published by Lessing insist chiefly on this objection; but the whole vanishes into nothing, unless we ourselves give it that importance which it has not in itself, by assuming an unnecessary hypothesis. J. D. MICHAELIS: Introd. to New Testament, vol. i. pp. 75–6.

No intelligent Christian will distinguish it by that name [will distinguish the Bible by calling it the "word of God"], without a large restriction of its contents. All we assert respecting it is, that it is a collection of writings, containing a history of the divine dispensations to our world, and that the proper word of God, with numberless other particulars, is interwoven all the way through these most ancient and invaluable writings. - DAVID SIMPSON: Plea for Religion, p. 222.

Had the distinction which Mr. SIMPSON, in common with the generality of Unitarians, makes between the word of God and the books containing it, been attended to by Christian divines in general, instead of their confounding terms of a widely different meaning, many of the objections urged by unbelievers would have lost their force; and neither the curses of a Hebrew bard, the mistakes of an evangelist, nor the inconsequential reasonings of an apostle, would have been regarded as at all affecting the credibility of a revelation from God.

They who read it [the Sacred Volume] with "an evil heart of unbelief” and an alien spirit, — what boots for them the assertion that every sentence was miraculously communicated to the nominal author by God himself? Will it not rather present additional temptations to the unhappy scoffers, and furnish them with a pretext of self-justification ? I am told that this doctrine must not be resisted or called in question, because of its fitness to preserve unity of faith, and for the prevention of schism and sectarian byways! Let the man who holds this language trace the history of Protestantism, and the growth of sectarian divisions, ending with Dr. Hawker's ultra-Calvinistic Tracts, and Mr. Belsham's New Version of the Testament. And then let him tell me, that, for the prevention of an evil which already exists, and which the boasted preventive itself might rather seem to have occasioned, I must submit to be silenced by the first learned infidel who throws in my face the blessings of Deborah, or the cursings of David, or the Grecisms and heavier difficulties in the biographical chapters of the Book of Daniel, or the hydrography and natural philosophy of the patriarchal ages, I must forego the means of silencing, and the prospect of convincing, an alienated brother, because I must not thus answer: 66 My brother, what has all this to do with the truth and the worth of Christianity?... If, though but with the faith of a

Seneca or an Antonine, you admit the co-operation of a divine Spirit in souls desirous of good, even as the breath of heaven works variously in each several plant according to its kind, character, period of growth, and circumstance of soil, clime, and aspect, on what ground

can you assume that its presence is incompatible with all imperfection in the subject, even with such imperfection as is the natural accompaniment of the unripe season?... I demand for the Bible only the justice which you grant to other books of grave authority, and to other proved and acknowledged benefactors of mankind. Will you deny a spirit of wisdom in Lord Bacon, because in particular facts he did not possess perfect science, or an entire immunity from the positive errors which result from imperfect insight?... Thenceforward your doubts will be confined to such parts or passages of the received canon as seem to you irreconcilable with known truths, and at variance with the tests given in the Scriptures themselves, and as shall continue so to appear after you have examined each in reference to the circumstances of the writer or speaker, the dispensation under which he lived, the purpose of the particular passage, and the intent and object of the Scriptures at large." S. T. COLERIDGE: Confessions of an Inquir

ing Spirit; in Works, vol. v. pp. 599, 602–3, 606.

For COLERIDGE's utterances of deep and fervid admiration of the Holy Scriptures, to which all Christians will respond, recourse should be had to the work itself.

Those who affirm, in a general and indiscriminate manner, that all and every the parts of the Old Testament were immediately dictated by the Holy Spirit, and that to each the same kind of inspiration belongs, appear to me to go farther than the evidence warrants, and to lay the cause of revealed religion under the feet of its enemies. . . . . . . These facts [erroneous statements of numbers in the Old Testament] must fearfully affect the theory of a servile literality of inspiration. It is that theory which has put the most ostensibly powerful arms into the hands of the foes to God and man. The efforts which are at this moment made, amongst the metaphysical and religious distractions of Germany, by Wislicenus, Uhlich, and other real or pretended Hegelians, find a chief standing-point in their assuming that the Christian faith requires a literal understanding of the phraseology in the Bible which speaks of divine acts and of natural objects in the manner that was adapted to the temporary and local state of human knowledge. DR. JOHN PYE SMITH: Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, vol. i. pp. 27, 30.

These principles of interpretation [this, in particular, that "Scripture is its own interpreter "] were forgotten, this pre-eminence of scriptural above human system strangely reversed, by the successors of the Reformers [in Germany]. False ideas of inspiration, introduced by the imaginary necessities of the argument with the Romanists, contributed to the same result: from the first assumption, that the whole of Scripture was immediately dictated by the Holy Spirit, was derived a second, that all must be of actual value. To prove this, it was supposed that the same doctrines, the same fundamental truths of Christianity, must be not implied merely, but expressed, by all; a theory which must, of necessity, do much violence to the sacred text, while it overlooked the beautiful arrangement, according to which the different doctrines of revelation are each prominently conveyed by that mind which was most adapted to its reception. Yet greater confusion must obviously be the result of the same theory, when applied to the Old Testament. The difference of the law and the gospel, which Luther had so vividly seen, was obliterated, the shadow identified with the substance, the preparatory system with the perfect disclosure. Not content with finding the germs of Christian doctrine in the Old Testament, or those dawning rays which were to prepare the mental eye for the gradual reception of fuller light, but whose entire character could only be understood by those who should witness the rising of that luminary whose approach they announced; they not only considered prophecy as being throughout an inverted history, but held that all the distinguishing doctrines of Christianity were even to the Jews as much revealed in the Old Testament as in the New, and that the knowledge of these doctrines was as necessary to their salvation as to ours. No scientific error seems to have prepared so much for the subsequent re-action, in which all prophecy was discarded, all doctrine considered to be precarious. . . . The Scriptures, thus handled, instead of a living word, could not but become a dead repository of barren technicalities. Less important, lastly, though perhaps in its effects more immediately dangerous, was the corollary to the same theory of inspiration, that even historical passages, in which no religious truth was contained, were equally inspired with the rest, and consequently that no error, however minute, could even here be admitted. Yet, the imparting of religious truth being the object of revelation, any further extension of inspiration would appear an unnecessary miracle, as indeed it is one nowhere claimed by the writers of the New Testament. The faith of the Christian depends not

