Scriptures; and that, to come nearer to the point, the inspiration of the Scriptures in points of physical science was once insisted on as stoutly as it is now maintained with regard to history....... It is strange to see how much of ancient history consists apparently of patches put together from various quarters without any redaction. Is not this largely the case in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles? For instance, are not chap. xxiv. and xxvi. of 1 Samuel merely different versions of the same event, just as we have two accounts of the creation in the early chapters of Genesis? And must not chapters xvi. and xvii. of the same book be also from different sources, the account of David in the one being quite inconsistent with that in the other? So, again, in 2 Chron. xi. 20 and xiii. 2, there is a decided difference in the parentage of Abijah's mother, which is curious on any supposition. . . . I have long thought that the greater part of the Book of Daniel is most certainly a very late work, of the time of the Maccabees; and the pretended prophecy about the Kings of Grecia and Persia, and of the North and South, is mere history, like the poetical prophecies in Virgil and elsewhere. In fact, you can trace distinctly the date when it was written, because the events up to the date are given with historical minuteness, totally unlike the character of real prophecy; and, beyond that date, all is imaginary. — DR. THOS. ARNOLD: Letters 20, 111, 222; in Life and Correspondence, pp. 69, 255, 358.

In his "Tracts for the Times" (Miscellaneous Works, pp. 285–6), Dr. ARNOLD, after stating his belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, says that it is an unwarranted interpretation of the term "inspiration" to suppose it equivalent to a communication of the divine perfections; that many of our words and actions are spoken and done by the inspiration of God's Spirit; that all inspiration does not destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it inspires; and that, though no merely human being ever enjoyed a larger share of the Spirit of God than Paul, yet did he err in expecting, and in leading the Corinthians and Thessalonians to expect, the end of the world in the generation then existing.

We have reason, from the whole tenor of Scripture, to believe that it is not the will of God to effect any end by a miracle which could be as well effected by the established course and methods of his providence. Hence I infer, that the kind or degree of inspiration would be according to the nature of the object; revelation and the highest suggestion, where they were necessary; but, where they were not necessary, that superintendence and direction of divine power upon

There are

the mind, which were sufficient for the purpose. many passages in Scripture to which an original inspiration could not be attached.... In Jeremiah, Jonah, and Habakkuk, inspired prophets, we find occasionally the utterance of sinful infirmity; such as, in reference to Hab. i. 2, 3, the late Mr. MILNER calls a "blamable mixture of impatience and unbelief." (Sermons, ed. by Dean M. p. 277.) . . . The three friends of Job, and sometimes Job himself, advance many positions which are not true in principle, nor right in practice, still less inspired. . . . Will any considerate person say that Job's mistaken friends were inspired, when God himself declared to them, "Ye have not spoken concerning me what is right"? or that the holy patriarch himself was inspired, when he execrated the day of his birth? .... In relations of fact, veracity and accuracy are all that we want. What possessed these qualities, though the knowledge of it might be derived from any of the common sources of information, would be not less true than that which was infused by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit. DR. JOHN PYE SMITH: Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, vol. i. pp. 25, 27–9.

In pp. 22-3, this powerful opponent of Unitarianism proposes the following translation of 2 Tim. iii. 16, "Every writing divinely inspired (is) also profitable for instruction," &c., and defends it by the authority of CAlvin, Beza, DiodatI, J. D. MICHAELIS, DE WETTE, and BOOTHROYD; of the oldest versions, and also of the Geneva English and the Dutch. In pp. 34-8, he assigns his reasons for believing that the Song of Solomon was not a divinely inspired composition, and had no relation to any of the facts or doctrines of either the Israelitish or the Christian economy. In p. 59, he very properly says, that "that which is evinced to be true, whatever may be the channel through which it has entered our minds, we are bound by our relation to the system of God's moral government to believe;" and that “those well-meaning persons who think that they have proved the divine inspiration of a particular sentence (such as 1 Tim. v. 23, or 2 Tim. iv. 13), because their pious fertility has been able to educe a great number of important religious reflections from the advice, the request, the motives, or the implied circumstances, in the case, are committing an egregious folly." In p. 60, he admits that "in the Gospels the same fact or discourse is often related with differences, which, if a rigorous verbal conformity were insisted upon, would be irreconcilable, but which can create no difficulty if only the fair sense and meaning be regarded." And, in p. 62, he confesses, "that, after long and serious examination, this hypothesis of a universal verbal inspiration does appear" to him "to be clogged with innumerable difficulties, and to be by no means required by the facts of the case and the statements of the divine word." In support of his opinion, Dr. SMITH quotes the sentiments advanced by many eminent divines.

Nor again is there any reason to suppose that any of the apostles was in such a sense infallible as that he could not teach false doctrine. They were, indeed, so guided by the Spirit as to have the truth clearly revealed to them, so that they always knew it themselves; but it does not appear that they were compelled always to speak the truth. Their infallibility does not seem to have been like that which Roman Catholics ascribe to their popes, whose decisions they are ready to follow, even when they know them to be personally the worst of men, and perhaps infidels in their hearts. The apostles Peter and Barnabas, for example, were, in one instance, induced by false shame to dissemble the truth which had been revealed to them, and, by the weight of their example, to draw others also into the same fault, Gal. ii. 11–13. Paul, too, expressly tells the Galatians, that, if he himself were to preach any other gospel to them than that which they had already received, they should not listen to him; so that, even in the case of the apostles, men were bound to exercise their own judgments, and not required blindly to receive every thing they said; but, when they spoke as witnesses, to consider the proofs of their integrity; when they reasoned, to examine their reasoning; when they published revelations, to weigh well the miraculous evidence of God's speaking in them. - ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: Cautions for the Times, pp. 111–12.

