Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 69-70
Context: None of us believes that rulers are infallible or that their commands should constitute our highest standard of right and wrong. Quite apart from the belief of the ruler, the method of war is either Christian or un-Christian, and his command does not determine whether our participation in it is moral or immoral. Therefore, the Christian citizen must come to his decision on a basis of the spirit and teaching of Jesus, quite independently of the command of the ruler. To say that Jesus and St. Paul recognize the function of the state is not to say that they command the Christian to participate in war when ordered to do so by the ruler of the nation; any more than their recognition of the state meant that they sanctioned human slavery, polygamy, extortion and the other evil practices which were approved by the [Roman] state.
1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 138
“We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us.”
Quoted by G.W.E. Russell in Collections and Recollections http://books.google.com/books?id=OEAPAAAAYAAJ&q=%22We+are+none+of+us+infallible+not+even+the+youngest+of+us%22&pg=PA234#v=onepage (1898)
What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)
Context: All “inspired books,” teaching that what the supernatural commands is right, and right because commanded, and that what the supernatural prohibits is wrong, and wrong because prohibited, are absurdly unphilosophic. And all “inspired books,” teaching that only those who obey the commands of the supernatural are, or can be, truly virtuous, and that unquestioning faith will be rewarded with eternal joy, are grossly immoral. Again I say: Intelligence is the only moral guide.
Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer (1876), Introduction
1870s
Context: A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.
“Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.”
“I do not believe in infallible men, nor in an infallible church, nor in an infallible book”
Defence at his Heresy Trial
(1959), as quoted in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/weekinreview/ideas-trends-the-quotations-of-chairman-helms-race-god-aids-and-more.html.
1950s
