"I hope, however, we shall not lose sight of the main subject in debate, by criticising on words. I say _main subject_ here, as I think there will be no occasion of saying any thing more on the subject of the _languages_ in relation to the arts and sciences.
"I am not disposed to think, sir, that you have designedly wrested the meaning of my words; nor that you are unwilling to receive my meaning when it is fully understood; and yet, having once explained on this subject, I am unable to account for your remarks.
"After my informing you that you had misconstrued me, and also stating my meaning, as I supposed, more explicitly, you have informed me that if your first construction was not my meaning, it seems that I must have meant the reverse of it, which, I must aver, is as foreign from my meaning as your first construction! For neither your former nor latter construction was in my mind when I wrote the sentence to which I allude: but a different idea from either of your constructions was in my mind, and was what I meant to state; which idea, as I conceive, is as fairly expressed by my words, and is a more just construction of them, taking into consideration the sentence which follows, than either of the ideas which you have expressed as their meaning.
"Permit me therefore to state again, that whatever might have been my opinion respecting the writings of the apostles, I did not mean to suggest, and much less to affirm in that sentence 'that they stated that which is not true!'--Neither did I mean to acknowledge in that sentence that they had stated 'no more' than what is true, at least in _substance_; but I did mean this, and this only, that admitting those things were true, all would admit that the design of the apostles was nothing _more_ than to state the truth of those things in _substance_; because all would acknowledge that they were not careful to be correct as to every _minutiae_. But as this makes nothing either for or against the main point, I wish to add no more respecting it, than simply to remark, that even if the apostles had gone on the opposite extreme of what I meant I should not think them 'deserving of _no credit_.' Supposing they had descended into _minutiae_, and related, to an exact nicety, every particular circumstance (which is exactly the reverse of what I mean to state), would they on this account have been deserving of _no credit_? I think not. Considering the time, however, which had elapsed after the facts are said to have taken place, before a history of them was given in writing, I think the evangelists are entitled to _more credit_, on the whole, than what they would have been if their testimony had borne the complexion last mentioned.