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THEOPNEUSTYiV^^ ^^ ^^^'^^ 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 :* SEP .^8 1922 
 
 PLENARY INSPir/¥M'#^ 
 
 OF 
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 
 
 / 
 
 BY S. R. L. GAUSSEN, 
 
 PROPESSOU OP THEOLOGY IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 1EDWARD N ORRIS KIRK 
 
 rniRD AMERICAN FROM THK SECOND FRENCH EDITION, 
 ENLARGED AND IMPROVED BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN S. TAYLOR & CO. 
 
 BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL, 145 NASSAU STREET. 
 1845. 
 
Enteukd, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, 
 
 By JOHN S. TAYLOR & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States 
 
 for the Southern District of New York. 
 
 i>^ 
 
 ,(^ 
 
 ITEREOTYPED BY T. B. SMIT] 
 74 FULTON-STHEET, NEW YORK. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Pages 
 
 lfirnoriv<'tiOf!s BY THE Translator 5 
 
 Prepack fc? ihe Author. ...... 21 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Definition of Theofneusty 33 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 Objections Examined. 49 
 
 Section I. — Individuality of the sacred writers, deeply 
 
 impressed on their books. ...... 49 
 
 Section II. — The Translations 74 
 
 Section III. — The employment of the Septuagint. . 80 
 
 Section IV. — The Variations. 85 
 
 Section V. — Errors of reasoning or of doctrine. . , -18 
 Section VI.— Errors in the narrations ; contradictions in 
 
 the facts. 128 
 
 Section VII. — Errors contrary to the Philosophy of Na- 
 ture 170 
 
 Section VIII. — The very acknowledgment of St. Paul. . ^00 
 
 CH.APTER III. 
 
 Examination of the Evasions 204 
 
 Skction I. — Could Inspiration regard the thoughts, with- 
 out extending also to the language 1 . . . 204 
 
 Section II. — Should the historical books be excluded 
 
 from the inspired portions of the Bible 7 . . . 216 
 
 Section III. — Would the apparent insigniiicance of cer- 
 tain details of the Bible, justify us in separating them 
 from the inspired portion. ..... 236 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Pages 
 
 Of thk use of Sacred Criticism, in its relations to 
 
 TlIKOPNEUSTY. 257 
 
 Section I. — Sacred Criticism a scholar not ajudge. . 258 
 
 Section II, — Sacred Criticism is a historian, and not a 
 
 conjurA-.ff 265 
 
 Section III. — Sacred Criticism not the God, but the door- 
 keeper of the temple. 272 
 
 ^ CHAPTER V. 
 
 Didactic Summary of the doctrine of Theopneusty. 287 
 
 Section I.— Retrospect. 288 
 
 Section II. — Short Catechetical Essay on the principal 
 
 points of the doctrine 294 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Scriptural proof op the Theopneusty. . . . 345 
 Section I. — All Scripture is Theopneustic. . . . 345 
 Section II. — All the words of the Prophets are given by 
 
 God 346 
 
 Section III. — All the Scriptures of the Old Testament 
 
 are Prophetic. 355 
 
 Section IV. — All the Scriptures of the New Testament 
 
 are Prophetical. ........ 361 
 
 Section V. — The examples of the Apostles and of their 
 
 Master attest, that they regard all the words of the 
 
 holy books as given by God 379 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Conclusion. 399 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 Thb Spirit of God has breathed afresh upon the Cliurches of 
 the Old World ; and the piinciple of life is manifesting itself in a 
 two-fold antagonism to the ancient superstition and the modem 
 scepticism of Continental Europe. The new theological school in 
 Geneva, founded in 1831, is an effect and an instrument of that 
 renovation. Its existence was indispensable to the awakened 
 churches of Switzerland ; for, the city, church, and school of Cal- 
 vin had abandoned the vital principles and facts of Calvin's reli* 
 gion. < 
 
 Mr. S. R. L. Gaussen, our author, is Professor of Theology in 
 this Evangelical Institution. He is an accomplished scholar, and 
 an able writer ; and we hail the productions of his pen, (several of 
 which are appearing at this moment, in an English dress,) and 
 those of his esteemed colleague, Mr. Merle D'Auhignc, as the pro- 
 mise to France, that she shall yet recover all, and even more than 
 she lost by the vandalism, that burned her Protestant citizens and 
 her Protestant literature at the same stake. 
 
 Of the style of this work, we merely deem it necessary to say, 
 that it possesses a degree of vivacity, simplicity, and richness, 
 which are but imperft-ctly represented in the translation. Of its 
 contents, we would make some few remarks, by which the reader 
 may be better prepared to approach the subject, and meet the 
 author as he desires to be met. He does not propo.se to convince 
 the sceptic ; and yet there is much here, on which the doubter 
 may prcfitablj reflect. His great oltject is. to take the Church off 
 from her present, unsafe, indefensible and enfeebling position, of a 
 naixed, varying and indeterminate inspiration. 
 
 He has assumed a bold position, which has to us many of the 
 1* 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 essential signs of truth ; simplicity, precision, consistency with it- 
 self and with the declarations of the Bible, and power to establish 
 the mind in firm assurance. It is simple ; and in this, is con- 
 trasted with that strange, confused, inapplicable theory, so preva- 
 lent in the church, which considers some divine, and others hu- 
 man ; — which however, gives us no sure guide, when we would fly 
 from the words of man to the pure word of God. Our author's 
 position is precise — for it docs not vacillate in a misty indcfinite- 
 ness between an inspiration of the men and of their writings, as 
 does the opposite theory. It comes directly to the book as an ex- 
 istence, as a thing, and says of it, this is inspired, all inspired, all 
 equally so, all infallible. It is consistent with itself, for it asserts 
 that the whole Bible is infallible and perfect ; and then forbids hu- 
 man reason to pronounce any passage of the Bible unworthy of 
 the Spirit of God. It is consistent with the Bible ; for it admits 
 and asserts that all that is written, (all Scripture) is given by in- 
 spiration of God. It is confirming ; for he who believes this doc- 
 trine, takes up his Bible, saying, this is all true, all important, all 
 worthy of God ; not one jot or tittle of it can fail. 
 
 Again and again, have we asked, in reading this book, what do 
 our learned writers on Inspiration propose to themselves, by adopt- 
 ing the subtile distinctions borrowed from Jewish Rabbins "? 
 There is, we admit, an intrinsic difficulty or mystery in the whole 
 subject of Inspiration. But it respects only the mode of the Spirit's 
 influencing the minds of the writers. And if this Jewish theory 
 of Inspiration had been adopted, merely in explanation of the psy- 
 chology of the case — to inform us how the writers were affected 
 in the composition of different parts of the sacred oracles, we should 
 consider it to be as harmless and useless as a thousand other the- 
 ories. But when it invades the text itself, and undertakes to clas- 
 sify tlie passages of the Bible, as partaking more or less of human 
 infirmity, ignorance or sinfulness, then tve feel ourselves con- 
 strained to differ and to remonstrate. It may be replied, no ; we 
 simply propose to guard against exaggeration, and to prevent the 
 exposure of the doctrine of Inspiration to contempt ; we find pas- 
 sages manifestly above the reach of human faculties, even for their 
 comprehension, much more for their composition; we find others 
 again mere recitals of trivial incidents, expressions of ordinary feel- 
 ings, such as may be seen in a school-boy's letter to his friends; 
 and we cannot believe that the Spirit of God equally dictated all 
 
INTEODUCTION. VU 
 
 ihesc passages. Still, we reply with the author, if you merely un- 
 dertake to speculate upon the state of the minds of the writers, 
 confine your speculations there — but suffer us to return, and tell 
 the pi^ople to rely on the fact, that every word of the original text 
 is, in its {)lace, an inspired word — that God placed it there, as a 
 portion of an infallible revelation. 
 
 A great excellence of this work, is the clearness of its distinction 
 between the inspiration of the men, and that of the book. We be- 
 lieve, indeed, and its author believes, that the writers were in- 
 spired ; that " holy men of God, were moved by the Holy Ghost," 
 when they spake. But the fact of their inspiration is one thing, 
 that of the book is another. And the perusal of this work has in- 
 creased our conviction, that a semi-intidelity on a vital point, has 
 crept into the Church ; that the sense of the imperfection of the 
 writers has imperceptibly diminished her reverence for the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 There is a formidable objection to the theory of Insj)iration, to 
 which our author has not replied. His reason for not doing so, is, 
 that he writes for believers, and not for sceptics. Yet, we fear, 
 that many a devout student of the Bible, and many a sincere 
 preacher of its truths, might discover lurking in his heart, this 
 subtle objection ; Avhich, like the unobserved '' worm i' the bud," 
 is sometimes hinderinof a vigorous grov/th, and sometimes corrodiny 
 vital organs. The objection may be thus stated : — God's works 
 are all perfect in one sense, and all his teachings are infallible. 
 But the instant he employs man to teach his teachings to otl^er 
 men, there is introduced a new element, which at once destroys 
 perfection and infallibility. This arises from two sources, the ini- 
 perfection of man, and that of his language. If the conceptions 
 or feelings of a man are employed, they must necessarily limit and 
 mar the divine thought communicated to him. And if man speak-s 
 to his fellows, in human language, he must use an imperfect me- 
 dium, ahvays more or less imperfectly comprehended. 
 
 This is the most subtile and imposing of all the objections which 
 have attacked our faith in plenary inspiration. Our ground of de- 
 fence is here ; that God calls his word perfect ; he declares that a 
 particle of it shall never fail, that no future changes, no progress 
 of science, no unfolding of the complicated drama of human life 
 shall ever change or modify one shade of its statements. This 
 may not satisfy the unbeliever ; yet even he may find a relief from 
 
VIU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 his own dark and chilling speculations, in the fact, that God's in- 
 struments are perfect for his purposes, however unadaptcd to ours 
 Nature is an infallible teacher, none can deny ; or, in other words 
 all God's works are perfect instructers. And this remains true 
 although men are constantly prone to misinterpret their meaning 
 It remains true, although men's senses are imperfect instruments 
 for the reception of truth, and material substances are imperfeci 
 media for conveying a knowledge of spiritual truth. " The invisi- 
 ble (spiritual) things of him are clearly seen, being understood by 
 the things (material as well as immaterial.) that are made." 
 
 It is enough then for us to believe, that he who has made na- 
 ture a perfect teacher, has made his word so, liliewise. And all 
 we oppose, is, the confounding one twig, one leaf, one fibre of this 
 wonderful production of divine goodness, w^ith any thing man has 
 made and marred. If a doubt still remains in the objector's mind, 
 because we have not produced an analogy on the main point, the 
 essential imperfection of the language ; consider, that you would 
 have no such difficulty, if God were to speak to 'you by audible 
 words in your own language. The words then and thus spoken, 
 although they had separately come down to you from your rude 
 Saxon ancestors, and although they are now variously and imper- 
 fectly used by men, would never be forgotten by you, never con- 
 founded with even the holiest words of the holiest uninspired men. 
 This is the precise impression which we desire to see the Bible pro- 
 duce in all our hearts. When our eye rests on its page, when its 
 
 " *ds fall on our ear, let us receive it as the very voice of God. 
 te whole scope of our book is to secure that effect. And both 
 su^Uct and 4he view of it here presented will compensate the 
 
 levout and the inquiring reader for the time and pains of an atten- 
 tive perusal. Here is the rock of the Christian's faith— an inspired 
 communication, an infdlible revelalion. Here is the life and power 
 of the Christian ministry — they have a voice of God to echo, an 
 infallible " thus saith the Lord," to form the soul of their oratory 
 and the power of their appeals. We could wish that the subject 
 of inspiration might receive a more earnest attention, in the educa- 
 tion of our youth, and especially of our candidates for the holy 
 ministry. There is still too much dependence on mere authority, 
 in training the mind. A consequence of vvhich is, that subtile er- 
 rorists, by seeming to ap{K!al to reason, can mislead such of our 
 young men, as have nothing but the ipse dixit of teachers, to op- 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 pose to argument. To this mode of instructing is opposed that of 
 exhibiting the reasons which have convinced us that the Bible is 
 inspired. Let us deal fairly with the youthful mind, by taking it 
 to points of observation, whence it can sec the beautiful, unques- 
 tionable signs and seals of a divine origin in the Bible. The best 
 and strongest of these are indeed invisible to " the natural man." 
 But there are others ; and they are sufficient to establish the con- 
 lidence, even of them who " discern not the things of the Spirit." 
 Let a part of the instruction of the common-school, the Sunday- 
 school, the Bible-class, the college and the pulpit, be — the inspira- 
 tion of the " hving oracles ;" let it be repeated, until the evidence 
 of it is clear and brilliant to the mental eye. We do not overrate 
 the importance of this point. The effects of a more earnest and a 
 more general inculcation of this great fact, must soon become ap- 
 parent, in many ways ; from such tilling, under the gentle dews 
 and quickening breath of the Spirit, would spring the most beauti- 
 ful and fragrant flowers, the richest and most refreshing fruits. 
 There would be too, the nipping of many a poisonous germ of error 
 in its first budding. Some of the most reckless and blasphemous 
 revilers of the word and doctrines of God, were once under chris- 
 tian culture. How comes it that they can now give themselves to 
 the constant contradiction of the plain statements of that word, to 
 the bold and damnable contempt of the theology and the logic of 
 the Bible'? Surely their eyes have never seen in that book, even 
 that which the "reason unbaptized" may see, of the presence and 
 authority of him who spake from the smoking summit of Sinai, 
 amid terrible glories. Much then may be done, to prevent this 
 fatal scepticism, by a more full and faithful exhibition to those un- 
 der our instruction, of the great and glorious fact of inspiration, 
 and of the evidence of its reality. Much too may be done to press, 
 back the sweepmg current of scepticism, by a faithful exhibition 
 )f this whole subject, including the incompetence of man to pre- 
 judge a Revelation, to dispense with a Revelation, or to provide a 
 substitute for the Bible. There has constantly been on the one 
 hand, an exalting of human reason to a position where it promises 
 to relieve us from the sense of helplessness ; and on the other 
 hand, there has been an equally dangerous tendency to exalf 
 merely human writings to a level with the Scriptures. To meet 
 these two extremes, of having no revelation and too much revela- 
 tion, our doctrine nmst be clearly, earnestly presented to the pub- 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 lie mind. On this point a great battle is yet to be fought. And 
 then, when the battle waxes hot, and the enemy presses our en- 
 trenchments closely, we shall not be surprised to find the whole 
 out-works of a varied inspiration carried away. We see not how 
 Rome is to be attacked in her fortress of traditions, and apocryphal 
 books, if a part of our very Bible is made up of Paul's and Peter's 
 uninspired sayings. You call them indeed, superintended sayings. 
 But you mean, in the very adoption of that term, to express that 
 the Holy Spirit did not give these passages to the apostles, any 
 more than he gave the book of Tobit to its author ; that he left 
 them to say in their own way, wliat they knew before, and what 
 it did not become the Holy Spirit to impart to them. If you do 
 not mean this, you then come to our author's ground ; for he be- 
 lieves fully in the free exercise of every faculty of the sacred 
 writers, just where you do, and as far as you do. He merely goes 
 a step farther, and says, God designed that they should say just 
 what they did say : and he secured their saying it in their own 
 way, but exactly as it should be, even to an iota and a tittle. This 
 is a plenary inspiration. And the book so wiittcn, is the word of 
 God, and binds the conscience of the world ; and nothing else 
 does so bind it, even though it were the writings of Paul or Peter. 
 This ground must be taken firmly with the apostate church. 
 
 And with the infidel, whether he be christian in name, or anti- 
 christian, the sharp sword of a perfect inspiration will be found, at 
 last, indispensable. If he can enter the armory, and take away a 
 single weapon, he may take all ; nay, if the ground is conceded to 
 him, that there is a single passage in the Bible that is not divine, 
 then we are disarmed ; for he will be sure to apply his privilege to 
 the very passages which most fully oppose his pride, passion, and 
 error. How is the conscience of a wicked race to be bound down 
 by a chain, one link of which is weak 1 How are you going to 
 press on human belief, the unwelcome doctrines of Native and 
 Total Depravity, of the Trinity, of Expiation by the Blood of 
 Christ, of Eternal punishment, of Demons, of Election, of gratui- 
 tous Justification, by a Bible wiiich admits of human imperfections 
 in its composition '? How are 3'ou going to check the audacity 
 that accuses Paul of fulse logic, when you accuse him of writing 
 sometliing which is not as perfect as it would have been, had God 
 himself written it 1 You have entered the sacred temple, and com- 
 menced the work of desecration, in your reverential and devout 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 way ; and how can you censure him that enters and imitates your 
 cxam|)le, after his own fashion, and not after yours ] You say, 
 when Panl reqiipstei' Timothy to hring his cloak, he was not speak- 
 ing as fully under t^he Spirit, as when he jvophosied of future 
 events, or revealed the doctrine of justification by faith. With pre- 
 cisely as good authority, the other says, when Paul wrote the 
 whole Epistle to the Hebrews, he was left to hunstlf 
 
 To this doctrine v/e look for new influences to affect even the 
 ministers of the gospi-l. We may have inferred too much from the 
 adoption of the popular theory of inspiration. But we must be- 
 lieve, that the difference is immense, Ktween a faith that knows 
 not precisely what parts of its Bible are given of God, without an 
 imperfection ; and that which plants its trusting footstep, every 
 where in the Bible, upon the rock of a divine declaration, which 
 cannot fail. We presume that there is indeed, in the case of many 
 pious ministers of the gospel, an in,consistency between their theory 
 and their general belief in this matter. They accept the entire 
 Bible as a revelation from God, com|)letely expressive of what he 
 desires that man should be taught, with the exception, that he has 
 not made it all equally divine. And as he has given no certain 
 marks by which we may distinguish such pa.ssages, these men 
 would, if consistent with themselves, feel a distrust of the whole 
 Bible. They often, however, avoid this paralyzing doubt, by hav- 
 ing settled in their own mind, that certain passages are fully in- 
 spired, and by venturing to determine which those passages are. 
 But otliers, who adopt the theory of a fourfold inspiration, must 
 feel a want of implicit resting on any one passage; as would all, 
 if they were consistent with their theory. Muoh of the power of 
 preaching depends on the degree of confidence felt by the ambas- 
 sador of Christ in the perfect truth and the divine authority of 
 every thing he has learned from the Bible, and of every thing he 
 quotes from the Bible, in the sense and connection in which the 
 word of God presents it. If a preacher depends for his theological 
 sentiments, more U[)on huinan arguments than upon inspired de- 
 clarations, it will be a leaven affecting Al his ministrations. Faith 
 comes by heanng: but whatever faith he imparts, will be a faith 
 in argument, but not in divine testimony. And we apprehend 
 moreover, that some of the strongest, the sweetest, the most mo- 
 mentous t»uths of tiie Bible are but faintly and rarely exliibited by 
 some good men, from the want of a deep impression that every 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thing in the Bible is inspired. It both prevents their searching 
 into those deep sayings, whose meaning is never found, without 
 prayer and earnest study, and yet which most powerfully beat 
 down the unbelief of the heart ; it likewise prevents the earnest, 
 cordial and frequent utterance of those awful, stern and overwhelm- 
 ing views of the justice of God, an(i of the evil nature and conse- 
 quences of sin, which are the sword of the Spirit for the destruc- 
 tion of pride, self- righteousness, and contempt of the cross. 
 
