I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Among the children of God, it was they who were most able to rightly divide the word of truth.
From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature - the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious, and it should be totally transparent.
I can't establish the veracity of what people say because only they know whether they are telling the truth. I can't look into your mind, can I?
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.
Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.
During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism.
We can't give the truth to someone as an object, we can only point to it, inviting inspection. It is in that spirit that we can hear or read a teaching and then look at our own lives, at our own experiences to see whether anything might have been revealed about them.
I've always believed you can get closer to the truth by pretending not to speak it.
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.