upon the reception of one or the other book of Scripture; and it has been a supposition pregnant with mischief, that any doubt respecting an individual portion of the Sacred Volume necessarily implies a diminished value for its whole contents, or a weakened reverence and gratitude towards its divine Giver. E. B. PUSEY: Causes of the Rationalist Character predominant in the Theology of Germany, pp. 28-32, 154; Lond. 1828.

"It is remarkable," says a critic in the North British Review for February, 1854, "that the first elaborate defence of German divines proceeded from the pen of Dr. PUSEY, who, though he has retracted his book, has not refuted his arguments."

While Christians of all denominations have ever agreed in admitting the inspiration of the New Testament, on no one point perhaps has there been a greater diversity of opinion than on the character of this inspiration. On this diversity of view, one general remark may be hazarded; and it will be found, I think, warranted by historieal fact. In proportion as inspiration has been made to approach to a complete inditing of the Scriptures, the Scriptures have been neglected. The consequence of the study and application of the Bible, from the period of the Reformation, has been, gradually and progressively, to limit the extent of inspiration; and, by so doing, to vindicate the holy character of what is unquestionably of divine origin, and to make the application of the rule of faith more sure. It was only perhaps in the worst ages of superstition, that an entire inspiration of matter, words, and composition generally, like that asserted of the Koran, was universally contended for. BISHOP HINDS: History of Christianity, pp. 520-1; Appendix, Note I.

It is great folly to turn our faith in Christianity into a Rupert's drop, which must fly into shivers the moment the Book of Obadiah or of Esther, or the second and third Epistles of St. John, or even a few disputed verses, are broken from the canon by an error of judgment. Such confused, ill-judging defences of the truth must naturally breed scepticism by wholesale, whenever they do not fall on the rich soil of a Protestant Popery, which receives any reasoning with implicit faith that leads to a foregone conclusion.. Infallibility, or perfect

freedom from all error, must perish with one faulty reading or erroneous version: consequently, the logical result of the whole process, which the author [Count Gasparin] commends as the only entrance to the School of Faith, is to leave our faith without any foundation whatever. It becomes an inverted pyramid, resting on its point; and

this point itself is lost and buried in the sands of a hundred versions and ten thousand various readings. Christian Observer for March,

1855; pp. 188, 192.

It will be seen, that, amid some diversity of opinion as to the precise nature of the inspiration possessed by the writers of the Bible, none of the authors from whom we have quoted, with the equivocal exception of GASPARIN, would defend the old opinion, still believed by ignorant multitudes, that every word contained in the Bible was dictated by the Spirit of God; that no mistake or error exists in the Sacred Records, whether relating to science or to history, to sentiment or to reasoning, to philosophy or to religion; that the books embraced in the present canons of the Old and New Testament, neither more nor less, and each and all parts, whether patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian, whether historical, poetical, prophetic, or doctrinal, whether obscure or plain, mysterious or intelligible, are equally divine, and equally binding on the consciences and hearts of the disciples of Jesus.

It would be egregious trifling seriously to refute such a mass of absurdities; and even the professed defenders of plenary inspiration are forced to make so many exceptions and restrictions to their theory as to render it practically useless, and to involve, after all, the principle of an inspiration which is only partial, and of an infallibility which is not absolutely perfect. We think it obvious that the Bible contains numerous passages, and even some entire books, which can in no proper sense be termed divine revelation; that neither the Book of Esther nor the Song of Solomon possesses any religious character whatever; that the historical portions of the Old and New Testament, though containing in the main a true record of things divine and supernatural as well as human, are not in themselves a revelation from heaven, any more than are the historical works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson; that the reasonings and inferences of the sacred writers, the modes in which they expressed their thoughts, and the images which they used to illustrate their doctrines, are as much human as those of classical and profane authors, who have given to the world the products of their learning or their genius. We are far from meaning to put the Gospels and the Acts, as to the value of their contents, on an equality with the histories of the Roman empire, or of the kingdoms of England and Scotland; nor would we at all imply, that, in our opinion, the Books of Moses and the Prophets, or the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and John, are not of more intrinsic worth than the best productions of any philosophic or historical school. They are no doubt immeasurably superior, not in the pomp of their expressions or in the harmony of their periods, though many portions will, as to beauty or sublimity of style, bear a comparison with the finest compositions of ancient or modern times, but in the grandeur of the subjects treated of, and in the fact, that, though not free from some of the errors of the times in which they were written, they contain those revelations of the Infinite