 The progress of piety likewise, is intimately connected with the 
 fulness, clearness and firmness of faith in the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures. We believe with devout thankfulness, that the un- 
 learned children of God have never gone so far as to determine, 
 with their teachers, which passages God gave the apostle, and 
 which he had without Divine aid. They believe in verbal inspi- 
 ration, without knowing that there is any other kind. Such, how- 
 ever, as carry to their Bible-readings this confused impression of 
 many kinds of inspiration must have an unobserved and unre- 
 proved vein of unbelief affecting all theii communion with the liv- 
 ing oracles. When the Christian retires to his private oratory, he 
 seeks the presence of God, and of God alone. He does not want 
 even Paul there. There may be seasons, we admit, when holy 
 men can greatly aid our private devotions ; but there are others, 
 when their presence would be an intrusion. And unless the 
 Christian has such hours, in which he is strictly alone with God, 
 he will not cultivate the divine life with much success. But in 
 those holiest hours, he may, he must take the Bible ; not however 
 as the book of Moses, of Daniel, of Isaiah or of Paul, but as the 
 book of God. In every line, in every word, he must see only his 
 Father, hear only his Saviour. And he should desire no niore to 
 think of Paul and David, any faither than their various circum- 
 stances and feelings are employed by God for illustrating truth, 
 than of the man Avho printed, bound and sold the volume. 
 
 But we must ask the reader's forgiveness for this long detention 
 from the author, to whom, and to whose work, it is our privilege 
 now to introduce him. 
 
 We intrude still, merely to say that the term Theopneusty and 
 its derivatives, are retained by us, because the author has chosen 
 it, because there is more reason for having a word of Greek, than 
 one of Latin origin, to express a doctrine of the New Testament; 
 
INTRODUCTION. XUl 
 
 and because we have supposed that the word, Inspiration, conveys 
 to every classical scholar something of the pagan notion ; and we 
 prefer to have a Scriptural term, with which the true, pure doc- 
 trine of the divine origin of the entire Bible may be associated. 
 
 E. N. K. 
 ^fEW York, March 15, 1842. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THE SECOND AMERICAN EDITION, 
 
 TnR general decision of the press is in favor of thi^ work. But 
 a few writers have dissented from the general verdict of critics, 
 and expressed greater or less opposition to it and its doctrine. And 
 we dccai it desirable to consider here, such of their objections as 
 the work itself, with all the additions the author has made in his 
 second edition, does not meet. They find objections to the doc- 
 trine and to the book. The former are all summed up in the re- 
 marks of one writer — "Read 'Coleridge's Confessions,' in which 
 he shivers to atoms the system supported by this writer. Pray 
 read Coleridge and re-read him." We have done so, and the result 
 is : a regard for him as the fairest writer on that side, a profound 
 admiration of his eloquence and earnest faith, but an utter convic- 
 tion of the illogical character of this brilliant production. Our 
 anrdysis of his work presents the following results. He commen- 
 ces with the question, whether an inquirer, and especially a scep- 
 tical one, should be met with the dogma that the whole Bible is 
 infallible ? This (jucstion gives much strength to his arguments, 
 and yet more to his appeals. But this is not a fair statement of the 
 question which is now before ns, and into which he insensibly 
 glides. We ask, is it true'? It is quite another question — how 
 early a religious enquirer is in a state to investigate that point. 
 And taking some of his touching appeals for our model we might 
 make as many, if not as elToctive, in reference to the danger of 
 sending men with '• the natural mind," which God declares, "dis- 
 cerneth not the things of the spirit," to measure, and test, and 
 canonize, and criticise the revelations of Heaven. We must main- 
 tain, after all his eloquence, that there can be no such thing as an 
 authoritative revelation of a statute from heaven, if every znan is 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 to judge of the degree of truth in any passage of that revelation by 
 its supposed suital>leness to his spiritual wants. It is like sending 
 a statute-book of a kingdom into the cells of a prison to get a de- 
 cision upon the wisdom and excellence of its criaiinal laws. Or, 
 if this comparison appears too harsh, it is like sending the pre- 
 scriptions of a skilful physician to the bed-side of tiie patient, to 
 ascertain their excellence. If there is any point to which God has 
 testified before man, it is to man's spiritual blindness, obliquity, 
 obstinacy, and obtuseness. Now if that be true, ?tlr. C«;leridge's 
 test must fall to the ground in two ways : first, because man's self- 
 complacency will induce him to think all such declarations unin- 
 spired, and secondly, because it shows that man's perception and 
 emotion is not an infillil^lc criterion of spiritual trutli. The 
 Bible declares that " the carnal mind is enmity against God." And 
 yet this carnal mind needs an exhibition of that God to whom it 
 is opposed. How much of his character will be likely to commend 
 Itself to him 1 The Bible declares that the cross is foolishness to 
 the Greek, and yet the Greek of that and of every age needs to be- 
 lieve before he sees with his own eyes, that that cross is the wisdom 
 and power of God unto salvation. Mr. Coleridge deceived him- 
 self; he took it for granted that all men would feel aright, as he 
 may have felt about every essential doctrine of the Scriptures; 
 and yet he knew enough of man, of history, and of the reception 
 given to our Lord and his preaching, to have led him to a different 
 conclusion. 
 
 He staggers greatly at the incompatibility of plenary inspiration 
 with the individuahty of the writers. But this our author has fully 
 disposed of 
 
 Another of his grand objections is thus forcibly stated. A be- 
 liever in plt'nary inspiration being asked his opinion "concerning 
 the transcen<lent blessedness of Jael, and the righteousness of the 
 act. in which she inhospitably, treacherously, perfidiously, murder- 
 ed sleep, the confiding sleep, closed the controversy by observing 
 that he wanted no better morality than that of the Bible, and no 
 other proof of an action's being p^j-aise-worthy than that the Bible 
 had declared it worthy to be praised ; an observation as applied 
 in tliis instance, so slanderous to the morality and moral spirit of 
 the Bible as to be inexplicable, except as a consequence of the 
 doctrine in dispute. But let a man be once fully persuaded that 
 there is no diiference between the two positions — • the Bible con- 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tains the religion revealed by God,' and ' whatever is contained in 
 the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God,' and 1 no loncrer 
 wonder at these paradoxes." This anecdote and this form of the 
 question will enable us to show how easily this great man could 
 misapprehend the point of dispute. Had any one maintained that 
 " every thing contained in the Bible is religion," he well deserved 
 all the castigation here bestowed upon hirn. But we have not yet 
 heard of that pcrsoji ; nor have we found him who would say in 
 direct terms that if God secured the infallible record of the lan- 
 guage in which Satan tempted Christ or Eve, then that language 
 is holy and is a part of religion. Our doctrine is, that if the Bible 
 says that Satan did say so, then he did say so. Of the same 
 character is his misapprehension of the doctrine in its relations to 
 the book of Job. We quote him — " Say that the book of Job 
 throughout was dictated by an infallible intelligence. Then re- 
 peruse the book, and still, as you proceed, try to apply the tenet : 
 try if you can even attach any sense or semblance of meaning to the 
 speeches which you are reading. What ! were the hollow truisms, 
 the unsufficing half-truths, the false assumptions and malignant 
 insinuations of the supercilious bigots, who corruptly defended the 
 truth : were the impressive facts, the piercing outcries, the pathetic 
 appeals, and the close and powerful reasoning which the poor suf- 
 ferer — smarting at once from his wounds, and from the oil of vitriol 
 which the orthodox liars for God were dropping into them — impa- 
 tiently, but uprightly and holily, controverted this truth, while in 
 will and spirit he clung to it : were both dictated by an infallible 
 intelligence] Alas! if I may judge from the manner in which 
 both indiscriminately are recited, quoted, appealed to, preached 
 upon, by the roiUiniers of desk and pulpit, I cannot doubt that they 
 think so, or rather without thinking, take for granted that so they 
 are to think : the more readily, perhaps, because the so thinking 
 supersedes the necessity of all after-thought." 
 
 Now this is all very fine, and it expresses just what hundreds 
 who deny our doctrine will thank him for saying. But before it 
 is used as a sword or shield, let us sec exactly v:hat it strikes, and 
 v:hat it defends. It strikes with a death-blow the proposition — 
 " all that is in the Bible is religion." But this we call a Quixotte's 
 windmill. It is no real giant, excepting in the fancy of some 
 sucli champion for partial inspiration. What then does it defend 1 
 The proposition, that the Bible contains some sayings of wicked 
 
INTRODUCTION. XVll 
 
 men which in themselves are as wicked as the men who uttered 
 them. Hut all this is forei'j;n to the cise in hand. We believe 
 that in writing the Scriptures, holy men were employed to write 
 just what God would have written, and as he wouUl have it writ- 
 ten. If it seemed to infinite wisdom d(siial)Ic that Jael's conduct 
 should be rccord.'d, and that idl the unwise and unicind sjx'cches 
 of .lob's friends, and all the lying sug;^cstioMs of Salan to our Lord 
 should be so infallibly reported to us that we might be pertictly 
 sure we possess them, we see not that this implies that the Holy 
 Spirit recommends these sp;n'ches and suggestions. We maintain 
 that where the Scriptures give a histor}', they are an infallible re- 
 cord ; and where they teach theology or morality, they are a per- 
 fect and unmixed {lattern of truth and holiness. It may then be 
 asked, " Since this position admits that we cannot regard every 
 saying in the Bible as infallible as a saying, while it may be a 
 perfect record of a saying, of what use is infallibility to us practi- 
 cally ; how are we to dis^criminate between what is said as abso- 
 lute truth, and what is said as a true report of what in itself is not 
 true 1" I reply ; that is requiring us to give a sy.stem of Herrae- 
 neutics. There are laws for the interpretation of all language ; 
 and to these laws inspired language is as subject as any other. 
 
 We have dwelt thus long on Mr. Coleridge's Confessions, be- 
 cause in that work we have found the strongest statement of the 
 objections which our autiior has not noticed. But even this very 
 work admits, that the authority which must determine the ques- 
 tion, is " the declarations of the Book itself."* And on that auti'or- 
 ity alone does our author lean, and on that rock we think he has 
 established the doctrine of a plenary inspiration. 
 
 H;is he done so 1 This brings us to the second class of criti- 
 cisms — objections to the work. 
 
 1. T/'ie anUufr is accvscd of reasojiivg in a circle ; of Jlrsf as- 
 suming the iiifidrLiiidy of the book, and then prGvingils iiifuUibillly 
 from i's'.lf. This is not a correct statement. He does nut assume 
 against an opponent that the Bible is infallible, but agrees with 
 him tliat the Book is authentic. His antagonist is not a Deist, 
 but theoretically at least, a Christian, wlio s.nys with Mr. Cole- 
 ridge, we must ascertain frotn the book vvhctlier the doctrine be 
 true. This may disappoint the inquiring sceptic ; but he cannot 
 blame the author, who states his object and the ])Ian of his work 
 * Confessions of an Inquirine Spirit. London : ISIO. P. 15. 
 
 2* 
 
XVHl INTRODUCTION. 
 
 with great distinctness. Surely if these critics liad read the forty- 
 first, forty-second, and forty-third answers of his Catechism, they 
 would not have made this charge. 
 
 2. The author is accused of rtnfairncss, in givivg lo limited texts 
 an unlimited meaning. The specifications are the following : — 
 
 " On 'p. 39 of the first edition^ p. 45. of this, the author says — 
 * these assej-tio?is, tlce words of ihs Lord are pure icords, they are 
 perfect, go to sheio the inspiration of the whole Bille.^ Nou) wc 
 know that these passages in the 12/A and Idih Psalms were penned 
 before half the Old Testameivt was written. On p. 52 of the first 
 edition, p. 58. of this, he says — ' Now licar the Bible itscf. It pro- 
 tests that all Scripture is given by inspiration by God.'' Bid this 
 can refer only to the Old Testament. Paris of the New Testament 
 were not then written — and none of it was then referred to as forming 
 part of the Scriptures. Besides ichich, the expression is ambiguous 
 even in the original, and the ancient versions and fathers dificr re- 
 specting its meaning. Hie writer is either disingenuous or igno- 
 rant. The word is is not in the original. The verse then reads, AU 
 Scripture given, <^c." 
 
 These two quotations are complete specimens, and our answer 
 to them involves our answer to all the others. Our author, before 
 coming to his proof, in defining terms and in meeting objections, 
 has occasion to explain what he understands by plenary inspira- 
 tion. And in doing so he necessarily quotes the language of the 
 Scriptures, for they contain all the definition and all the proof. It 
 must be remembered tl^.at he firmly believes that plenary inspira- 
 tion is the doctrine of the Bible ; that he believes that whatever 
 they say of the purity and the infallibleness of one part, they mean 
 equally to apply to the whole. He regards, and believes he has 
 reason to regard, each one of them as describing the generic na- 
 ture of that inspiration which belongs alike to every passage of the 
 Bible. Whether he proves it is a subsequent question. But just 
 now we are concerned with the propriety of his speaking of the 
 meaning of the Bible as he understands it, where he is defining 
 a doctrine of the Bible. We think these gentlemen, in making 
 their animadversions, have denied him the privilege ever accorded 
 in debate, to employ what terms the disputant pleases in defining, 
 to state what he believes before he proves it, in order that he may 
 prove it. 
 
 And certainly the charge of unfairness or ignorance, as made 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlx 
 
 in the second specification, would all have been removed, had the 
 critic read the book through at least as far as to the argument, and 
 especially to the first page of the Sixth Chapter, or even to the 
 27th question of the Catechism, in the fifth Chapter. 
 
 But we are told ; 
 
 3. That his proof is drfccHve. It is said : " Mr. Gnusscn's rea- 
 soning must be characterized as singularly loose, rambling, incon- 
 clusive and sophistical." But may not this charge against him be 
 " loose," and the evidence to support it "inconclusive and sophis- 
 tical '?" There is happily in all questions of logic a sure and easy 
 test ; the syllogism. Let us apply it to Mr. Gaussen's argument, 
 which may be thus stated. 
 
 Whatever the Scriptures declare, is true. The Scriptures de- 
 clare that they are plenarily inspired. Therefore, &c. 
 
 Now there are some cases in which the major proposition re- 
 quires proof Here it does not ; for he reasons with no person 
 who denies or doubts it. His proof then is necessarily bestowed 
 upon the minor propo.sition. His arguments are the following : — 
 Whatever the Bible calls Scripture, is theopncustic or inspired. 
 " AH Scripture is given by inspiration of God." Now, what con- 
 stitutes the canon is totally an independent question. Whatever 
 it is, that is theopneustic. He shews that it is not the thought or 
 substance, but it is the (ypacpf) writing that is inspired. And it 
 is not a part of the (ypxbfi) writing, but (tT(ti;,) the whole. 
 Now let any one agree with the author that all the hooks of our 
 Bible are canonical, and constitute the Scriptures (and he reasons 
 with no others), to them his argument appears to us conclusive. 
 But he leaves it not to this one declaration. He passes on to an 
 extended course of reasoning, the purport of which is: — That a 
 prophet is in the Bible, one who speaks the word of God, whether 
 it be concerning the past, present or future. The limitation of the 
 term to one who predicts, is by no means scriptural. This should 
 answer the question of one of the critics — " Is Ruth a prophetic 
 book 1" If written by an inspired man, it is so, in the Bible-sense 
 of that term. He then proceeds to shew that the Old Testament 
 and the New Testament are entirely prophetical in this sense, and 
 therefore inspired. He then closes (he argument by shewing how 
 Christ and his A[)nstles regarded the Old Testament. And he 
 might safely rest all his argument on that point, both because it is 
 so manifest that they believed in a verbal inspiration, and be- 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cause the main objections to inspiration are found in the Old Tes- 
 tament. 
 
 After all the ordeals through which the first edition of this work 
 has passed, we feel only the stronger confidence in recommending 
 the second. It is enriched by new contributions from the fertile 
 genius and exhaustless stores of its gifted author ; and we trust 
 will be found free from the painful typographical errors in the re- 
 ferences, which occurred through the inabiliry of the translator to 
 superintend the press as minutely as figures require. The author 
 has changed the order of his chapters ; but as his reasons were 
 not ohvious to us, we have prefeiTed continuing the arrangement 
 of the first edition. The rapid sale of this work assures us that the 
 need of it is felt. In these days of overturning and innovation, 
 men want a rock for their anchor-hold. We believe their God has 
 furnished it. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The very first sight of this book and its title may occasion two 
 equally unfounded prejudices in certain minds. I desire to remove 
 them. 
 
 The Greek word Theopnnisly, although derived from a word 
 used by St Paul, and itself for a long time used by the Germans, 
 is yet unknown in our tongue. Many a reader may therefore say, 
 that the subject here treated, is too scientific to be popular, and too 
 little popular to be useful. And yet 1 unhesitatingly declare, that 
 if any thing has inspired me with both the desire and the courage 
 to undertake this work, it is the two-fold conviction of its vital im- 
 portance and its simplicity. 
 
 I do not think, that after the admission of the divinity of Chris- 
 tianity, a question can be stated, which is more essential to the 
 life of our fiith, than this ; Is the Bible from God 1 is it entirely 
 from God 1 or is it true, (as some assert,} that it contains sentences 
 which are purely human, inaccurate narratives, vulgar errors, il- 
 logical reasonings; in a word, that it contains books, or portions of 
 books, in which our faith has no interest, being marred by error 
 and the natural indiscretions of the writers 1 — a question decisive, 
 fundamental ; yea vital ! It is the first that meets you on opening 
 the Scriptures ; and with it your religion ought to commence. 
 
 If it be true, as you say, that some things in the Bible are un- 
 important, have nothing to do with your faith, and no relation to 
 Jesus Christ ; and if it be true, again, that nothing in this book is 
 inspired, but that whicli you may happen to think possessed of 
 importance, related to faith and to Jesus Christ, tlien your Bible 
 is a totally different book from that of the Fathers, of the Reform- 
 ers, and of the saints in every age. Your Bible is fallible: theirs 
 was infallible. Yours has chapters, or portions of chapters, sen- 
 tences or phrases, which must be totally distinguished from those 
 that are of God ; theirs was " all given by inspiration of God, and 
 
XXU TREFACE. 
 
 all of it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- 
 struction in rigliteousness ; that the man of God may be perfect." 
 The very sanie passage may then be, in your estimation, as far 
 from that which it was in theirs, as earth is from heaven. 
 
 You have opened for instance, at the forty-fiflh Psalm, or at the 
 Song of Solomon. Whilst you see nothing there, but that v.hich 
 is the most thoroughly human, a long marriage-song, or the amor- 
 ous conversations between a young woman of Sharon and her 
 young husband ; they were there accustomed to see t!ie glories of 
 the Church, the bonds of Jehovah's love, the depths of grace in 
 Christ ; in a word, that which is most divine in heavenly things ; 
 and if they could not read them there, they knew that thoy aro 
 there, and there they searched for them. 
 
 Or, we take an epistle of St. Paul. Whilst one of us attributes 
 a sentence which he does not understand, or which shocks his 
 carnal sense, to the Jewish prejudices of the writer, to intentions 
 entirely vulgar, to circumstances altogether human ; the other there 
 searches with profoundest respect, the meaning of the Spirit ; he 
 believes it to be perfect, before discovering what it is ; and he at- 
 tributes its apparent insignificance or obscurity only to his own 
 unskilfulness and ignorance. 
 
 Thus, while in the Bible of the one, everything has its design, 
 its place, its beauty, its use; just as, in a tree, tlie branches and 
 the leaves, the vessels and the fibres, the epidermis, and even the 
 bark, all have their uses ; the Bible of the other is a tree, having 
 many leaves and branches, and fibres which God did not create, 
 and wliich, therefore, do not accomplish his designs. 
 
 But this is not all. Not only shall you and we have two differ- 
 ent bibles, but we shall be at an utter loss to tell what yours is. 
 It is only, to a certain degree, human and fallible, you say ; but 
 who shall define this degree 1 If it be true that man, by putting 
 his hand to this work, has left upon it the impression of his own 
 imperfection; who shall determine the extent ofthat imperfection, and 
 the places which it mars 1 It has its human part, you say ; Imt what 
 arc the limits of this part ; who shall fix them for me 1 No one. 
 Everv one must do it for himself, according to the dictates of his 
 own judgment; that is, this falUble part of the Bible will be mag- 
 nified to us, just in proportion as we are less enlightened by God's 
 light; so that a man must be deprived of the word of God, just 
 in proportion as he has need of it ; as we see idolaters making 
 
PREFACE. XXIU 
 
 idols, whose impurity increases with their own distance from the 
 living and holy God ! Thus, then, every one will reduce the in- 
 spired Scriptures within different limits; and making to himself of 
 the Bible, so expurgated by himself, an infallible rule, will say to 
 it — Henceforth guiile me, for thou art my rule ! as that image-ma- 
 ker of whom Isaiah speaks ; " who maketh a god, and saith, de- 
 liver me, for thou art my God." 
 
