"We do not certainly know the exact nature and operation of the
moral attributes of God: we can but infer and conjecture from what
we know of the moral attributes of man: and the analogy between the
Finite and the Infinite can never be so perfect as to preclude all
possibility of error in the process. But the possibility becomes
almost a certainty, when any one human faculty is elevated by
itself into an authoritative criterion of religious truth, without
regard to those collateral evidences by which its decisions may be
modified and corrected."[BH]... "Beyond question, every doubt
which our reason may suggest in matters of religion is entitled to
its due place in the examination of the evidences of religion; if
we will treat it as a part only, and not the whole; if we will not
insist on a positive solution of that which, it may be, is given us
for another purpose than to be solved. It is reasonable to believe
that, in matters of belief as well as of practice, God has not
thought fit to annihilate the free will of man, but has permitted
speculative difficulties to exist as the trial and the discipline
of sharp and subtle intellects, as He has permitted moral
temptations to form the trial and the discipline of strong and
eager passions.... We do not doubt that the conditions of our moral
trial tend towards good, and not towards evil; that human nature,
even in its fallen state, bears traces of the image of its Maker,
and is fitted to be an instrument in His moral government. And we
believe this, notwithstanding the existence of passions and
appetites which, isolated and uncontrolled, appear to lead in an
opposite direction. Is it then more reasonable to deny that a
system of revealed religion, whose unquestionable tendency as a
whole is to promote the glory of God and the welfare of mankind,
can have proceeded from the same Author, merely because we may be
unable to detect the same character in some of its minuter
features, viewed apart from the system to which they
belong?"[BI]

[BH] _Bampton Lectures_, p. 157, Fourth Edition.

[BI] _Bampton Lectures_, p. 166, Fourth Edition.

Surely this is very different from denouncing all reasoning from human
goodness to Divine as "illicit." To take a parallel case. The manufacture
of gunpowder is a dangerous process, and, if carried on without due
precautions, is very likely to lead to disastrous consequences