The greater part of what the apostles wrote was, doubtless, entirely the suggestion of their own minds, and, properly speaking, uninspired. Its authority is not at all diminished by this circumstance, if we grant (what it would be absurd to doubt) that every wrong suggestion must have been checked by the impulse of the Spirit, every deficiency supplied by actual revelation, and every failure or fault of memory miraculously remedied. The revelation was miraculous; but it was recorded just as any man would record any ordinary information which might be the result of reasoning or of report. The Bible is the only book in the world which appeals to God for its authority, without affecting or pretending to the immediate authorship of God. . . . . . . The true notion of inspiration is not that the sacred penman was inspired while in the act of writing, but that he wrote what he had beforehand received by extraordinary revelation. It would be impossible else to account for the variety of style and thought, the occasional introduction of matter foreign to revelation, and whatever else belongs to such writings in common with all mere human compositions. DR. SAMUEL HINDS, Bishop of Norwich: History of Christianity, pp. 190, 284–5.

Having perused with great attention all that has fallen in my way from Protestant writers on this subject [the inspiration of the Scriptures], I have hardly found one single argument advanced by them that is not logically incorrect; so that, if I had not higher grounds on which to rest my belief, they could not have led me to adopt it. It is not fair to consider the Sacred Volume . . . as forming an individual whole. Many of its books stand necessarily on different grounds from the rest. For instance, learned Protestant divines, especially on the continent, have excluded from inspiration the writings of St. Luke and St. Mark, for this reason, that, according to them, the only argument for inspiration in the Scriptures is the promise of divine assistance given to the apostles. But these were not apostles; they were not present at the promise; and, if you extend that privilege beyond those who were present, and to whom the promises were personally addressed, the rule will have no farther limit. If you admit disciples to have partaken of the privilege, on what ground is Barnabas excluded, and why is not his Epistle held canonical? ... Nowhere does our Saviour tell his apostles, that whatever they may write shall enjoy this privilege [of inspiration]; nor do they anywhere claim it....What internal mark of inspiration can we discover in the third Epistle of St. John to show, that the inspiration sometimes accorded must have been granted here? Is there any thing in that Epistle which a good and virtuous pastor of the primitive ages might not have written; any thing superior in sentiment or doctrine to what an Ignatius or a Polycarp might have indited? It is unfair in the extreme, as I before intimated, to consider the New Testament, and still more the entire Bible, as a whole, and use internal arguments from one book to another; to prove that the Song of Solomon has internal evidence of inspiration, because Jeremiah, who is in the same volume, contains true prophecies; or that the Epistle to Philemon is necessarily inspired, because the Apocalypse, by its side, is a revelation. Yet such is a common way of arguing. If internal evidence has to decide the question, show it me for each book in that sacred collection. . . . As such conversions [those spoken of by the Rev. Mr. Tottingham, an opponent of the Roman Catholic belief] do not prove the preacher's sermon to be inspired, but only the doctrines which he teaches to be good, and, if you please, divine; so neither can a similar fact prove the Bible inspired, but merely its doctrines to be holy and salutary. The "Imitation of Christ" may be thus proved to be an inspired work. . . . His [Mr. Tottingham's] second proof is the prophecies recorded in Scripture. These may,

indeed, prove any book to be inspired which is composed of them, but not, surely, any wherein they are merely recorded. . . . Show me where St. Matthew or St. Mark says that they have written their books under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, or by the command of God, or for any other than human purposes. Unless you can show this, the evidence as to their character may prove that whatever they wrote is true; but it will never prove that it was written under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. Precisely of a similar form is his argument drawn from prophecy. It is never attempted to show how the prophecies recorded in the New Testament were intended to prove the inspiration of the books which contain them; how, for instance, the truth of our blessed Redeemer's prophecy touching the destruction of Jerusalem can demonstrate that the Gospel of St. Matthew must be inspired, because it relates it. CARDINAL WISEMAN: Lectures on the Doctrines of the Catholic Church, pp. 31–6.

I... shall attempt to wrench this notion of a verbal inspiration from the hands of its champions by a reductio ad absurdum, viz., by showing the monstrous consequences to which it leads. . . . Of what use is it to a German, to a Swiss, or to a Scotsman, that, three thousand years before the Reformation, the author of the Pentateuch was kept from erring by a divine restraint over his words, if the authors of this Reformation-Luther, suppose, Zwingle, John Knox—either making translations themselves, or relying upon translations made by others under no such verbal restraint, have been left free to bias his mind, pretty nearly as much as if the original Hebrew writer had been resigned to his own human discretion?... The great ideas of the Bible protect themselves. The heavenly truths, by their own imperishableness, defeat the mortality of languages with which for a moment they are associated. Is the lightning enfeebled or dimmed, because for thousands of years it has blended with the tarnish of earth and the steams of earthly graves? Or light, which so long has travelled in the chambers of our sickly air, and searched the haunts of impurity, — is that less pure than it was in the first chapter of Genesis? Or that more holy light of truth, — the truth, suppose, written from his creation upon the tablets of man's heart, which truth never was imprisoned in any Hebrew or Greek, but has ranged for ever through courts and camps, deserts and cities, the original lesson of justice to man and piety to God, has that become tainted by intercourse with flesh? or has it become hard to decipher, because the very heart, that human heart where it is inscribed, is so often blotted with