 But this is not all ; consequences still more serious are here in- 
 volved. According to your answer, it is not the Bible alone which 
 is changed ; it is you ! 
 
 Yes, even in the presence of passages which you may have ad- 
 mired most, you shall have neither the attitude nor the heart of a 
 believer ! How can it be otherwise after that you have arraigned 
 these very passages with all the rest of the Bible, at the tribunal 
 of your judgment, that they may there be pronounced by you, 
 divine, not divine, or partially divine 1 What can be the authority 
 of a passage over you, which is infallible only so far as you please 
 to consider it so ? Has it not once stood on trial at your bar, on 
 the same footing with passages, convicted of being merely human 
 in whole or in part 1 And can your spirit then assume sincerely, 
 the humble and submissive attitude of a learner, before the very 
 passage which you have just examined in the character of a judge"? 
 Impossible; you may perhaps render it the obedience of acquies- 
 cence, but never that of faith ; of approbation, never that of adora- 
 tion ! You believe in the divinity of a passage, you say ; but it is 
 not in God that you believe, it is in yourself! This passage pleases 
 you, it does not govern you ; it excites your admiration, but does 
 not reign over you ; it is before you as a lamp, it is not in you as 
 an unciion from on high, a principle of light, a fountain of life. I 
 cannot persuade myself that any pope, however conscious of his 
 sacerdotal power, ever prayed with great confidence to a saint whom 
 by his own plenary authority, he had raised to the rank of a demi- 
 god by canonizing him. How then, can any reader of the Bible, 
 (however conscious of his own superior wisdom^) act the pirt of 
 a genuine believer toward a passage which he has just canonized"? 
 Will his spirit come down from the pontificial chair, to prostrate 
 itself before this passage, which but for his decision, had remained 
 human, or at least, doubtful 1 How can he study any longer a 
 passage which he mu.-5t already have examined thoroughly in or- 
 der to have assigned it its true position ; how can he fully submit 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 to an authority which he might have tlonied, and which he has 
 already made dubious 1 We can but imperfectly adore that which 
 \vc have degraded. 
 
 jMorcover, let it be remarked, that as the entire divinity of such 
 or such a passage of the Scriptures is dependent in your estimation, 
 not on the fact of its being found in the book of the oracles of 
 God, but on the fact that it presents to your wisdom and your 
 spirituality certain signs of spirituality and wisdom ; the sentence 
 which you pronounce, can never be so unhesitating as that you 
 can totally separate from it every doubt which at first attended it. 
 Your faith must then partake of your doubts, and must itself be 
 imperfect, undecided, conditional ! And as the decision, so will be 
 the faith ; as the faith, such the life ! But that is not the faith, 
 that is not the life of God's elect ! 
 
 The consideration, however, which manifests most strongly the 
 importance of the subject we are about to discuss, is, that if the 
 system w^e oppose have its roots steeped in incredulity, it must in- 
 evitably bear the fruit of yet a new incredulity. How happens it, 
 that so many thousands can open their Bible, day and night, with- 
 out ever discovering the doctrines which it teaches with the ut- 
 most explicitness 1 Whence comes it that thoy walk in darkness 
 so many years, with the sun shining before them 1 Do they not 
 regard these books as a revelation from God 1 Yes ; — but, preju-- 
 diced^by false notions of inspiration, and believing that there still 
 exists in the Scriptures a mixture of error ; and at the same time 
 desirous of finding those parts which are sufficiently reasonable to 
 be esteemed divine, they study, unconsciously I admit, to give 
 them a sense acceptable to their own wisdom ; and thus they not 
 only make it impossible to discover what God would teach, but 
 also make the Scriptures contemptible in their own eyes. They 
 take up, for instance, the writings of St. Paul, in order to find in 
 them justification by the law, man's native innocence, his tendency 
 toward the good, the moral omnipotence of his will, the merit of 
 his works. And what is the consequence 1 It is alas ! that after 
 having forced such doctrines upon the sacred waiter, they find the 
 language so totally unndapted to its supposed end, terms so badly 
 chosen to express the meaning they have determined to find there, 
 reasonings so badly conducted ; they at last come to lose, in .';pite 
 of themselves, what little respect they had for the Scriptures, and 
 then they plunge into rationalism. Thus it is, that having com- 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 menced in incredulity, the fruit of thrir labor is a more advanced 
 incrt'dulity ; they have darkness as the consequence of darkness, 
 and so fulfil tliat dreadful word of Christ; " from him that hath 
 not, shall be taken away that which he hath." 
 
 Such then, is manifestly the fundamental importance of the 
 great question we are about to examine. By your answer, the 
 arm of the word of God is enervated for you, the sword of ihe^. 
 Spirit is blunted, it has lost its temper and its penetrating power.** 
 How can it thenceforward " pierce even to the dividing asunder 
 of the joints and the marrow, and separate the soul and the spirit '?" 
 How can it be mightier than your lusts, than your doubts, than 
 the world, than Satan 1 How can it give you light, force, victory, 
 peace 1 No ! it might be by an operation of the mere grace of 
 God, that in spite of this deplorable state of the soul, a divine word 
 should come and seize it suddenly ; then Zaccheus would come 
 down from his sycamore, Matthew quit his receipt of custom, the 
 paralytic take up his bed and walk, and the dead revive. All that 
 is, doubtless, possible. But it still remains true, that this disposi- 
 tion which judges the Scriptures, and which doubts in advance, 
 their universal inspiration, is one of the greatest obstacles we can 
 oppose to their legitimate action. " The word preached," says St. 
 Paul, " did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them 
 that heard it ;" while the most abundant benedictions of the same 
 Scriptures were ever the portion of those who " received it, not as 
 the word of men, but, (as it is in truth,) the word of God, which 
 effectually worketh in them that believe."* 
 
 This question is, then, evidently vital to our faith ; and we have 
 the right to say, that between the two answers made to it, there 
 exists the same gulf that f irmerly would have separated two Jews 
 who might have seen Jesus Christ in the flesh, and who might 
 equally have recognized him as a prophet ; but of whom, the one, 
 in view of his carpenter's dress, his homely fare, his hands hard- 
 ened by work, and his rustic attendants, believed him fallible and 
 peccable, like any other prophet : whilst the other recognized in 
 him Emanuel, the Lamb of God, the Lord our RiLfhleousness, the 
 Holy One of Israel, the King of kings, the Lord of lords. 
 
 The reader may not yet have admitted each of these considera- 
 tions ; but it must certainly be conceded, that enough has been 
 said to justify the conclusion, that the study of this question is 
 • 1 Thess. ii. 13. 
 
XXVlll PREFACE. 
 
 There was a time when all the sciences were mysterious, teach- 
 ing with closed doors; having their initiated, their holy language, 
 and tlieir free-masonry. Physics, geometry, medicine, grammar, 
 history, all were taught in Latin. They sailed in the clouds, far 
 above the vulgar; and they let fall, at the utmost, from their sub- 
 lime bark, a few detached leaves, which men were to take up with 
 great respect, but which they were not permitted to judge. Now, 
 every thing is changed. Genius glories in making itself under- 
 stood by the many ; and after having soared to the ethereal regions 
 of science, in order there to seize the truth in her highest retreats, 
 it employs its power in ascertaining the way back to earth, and in 
 approaching closely to us, that it may show us the rout it has 
 traveled, and the secrets it has discovered. But, if such is now 
 the almost universal tendency of the human sciences, it was ever 
 the distinctive characteristic of true Theology. She owes herself 
 to all. The other sciences can dispense with the people, as the 
 people dispense with them ; true Theology, on the contrary, has 
 need of the people, as the people have of her. She guards their 
 Religion ; and their Religion, in its turn, guards her. Wo to 
 them when Theology languishes, and does not speak to them ! 
 Wo to her, when the religion of the churches neglects her, and 
 ceases to esteem her ! We must then see to it, both on her account 
 and on theirs, that she speaks to them, hears them, studies in re- 
 ference to them, and keeps their schools open, as our temples are. 
 
 Whilst theology continues to teach in the midst of the churches, 
 by having constantly before her the realities of the Christian life ; 
 she is also constantly reminded of the realities of science, the 
 apostacy of man, the counsels of the Father, the cross of the Re- 
 deemer, the consolations of the Spirit, hohness, eternity. Then, 
 also, the conscience of the Church, restraining her wanderings, 
 intimidates her boldness, obliges her to be serious, and corrects the 
 effects of that almost profane familiarity, with which the science 
 of the schools lays her hand on holy things. In speaking to her, 
 every day, of that life which the preaching of the Cross preserves 
 in the Church, (that life, without the knowledge of which all her 
 science would be as incomplete, as would be the natural history 
 of man, derived only from the study of carcasses,) the religion of 
 the people takes away from theolorry her too prompt admiration of 
 the sciences which do not sanctify. Religion often proposes to 
 theology this question, originally put by St. Paul to the false 
 
PREFACE. XXIX 
 
 science of the Galatians; "Received ye the Spirit by the works 
 of the law, or by the hearing of faith V She takes away the en- 
 chantment of liuman wisdom, she inspires theology with a pro- 
 found reverence for the word of God, and (in this holy word) for 
 those doctrines of justification by faith, which are the power of 
 God our Saviour, and which ought to penetrate the very soul of 
 her science. It is thus that religion guides theology by teaching 
 her to associate in her researches, the labors of the conscience and 
 affections, with those of the understanding, and never to pursue 
 the truth of God, but by the united illuminations of study and 
 prayer. 
 
 Alii], on the other side, theology renders in her turn, to the 
 Christian churches, services which are to them equally indispen- 
 sable. It is she who watches over the religion of a people, that 
 the " lips of the priest may preserve knowledge, and that they may 
 be able to seek the law at his mouth." It is she who preserves in 
 the holy ministry of the gosp^d, the purity of its doctrines ; and in 
 their preaching, tlie exact balance of all the truths. It is she who 
 confirms the unlearned against the hostile assertions of a science 
 which they do not understand ; it is she wlio gathers her answers 
 from the very region where the objections are gathered ; who puts 
 her finger upon the sophisms of the adversaries; who keeps them 
 respectful in her presence, and who obliges them to observe before 
 the Church, a style more guarded and less presumptuous. It is 
 she, in fine, who signahzes the first moment, often so decisive, 
 when the language of Religion among a people, begins to be er- 
 roneous ; and when error, hke a germinating tare, first shoots 
 above the ground. She gives the timely warning, and they haste 
 to weed it up. 
 
 Always, when the Churches have been pious. Theology has 
 flourished; she has become enlightened; she has made study hon- 
 orable; and, in order to qualify herself for studying the Scriptures 
 profoundly, not only has she been willing to make herself mistress 
 of all the sciences which could throw light, on the Bible, but she 
 has quickened all the others into new life ; whether directly, by 
 the example of her own labors, or in bringing elevated spirits 
 around her, or in diffusing through the academic institutions that 
 generous sentiment of high morality, so favorable to the develop- 
 ment of science. 
 
 3* 
 
XXX PREFACE. 
 
 Thus in elevating the character of study, she has often ennobled 
 that of an enth'e people. 
 
 But on the other hand, when theology and the people have be- 
 come inditforent to each other, and the slumbering Churches w^ere 
 living only for this world, then theology herself has become indo- 
 lent, frivolous, ignorant, or, perhaps, a lover of novelties ; seeking, 
 at any cost, a profane popularity ; teaching for the few ; pretend- 
 ing to discoveries which are said only to the ear, which are taught 
 only in the academics, and suppressed in the temples ; holding her 
 gates closed in the midst of the people, and at the same time, 
 throwing among them from the windows, doubts and impieties, to 
 evidence the existing measure of her indifference; until, finally, 
 she sinks into scandalous conduct, either in attacking doctrines, 
 in denying the integrity or the insjnration of certain books, or in 
 audaciously giving the lie to the facts they announce. 
 
 And let no one imagine that the entire people do not quickly 
 feel so great an evil. They suffer from it, even in their temporal 
 interests ; and their very national existence is endangered by it. 
 In degrading the religion of a people, you debase their morals, you 
 take away their moral life. Every thing in a nation may be mea- 
 sured by one standard ; the height of their heaven. If their 
 heaven is low, every thing here on earth feels its debasing influ- 
 ences ; everything at once becomes more limited and more grovel- 
 ing ; the future becomes more circumscribed ; patriotism is mate- 
 rialized ; generous traditions are engulfed ; the moral sense becomes 
 effeminated; the worship of self is alone exalted, and all conserva- 
 tive principles depart, one after another. 
 
 We then conclude, on the one hand, that there exists the most 
 intimate union, not only between the happiness of a people and 
 their religion, but between their religion and true theology ; and, 
 on the other hand, that if it was always highly proper that this 
 science should teach for all and before all, never was this charac- 
 ter more necessary to it than in treating of the doctrine which is 
 now to engage our attention. It is the doctrine of doctrines — the 
 doctrine which teaches us all the others, and by virtue of which 
 alone they are doctrines ; the doctrine which is to the soul of the 
 believer what the air is to his lungs— necessary for his birth, 
 growth, and perseverance in the Christian life. 
 
 Under the inspiration, then, of this twofold thought, this book 
 has been written. 
 
PREFACE. XXXI 
 
 Every thing in it, I trust, will show my serious desire to render 
 it useful to Christians of every class. 
 
 To this end, I have cast off all the forms of the schools. With- 
 out renouncing entirely quotations from ancient languages, I have 
 yet used them sparingly. In exhibiting the admirable unanimity 
 of Christian antiquity on this question, I have confined myself to 
 general facts. In disposing the order of the chapters, I have neg- 
 lected the ordinary rules of the didactic, to follow those of the popu- 
 lar logic ; which commences by presenting the objections, and 
 closes with the proofs. In a word, when it has been found neces- 
 sary to treat the different questions which relate to the subject, 
 and which ought to be found here, for the full presentation of the 
 doctrine, I have referred them all to a special chapter. And there, 
 too, I have gone against the advice of some friends, in employing 
 a mode w-hich seems to them out of harmony with the general 
 tone of the book ; but to me, seems to make the clear and rapid 
 comprehension of the subject more easy. 
 
 It is then under this simple and practical form, that in present- 
 ing this book to the Church of God, I am happy in being able to 
 recommend it to the blessing of Him who preached in the streets, 
 and who thus characterized his own ministry, — the gospel is 
 preached to tfie poor ! 
 
 Happy, if these pages confirm, in the simplicity and blessedness 
 of their faith, those Christians who, though unlettered, have al- 
 ready believed, through the Scriptures, in the full inspiration of 
 the Scriptures ! Happy, if some burdened and weary souls are led 
 to hear more attentively that God v/ho speaks to them in every 
 line of the holy Book ! Happy, if by our words, some travelers, 
 (like the pilgrim Jacob, In' the stone of Bethel,) after having re- 
 posed their wearied spirits with too much indifference on this book 
 of God, should at last com.e to recognize this mysterious ladder 
 which rises thence to heaven, and by which alone the messages 
 of crrace can descend upon tln'ir souls, and their prayers go up to 
 God ! May I urge them, in their turn, to pour out upon this sa- 
 cred object t!ie oU of their gratitude and joy, and learn to exclaim^ 
 " Surelv the Lord is here — it is tlie house of God — it is the gate 
 of heaven !" 
 
 For myself, I say it fearlessly; in prosecuting this work I have 
 often been constrained to give thanks to God for having called me 
 to it ; for 1 have there seen more than once, the divine majesty 
 
XXXU PREFACE. 
 
 fill with its splendor, the entire temple of the Scriptures ; I have 
 seen all the threads of that coarse garment, with which the Son 
 of Man was clothed, become suddenly such as no fuller on earth 
 could make them; 1 have otlen seen this book illuminated by the 
 glory of God, and every word appear radiant. In fine, I have felt 
 what we always experience in sustainhig a cause which is holy 
 and true ; that it grows the more in truth and majesty, the more 
 you contemplate it. 
 
 My God, grant that I may love this word, and possess it as fully 
 as thou hast taught me to admire it ! 
 
 " All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower 
 of the field ; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth ; but the word 
 of our God endureth for ever, and it is this word which is preached 
 unto us." 
 
THEOPNEUSTYi 
 
 THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OP THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Our design in this book, by the help of God and the sole au- 
 thority of his word, is, to expound, defend and estaWish the Chris- 
 tian doctrine of inspiration. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEFINITION OF THEOPNEUSTY. 
 SECTION 1. 
 
 This term expresses that mysterious power by which 
 the Divine Spirit made the authors of the Old and New 
 Testaments compose them, just as the church has re- 
 ceived them. " All Scripture," an apostle says, " is 
 ihcopneustic.^'* 
 
 This Greek term perhaps was new, even among- the 
 Greeks, at the time when St. Paul employed it. Yet. 
 if it was not used by the idolatrous Greeks, it was em- 
 ployed by the Hellenistic Jews. 
 
 JosephuSjt the historian, contemporary with St. Paul, 
 employs a very similar term, in his first book against 
 
 • 2 Tim. iii. 16. Theopneust would be more exact, but less euphonic. 
 tP. 1036. AureLAllobr. 1611. 
 
34 DEFINITION. 
 
 Apion, when he says, in speaking- of all the prophets, 
 " who composed the twenty-two sacred books of the 
 Old Testament," he adds, that " they wrote after the 
 fneusty (or inspiration) which comes from God* And 
 the Jewish Philosopher, Philo,t himself contemporary 
 with Joseph us, in the account of his embassy to the 
 Emperor Caligula, using- likewise a term very similar 
 to St. Paul's, calls the Scriptures theochristic oracles ;% 
 that is, oracles given under the anointing of God." 
 Theopneusty is not a system, but a fact ; and like all 
 the other events of the history of Redemption, this fact, 
 attested by the Holy Scriptures, is one of the doctrines 
 of our faith. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 At the same time, it should be distinctly observed, that 
 this miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit had not for 
 its object the sacred writers, who were only his instru- 
 ments, and who were soon to pass away ; but its object 
 was the sacred books themselves, which were destined 
 to reveal to the Church from age to age, the immuta- 
 ble counsels of God. 
 
 The influence which was exercised upon these men, 
 and of which they themselves were conscious in very 
 different degrees, has never been defined to us. Nothing 
 authorizes us to explain it. The Scriptures themselves 
 have never presented to us its mode or its measure as an 
 object of study. They speak of it always incidentally ; 
 they never connect our piety with it. That alone which 
 they propose as the object of our faith is the inspiration 
 of their word; is the divinity of their books; between 
 
 * Kara -/;*' ETcn'Ofuv r.-jv and T.tv GfoO. 
 
 t P. 1022. edit. Fraukf. X (dtoxon^ra \6yta. 
 
DEFINITION. 35 
 
 these they make no difference. Their word, say they, 
 is theopneustic ; their books are of God, whether they 
 recount the mysteries of a past anterior to the creation, 
 or those of a future posterior to the return of the Son of 
 Man ; the eternal counsels of the most High, the secrets 
 of the human heart, or the deep things of God ; whether 
 they give utterance to their own emotions or record 
 their own recollections, relate contemporaneous events, 
 copy genealogies or make extracts from inspired docu- 
 ments ; their writings are inspired ; their statements are 
 directed by heaven ; it is always God who speaks, who 
 relates, ordains or reveals by their mouth, and who, to 
 accomplish it, employs their personality in different 
 degrees. For '• the Spirit of the Lord was upon them, 
 and his word upon their tongue." And if it is always 
 the word of man, because it is always men who utter 
 it, it is likewise always the word of God, for it is alway» 
 God that superintends, guides and employs them. They 
 give their narrations, their doctrines, or their precepts, 
 " not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
 which the Holy Spirit teacheth." And it is thus that 
 God has constituted himself not only the voucher of all 
 these facts, the author of all these ordinances, and the 
 revealer of all these truths, but that also he has caused 
 them to be given to the Church in the precise order, 
 measure and terms which he has judged most condu- 
 cive to his heavenly design. 
 
