preserved, seems to have been that of moral instruction adapted to the gradual, though slow, progress of the nation from a very rude to a more civilized state. In the writings of Isaiah, for instance, we find higher moral views than are contained in the books of Moses. But the general object of the prophetic writings, seems to be the encouragement of the people under some peculiar circumstances of danger or suffering. In a nation so rude and illiterate as the Jews, written compositions of any kind must have always appeared as something more or less approaching to the Supernatural. That a man not regularly educated in the schools of the Prophets should be able to produce any poetical composition, as it happened in the case of "Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa," could not but seem miraculous. The sudden appearance of Saul among the prophets was a subject of astonishment.* But even the writers of history, and the collectors of moral proverbs, could not fail to obtain a high degree of popular veneration: for either they must have been prophets by education and profession, or, their talent must have obtained them a place among that class. The duty of deference to the admonitions of such men, especially when their writings had been added to the collection of the Jewish Bible, with the approbation of the national authorities, was a part of the constitutional law of Moses.† Hence the established weight of what, in the language of the New Testament, is called the Scripture. This obedience and deference was not, however, necessarily grounded on a belief of the divine infallibility of every part of those writings. It is well known that the opinions of the Jewish Church (as our Divines love to call the Jewish priesthood) were perfectly unsettled upon the subject of inspiration. This is an important fact, in our present question: for the strongest argument for the divine authority of the Jewish part of the Bible, is derived from the circumstance that Jesus and his apostles must have spoken of those writings in the sense of the Jewish Church; recognising the canon which that church admitted, and approving the notions of inspiration which that church received. Nothing, however, can be more fallacious than this view. It is indeed quite surprising that so few have remembered, in connection with this subject, that the Jewish Church, in the time of Christ, consisted of Pharisees and Sadducees; that the latter rejected all the Jewish Scriptures, except the five books of Moses; that nevertheless the Sadducees were allowed without opposition to be High Priests, and to hold the first places in the Sanhedrim, a body in which the highest ecclesiastical authority was lodged;

that, if Jewish tradition is to be the foundation of our belief in the divine infallibility of the Jewish Scriptures, we have to choose between the tradition of the more ancient church branch-the Sadducees, and that of the more modern pretended reformers, the Pharisees; that, even among these, the notions of inspiration were far from being established as a point of Jewish faith; for Josephus, a Pharisee and a Priest, in his answer to Apion, which was a public defence of the Jewish religion, establishes the principle that Moses had only a general divine call to legislate for the Hebrew nation, and explains the expressions, "thus saith the Lord," and "the Lord said unto me," by a conscientious persuasion that such a general commission gave a divine sanction to his own judgment.* If this had been a very unusual opinion, if it had been a view against which the whole priesthood would as readily have protested as our Clergy at the present day, Josephus could not well have ventured to use it in answer to such an opponent as Apion, who would have appealed to the Jews themselves against the apologist.

But, on this point, we need not have recourse to conjectures. The conduct of Jesus in regard to the Sadducees, puts an end to all doubt, by showing that belief in the Hebrew Scriptures, as an inspired and infallible collection of writings, was not considered by him an essential point. Let us suppose that Christ had entertained the notions of Scripture inspiration which are now common among us: how then could he have treated the Sadducees with so much mildness? How could he have omitted to reproach them for the rejection of by far the greatest portion of the Hebrew Bible? Yet there is not a word of censure against this view; there is not even an insinuation on the part of Jesus against the unfitness of such men for the priesthood. When he argues with them he limits his quotations to the books of Moses, without saying a word against the opinion which reduced him to this limitation. The Evangelists who have recorded Christ's severe and indignant censures of those Ultra-believers, the Pharisees, do not mention the slightest reproach against the Sadducees: and yet, if we believe the theory of Scripture infallibility, those men must have been the worst of heretics.

This unquestionable fact appears conclusive. The expressions of the Christ and his apostles, commonly adduced as proofs of the divine infallibility of the Hebrew Scriptures, must lose all weight in this controversy, when placed in juxtaposition with this mode of proceeding. That the Scriptures of the Old

* Contra Ap. L. ii. § 16. ed. Richter. Lipsia, 1826.

Testament were appealed to by Jesus and his disciples, when disputing with the Jews; that they were recommended to the Jews, as the best means to judge whether Jesus of Nazareth united in his person the signs of the long expected Messiah, is certain; but it is equally evident that such references and appeals were never made when addressing Gentiles. Besides all this, whoever will examine the New Testament with an unprejudiced mind, must be surprised at the exceedingly sparing use which Jesus made of the Hebrew Scriptures. Had he looked upon them as our Divines do; had he intended to sanction those. writings as infallible oracles for all future ages, his conduct, in respect to the Sadducees, his omitting to give us a positive declaration on that subject, and his contenting himself with a few quotations from some of the Scripture writings, would be perfectly inexplicable.

