Hereat he smiled and said, “Thou hast well questioned me. Assuredly we, even the Saints, may be, nay, must needs be, in some error. For whereas hereafter we shall discern all things as they are, seeing God face to face in heaven, on earth we can but see them darkly, as it were through a mirror. Yet be thou ever prompt, my dear Onesimus, to make distinction between those cases where to err is to lie, and hurtful to the soul, and those where to err is not to lie, and therefore not in the same way hurtful. For I also, not many months ago, was in error concerning the time of the coming of the Lord. For as a peevish child is impatient till the day shall dawn, though the sun be not risen nor like to rise, even so I desired that my Lord should come before his time, while I still lived, and that I should be snatched up into the clouds to him, before this generation had passed away. But now I perceive that the day of the Lord is not yet, nor will be perchance during this generation nor the next, nor perhaps for many generations yet to come. Herein therefore I erred, but inasmuch as this error was not against my soul, to err in such a matter was not to sin.
“But now let me tell thee what kind of error corrupteth the soul, and warreth against righteousness. Whoso supposeth that to abstain from swine’s flesh maketh expiation for impure thoughts, or that a man may be envious and a slanderer if he do but observe Sabbaths, I say unto thee that such a one walketh in the darkness of error that wholly cloudeth the soul and shutteth out the light of God. For these opinions or beliefs are against the perfect Law of Love; against which whatsoever opposeth itself is not of God but of Satan. From such errors as these flee thou, and fight thou, with all thy power; but the other errors none can altogether avoid, nor be thou overmuch troubled concerning them. As I myself was in error touching the day of the Lord, so doubtless art thou touching some other matters, and so are and so will be, many others of the saints, liable severally perchance to several errors. Yea, all earthly knowledge of heavenly things must needs be, in some sort, error, because they are seen as it were by reflection through an imperfect glass; for the perfect God none hath seen nor can see in the flesh. Wherefore doubt not but thou art assuredly in error; yet be not on that account disquieted, provided that thou strive to attain more and more of the truth. Neither forget thou that the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be with thee to guide thee into all truth, and to turn darkness into Light before the feet of the Saints, from generation to generation, that all men may grow in the knowledge of the Lord, and in the understanding of his unsearchable ways.