 If then, we are asked how this theopneustic work was 
 accomplished in the men of God, we should reply, that 
 we do not know, and that we are not to know, and that 
 it is in the same ignorance, and in a perfectly similar 
 faith, that we receive the doctrine of the regeneration or 
 sanctification of a soul by the Holy Spirit. We be- 
 
36 DEFINITION. 
 
 lieve that the Spirit illumines this soul, purifies it, quick 
 ens it, consoles it, softens it ; we recognize all these 
 effects ; we know and we adore their cause ; but \vt 
 consent to a perpetual ignorance of the mode. Thus 
 let it be then with Theopneusty. 
 
 And if we were still asked to say at least, what these 
 men of God experienced in their organs, in their will, 
 or in their understanding, whilst they were inscribing- 
 the sacred pages, we should reply, that the powers o 
 inspiration were not felt in the same degree by each of 
 them, and that their experiences were not uniform ; but 
 we should add that the knowledge of this is almost in 
 different to the interests of our faith, for that is concernec 
 with the book and not with the men. It is the book 
 that is inspired, and totally so. This assurance is suffi- 
 cient for us. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Three classes of men, in these latter days, Avithout 
 disavowing the divinity of Christianity, and without pre- 
 tending to decline the authority of the Scriptures, have 
 considered themselves justifiable in rejecting this doc- 
 trine. 
 
 The one class has been totally ignorant, etc i of the 
 existence of this action of the Holy Spirit ; others have 
 denied its universality ; others again its j/hnilnde. 
 
 The first, as Schleiermacher,* Dewette,! and many 
 other German theologians, reject all miraculous inspi- 
 ration, and attribute to the sacred writers only whr 
 Cicero attributes to the poets ; afflatuw, spiritus dlvin 
 a breathing of the divine Spirit, "a divine action of n 
 
 * Schleiermacher der christliche Glauhe. Band 1, S. 115. 
 t De\v<*tte ; Lelirhnch AiuAerk. Tw'i^^leii : Voslesungen ube " 
 matik, torae 1, p. 424, cfcc. 
 
DEFINITION. 37 
 
 .ure, an interior power, like the other vital forces of 
 nature." 
 
 Others, like Michaelis,* and as formerly, Theodore 
 of Mopsuesta, while fully admitting the existence of an 
 inspiration, are unwilling to acknowledge it, for more 
 than a fart of the holy books ; for the first and the 
 fourth evangelist, for example ; for a part of the epis- 
 tles ; for a part of Moses, a part of Isaiah, and a part of 
 Daniel. These portions of the Scriptures, say they, 
 are from God, the others from men. 
 
 The third class, as Mr. Twesten in Germany, and as 
 many theologians in Englandf extend, it is true, the 
 notion of a theopneusty to all parts of the Bible, but not 
 to all equally^ (nicht gleichmassig.) — Inspiration, ac- 
 cording to them, is indeed universal, but unequal ; often 
 imperfect ; accompanied by innocent errors ; and ex- 
 tended, according to the nature of the passages, in very 
 different degrees ; of which they constitute themselves, 
 more or less the judges. 
 
 Many of them, especially in England, have divided 
 inspiration into four kinds — inspiration of superintend- 
 c. ce^ by which the sacred authors have been constantly 
 prese,;jyed from grave errors, in every thing which re- 
 lates to faith and spiritual life ; inspiration of elevation, 
 by which the Divine Spirit, in raising the thoughts of 
 the men of God to the purest regions of truth, has in- 
 directly impressed the same characters of holiness and 
 j^ grandeur on their words ; inspiration of direction, un- 
 j der the more powerful action of which, the sacred 
 xj authors were guided by God, both as to the selection 
 j>nd rejection of topics and thoughts ; and, finally, in- 
 --^tion of suggesti"':,, through which, they say, all 
 
 * Michaelis, Introd. to N. T. t Drs. Pye Smith, Dick, and Wilson. 
 
 4 
 
38 DEFINITION. 
 
 the thoughts and even the words, were given by God 
 through a still more direct and energetic operation of 
 his Spirit. 
 
 " Theopneusty," says Mr. Twesten, '' doubtless ex- 
 , tends even to the words, but only when the choice or 
 employment of them is connected with the interior re- 
 ligious life ; for," he adds, " we must make distinctions 
 in this respect, between the Old and New Testaments, 
 between the law and the gospel, between history and 
 prophecy, between narratives and doctrines, between 
 the apostles and their apostolic aids." 
 
 All these distinctions, we consider fanciful ; the Bible 
 does not authorize them ; the Church of the first eight 
 centuries of the christian era knew nothing of them ; 
 and we must regard them as erroneous and injurious. 
 
 Our object, in this book, is to prove, in opposition to 
 these three systems, the existence, universality and ful- 
 ness of inspiration. 
 
 Our first inquiry is, whether the Scriptures were 
 divinely and miraculously inspired. We affirm it. 
 Then we inquh-e, whether the parts of the Scriptures 
 which are inspired, are so, equally and entirely : or, in 
 other words ; whether God has provided, in a definite 
 though mysterious manner, that the very words of the 
 holy book should always be what they ought to be, and 
 should be free from error. This we affirm. Finally, 
 we inquire whether the whole Bible, or only a part, is 
 thus inspired. We affirm this kind and degree of in- 
 spiration of all the Scriptures ; the historical books as 
 well as the prophecies, the Epistles as well as the 
 Psalms, the gospels of Mark and Luke as well as those 
 of John and Matthew ; the history of Paul's shipwreck 
 in the Adriatic Sea, as well as that of the destruction of 
 
DEFINITION. 39 
 
 the ancient world ; the scenes of Mamre under Abra- 
 ham's tent, as those of the days of Christ in the eternal 
 tents ; the prophetic prayers in which the Messiah, 
 a thousand years before his advent, exclaimed in the 
 Psalms ; " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me? They pierced my hands and my feet; they cast 
 lots upon my vesture ;" as well as the narrative of the 
 same events by the evangelists. 
 
 In other words, we aim to establish by the word of 
 God — that the Scriptures are from God — that all the 
 Scriptures are from God — and that every part of the 
 Scriptures is from God. 
 
 At the same time, we would be understood in making 
 this assertion. In maintaining that all the Bible is from 
 God, we are far from thinking that this excludes man. 
 We shall illustrate this point more clearly hereafter, but 
 we deem it necessary to allude to it in this connection. 
 Every word of the Bible is as really from man, as it is 
 from God. In a certain sense, the Epistle to the Ro- 
 mans is entirely a letter of Paul ; and in a still higher 
 sense, the Epistle to the Romans is entirely a letter 
 from God. Pascal might have dictated one of his Pro- 
 vincial letters to a mechanic of Clermont, and another 
 to the abbess of Port Royal. Would the first have been 
 any less Pascalian than the other? Surely not. The 
 great Newton, when he desired to transmit his wonder- 
 ful discoveries to the world, might have procured some 
 child in Cambridge to write the fortieth, and some ser- 
 vant of his college to write the forty-first proposition of 
 his immortal Principia, whilst he dictated the other 
 pages to Barrow and Gregory. Should we thence 
 have possessed in any less degree, the discoveries of his 
 genius and the mathematical reasonings which were to 
 
40 DEFINITION. 
 
 exhibit all the movements of the universe under the 
 same law? Would the entire work have been any 
 less Newton's? Surely not. Perhaps at the same 
 time, some man of leisure might have felt some interest 
 in ascertaining- the emotions of these two great men, or 
 the simple thought of that child, or the honest preju- 
 dices of that servant, while their four pens, alike docile, 
 were tracing the Latin sentences which were dictated 
 to them. You may have been told that the two last, 
 even when writing, were roving in their imaginations 
 in the gardens of the city, or in the court yards of 
 Trinity College ; whilst the two professors, entering 
 with lively transports into all the thoughts of their 
 friend, and soaring in his sublime flight, like the eaglets 
 upon their mother's back, were plunging with him into 
 the higher regions of science, borne along and aloft 
 upon his powerful wings, and sailing enchanted in the 
 new and boundless space which he had opened to them. 
 Yet, you may have been told that, among the lines thus 
 dictated, there are some which neither the child nor 
 even the professors were able to comprehend. What 
 do I care for these details , you would have replied. I 
 will not spend my time upon them ; it is the book, 
 Newton's iDook I want to study. Its preface, its title, 
 its first line, its last line, all its theorems, easy or diffi- 
 cult, understood or not understood, are from the same 
 author ; and that is sufficient for me. Whoever the 
 writers may have been, and at whatever different eleva- 
 tions their thoughts may have ranged ; their faithful and 
 superintended hands traced alike the thoughts of their 
 master upon the same paper ; and I can there always 
 study with an equal confidence, in the very words of his 
 genius, the mathematical principles of Newton's Philo- 
 
DEFINITION. 4 1 
 
 Sophy. Such is the fact of Theopneusty ; the divine 
 power in causing- the Holy Scriptures to be written by 
 inspired men, has, almost uniformly put in operation 
 their understandings, their wills, their memories and all 
 their individualities,* (as we shall presently shew.) 
 
 It is thus that God, who would make known to his 
 elect, in an eternal book, the spiritual principles of the 
 divine philosophy ; has dictated its pages, during six- 
 teen centuries, to priests, kings, warriors, shepherds, 
 tax-gatherers, fishermen, scribes, and tent-makers. Its 
 first line, its last line, all its instructions, understood or 
 not understood, are from the same author : and that is 
 sufficient for us. Whoever the writers may have been, 
 and whatever their circumstances, their impressions, or 
 their understanding of the book ; they have all written 
 with a faithful, superintended hand, on the same scroll, 
 under the dictation of the same master, to whom a 
 thousand years are as one day ; such is the origin of 
 the Bible. 1 will not waste my time in vain questions ; 
 I will study the book. It is the word of Moses, the 
 word of Amos, the word of John, the word of Paul; 
 but it is the mind of God and the word of God. 
 
 We should then deem it a very erroneous statement 
 to say ; certain passages in the Bible are from men, and 
 certain others from God. No ; every verse, without 
 exception, is from men ; and every verse, without ex- 
 ception, is from God : whether he speaks directly in 
 his own name, or whether he employs all the individu- 
 ality* of the sacred writer. And as St. Bernard says 
 
 • Translator's Note. — The word "individuality" is here employed, not 
 in its ordinary, perhaps its only true signification; which is; separate, 
 personal existence. The translator, for the sake of avoiding circumlocu- 
 tion, intends it to represent throughout this work— the expression of per- 
 Bonal peculiarities in the style and contents of a writing. 
 
 4* 
 
42 DEFINITION. 
 
 of the living works of the regenerated man, that " our 
 will performs none of them without grace ; but that 
 grace too performs none of them without our will ;" so 
 must we say, that in the scriptures, God has done 
 nothing but by man, and man has done nothing but by 
 God. 
 
 There is, in fact, a perfect parallel between Theo- 
 pneusty and efficacious grace. In the operations of the 
 Holy Spirit in inditing the sacred books, and in those 
 of the same Spirit converting a soul, and causing it to 
 walk in the paths of holiness, man is in some respects 
 entirely passive, in others entirely active. God there 
 does every thing ; man there does all ; and we may say 
 of all these works, as St. Paul said of one of them to the 
 Philippians ; " it is God who worketh in you both to 
 will and to day* And we see that in the Scriptures, 
 the same work is attributed alternately to God and to 
 man ; God converts, and it is man who converts him- 
 self; God circumcises the heart, God gives a new 
 heart, and it is man who must circumcise his own heart 
 and make to himself a new heart. " Not only because 
 we must employ the means of obtaining such an effect," 
 says the famous Pres. Edwards, in his admirable re- 
 marks against the Arminians, " but because this effect 
 itself is our act, as well as our duty ; God producing 
 all, and we acting all."t 
 
 Such is then the word of God. It is God speaking 
 in man, God speaking by man, God speaking as man, 
 God speaking for man. We have affirmed it ; and 
 now must prove it. 
 
 Perhaps, however, it will be proper first to define this 
 doctrine with more precision. 
 
 • Phil. ii. 13. t Edwards's Remarks, &c. p. 251. 
 
DEFINITION. 43 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 In theory, we might say that a reh'gion could be 
 divine, without the miraculous inspiration of its books. 
 It might be possible, for example, to conceive of a 
 Christianity without Theopneusty ; and it might per 
 haps, be conceived that every other miracle of our re- 
 ligion, except that, was a fact. In this supposition, 
 (which is totally unauthorized,) the eternal Father 
 would have given his Son to the world ; the all-creating 
 Word, made flesh, would have undergone the death of 
 the cross for us, and have sent down upon the apostles 
 the spirit of wisdom and miraculous powers ; but, all 
 these mysteries of redemption once accomplished, he 
 would have abandoned to these men of God the work 
 of writing our sacred books, according to their own 
 wisdom ; and their writings would have presented to 
 us only the natural language of their supernatural illu- 
 minations, of their convictions and their charity. Such 
 an Older of things is undoubtedly a vain supposition, 
 directly contrary to the testimony of the Scriptures as 
 to their own nature ; but, without remarking here, that 
 it explains nothing ; and that, miracle for miracle, that 
 of illumination is not less inexplicable than Theo- 
 pneusty ; without further saying that the word of God 
 possesses a divine power peculiar to itself: such an 
 order of things, if it were realized, would have exposed 
 us to innumerable errors, and plunged us into the most 
 ruinous uncertainty.* With no security against the 
 imprudence of the writers, we should not have been 
 
 * For, upon what testimony could we then found our faith ; upon that 
 of menl But faith is founded on the word of God alone. (Rom. x. 17.) 
 By this system then, you will have obtained only a Christianity without 
 Christians. 
 
44 DEFINITION. 
 
 able to give their writings even the authority which the 
 Church now concedes to those of Augustine, Bernard, 
 Luther, Calvin, or of a multitude of other men enlight- 
 ened in the truth by the Holy Spirit. We are suffi- 
 ciently aware how many imprudent words and errone- 
 ous propositions mar the most beautiful pages of these 
 admirable writers. And yet the apostles (on the sup- 
 position we have just made,) would have been subjected 
 still more than they, to serious errors ; since they could 
 not have had, like the doctors of the church, the word 
 of God, by which to correct their Avritings ; and since 
 they would have been compelled to invent the entire 
 language of religious science ; for a science, we know, 
 is more than half formed, when its language is made. 
 What fatal errors, what grievous ignorance, what in- 
 evitable imprudence had necessarily accompanied, in 
 them, a revelation without Theopneusty ; and in what 
 deplorable doubts had the Church then been left ! — 
 errors in the selection of facts, errors in estimating them, 
 errors in stating them, errors in the conception of the 
 relations which ihej hold to doctrines, errors in the ex- 
 pression of these doctrines themselves, errors of omis- 
 sion, errors of language, errors of exaggeration, errors 
 m the adoption of national, provincial or party preju- 
 dices, errors in the anticipations of the future and in the 
 estimate of the past. 
 
 But, thanks to God, it is not so with our sacred books. 
 They contain no errors ; all their writings are inspired 
 of God. " Holy men of God spake as they were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost ; not in the words which man's 
 v/isdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth ;" 
 so that none of these words ouo-ht to be neglected, and 
 we are called to respect them and to study them even 
 
DEFINITION. 45 
 
 to their least iota and to their least tittle, for these 
 "words of the Lord are pure words ; as silver tried in 
 a fu?nace of earth, they are perfect." These assertions, 
 themselves testimonies of the word of God, contain pre- 
 cisely our last definition of Theopneusty, and lead us to 
 characterize it finally, as " that inexplicable power 
 which the Divine Spirit formerly exercised over the 
 authors of the Holy Scriptures, to guide them even in 
 the employment of the words they were to use, and to 
 preserve them from all error, as well as from every 
 omission." 
 
 This new definition, which may appear complex, is 
 not so in reality : because the two points of which it is 
 composed, are equivalents : to receive the one of which, 
 is to receive the other. 
 
 We propose them, then, separately to the consent of 
 our readers, and we offer them the choice between the 
 two. The one has more precision, the other more sim- 
 plicity ; inasmuch as it presents the doctrine under a 
 form more separate from every question about the mode 
 of inspiration and about the secret experience of the 
 sacred writers. Accept one or the other fully, and you 
 have rendered to the Scriptures the honor and the faith 
 which are their due. 
 
 We propose then to establish the doctrine of Theo- 
 pneusty under the one or the other of these two forms ; 
 " the Scriptures are given and guarantied by God, even 
 in their very language ;" and, "the Scriptures contain 
 no error ;" that is, they say all they ought to say, and 
 only what they ought to say. 
 
 Now, how shall we establish this doctrine? By the 
 Scriptures themselves, and only by the Scriptures. 
 When their truth is once admitted, it is from them we 
 
46 DEFINITION. 
 
 must learn what they are ; and when they have once 
 asserted that they are inspired of God, it is still for them 
 to say how they are inspired, and how far. 
 
 To undertake to prove, a priori, their inspiration, in 
 arguing from the necessity of this miracle for the secu- 
 rity of our faith, would be, to reason feebly, and almost 
 to imitate, in one respect, the presumption which, in 
 another respect, imagines, a priori, four degrees of 
 Theopneusty. Again, to undertake to establish the in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures upon the consideration of 
 their beauty, their uniform wisdom, their prophetic pru- 
 dence, and all those marks of divinity which are there 
 revealed, would be indeed, to rest our proof on reason- 
 ings doubtless just, but contestable, or at least contested. 
 We must then stand upon the Scriptural declarations 
 alone. We have no other authority for the doctrines 
 of our faith ; and Theopneusty is one of those doctrines. 
 
 At the same time, let us here guard against a misap- 
 prehension. It may happen that some reader not fully 
 confirmed in his belief of Christianity, mistaking our 
 design, and thinking that from our book he may gather 
 arguments to establish his faith, shall be disappointed, 
 and shall feel himself authorized to reproach our argu- 
 ment as having the capital defect of attempting to prove 
 the inspiration of the Scriptures by that inspiration. 
 
 Here we must vindicate ourselves. We have not 
 written these pages for the disciples of Porphyry, of 
 Voltaire, or Rousseau ; nor has our object been to prove 
 that the Scriptures are worthy of faith. Others have 
 done this ; it is not our task. We address men wno re- 
 spect the Scriptures, and who admit their truth. It is 
 to them we assert, that the Scriptures being true, de- 
 clare themselves inspired ; and that being inspired, they 
 
DEFINITION. 4T 
 
 declare themselves entirely so ; wnence we conclude 
 that they must be so. 
 
 Certainly this doctrine is one of the simplest and 
 clearest of all truths, to the mind humbly and rationally 
 submissive to the testimony of the Scriptures. We may 
 indeed hear modern theologians represent it as full of 
 uncertainty and difficulties ; but men who have desired 
 to study it only by the light of God's word, have not 
 found there these difficulties and this uncertainty. No- 
 thing, on the contrary, is more clearly or more fre- 
 quently taught in the Scriptures, than the inspiration of 
 the Scriptures. The ancients too, never found the em- 
 barrassments and doubts on this subject, which confound 
 the learned of our day. For them the Bible either was 
 of God, or it was not of God. Antiquity presents on 
 this point an admirable unanimity* But, since the 
 moderns, in imitation of the Jewish Talmudists and 
 Rabbins of the middle ages,t have imagined sage dis- 
 tuictions between four or five degrees of inspiration, who 
 can be astonished to find that difficulties and uncertainty 
 have increased in their view ? They contest that which 
 the Scriptures teach, and they inculcate what the Scrip- 
 tures do not teach. Their embarrassment is easily ex- 
 plained, but the blame of it rests on their temerity. 
 