When, from this point of view, we look at the best treatises on the Inspiration of Scripture, it is perfectly astonishing to see how very little will satisfy men who are strongly predisposed to establish a theory. "It is hardly consistent," say they, "with the dignity of Scripture to suppose the writers left liable to any false reasoning."* But should such a question be decided according to each man's notions of dignity?—This is to adopt as a principle, that God must always have acted according to our expectations. If this be granted-if we are to judge by our notions of what is "hardly," or altogether inconsistent with the dignity of Scripture, the conclusion must inevitably depend on our previous arbitrary measure of that dignity. And here we see even an acute logician arguing in the usual circle-the Scriptures must be inspired because they are the Word of God, and they are the Word because they are inspired. On what is the dignity of the Scriptures made to depend but on their inspiration; and yet the quantum of the inspiration is to be measured by the dignity of the Scriptures!

The same author stumbles upon the leading principle in this question, and then lays it aside as a mere incidental thought. "It is inconceivable that God should interpose miraculous agency for the accomplishment of any object, and then allow his purpose to be defeated through any defect in its application" (p. 136). This principle completely destroys the theory of Bible infallibility. If certainty was the object, and we cannot conceive any other, it is impossible that God should have laid its foundation on probabilities. But what else has this able writer found throughout this question? "The persons who wrote the

* See Hinds on Inspiration, page 162.

Bible and those who were appointed to govern God's people of old, were divinely commissioned and miraculously qualified, so far as was needful" (p. 27). We ask, how far was it needful?Whatever answer may be given, must be a matter of conjecture, and it will certainly depend upon some preconceived necessity either of miracle or inspiration. Had not the notion (which evidently orginated in the early Christian Writers called FATHERS) that Christianity is essentially a system of metaphysical doctrines, and that saving faith consists in admitting statements as true, which our reason rejects either as false or groundless, had not this spurious faith gradually obtained full credit among Christians, in consequence of the furious controversies of the clergy, the theory of Scripture infallibility would have lost ground in proportion as the Jewish habits of mind which brought in that notion declined, together with the number of Jewish converts. But the moment it was established that salvation depends on the acceptance of certain propositions, as directly proceeding from God, it was impossible for Christians to remain without a divine oracle which should, at all times, declare which were the eternally saving, and which the eternally destroying propositions. As the Jews had the Old Testament given to them for a national rule on all matters whatever, it was easily supposed that it had been given also in the character of a perfect and true rule. Look into the works of Cyprian, for instance, and you will find that, in the middle of the third century, the Jewish notion that the Old Testament should continue among Christians as an oracle to be consulted on all points, was established as an incontrovertible principle. And now it was plausibly urged-is it possible that a more perfect dispensation should be left without a similar rule? Proceeding on the gratuitous and false supposition that doctrines were the essence of the Gospel, this question could not but be answered in the negative. It was then concluded that since the Jews had oracles, the Christians must have oracles too. "Well, then (said the clergy), the apostles and some of their immediate disciples have written on the subject of Christianity. These writings, therefore, must be the Christian Scriptures, and they must have been intended by God to decide all controversies among Christians: consequently they must be infallible; and in order to be infallible they must have been inspired or dictated by God."-Inspired? Dictated?" Yes: so far as was needful."-Needful for what?-For the purpose of ascertaining what doctrines save, and what doctrines destroy the soul eternally." But you forget, we would say, that this object is established on a mere SUPPOSITION. Remove this supposition, and the need ceases

But, "it is monstrous to suppose that God should have committed his Revelations to uninspired records." There are very few things of which we can assert a priori that they would be monstrous in the plans of Divine Wisdom. The permission of moral and physical evil would appear a monstrous supposition to any intelligent being, who, without a knowledge of our present state, should judge that supposition a priori. Whether the Revelations of God to mankind necessarily require to be made in writing, we cannot even conjecture: this, however, we know, that the original revelation to our first parents, and the patriarchs, was not made in writing. What certainly seems monstrous is that any inspired documents of revelation, having been prepared by miracle, should bear no unquestionable proofs of the miracle that produced them :-that not even the natural and obvious means of convincing mankind of their authenticity, and their exemption from corruption and interpolation-such means as the printing press would have afforded

should have been observed by a providence so profuse in supernatural operations, as it is represented by Divines. Most of all it is monstrous to suppose that the Revelations of God, committed to writings of high antiquity, partly in Hebrew, a dead language of which no perfect knowledge can ever be acquired, partly in Greek, in a dialect which though made up of Greek words, has scarcely anything in common with the notions and mental forms preserved in the writings which are our most abundant as well as most effectual means of understanding the Greek language-it is monstrous, we repeat, to suppose that God, having committed his Revelations to such writings, should leave Christians to guess which of the various meanings they convey is his own revelation, and which are poisonous, soul-killing errors. This is the true monster in the question:-a monster, indeed, which for ages has produced and nourished another-the living Oracle of the Church of Rome.

The natural and inevitable inference from these undeniable truths is, that the Revelations which God has made to mankind cannot be of that kind which would be frustrated for want of a miraculous certainty, either in regard to their origin, or their meaning. Let Divines open their eyes to a truth of indescribable importance: it is this ;-To make Christianity consist in a revelation, which is not, cannot be, a revelation, except in combination with a miraculous interpreter of it, is to condemn Christianity altogether. Since it is a fact that such an interpreter does not exist, and, on the generally-received hypothesis, Christianity cannot exist without him, the rejection of the Gospel is reduced by Divines to a direct consequence of a palpable fact.

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