I take up this work with the purpose to read it for the first time as I should any other work, — as far at least as I can or dare. For I neither can, nor dare, throw off a strong and awful prepossession in its favour — certain as I am that a large part of the light and life, in and by which I see, love, and embrace the truths and the strengths co-organized into a living body of faith and knowledge… has been directly or indirectly derived to me from this sacred volume, — and unable to determine what I do not owe to its influence. (9)
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– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, 1840