 The Bible renders so clear a testimony to its own full 
 inspiration, that differences of opinion among Christians 
 on a subject so well defined, are astonishing. And the 
 explanation of it will only add so much testimony to the 
 
 * See on this subject the learned dissertation of Dr. Rudelbarh; in -which 
 he establishes from history, 'he sound doctrines of inspiration as we have 
 endeavored to establish them from the Scriptures. (Zeitsrhrift fur die 
 gesammte r,utherische Theologie und Kirche, von Rudelbach und Gue- 
 ricke. 1840.) 
 
 t See our chap. 5, sec. 2, ques. 44. 
 
48 DEFINITION. 
 
 power and evil of prejudice. The mind, already pre- 
 occupied with objections which it has originated, distorts 
 the sacred passages, and turns them from their natural 
 sense, and by a secret labor of thought, forces itself to 
 reconcile them with the difficulties which embarrass it. 
 These Christians deny, in spite of the Scriptures, the 
 full inspiration of the Scriptures ; as the Sadducees de- 
 nied the resurrection, because they found the miracle 
 inexplicable ; but it must be remembered that Jesus 
 Christ has answered : " Ye do err, not knowing the 
 Scriptures, nor the power of God."* It is then on ac- 
 count of this too common disposition of the human mind, 
 that we have thought it best not to present our scriptu- 
 ral proofs, until after a full examination of the objections 
 raised against the doctrine. 
 
 That will be the subject of the next chapter. 
 
 We desire to present also, to our reader, a more pre- 
 cise exposition of our doctrine, and of some of the ques- 
 tions connected with it ; but it has appeared to us pre- 
 ferable to defer this also to the last pages ; both because 
 it will be more acceptable when the difficulties shall 
 have been maturely considered, and because we would 
 not, at the beginning, repel, by a too didactic discussion, 
 the unl< ttered readers who may come to these pages, 
 seeking the edification of their faith. 
 
 We are about then, to commence, by an attentive ex- 
 amination of the difficulties and the systems raised up 
 against the doctrine of a plenary inspiration. These 
 difficulties constitute objections ; and these systems are 
 rather evasions. We shall examine them both in the 
 two succeeding chapters. 
 
 • Mark xii. 34—27. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 OBJECTIONS EXAMINED. 
 
 It is objected, that the individuality of the sacred 
 writers, deeply imprinted on their respective writings, 
 cannot be reconciled with plenary inspiration ; it is ob- 
 jected, that the fallibility of the translator renders illu- 
 sory the infallibility of the original text ; it is objected, 
 that the use of the totally human version of the Seventy, 
 by the apostles, renders their theopneusty more than 
 doubtful ; the objector refers to the variations in the 
 manuscripts, imperfections in the reasonings and in the 
 doctrines, errors in the facts ; he brings up the state- 
 ments which appear absurd in the light of our more 
 perfect acquaintance with the laws of nature ; he states, 
 finally, what he calls the admissions of St. Paul. We 
 shall answer these objections in order, and then examine 
 in succession, some of the theories by which the doctrine 
 of plenary inspiration is evaded. 
 
 SECTION L 
 
 TJie Individuality, or Peculiarities of the Sacred Writers^ deeply 
 impressed on their 
 
 It is first objected, that this individuality, which so 
 pervades the sacred books, furnishes a powerful testi- 
 mony against the doctrine of a full and constant inspira- 
 tion. We are told that it is impossible to read the Scrip- 
 tures, without being struck with the differences of lan- 
 guage, of conception, of style, which each author pre- 
 sents. These difTerences, by impressing on these 
 5 
 
50 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 writings the indisputable features of their personality,* 
 betray, every where, the concurrence of their personal 
 action in the composition of the Scriptures. Ahhough 
 the title of each book should not indicate to us that we 
 are passing from one author to another ; yet we should 
 quickly discover by the change of their character, that 
 a new hand has taken the pen. This difference shows 
 itself even between one prophet and another, and between 
 two apostles. Who could read the writings of Isaiah 
 and Ezekiel, of Amos and Hosea, of Zephaniah and 
 Habakkuk, of Jeremiah and Daniel ; who could study 
 successively the writings of Paul and Peter, of James 
 and John, without remarking in each one of them, the 
 influence which his habits, his condition, his genius, his 
 education, his circumstances have exercised over his 
 views of truth, over his reasoning, and his language ? 
 They describe that which they have seen, and as they 
 have seen it. Their memory has full play, their im- 
 aginations are exercised, their afTections are drawn out, 
 all their being is employed, and their moral physiog- 
 nomy is clearly pourtrayed in their writings. We per- 
 ceive that the composition of each book has depended 
 greatly, both for its matter and its form, upon the pecu- 
 liar circumstances and turn of its author. 
 
 Could the son of Zebedce have composed the Epistle 
 to the Romans, such as we have received it from the 
 hands of St. Paul 1 Who would have dreamed of at- 
 tributing the Epistle to the Hebrews to him ? And al- 
 though the catholic letters of Peter should be deprived 
 of their title, who would think of attributing them to 
 
 • Translator's Note.—We would make the same remark concerning the 
 yford personality, sls vfe have made concerning individuality. See note, 
 page 41. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 51 
 
 John? It is so likewise with the evang^elists. It is 
 perfectly easy to recognize each one of them, although 
 they speak of the same Master, teach the same doctrines, 
 and relate the same incidents. This is the fact which 
 none can dispute; but the legitimacy of their inferences 
 we deny. It is said, 
 
 " 1. If it were God alone who speaks in every part 
 of the Scriptures, we should see, then, a uniformity 
 which now they do not possess. 
 
 2. We must then admit that two different forces have 
 acted at the same time upon the sacred writers, while 
 they were composing the Scriptures — their own natural 
 force, and the miraculous force of inspiration. 
 
 3. From the conflict, the concurrence, or the balanced 
 action of these two forces, there must have resulted an 
 inspiration variable, gradual, sometimes entire, some- 
 times imperfect, and often even reduced to the feeble 
 measure of a mere supervision. 
 
 4. The variable power of the Divine Spirit in this 
 combined action, must have proportioned itself to the 
 importance and to the difficulties of the matters treated 
 by the sacred author. It must, in fact, have withdrawn 
 itself, whenever the judgment and the recollection of the 
 writer were competent to the work ; fur God performs 
 no needless miracle." 
 
 '■ Man cannot say," says Bishop Wilson.* " where 
 this inspiration begins, and where it ends " 
 
 " That," says Dr. Twesten, '• which is exaggerated 
 ia the notions of some, concerning inspiration, is not the 
 extension of it to all parts, but tlie extension of it to all 
 parts equally. If inspiration does not exclude the per- 
 sonal action of the sacred writers, neither does it destroy 
 
 * Lect. on Evid. of Christi.nnity, p. 506. 
 
52 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 all the influence of human imperfection. But we may 
 suppose this influence always feebler in the writers, in 
 proportion as the matter relates more intimately to 
 Christ."* 
 
 " We should recognize," says Dr. Dick, " three de- 
 grees of inspiration. There are, in the first place, many 
 things which the writers could know by the mere exer- 
 cise of their natural faculties ; no supernatural influence 
 was necessary, to relate them ; it was only requisite that 
 they should be infallibly preserved from error. In the 
 second place, there were other things, for which their 
 understandings and their fiiculties needed to be divinely 
 strengthened. Finally, there are many others still, 
 which contain subjects that made a direct inspiration in- 
 dispensable."! 
 
 Hence it would result, that if this full inspiration was 
 sometimes necessary, yet, for matters at once simple 
 and not vital to religion, there might be in the Scrip- 
 tures some innocent errors, and some of those stains 
 which the hand of man always leaves on that which 
 it touches. 
 
 Whilst the energy of the Divine Spirit, by an action 
 always powerful, and often victorious, was enlarging 
 the understandings of the men of God, purifying their 
 affections, and making them seek among all their recol- 
 lections, for those which could be the most usefully trans- 
 mitted to the Church ; the natural energies of their 
 minds, left to themselves for all the details which were 
 of no importance to faith or virtue, may have introduced 
 in the Scriptures some mixture of inexactness and im- 
 perfection. " We must not then attribute to the Scrip- 
 
 * Vorles. ul)er die Dogmatik, Tom. i. 
 t Essay on Insp. of Holy Scriptures. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 53 
 
 tures an unlimited infallibility, as if there were no error," 
 says Dr. Twesten. " Doubtless, God is truth ; and, in 
 important matters, every thing which comes from him. 
 is truth ; but if every thing is not equally important, then 
 every thing does not come equally from him ; and if in- 
 spiration does not exclude the personal aciion of the sa- 
 cred authors, neither does it destroy all the influence 
 of human imperfection." 
 
 Such is then the objection. — It assumes, in its suppo- 
 sitions and in its conclusions, that there are in the Scrip- 
 tures, some passages of no importance, and others marred 
 by imperfection. — We will hereafter repel with all our 
 power, both these erroneous imputations ; but we must 
 defer it for the present, as we are here considering only 
 the living and personal form under which the Scriptures 
 have been given to us, and its supposed incompatibility 
 with a plenary inspiration. 
 
 To this objection we reply. 
 
 1. We commence by declaring how far we are from 
 denying the alleged fact, while we resist the false infer- 
 ences deduced from it. So far are we from overlooking 
 this human individuality, every where impressed on our 
 sacred books ; that, on the contrary, it is w^ith profound 
 gratitude, with an ever-increasing admiration, we regard 
 this living, real, dramatic, human character infused so 
 powerfully and so charmingly into every pait of the 
 book of God. Yes, (we delight to say it to the objec- 
 tors.) here it is the phraseology, the stamp, the accent 
 of a Moses, there of a St. John, here of an Isaiah, there 
 of an Amos, here of a Daniel, or St, Peter, there of a 
 Nehemiah, there of a St. Paul. We recognise them, 
 we hear them, w^e see them ; it is all but impossible to 
 be mistaken in regard to it. We admit this fact, we de- 
 5* 
 
54 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 lig-ht to study it, we admire it profoundly ; and we there 
 see, as we shall be called to repeat, more than an addi- 
 tional proof of the divine wisdom which dictated the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 2. What bearing has the absence or the presence of 
 the writer's affections on the fact of theopneusty ? Can- 
 not God alike employ them or dispense with them ? 
 He, who could make a statue speak ; can he not make 
 even an infant speak as he pleases ? He who reproved 
 the folly of the prophet by a dumb animal ; can he not 
 impart to another prophet the sentiments or the words 
 which are best suited to the plan of his revelations ? 
 He who caused the lifeless hand to come out from the 
 wall, and write these terrible words : " Mene, Mene, 
 Tekel, Upharsin !" could he not equally direct the in- 
 telligent and pious pen of his apostle to write such words 
 as these : " I say the truth in Christ, I lie not ; my con- 
 science bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I 
 have great sorrow and heaviness of heart for my breth- 
 ren, my kinsmen according to the flesh?" 
 
 Do you know how God acts, and how he refrains 
 from acting? Will you teach us the mechanism of in- 
 spiration ? Will you tell us what is the difl^erence be- 
 tween his mode of influence; when the personal qualities 
 of the writer show themselves, and when they do not ? 
 Will you explain to us how the concurrence of the 
 thoughts, the recollections and the emotions of the sacred 
 writers would impair their theopneusty ; and will you 
 tell us why this very concurrence does not make part 
 of it? Between the fact of individuality and the infer- 
 ence which you draw from it, there is an abyss. And 
 into this abyss your intelligence can no more descend 
 to oppose the theopneusty, than ours to explain it. Was 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 55 
 
 there not enough individuality in the language of Caia- 
 phas, when that wicked man, full of the bitterest gall, 
 abandoning himself to the counsels of his depraved 
 heart, and thinking of anything but speaking the words 
 of God, cried out in the Jewish council : " You do not 
 understand nor consider that it is expedient that one man 
 die for the people ?" Surely there was in those words 
 sufficient individuality ; and yet it is written that Caia- 
 phas did not speak them of himself, [(xcp^iavTov) but that 
 being high-priest that year, he spoke as a prophet, with- 
 out knowing what he said ; announcing that Jesus was 
 about to die, to gather the children of God who are 
 scattered abroad * 
 
 Why then could not the same spirit employ the pious 
 affections of his saints for announcing the word of God, 
 as well as use the hypocritical and wicked thoughts of 
 his most odious adversaries ? 
 
 3. When they say, that if, in such a passage, it is the 
 style of Moses, or of Luke, of Ezekiel, or of John, it 
 cannot be that of God, they mean to tell us what is the 
 style of God ; they would point out to us the accent of 
 the Holy Ghost ; they would teach us to recognize it by 
 the turn of his phrases, by the tone of his voice ; and 
 they would tell us what signalizes in the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, or in the Greek, his supreme individuality. 
 Since then you know it, explain it to us. 
 
 4. It should not be forgotten that the sovereign action 
 of God, in the different fields of its exercise, never ex- 
 cludes the employment of second causes. On the con- 
 trary, it is in their very enlistment, that he loves to man- 
 ifest his powerful wisdom. In the field of the creation, 
 he gives us the plants, by the combined employment of 
 
 * John xi. 49—52. 
 
56 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 all the elements ; of heat, moisture, electricit}'', atmos- 
 phere, light, the mechanical attraction of the capillary 
 vessels, and of the various work of the organs. In the 
 field of Providence, he accomplishes the development 
 of his vastest plans, by the unanticipated combination of 
 a thousand millions of human wills alternately intelli- 
 gent and submissive, or ignorant and rebellious. 
 " Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the 
 people of Israel, (moved by so many different passions) 
 were gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and 
 thy counsel determined before, to be done." In the 
 field of prophecy, it is still in the same manner that he 
 leads the prophecies on to their fulfilment. He pre- 
 pares, for instance, long before hand, a warrior-prince 
 in the mountains of Persia, and another in those of Me- 
 dia : the first he had designated by name, more than a 
 century before his birth ; he unites them at a point 
 named, with ten other people, against the empire of the 
 Chaldeans ; he leads them to surmount a thousand ob- 
 stacles, and at last brings them into great Babylon, at 
 the very moment which terminated the seventy years so 
 long before assigned to the Jewish captivity. In the 
 very field of his miracles, he is still pleased to use se- 
 cond causes. He might there have said : " let it be ;" 
 and it would be. But he designed, even there, in em- 
 ploying inferior agents, to make us comprehend more 
 fully, that it is he who gives power to the feeblest of 
 them. To divide the Red Sea, he causes not only the 
 rod of Moses to be stretched out over the abyss ; but 
 sends also an impetuous east wind, which blows all 
 night, and drives back the waters of the sea. To restore 
 sight to the man born blind, he moistens the clay, and 
 with it anoints the eye-lids. In the field of redemption, 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 57 
 
 in place of converting a soul by an immediate act of his 
 will, he presents to it motives, he makes it read the gos- 
 pel, he sends it preachers ; and thus, although it is he 
 " who worketh in us to will and to do of his good plea- 
 sure ;" yet '• he begets us according to his own will by 
 the word of truth." Why then, is it not so in the field 
 of Theopneusty ? Why, when he sends his word ; 
 should he not place it in the understanding, in the heart 
 and in the life of his servants, as he puts it upon their 
 lips ? Why should he not associate their personality 
 with that which they reveal to us ? Why should not 
 their sentiments, their history, their experiences make 
 part of their Theopneusty ? 
 
 5. The error of the objection to which we reply, may 
 be further shewed by the entire inconsistency of those 
 who use it. In order to deny the plenary inspiration 
 of certain passages of the Scriptures, they allege the in- 
 dividuality impressed on them ; and yet. it is admitted 
 that other parts of the holy book, where this feature is 
 equally produced, must have been given directly by 
 God, even in their minutest details. Isaiah, Daniel, 
 Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the author of the Apocalypse 
 have just as much, impressed, each one his own style, 
 features, manner ; in a word, his own mark, on their 
 prophecies ; as Luke, Mark, John, Paul and Peter have 
 on their histories or their letters. The objection then 
 is not valid ; if it proves any thing, it proves too much. 
 
 6. That which still strikes us in this objection and in 
 the system of intermittent inspiration to which it is al- 
 lied, is its threefold character of complication, temerity 
 and puerility ; — of complication, for its advocates sup- 
 pose that the Divine action, dictating the Scriptures, 
 was interrupted or enfeebled in any passage, just in pro- 
 
58 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 portion to the diminished difficulty or importance of the 
 passage; and thus they represent God as successively 
 retiring" and advancing in the spirit of the sacred writer, 
 during the course of the same chapter or passage! — of 
 rashness ; for, not knovv^ing the majesty of the Scrip- 
 tures, they dare to suppose that they have, in some of 
 their parts, no more than a human importance, and that 
 they required for their composition, no more than a hu- 
 man wisdom ! — of puerility, we say too : for they fear 
 to ascribe useless miracles to God ; as if the Holy 
 Spirit, after having, as they avow, dictated, word for 
 word, one part of the Scriptures, would have found it a 
 less difficult task, in other parts, merely to illuminate or 
 to superintend the writer. 
 
 7. But we go farther. That which chiefly leads us 
 to oppose a theory that dares to classify the Scriptures 
 as inspired, half-inspired, and not inspired, (as if this 
 sad doctrine ought to be deduced from the flict that each 
 book is characterised by the peculiarities of its author ;) 
 is its direct opposition to the Scriptures themselves. 
 The theory is, that one part of the Bible is made by 
 man, and another part by God. Now hear the Bible 
 itself It protests that " all scripture is given by inspi- 
 ration of God." It does not indicate an exception. B}"- 
 what authority then can any one make an exception 
 which it does not admit?* We are told indeed, that a 
 part of the Scriptures required the plenary inspiration 
 of the writer ; that a part required nothing more than 
 
 • It has been said that this declaration refers only to the Old Testament, 
 and that our author quotes it here unfairly. The charge is not valid. He 
 selects one expression of the Bible, which describes the nature and e.xtent 
 of inspiration in all the Scriptures then written. And he niisht strongly 
 urce upon these objectors the a furtiori conclusion ; if the Old Testament 
 ii all inspired, what doubt can remain about the New.— T^r. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 59 
 
 eminent gifts, and that still another part might have 
 been written by an ordinary man. All this may be ; 
 but what bearing has it on the question ? When the 
 author of a book is named to you ; you know that every 
 thing in the book is his, the easy and the diflficult, the 
 important and the unimportant. 
 
 If, then, " all Scripture is given by inspiration of 
 God ;" how does it affect our question, that there are 
 passages, in your eyes more important, or more diffi- 
 cult, than others ? The least of the companions of 
 Jesus could have composed the fifth verse of the elev- 
 enth chapter of John : — " Now Jesus loved Martha, and 
 her sister, and Lazarus:" as also the most insignificant 
 schoolmaster could have written the first line of Atha- 
 iia : — '■ Yes, I come into his temple, to adore the Lord." 
 But if some one had told us, that the great Racine had 
 dictated all his drama to some village-mayor, should we 
 not still continue to attribute all its parts to him ; its 
 first verse, the number of its scenes, the names of its 
 actors, the directions for their entrance and their exit, 
 as well as the sublimest strophes of its chorusses 1 If, 
 then, God himself declares to us, that he has dictated 
 all the Scriptures, who shall dare say that this fifth 
 verse of the eleventh chapter of John is any less from 
 God, than the sublime words which begin the Gospel, 
 and which describe to us the eternal Word ? Inspira- 
 tion may, indeed, be more clearly distinguished in some 
 passages than in some others ; but it is not, therefore, 
 less real in the one than in the other. 
 
 In a word, if there were parts of the Bible without 
 inspiration, it would no longer be truth to say, that all 
 the Bible is divmely inspired ; it would no more be en- 
 tirely the word of God : it would have deceived us. 
 
60 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 8. It is especially important to remark here, that this 
 fatal system of an inspiration, gradual, imperfect, and 
 intermittent, arises from a mistake which we have more 
 than once found it necessary to point out. It is, that 
 inspiration has almost always been considered as in the 
 man ; whereas it ought to be looked for only in the 
 book. It is " ALL Scripture," it is all that is written, 
 which is inspired of God. We are not told, and we 
 are not asked, how God has done it. It is certified to 
 us, only that he has done it ; and all that we are to be- 
 lieve is simpl3'-that, whatever mode he may have adopted 
 for accomplishing it. 
 
 The contemplation of inspiration from this false point 
 of view has given rise to the three following allusions : — 
 
 First, In contemplating inspiration in the sacred au- 
 thor, it has been usual to consider it in him as an ex- 
 traordinary excitement, of which he was conscious, 
 which carried him out of himself; which animated 
 him, after the manner of the ancient Pythons, by a di- 
 vine afflatus, or poetic fire, easily recognized ; so that 
 \vhere the words are simple, calm, familiar, they must 
 no longer be attributed to inspiration. 
 
 Again ; by regarding theopneusty as in the persons, 
 they have been naturally led to attribute to it different 
 degrees of perfection ; because they knew that the sa- 
 cred writers themselves have received very different 
 measures of illumination and of holiness. But if you 
 regard inspiration as in the book, rather than in the 
 man, then you will perceive that it cannot admit of de- 
 grees. A word is of God, or it is not of God. If it is 
 of God, it is not so in two different modes. Whatever 
 may have been the spiritual condition of the writer, if 
 all his writings are divinely mspired, all his words are 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 61 
 
 of God. And it is on this principle, (mark it well,) 
 that a Christian will hesitate no more than Christ, to 
 place the writings of Solomon by (he side of those of 
 Moses ; or those of Mark or of Matthew, by the side of 
 those of the disciple whom Jesus loved ; yea, by the 
 side of even the words of the Son of God. They are 
 all of God. 
 
 Finally, by a third illusion ; in considering the in- 
 spiration as in the writers, instead of seeing it in the 
 writings, it has naturally been thought absurd to sup- 
 pose that God miraculously revealed to a man that 
 which this man already knew. This has led to a denial 
 of the inspiration of those passages in which the sacred 
 writers have merely recounted what they have seen, or 
 have written sentences which any man of sense could 
 have uttered without the aid of inspiration. But the 
 case is totally changed, when inspiration is regarded as 
 belonging to that which is written ; for then every thing 
 will be recognized as written by Divine dictation ; 
 whether it be what the writer already knew, or that of 
 which he was ignorant. Who does not perceive, for 
 example, that the case in which I should dictate to a 
 student a book of geometry, is very different from the 
 case in which, after having more or less instructed him 
 in the sciences, I should request him to compose one 
 under my supervision. In the latter case he would, 
 doubtless, have need of me only for difficult proposi- 
 tions ; but then too, who would think of saying that the 
 book was mine ? In the other case, on the contrary, 
 all the parts of the book, easy or difficult, would be 
 mine ; from the quadrature of transcendental curves, 
 even to the theory of the straight line or of the triangle. 
 Now, such is the Bible. It is not, as some have said, 
 6 
 
<6@ OBJECTIONS. 
 
 a book which God has charged men, already enlight- 
 ened, to make, under his protection It is a book which 
 God dictated to them ; it is the word of God ; the Spirit 
 of the Lord hath spoken by its authors, and his words 
 were upon their tongue. 
 
 9. That a child may know that the style of David, 
 of St. Luke, or St. John, can be, at the same time, the 
 style of God. 
 
 If some modern French author, at the beginning of 
 the century, in order to render hiinself popular, had 
 imitated the style of Chateaubriand, could it not have 
 been said, with equal truth, although in two different 
 senses, that the style was his while yet it was Chateau- 
 briand's ? If God himself, in order to save the French 
 nation from a frightful explosion, by introducing the 
 Gospel among them, should deign to send some prophets, 
 by whose mouth He would make himself heard, they 
 would certainly preach in the French language. But 
 then, what would be their style, and what would you 
 require as characteristic of the style of God 7 God 
 might choose that one of these prophets should speak 
 like Fenelon, and the other like Bonaparte. Then it 
 would be, in a certain sense, the pithy, barking, jerking 
 style of the great general : it would be again, and in 
 he same sense, the flowing style, the sustained and wire- 
 Ira wn period of the priest of Cambray ; but, in another 
 '.ense, more elevated and more true, it would be, in the 
 one and in the other of these two mouths, the style of 
 God, the periods of God, the manner of God, the word 
 of God. God could, without doubt, every time he re- 
 vealed his will, have uttered, from the highest heavens, 
 a voice as glorious as that which shook the rocky Sinai, 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 63 
 
 OT that which was heard on the banks of the Jordan.* 
 He could have deputed no less than the angels of light. 
 But then, what languages would they have spoken ? 
 Those of the earth, evidently. If then, in speaking to 
 men on the earth, he must adopt the words and the con- 
 struction of the Hebrews and the Greeks, instead of the 
 syntax of the heavens and the vocabulary of archangels; 
 why should he not also equally have borrowed their 
 gait, their style, and their personality ? 
 
 10. He has done so, without doubt ; but do not think 
 that he has done it by accident. " His works are known 
 to him from the beginning."! See how he prepares 
 with prospective wisdom, the leaf of a tree, wrapped 
 first in its little case ; then gradually unfolding, to drink 
 the rays of light and breathe the vital air, while the 
 roots send up to it their nourishing juices. But his 
 wisdom has looked and provided still further ; it has 
 prepared this leaf for that coming day, when it may 
 nourish the worms which are to burst their silky cover- 
 ing and spin their thread upon its branches. See how 
 he prepared, first a gourd for the place and for the time 
 when and where Jonas was to come and sit down on 
 the east of Nineveh ; and afterwards a destructive 
 worm for the next morning, when this gourd should 
 wither ; — ^just too, as when he would proceed to the 
 most important of his works, and cause to be written 
 this prophecy which is to outlive the heavens and the 
 earth ; the eternal God knew how to prepare, long be- 
 forehand, each one of his prophets for the moment and 
 for the testimony to which he had destined him from eter- 
 nity. He has chosen them, one after the other, for their 
 respective offices, from among all the men born of wo- 
 
 * Exod. xi.x. John xii. 29. t Acts xv. 18. 
 
64 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 men ; and he has perfectly accomplished in respect to 
 them, this word : " Send, oh Lord, whom thou wilt 
 send."* 
 
 As a skilful musician, who has to execute alone a longf 
 score, will avail himself by turns, of the funereal flute, 
 the shepherd's pipe, the dancer's bagpipe or the war- 
 rior's trumpet ; thus the Almighty God, to proclaim to 
 us his eternal word, has chosen of old, the instruments 
 into which he would successively breathe the breath of 
 his Spirit. " He chose them before the foundation of the 
 world ; he separated them from their mother's womb."t 
 
 Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and 
 listened to that Avonderful organist, who, with such en- 
 chantment, draws the tears from the traveler's eyes ; 
 while he touches, one after another, his wonderful keys, 
 and makes you hear by turns, the march of armies 
 upon the beach, or the chanted prayer upon the lake 
 during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is 
 calm? All your senses are overwhelmed, for it has 
 all passed before you like a vivid reality. Well, thus 
 the Eternal God, powerful in harmony, touches by turns 
 with the fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had 
 chospn for the hour of his design, and for the unity of 
 his celestial hymn. He had before him, from eternity, 
 all the human keys ; his creating eyes embraced at a 
 glance, this key-board of sixty centuries ; and when he 
 would make this fallen world hear the eternal counsel 
 of its redemption and the advent of the Son of God, he 
 laid his left hand on Enoch the seventh from Adam,J 
 and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime 
 prisoner of Patmos. The celestial hymn, seven hun- 
 dred years before the deluge, began with these words : 
 
 • Ex. iv. 13. t Gal. i. 15. Eph. i. 4. J Jude, 14. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 65 
 
 " Behold, the Lord comcth with ten thousand of his 
 saints, to judge the world ;" but already in the thought 
 of God and in the eternal harmony of Jiis work, the 
 voice of John was responding to that of Enoch, and 
 terminating the hymn, three thousand years after him, 
 with these words : " Behold, he cometh, and every eye 
 shall see him, yea, those that pierced him ! even so. Lord 
 Jesus, come quickly, amen !" And during this hymn 
 of three thousand years, the Spirit of God did not cease 
 to breathe upon all his ambassadors ; the angels stooped, 
 says an Apostle, to contemplate its depths ; the elect of 
 God were moved, and eternal life descended into their 
 souls. 
 
 Between Enoch and St. John, hear Jeremiah, twenty- 
 four centuries after the one, and seven centuries before 
 the other : " Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew 
 thee, and before thou comest forth out of the womb, I 
 sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the 
 nations."* It was in vain that this man in his fear ex- 
 claimed : '• Ah Lord, behold I cannot speak, for I am 
 a child ;" the Lord answered him : " say not, I am a 
 child ; for, thou shalt speak all that I command thee." 
 Then the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched 
 his mouth, and said: " Behold, I put my word in thy 
 mouth." 
 
 Between Enoch and Jeremiah, hear Moses. He de- 
 bates too, upon Mount Horeb, against the Lord's appeal : 
 " Alas, Lord, I am a man slow of speech ; send rather 
 I pray thee, by whom thou wilt send."t But the anger 
 of the Lord burns against Moses : " Who hath made 
 man's mouth ? Now therefore go, and I will be with 
 thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." 
 
 • Jer. i. 5, 6, 7. t Ex. iv. 10. 
 
 6* 
 
66 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Between Jeremiah and St. John, hear Saul of Tarsus : 
 
 " When it pleased God, who hath separated me from 
 my mother's womb and called me by his grace, to re- 
 veal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the 
 heathen."* 
 
 ' We see then, it was sometimes the sublime and untu- 
 tored simplicity of John ; sometimes the excited, ellip- 
 tical, startling, argumentative energy of Paul ; some- 
 times the fervor and solemnity of Peter ; it was the 
 majestic poetry of Isaiah, or the lyrical poetry of David ; 
 it was the simple and majestic narrative of Moses, or 
 the sententious and royal wisdom of Solomon ] — yes, it 
 was all that ; it was Peter ; it was Isaiah ; it was Mat- 
 thew ; it was John ; it was Moses ; but it was God ! 
 
 " Are not these men who speak to us, all, Galileans ?" 
 cried one on the day of Pentecost. Yes, they are ; but 
 the word upon their lips comes from another country, 
 it is from heaven. Hear it ; for the tongues of fire 
 have come down upon their heads, and it is God who 
 speaks to you by their mouth. 
 
 11. Finally; we v/ould show that this human per- 
 sonality which is pointed out to us in the Scriptures; 
 so far from leaving any stain there, or from being an 
 infirmity ; on the contrary, impresses a divine beauty 
 on the sacred page, and powerfully proves to us its theo- 
 pneusty. 
 
 Yes, we have said it ; it is God who there speaks to 
 us ; but it is also man ; it is man, but it is also God, 
 Admirable word of God ! It has been made human 
 in its way, like the eternal Word ! Yes, God has 
 caused it thus to stoop even to us, full of grace and truth, 
 like our words, in eveiy thing but error and sin. Ad- 
 
 • Gal. i. 15. 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 67 
 
 mirable word ; divine, but full of humanity ; amiable 
 word of my God ! Yes, it must, in order to be under- 
 stood by us, place itself on mortal lips and recite human 
 things ; and to charm us, must put on the features of 
 our thoughts and all the tones of our voice, because 
 God knows well of what we are made. But we have 
 recognized it as the word of the Lord, powerful, effica- 
 cious, sharper than any two-edged sword ; and the most 
 simple among us, have been able to say in hearing it, 
 like Cleopas and his friend : " did not our hearts burn 
 within us while he talked with us ?" 
 
 With what a powerful charm the Scriptures, by this 
 abundance of humanity, and by all this personality 
 which clothes their divinity, remind us that the Lord of 
 our souls, whose touching voice they are, himself bears 
 a human heart upon the throne of God, although seated 
 in the highest places, where the angels can serve and 
 adore him ! By this too, they present to us, not only 
 this double character of variety and unity Avhich at once 
 so embellishes and distinguishes all the other works of 
 God, as creator of the heavens and the earth, but also 
 that union of fomiliarity and authority, of sympathy 
 and grandeur, of practical detail and mysterious ma- 
 jesty, of humanity and divinity, which we recognize in 
 all the dispensations of the same God, as the Redeemer 
 and Shrpherd of his Church. 
 
 It is then thus that the Father of mercies, in speaking 
 in his prophets, has had not only to employ their man- 
 ner as well as their voice, and their style as well as their 
 pen, but also often to enlist in it all their faculties of 
 tho'jo:ht and feelinnf. Sometimes in order to show us 
 his divine sympathy, he has thought proper to associate 
 their personal reminiscences, their own experiences and 
 
68 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 their pious emotions witii the words which he was dic- 
 tating to them. Sometimes, in order to remind us of 
 his sovereign interference, he has preferred to dispense 
 with this unessential concurrence of their memories, 
 their affections and their understandings. 
 
 So ought the word of God to be. 
 
 Like Emmanuel, full of grace and truth ; at once, in 
 the bosom of God and in the heart of man; powerful 
 and sympathetic, celestial and' of the earth, sublime and 
 humiliated, imposing and familiar, God and man ! It 
 does not then resemble the God of the rationalists. Af- 
 ter having, like the disciples of Epicurus, removed the 
 Deity very far from man, and into the third heaven, they 
 have wished the Bible to put him there too. " Philo- 
 sophy," said the too celebrated Strauss of Louisburg. 
 " employs the language of the gods ; whilst religion 
 employs the language of men.'" Yes, doubtless, it does ; 
 it assumes no other ; it leaves to philosophers and the 
 gods of this world, their empyrium and their language. 
 
 Studied under this aspect, and considered by this char- 
 acter, the word of God shows itself without a parallel ; 
 it has unequalled attractions ; it offers to the men of 
 every age, place and condition, beauties ahvays new, a 
 charm which does not grow old, which ever satisfies 
 and never satiates. In direct contrast with human 
 books, it not only pleases you, it increases in beauty, ex- 
 tent and elevation of meaning, in proportion as you read 
 it more assiduously. It seems that the book, the more 
 you study and re-study it, grows and expands, and that 
 an invisible and benevolent Being comes daily to sew 
 in it some new leaves ! This is the reason why the 
 souls of the learned and the unlearned, who have lono* 
 
 o 
 
 been nourished by it, equally hang upon it, just as those 
 
INDIVIDUALITY. 69 
 
 once did on the lips of Christ, who are mentioned by 
 Luke.* They all find it incomparable ; sometimes 
 powerful as the noise of mighty waters, sometimes ami- 
 able and sweet as the voice of the bride to her bride- 
 groom ; but always " perfect, always restoring the soul, 
 and making wise the simple."! 
 
 To what book, in this respect, would you compare 
 it? Would you place by its side, the discourses of 
 Plato or of Seneca, of Aristotle, or St. Simon, or Rous- 
 seau ? Have you read the books of Mohammed? 
 Listen to him for one hour. Under the pressure of his 
 piercing and monotonous voice, your ears Vv'ill tingle. 
 From the first page to the last, it is always the cry of 
 the same trumpet, always the cornet of Medina sound- 
 ing from the top of the minaret of a mosque or from the 
 back of a war-camel ; always a sybilline oracle, sharp 
 and hard, in a continued strain of commandment and 
 threat ; whether he ordains virtue or commands mur- 
 der ; always one and the same voice, sharp and roaring, 
 without compassion, without familiarity, without tears, 
 without soul, without sympathy. 
 
 If after reading other books, you feel religious wants, 
 open the Bible ; hear it. They are sometimes indeed 
 the songs of angels, but of angels come down among 
 the sons of Adam. 
 
 They are the organs of the Most High ; but they 
 come to charm the heart of man and to move his con- 
 science ; in the cabin of the shepherd, as in the palace ; 
 in the garrets of the poor, as in the tents of the desert. 
 
 The Bible, in fact, instructs all conditions ; it brings 
 on the stage, the humble and the great : it reveals to 
 them equally the love of God, and exposes in them the 
 
 * Ch. xix. 48. 6 Xa6s S.TTag i^eKpenaro. t Ps. xix. 7. 
 
70 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 same miseries. It addresses children; and they are 
 often children who there show us the way to heaven, 
 and the greatness of the Lord. It addresses herdsmen ; 
 and they are often herdsmen who there speak and re- 
 veal to us the character of God. It speaks to kings 
 ind to scribes ; and they are often kings and scribes 
 who there teach us the miseries of man, humility, con- 
 fession and prayer. Domestic scenes, avowals of the 
 conscience, secret effusions of prayer, travels, proverbs, 
 revelations of the depths of the heart, the holy career 
 of a child of God, weaknesses unveiled, falls, revivings, 
 intimate experiences, parables, familiar letters, theolo- 
 gical treatises, sacred commentaries on some ancient 
 Scripture, national chronicles, military pageants, politi- 
 cal censuses, descriptions of God ; portraits of angels, 
 celestial visions, practical counsels, rules of life, solu- 
 tions of cases of conscience, judgments of the Lord, sa- 
 cred songs, predictions of the future, accounts of the 
 days which preceded our creation, sublime odes, inimi- 
 table poetry ; all this is found in turn ; and all this is 
 there exposed to our view, in a variety full of charm, 
 and in a whole, whose majesty is captivating as that of 
 a temple. 
 
 It is thus the Bible must from its first page to its last, 
 associate with its majestic unity, the indefinable charm 
 of an instruction, human, familiar, sympathising, per- 
 sonal, and with a drama of forty centuries. " There 
 are," it is said in the Bible of Desmarets, " shallows, 
 where a lamb may wade, and deep waters, Avhere an 
 elephant may swim." 
 
 But mark at the same time, the peculiar unity, and 
 the numberless and profound harmonies in this immense 
 variety!' Under all these forms it is always the same 
 
INDmDUALITY. 7 1 
 
 truth ; always man lost, and God the Savior ; aiwaj^^s 
 the first Adam with his race leaving Eden and losing 
 life, and the second Adam with his people reentering 
 Paradise, and finding again the tree of life ; always the 
 same appeal in a thousand tones : " Oh heart of man. 
 return to thy God ; for thy God pardons. Thou art in 
 the abyss ; come up from it ; a Savior has descended 
 into it — he gives holiness and life !" 
 
 " Can a book at once so sublime and so simple, be 
 the work of man ?" inquired a too celebrated philoso- 
 pher of the last century ; and every page has answered ; 
 no, impossible ; for, every where, through so many 
 ages, and whichever of the sacred writers holds the 
 pen, king or shepherd, scribe or fisherman, priest or 
 publican, every where you recognize that the same 
 author, at an interval of a thousand years, and that the 
 same eternal Spirit has conceived and dictated every 
 thing , every where, in Babylon as at Horeb, in Jeru- 
 salem as in Athens, in Rome as in Patmos, you find 
 described the same God, the same world, the same men, 
 the same angels, the same future, the same heaven. 
 Every where, whether it be a historian or a ])oet who 
 speaks to you ; whether on the plains of the desert in 
 the age of Pharoah, or in the dungeon of the capitol, 
 in the age of the Csesars, — every where, in the Avorld, 
 the same ruin : in man, the same condemnation and 
 impotence ; in the angels, the same elevation, innocence 
 and charity ; in heaven, the same purity and happiness, 
 the same meeting together of truth and mercy, the same 
 embrace of righteousness and peace ; the same designs 
 of a God who blots out iniquity, transgression and sin, 
 and who will yet by no means clear the guilty. 
 
 We conclude then, that the abundance of humanity 
 
72 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 which is found in the Scriptures, far from compromising 
 their Theopneusty, is but another indication of their di- 
 vinity. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 T%e Translations. 
 
 We come to the second objection : — 
 
 " You are sure, that the inspiration of the Scriptures extends 
 even to the words of the original text ; but of what use is this 
 verbal exactness of the holy word ; since after all, the greater part 
 of Christians must use only the more or less inaccurate versions 1 
 The privilege of such an inspiration is then lost to the modern 
 Church ; for you will not go so far as to say that any translation 
 is inspired," 
 
 We have felt at first some repugnance to presenting 
 this objection, on account of its insignificance : but it 
 must be noticed, since we are told that it is fi'equently 
 repeated, and that it is well received among us. 
 
 The first remark to be made on this objection, is, that 
 it is not an objection. It is not raised against \h.% fact 
 of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, but against 
 its advantage. So far as respects the majority of readers, 
 it says : the benefit of such an interference of God 
 would be lost, since, instead of the infallible words of 
 the original, they can have only the fallible words of a 
 translation. But wc are not at liberty to deny a fact, 
 because we cannot at once perceive all its advantages ; 
 and we are not permitted to reject a doctrine, merely 
 because we cannot perceive its utility. All the expres- 
 sions, for instance, and all the letters of the ten com- 
 mandments were certainly written by the finger of God, 
 from the Aleph which commences, to the Cajjh which 
 closes them. Yet would any one dare to say that the 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 73 
 
 credibility of this miraculous fact is impaired by the 
 necessity which the majority of unlearned readers now 
 find, of reading the decalogue in some translation ? No 
 one would dare to say it. We must then observe 
 that this objection, without attacking directly the doc- 
 trine which we defend, brings into dispute only its ad- 
 vantages ; they are lost as to us, it is said, by the work 
 of the translator ; they disappear in this metamorphosis. 
 
 We are going then to show how even this assertion, 
 when reduced to its last terms, is also without foundation. 
 
 The divine word, which the Bible reveals to us, 
 passes through four successive forms, before arriving to 
 us in a translation. It was first, from all eternity, in 
 the mind of God. Then, he placed it in the mind of 
 man. Then, under the operation of the Holy Spirit, 
 and by a mysterious translation from the mind of the 
 Prophet into the moulds and symbols of an articulate 
 language, it there assumed the form of words. Finally, 
 when it had undergone this first translation, as impor- 
 tant as inexplicable, man reproduced and transferred it 
 by a new translation, in copying it from one human 
 language into another. Of these four operations, the 
 first three are divine ; the fourth alone is human and 
 fallible. Will any one say, because it is human, the 
 divinity of the other three is to us a matter of indifl^er- 
 ence*? At the same time, observe, that between the 
 third and the fourth, I mean between the first transla- 
 tion of the thought by the sensible signs of a human 
 language, and the second translation of the words by 
 other words, the difference is immense. Between the 
 doubts which we may entertain upon the exactness of 
 the translations, and those which would oppress us, as 
 to the accuracy of the original text^ if it were not lit- 
 7 
 
74 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 erally inspired, the distance is infinite. You say; 
 " Wliat difference does it make to me, that the third 
 operation is produced by the Spirit of God, if the last 
 is effected only by the human intellect ? In other words, 
 of what avail is it to me that the primitive language is 
 inspired, if the versions are not?" But you forget, in 
 speaking thus, that we are infinitely more assured of 
 the exactness of the translators, than we could be of that 
 of the original text, provided all the expressions in it 
 were not from God. 
 
 Of this we shall be convinced by the five following 
 considerations ; 
 
 1. The operation by which the sacred writers express 
 in words, the thought of the Holy Spirit, is itself, as we 
 have said, a translation, not of words by other words, 
 but of divine thoughts by sensible symbols. Now, this 
 first translation is infinitely more delicate, more myste- 
 rious, and more exposed to error, if God does not inter- 
 fere, than that can be, by which we afterwards render 
 a Greek word of this primitive text by an equivalent 
 word in French or English. In order that a man may 
 express exactly the thought of God, he must, if not 
 aided from on high in his language, have entirely seized it 
 in its full measure, and in all the extent and depth of its 
 meaning. But this is not the case with a mere transla- 
 tion. The divine thought having already become in- 
 carnate in the language of the sacred text, the object in 
 translating, is no longer to give it a body, but only to 
 change its dress ; to make it say in English or French 
 what it said in Greek, and modestly to replace each one 
 of its words by an equivalent one. 
 
 It is comparatively a very inferior process, very ma- 
 terial, without mystery, and infinitely less subject to 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 75 
 
 error than the former. It requires in fact so little spir- 
 ituality, that an honest pagan can accomplish it per- 
 fectly^ if he possesses perfectly the knowledge of the 
 two languages. The version of an educated rationalist, 
 who confined himself to the simple labor of translation, 
 would afford us more security than that of an orthodox 
 believer who allowed himself to paraphrase, who at- 
 tempted to complete the sense of the text, and who en- 
 deavored to present truth more clearly in his own lan- 
 ofuage than it was found in the Greek or Hebrew 
 original. And let not this assertion excite surprise ; it 
 is justified by fact. At the present day, in Germany, 
 is not the translation by De Wette esteemed above that 
 of the great Luther? Is it not felt that there is more 
 likelihood of possessing the thought of the Holy Spirit 
 in the lines of the professor of Basle than in those of 
 the Reformer, because the former has adhered closely 
 to the expressions of his text, as a scholar subject to the 
 laws of philology, while the other has seemed to seek 
 after something more, and has written rather as an in- 
 terpreter than as a translator ? The more you reflect 
 on this first consideration, the more the difference of 
 these two orders of translation must appear incommen- 
 surable.* It must not then be said; what good can it 
 do me that the one is divine, if the other is human? 
 
 2. A second characteristic by which we can recognise 
 the difference of these two operations, and by which the 
 work of translation will be seen to be infinitely less 
 liable to error than the original text would be, if unin- 
 spired, is, that, whilst the labor of our translations is 
 
 * I mean ; the difference between the translation of the divine thoughts 
 into the words of a human language, and the translation of these same 
 wordt< i«to the equivalent terms ef another language. 
 
76 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 performed by a great number of men of every tongue 
 and country, who have been able to consecrate to it all 
 their time and all their care ; who have from age to 
 age, been criticising one another : who have mutually 
 instructed and improved each other ; the original text, 
 on the contrary, must have been written at a given mo- 
 ment^ and by one ma^i alorie. No one was with that 
 man but his God, to correct him if he erred, to improve 
 his expressions, if he chose those which were imperfect. 
 If then God has not done it, no one can have done it. 
 And if this man has badly expressed the thought of the 
 Holy Spirit, he has not had, as our translators have 
 had, friends to point out his errors, predecessors to guide 
 him, nor successors to correct him, nor months, years, 
 ages to revise and complete his work. It is made by 
 one solitary man, and it is made once and forever. We 
 see then again, by this view, how much more necessary 
 the intervention of the Holy Spirit was to the original 
 writers of the Bible, than to their translators. 
 
 3. A third consideration which should also lead us 
 to the same conclusions, is, that whilst all the translators 
 of the Scriptures have been literary men, laborious, and 
 versed in the study of language ; the sacred authors, on 
 the contrary, were, for the most part, ignorant men, 
 without literary cultivation, unaccustomed to write their 
 own language, and by that alone exposed, if not guided 
 infallibly in expressing the divine revelation, to give us 
 a defective representation of an infallible thought. 
 
 4. A fourth consideration full of force, and which 
 will make us feel more sensibly still, the immense dif- 
 ference between the sacred writers and their translators ; 
 is that, whereas the thought of God passed like a flash 
 of lightning from heaven across the mind of the pro- 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 77 
 
 phet ; whereas this thought can no more be found any- 
 where upon *he earth, except in the rapid expression 
 which was then given it by the prophet ; whereas, if he 
 has spoken badly, you know not where to look for his 
 prototype, that in it you may find the thought of God 
 in its purity ; whereas, if he erred, his error is forever 
 irreparable, it must endure longer than the heaven and 
 the earth, it has stained remedilessly the eternal book, 
 and no human being can correct it ; — it is totally other- 
 wise with the translations. They, on the contrary, have 
 always there, by their side, the, divine text, to be cor- 
 rected and re-corrected from this eternal type, until they 
 shall become entirely conformed to it. The inspired 
 word does not leave us ; we have not to go and seek 
 for it in the third heavens ; it is still here upon the 
 earth, such as God primitively dictated it. You may 
 then study it for ages, to submit to its unchangeable 
 truth, the human work of our translation. You can 
 to-day, correct the versions of Osterwald and Martin, 
 after a hundred and thirty years, by bringing them more 
 rigidly to their infallible standard ; after three hundred 
 and seventeen years, you may correct the work of Lu- 
 ther ; after fourteen hundred and forty years, that of 
 Jerome. The phraseology of God remaining always 
 there, before our human versions, such as God himself 
 dictated it, in Hebrew or in Greek, in the day of the 
 revelation ; and, our dictionaries in your hand, you can 
 return there and examine, from age to age, the infillible 
 expression which he was pleased to give to his divine 
 thought, until you are assured that the language of the 
 moderns, has truly received the exact impression of it, 
 and has given you, for your use, the most faithful fac- 
 simile of it. Say no more then ; of what use is a 
 7* 
 
78 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 divine revelation to me, if I must use a human transla- 
 tion? If you wanted a bust of Napoleon, would you 
 say to the sculptor, of what use is it to me that your 
 model has been moulded at St. Helena upon the very 
 face of Bonaparte ; since, after all, it will be but your 
 copy? 
 
 5. Finally, that which distinguishes still the first ex- 
 pression of the divine thought in the words of the sa- 
 cred book, from its new expression in one of our trans- 
 lations, is that, if you suppose the words of the one as 
 little inspired as those of the other ; yet the field of the 
 conjectures which you might make upon their possible 
 fauhs, would be, as to the original text, a boundless 
 space, ever expanding ; whereas the same field, as to 
 the translations, is a very limited space, always dimin- 
 ishing as you traverse it. 
 
 If some friend, returning from the East Indies, where 
 your father had breathed his last, far from you, should 
 bring from him a last letter written with his own hand, 
 or dictated by him, word for word, in the Bengalese 
 language ; would it be to you a matter of no import- 
 ance that this letter was entirely his ; simply because 
 you were ignorant of that language, and because you 
 can read it only through a translation ? Do you not 
 know that you can multiply translations of it, until there 
 shall remain no doubt that you comprehend it just as 
 fully as if you yourself were a Hindoo ? Do you not 
 admit, that after each one of the new translations, your 
 uncertainty would constantly diminish, until it vanished 
 completely ; like the fractional and convergent progres- 
 sions in arithmetic, whose final terms are equivalent to 
 zero ; whereas, on the contrary, if the letter did not 
 come from your father himself, but from some stranger, 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 79 
 
 who should avow that he had only repeated his thoughts, 
 
 there would be no limit to your possible suppositions ; 
 and your uncertainty, carried into new and boundless 
 regions, would continue to increase, the more you re- 
 ftected ; like the ascending progressions in arithmetic, 
 whose last terms represent infinity? Thus it is with 
 the Bible. If I believe that God has dictated it all ; ny 
 doubts, as to its translations, are shut up in a very nar- 
 row field ; and in this field too, as often as you re-trans- 
 iate it, the limits of these doubts are ahvays diminish- 
 ing. But if I believe that God has not entirel}?^ dictated 
 it ; if, on the contrary, I am to believe that Luman in- 
 firmity may have had its part in the text of the Bible, 
 where shall I stop in my supposition of errors ? I do 
 not know. The Apostles, were ignorant, I must say ; 
 they were unlettered ; they were Jews ; they had popu- 
 lar prejudices ; they judaized ; they platonized ; . . . 
 I know not where to stop. I should begin with Locke, 
 and I should finish with Strauss. I should first deny 
 the personality of Satan, as a rabbinical prejudice ; and 
 I should finish by denying that of Christ as another 
 prejudice. Between these two terms, in consequence of 
 the ignorance to which the Apostles were exposed, I 
 should come, like so m.any others, to admit, notwith- 
 standing the letter of the Bible, and with the Bible in 
 my hand, that there is no corruption in man, no per- 
 sonality in the Holy Spirit, no Deity in Jesus Christ, no- 
 expiation in his blood, no resurrection of the body, no 
 eternal punishment, no wrath of God, no devil, no mira- 
 cles, no damne'd, no hell. St. Paul was orthodox, I should 
 say, with others ; but he did not rightly understand his 
 master. Whereas, on the contrary, if every thing ia 
 the original has been dictated by God, even to the least 
 
80 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 expression, even to " a jot and tittle ;" who is the trans 
 lator that could by his labor, lead me to one of these 
 negations, and make the least of these truths disappear 
 from my Bible ? 
 
 Who does not there perceive, at what an immense 
 distance all these considerations place the original text 
 from the translation, in respect to the importance of ver- 
 bal inspiration ! Between the translation of the divine 
 thoughts into human words, and the simple version of 
 these words into other words, the distance is as great as 
 that between heaven and earth. The one requires God ; 
 the other needs only man. Let no one then repeat : 
 of what use is a verbal inspiration in the one, if we 
 have it not in the other ; since between these two terms, 
 which some would make equivalents, there is an almost 
 infinite distance. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Employment of the Septuagini. 
 It has been said and insisted on ; 
 
 "We agree that the fact of modern translations could not o fleet 
 in the least, the question of the original inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures ; but the difficulty Kes deeper. The sacred authors of the 
 New Testament, when they themselves quote the Old Testament, 
 use the Greek translation, called the Scpinagint, made at Alexan- 
 dria, two centuries and a half before Jesus Christ. Now, no one 
 will dare, among the modems, to pretend, as among the ancients, 
 that the Alexandrian interpreters were inspired. Would any one 
 now dare to advance, that this version, still human in the days of 
 Jesus Christ, has acquired, merely by the fact of its citation by the 
 Apostles, a divinity which it had not originally ? Would not this 
 strange pretension resemble that of the council of Trent, declaring 
 divine the apocryphas, which the ancient Church rejected from 
 the canon, and which St. Jerome calls " fables, and a mixture of 
 
SEPTUAGINT. O i 
 
 gold and dross ;"* or declaring authentic the latin version of St, 
 Jerome, which at first had not been, for Jerome himself, and after- 
 wards for the church, for more than a thousand years, any thing 
 more than a human work; respectable, without doubt, but imper- 
 fect 1 Would it not resemble still the absurd infallibility of Sixtus 
 V, declaring authentic his edition of 1590; or that of his succes- 
 sor Clement VIII ; who, finding the edition of Sixtus V. intoler- 
 ably incorrect, suppressed it in 1592, to substitute for it another 
 very different, and yet likewise authentic. t"' 
 
 We love to bring **up this difficulty; because, like 
 many others, examined more closely, it changes objec- 
 tions into arguments. 
 
 It is sufficient in fact, to study the manner in which 
 the Apostles employed the Septuagint, in order to recog- 
 nize in it a striking index of the verbal inspiration 
 which led them to write. 
 
 If some modern prophet were sent by God to the 
 churches of France, in what language, do you think, 
 he would quote the Scriptures ? In French, doubtless. 
 But from which version ? Those of Osterwald and 
 Martin being the most extensively used, he would pro- 
 bably make his quotations from both of these, whenever 
 their versions should appear to him sufficiently exact. 
 But likewise, notwithstanding our habits and his, he 
 would take great pains to alter these two versions, and 
 to translate in his own way, as often as the thought of 
 the original should appear to him defectively rendered, 
 
 • Caveat omnia apocrypha ; sciat multa his admixta vitiosn, et grandis 
 esse prudentiae auriim in Into quaerere. Let him beware of all aporry. 
 phal writings; let him know that they contain a great admixture nf vi- 
 cious things, and that it reqnirps great prudence to search for gold in the 
 mud. See Epis. ad Laetani. Prolog. Galeat. sive. praefat. ad. 111). Regum. 
 —Symbol. Riiflini, torn, ix., p 186. See I.ardner, vol. v. p 18—22 
 
 tSeeKorthoU: de variis, S. Scrip, editionibus, p. 110 to 251. Thomas 
 James : Bellum papale, sive Concordia, discors Sexti V., Lend., 1600. 
 Hamilton's Introd. to reading Scrip , p. 163 to 166. 
 
Sometimes he would do even more. In order to make 
 us better understand in what sense he designed to apply 
 such or such a passage, he would paraphrase the quoted 
 passage ; and in citing it, w^ould be confined, neither to 
 the letter of the original text nor to that of the transla- 
 tions. 
 
 That is precisely what has been done in regard to the 
 Septuagint by the writers of the New Testament. 
 
 Although the universal custom of the hellenistic 
 Jews in all the East, was, to read in the Synagogues, 
 and to quote in their discussions, the Septuagint version,* 
 yet the Apostles, by the three different modes of quota- 
 tion, which they used, shew us the independence of the 
 spirit that guided them. 
 
 First. When the Alexandrian translation appeared 
 to them exact, they did not hesitate to gratify the feel- 
 ings of their hellenistic audiences, and to quote literally 
 from this version. 
 
 Secondly. And this case occurs frequently ; when 
 they are not satisfied with the work of the seventy, they 
 correct it, and quote from the original Hebrew, by re- 
 translating it more accurately. 
 
 Thirdly. In fine, when they wished to indicate more 
 clearl}'-, the sense in which they quote such or such a 
 c^eclaration of the sacred Scriptures, they paraphrased 
 it in quoting it. It is then the Holy Spirit, who, by 
 their mouth, quotes himself in modifying the expres- 
 sions which he had formerly dictated to the prophets of 
 the ancient Jews. We may compare, for instance, 
 Micah V. 2, with Matt. ii. 6, Mai. iii. 1, with Matt. xi. 
 10, Mark i. 2, with Luke, vii. 27, &c. &c. 
 
 * The Talmud itself admits of the translation of the Scriptures, only in 
 Greek (Talmud Megillah, fol. 86.) 
 
SEPTUAGmT. 06 
 
 The learned Home, "in his introduction to the Scrip- 
 tures, (vol. i. p 503.) has placed in five distinct classes, 
 the quotations from the Septuagint version of the Old 
 Testament by writers of the New Testament. We do 
 not here guarantee all his distinctions, nor all his num- 
 bers ; but our readers will comprehend the force of our 
 argument, when we shall have told them that this writer 
 counts eighty-eight verbal quotations conformed to the 
 Alexandrian version : sixty-four others borrowed from 
 it, but with some variation ; thirty-seven which adopt its 
 meaning, but change the language ; sixteen which 
 translate the Hebrew more accurately ; and twenty-four 
 in which the sacred writers have paraphrased the Old 
 Testament, in order to make the sense in which they 
 quoted the passage, more obvious. 
 
 These numerical data are sufficient to show the inde- 
 pendence exercised by the Holy Spirit, when he would 
 quote from the Old Testament, to write the New. They 
 then not only answer the objection ; they establish our 
 doctrme. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 TTie Variations. 
 
 Other objectors will say : — 
 
 " We have no such difficulty, for it is evident that the transla- 
 tions have nothing to do with the question of the inspiration of the 
 original text. But in this very text, there are numerous differ- 
 ences between the several ancient manuscripts consulted by our 
 churches, and those on which the admitted editions are founded. 
 Before the evidence of such a fact, what becomes of your verbal 
 inspiration, and of what use can it be to us 1" 
 
 The answer here too is easy. We might quote al- 
 ready upon the variations of the manuscripts, what we 
 
84 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 have said concerning the translations. Do not confound 
 two kinds of facts totally distinct : that of the first in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures, and that of the present in- 
 tegrity of the copies made from them. If God himself 
 dictated the letter of the sacred oracles, that is a fact ac- 
 complished, and none of the copies nor translations since 
 made, can undo the fact of the original inspiration. 
 
 A fact once consummated, nothing that follows can 
 erase the history of that which is past. There are then 
 here two questions to be carefully distinguished. First ; 
 is the whole Bible divinely inspired ? The second is ; 
 are the copies made by monks and learned men, ages 
 afterwards, exact ; or are they not? This question can 
 in no degree affect the other. Beware then of subordi- 
 nating the first to the second by a strange confusion ; 
 they are independent of one another. A book is from 
 God, or it is not from God. In the Litter case, I should 
 in vain transcribe it a thousand times with accuracy, I 
 could not make it divine. And in the first case, I should 
 in vain have made a thousand inaccurate copies ; my 
 ignorance and my unfaithfulness could not make it any 
 less the work of God. 1' he. decalogue, we repeat once 
 more, was entirely written by the finger of Jehovah 
 upon two tables of stono ; but if the manuscripts which 
 now give it to me, contained some variations, this second 
 fact, would not hinder the' first. The sentences, the 
 words and the letters of the Ten Commandments would 
 have been none the less written by God. The inspira- 
 tion of the first text — the integrity of the subsequent 
 copies ; these are two orders of facts absolutely differ- 
 ent, and separated from one another by thousands of 
 miles and thousands of years. Beware then of con- 
 
VARIATIONS. 85 
 
 founding that which logic, time and space oblige you to 
 distinguish. 
 
 It is by a precisely parallel reasoning that we reprove 
 the indiscreet admirers of the apocrypha. The ancient 
 oracles of God, we say to them, were committed to the 
 Jews, as the later oracles were afterwards to the Chris- 
 tians. If then the book of Maccabees was merely a 
 human book in the days of Jesus Christ ; a thousand 
 decrees of the Christian Church could not afterwards 
 cause, that in 1560, becoming what it never was before, 
 it should be by transubstantiation, metamorphosed into a 
 divine book. Did the prophets write the Bible with 
 words which human wisdom dictated to them, or with 
 words given by God ? That is our inquiry. But have 
 they been faithfully copied, from age to age, from manu- 
 script to manuscript ? That is, perhaps, your inquiry ; 
 it is very important undoubtedly ; but it is totally different 
 from the first. Do not then confound what God has 
 made distinct. 
 
 " It is true, without doubt," some one will say, " the fidelity of 
 a copy does not render the original divine, when it is not so : and 
 the inaccuracy of another copy will not render it human if it is not 
 .so already. To this, therefore we have made no pretension. The 
 fact of the inspiration of the sacred text, in the days of Moses or 
 in those of St. John, cannot depend on the copies of them which 
 men may have made in Europe or in Africa, two or three thousand 
 years after them ; but if the second of these facts does not destroy 
 the first, it at least renders it illusory, in taking away its import- 
 ance.'' 
 
 This is then the real objection. The question is now 
 changed ; we are no longer inquiring after the inspira- 
 tion of the original text, but the integrity of the present 
 text. It was at first a doctrinal inquiry : " Is it declared 
 in the Scriptures, that the Scriptures are inspired, even 
 8 
 
86 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 to their language ?" But it is now a question of his- 
 tory, or rather of criticism : " Have the copyists been 
 accurate ? are the manuscripts faithful ?" We might 
 then be silent upon a thesis, the defence of which is not 
 here committed to us ; but the answer is so easy ; nay 
 more, God has made it so triumphant, that we cannot 
 withhold it. Besides, the faith of the uninstructed has 
 been so often disturbed by a phantasmagoria of science, 
 that we think it may be very useful to state the case as 
 it is. And although the objection diverts us a little from 
 the direct pursuit of our subject, yet it may be important 
 to follow it. 
 
 We do not doubt that if this difficulty had been pre- 
 sented in the days of Anthony Collins and the Free 
 Thinkers, we should not have been without a reply ; 
 but we should perhaps have felt some degree of embar- 
 rassment ; because the facts were not yet completely de- 
 veloped, and the field of conjecture yet unexplored, re- 
 mained perfectly unbounded. We remember the per- 
 plexities of the excellent Bengel on this subject ; and 
 we know that from them proceeded, at first his laborious 
 researches upon the sacred text, and then his admi ra- 
 tion and devout gratitude at the wonderful preservation 
 of that text. 
 
 " Of what advantage," would the objector have said to us, " can 
 the assurance be, that eighteen hundred years ago the primitive 
 text was dictated by God, if I have no more the certain assurance 
 that the manuscripts of our Ubraries present it to me now in its 
 purity 1 and if it be true (as we are assured,) that the variations 
 of these manuscripts are at least thirty thousand 1" 
 
 Such was the ancient objection ; it was specious ; but 
 in our day it is recognised by all who have investigated 
 it, to be but a vain pretext. The rationalists themselves 
 
VARIATIONS. 87 
 
 have avowed that it can no longer be urged, and that it 
 must be renounced. 
 
 The Lord has miraculously watched over his word 
 Facts have shown it. 
 
 In constituting for its depositories first, the Jewish; 
 chen the Christian Church, his providence must have 
 exercised its vigilance, that by this means the oracles of 
 God should be faithfully transmitted to us. It has done 
 so; and to secure this result, it has employed divers 
 causes, of which we shall hereafter have occasion to 
 speak. Recent scientific researches have placed this 
 fact in a strong light. Herculean labours have been 
 pursued during the last century, (especially in the last 
 half, as well as during the present century,) to re-unite 
 all the readings or variations^ which could be furnished 
 by the detailed examination of the manuscripts of the 
 Holy Scripture preserved in the several libraries of 
 Europe ; by the study of the oldest versions ; by a 
 comparison of the innumerable quotations of the sacred 
 books in all the writings of the Christian Fathers ; — 
 and this immense labour has exhibited a result admira- 
 ble for its insignificance ; imposing, shall I say, by its 
 diminutiveness. 
 
 As to the Old Testament, the indefatigable investiga- 
 tions and the four folios of Father Houbigant, the thirty 
 years' labor of John Henry Michaelis ; above all, the 
 great critical Bible, and the ten years' study of the famous 
 Kennicott, (upon his five hundred and eighty-one He- 
 brew manuscripts,) and, finally, the collation of the six 
 hundred and eighty manuscripts of Professor Rossi : — 
 as to the New Testament, the not less gigantic investi- 
 gations of Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, and Griesbach, (into 
 the three hundred and thirty-five manuscripts of the 
 
88 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Gospels alone,) the later researches of Nolan, Matthei, 
 Lawrence, and Hug ; above all, those of Scholz, (with 
 his six hundred and seventy-four manuscripts of the 
 Gospels, his two hundred of the Acts, his two hundred 
 and fifty-six of Paul's Epistles, his ninety-three, of the 
 Apocalypse, without counting- his fifty-three Leclinna- 
 ria) ; all these prodigious labors have established, in a 
 manner so convincing, the astonishing preservation of 
 this text, although copied so many thousand times, (in 
 Hebrew, during thirty-three centuries, and in Greek 
 during eighteen centuries,) that the hopes of the enemies 
 of religion from this quarter have been overthrown ; and 
 that, as Michaelis* remarks, " they have thenceforward 
 ceased to hope anything from these critical researches, 
 at first earnestly recommended by them, because from 
 them they expected discoveries which no one has made." 
 The learned rationalist Eichhorn himself also acknoAV- 
 ledges, that the different readings of the Hebrew manu- 
 scripts collated by Kennicott, offer scarcely sufficient 
 compensation for the labor they have cost.f But these 
 very failures, and this absence of discoveries, have been, 
 for the Church of God, a precious discovery. She 
 looked for it ; but she rejoices to owe it to the very 
 labors of her enemies, and to the labors which they de- 
 signed for the overthrow of her faith. '' In truth," says 
 a learned man of our day, " if we except these brilliant 
 negative conclusions to which they have come, the di- 
 rect result obtained by so many lives of men consumed 
 in these immense researches, appears to be a nullity ; 
 and we might say, that lime, talent, and science have 
 been foolishly spent in arriving there." ;}. But, we re- 
 
 • Tome ii. p. 266. t Einleitung, 2 Th. s. 700. 
 
 X Wiseman, Discourse on the Relations, &c. vol ii. disc. a. 
 
VARIATIONS. 89 
 
 peat, this result is immense by its nothingness, and 
 almighty in its impotence. When we reflect that the 
 Bible has been copied during three thousand years, as 
 no book of human of composition has ever been, nor ever 
 will be; that it has undergone all the catastrophes and 
 all the captivities of Israel ; that it has been transported 
 for seventy years into Babylon ; that it has seen itself 
 so often persecuted, or forgottt n. oi interdicted, or burned, 
 from the days of the Philistines to those of the Seleuci- 
 dae ; when we recollect, that since the days of our Sa- 
 vior, it has had to traverse the first three centuries of 
 imperial persecutions, when they threw to the wild 
 beasts the men that were convicted of possessing the 
 sacred books ; then the seventh, eighth, and ninth cen- 
 turies, when false books, fals" leo-pnds, and false decre- 
 tals were everywhere multipli( d , the tenth century, 
 when so few men could read, even among the princes ; 
 the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, when 
 the use of the Scriptures in the language of the people 
 was punished with death ; when they mutilated the 
 books of the old Fathers; wh<n they retrenched and 
 falsified so many ancient traditions, raid the very acts of 
 emperors and those of councils; — then we understand 
 how necessary it has been that the providence of God 
 should always have h^ld its powerful hand outstretched 
 for the preservation of all the writings in their puiity. 
 A constant and almost miraculous guardianship was 
 needed to hinder, on the one side, the Jewish Church 
 from impairing the integritv of that word which recounts 
 their revolts, which predicts their ruin, which describes 
 Jesus Christ ; and on the other, to secure the transmis- 
 sion to us, in all their puiity. by the Christian churches, 
 (the most powerful sects of which, and especially the 
 8* 
 
90 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Roman, have prohibited to the people the reading of 
 the Scriptures, and have in so many ways substituted 
 the traditions of the middle ages for the word of God,) 
 of those Scriptures which condemn all their traditions, 
 their images, their dead languages, their absolutions, 
 their celibacy ; which say of Rome, that she shall be 
 the seat of a frightful apostacy, where shall be seen " the 
 man of sin sitting as God in the temple of God, making 
 war on the saints, forbidding to marry, and commanding 
 to abstain from meats which God has made;" which 
 say of images, " thou shalt not worship them ;" of un- 
 known tongues, " thou shalt not use them ;" of the cup, 
 "drink ye all of it ;" of the Virgin, "woman, what 
 have I to do with thee ?" and of marriage, " it is hon- 
 orable in all." 
 
 Now, although all the libraries containing ancient 
 copies of the sacred books have been called to testify ; 
 although the elucidations given by the Fathers of all 
 ages have been studied ; although the Arabic, Syriac, 
 Latin, Armenian and Ethiopic versions have been col- 
 lated ; although all the manuscripts of all countries and 
 ages, from the third to the sixteenth century have been 
 collected and examined a thousand times, by innumer- 
 able critics, who sought with ardor, and as the recom- 
 pense and glory of their fatiguing vigils, some new text ; 
 although the learned men, not satisfied with the libraries 
 of the West, have visited those of Russia, and carried 
 their researches even to the convents of Mount Athos, of 
 Asiatic Turkey and of Egypt, to search there for new- 
 copies of the sacred text ; — " they have discovered noth- 
 ing," says a learned writer already quoted, " not even a 
 solitary reading which could cast doubt upon any pas- 
 sage before considered certain. All the variations, 
 
VARIATIONS. 91 
 
 almost without exception, leave untouched the essential 
 thoughts of each phrase, and affect only points of se- 
 condary importance," such as the insertion or omission 
 of an article or a conjunction, the position of an adjec- 
 tive before or after a substantive, the greater or less ex- 
 actness of a grammatical construction. 
 
 Do we ask for a standard for the Old Testament? 
 The famous Indian manuscript, recently deposited in the 
 library of Cambridge, may furnish an example. It is 
 now about thirty-three years since the pious and learned 
 Claudius Buchanan, in visiting the western peninsula 
 of India, saw in the hands of the black Jews of Malabar, 
 (believed to be the remnants of the tribes scattered at 
 Nebuchadnezzar's first invasion,) an immense scroll, 
 composed of thirty-seven skins died red ; forty-eight 
 feet long, twenty-two inches wide, and which, in its per- 
 fect condition, must have been ninety English feet long. 
 The Holy Scriptures had been copied on it by different 
 hands. There were left a hundred and seventeen col- 
 umns of beautiful writing ; and nothing was wanting 
 but Leviticus and a part of Deuteronomy. Buchanan 
 procured this ancient and precious monument, which 
 had been used in the worship of the synagogue, and he 
 has recently deposited it in the Cambridge library. 
 There are features which gives satisfactory evidence 
 that it was not a copy of a copy brought there by Eu- 
 ropean Jews. Now Mr. Yeates has recently examined 
 it with great attention, and has taken the pains to com- 
 pare it, word for word, letter for letter, with our He- 
 brew edition of Van der Hooght. He has published 
 the result of these researches. And what has he found? 
 Even this ; that there do not exist between the text of 
 India and that of the West, more than forty petty differ- 
 
92 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 ences, of which not one is sufficiently serious to make 
 the slightest change in the meaning and in the interpre- 
 tation of our ancient text ; and that these forty differences 
 consist in the addition or retrenchment of an (^) r, or a 
 (1) V, letters, whose presence or absence in Hebrew 
 cannot change the power of a word.* We know that 
 the Masorites, or teachers of tradition among the Jews 
 were men whose whole profession consisted in copying 
 the Scriptures ; we know how far these men, learned in 
 minutias, carried their respect for the letter ; and when 
 we read the rules of their profession, we understand the 
 use which the providence of God, who had confided his 
 oracles to the Jewish people, made of their reverence, 
 of their rigor, and even of their superstition. They 
 counted, in each book, the number of the verses, that of 
 the words, that of the letters ; they would have said to 
 you, for example, that the letter A recurs forty-two 
 thousand three hundred and seventy-seven times in the 
 Bible ; the letter B thirty-eight thousand two hundred 
 and eighteen times, and so of the rest ; they would have 
 scrupled to change the situation of a letter evidently 
 misplaced, they would merely have advised you of it in 
 the margin, and have supposed that some mystery was 
 connected with it ; they could have told you the middle 
 letter of the Pentateuch, a.nd the middle letter of each 
 of the books that compose it; they would never suffer 
 an erasure to be made in their manuscripts ; and if any 
 mistake was made in copying, they would reject the 
 papyrus or the skin which was thus stained, to renew 
 their work upon another scroll ; for they were equally 
 forbidden to correct a fault, and to preserve for their sa- 
 
 • See Chris. Obs. xii. p. 170.— Examin. of jti Indian copy of the Pentat 
 p. 8.— Home's Introd. and Append, p. 95. Edit. 1S18. 
 
VARIATIONS. 93 
 
 cred scroll, a parchment or a skin that had undergone 
 any erasure. 
 
 This intervention of the providence of God in the pre- 
 servation of the Old Testament will become still more 
 remarkable in our view, if we compare the astonishing 
 integrity of the original Hebrew (after so many centu- 
 ries,) with the immense alteration which had taken 
 place in the Septuagint, even in the days of Jesus Christ, 
 {a space of about two hundred years,) although this 
 version had acquired, after the almost universal adop- 
 tion of the Greek language, an authority, at least semi- 
 canonical, first with the Jews, and then with the Chris- 
 tians ; although it was at a later period, the only text 
 used by the fathers, (if we except Origen and Jerome,) 
 the only one on which Chrysostom and Theodoret wrote 
 their commentaries, the only one from which Athanasius, 
 Basil and Gregory Nazienzen drew their arguments ; 
 akhough the western world, like the eastern, had, for so 
 many ages, enjoyed no other than this borrowed light, 
 (since the ancient Italian Vulgate — universally em- 
 ployed, was a translation of the Greek Septuagint and 
 not of the Hebrew text:) hear what the learned tell us 
 of the alterations in this important monument of the ad- 
 ditions, changes, interpolations it had received, first from 
 the Jews who lived before Christ, then by the unbe- 
 aeving Jews, and afterwards, through the negligence of 
 Christian copyists. " The evil was such {mirum in 
 modurrC^) says Dr. Lee, '-that, in some books, the an- 
 -ient version could scarcely be recognized;"* and when 
 Origen (A D. 231.) had consecrated twenty-eight years 
 -)f his noble life to the exanunation of the various manu- 
 scripts, to accomplish for this text (in his Tetrapla and 
 
 • Proleg. in Bib. Polyg. Bagsteriana. (iv. § 11.) 
 
94 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Hexapla) that which modern critics have done for thai 
 of the Old and New Testaments, not only could he not 
 find a copy that was correct, but he even increased the 
 evil. By the unskilfulness of his copyists, (who neg- 
 lected his asterisks and obelisks.) the greater part of his 
 marginal corrections slipped into the text, so that new 
 errors were accumulated to such an extent that in 
 Jerome's day his annotations could not be distinguished 
 from the primitive text.* We repeat it ; these facts, 
 viewed in connexion with the astonishing preservation 
 of the Hebrew text (twelve hundred years older than 
 the Septuagint,) illustrates most impressively the inter- 
 vention of a particular providence to preseve the purity 
 of the sacred text. 
 
 Thus much for the Old Testament. But let it not 
 be supposed that the Providence which watched over 
 the holy book, and which had intrusted it to the Jews 
 (Rom. iii. 1, 2,) has any less protected the oracles of 
 the New Testament, committed by it to the new people 
 of God. He has not left to them any feebler incentives 
 to gratitude and confidence. 
 
 We would first cite here the recent experience of the 
 authors of a version of the New Testament just published 
 in Switzerland, and in the protracted labor of vv-hich Ave 
 participated. One single faotwill exhibit to every class 
 of readers how completely insignificant are the difii-rent 
 readings of the different manuscripts. The translators 
 just referred to, followed without exception, the received 
 edition^ that is the Greek text of Elzevir 1624, so long 
 adopted by all the French churches. But, as the origi- 
 
 * Grahe, Epit. an doct. Mill Oxford, 1705 ; et Dissertat. de variis vitiig 
 Ikx. Interpretum, p. 50, oxon. 1710. — Samuel Lee : Projeg. in Polyg, 
 Bagster (Prol. iv. § 11.) Fisher, Prolusiones in Vers, grascis V. T. &c. 
 
VARIATIONS. 95 
 
 nal plan of their work required them to introduce into 
 the original text the variations most approved by the 
 critics of the last century, they were often embarrassed by 
 finding the impossibility of expressing even in the most 
 literal French, the new shade introduced into the Greek 
 by this correction. The French language, in the most 
 scrupulous version, is not sufficiently flexible to express 
 these differences ; as the moulds made on the face of a 
 king, reproduce his noble features in the brass, yet with- 
 out shewing all the wrinkles and veins. 
 
 At the same time we are desirious of giving to those 
 of our readers who are strangers to sacred criticism, 
 two or three other more im.pressive proofs of his provi- 
 dence, which, for thirty centuries, has watched over our 
 sacred text. 
 
 First ; let us compare the two Protestant translations 
 of Osterwald and Martin. There are few modern ver- 
 sions more like each other. Both being made from the 
 ancient version of the Geneva pastors, written nearl)" at 
 the same time and in the same spirit, differ so little from 
 each other, especially in the New Testament, that our 
 Bible societies distribute them indiscriminately, and that 
 it is embarrassing to state which we prefer. Yet, if you 
 will take the trouble to notice their differences in every 
 particular, as we have done in comparing together our 
 four hundred manuscripts of the New Testament, we 
 affirm in advance (and then we think, below the truth,) 
 that these two French texts are three times, and in many 
 chapters, ten times more distant from each other, than 
 the Greek text of our printed editions is, we do not say, 
 from only the least esteemed Greek manuscripts of our 
 libraries, but from all their manuscripts taken to- 
 gether. — We mean to say that if some skilful and ma- 
 
96 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 licious man (as the unhappy Voltaire or the too cele- 
 brated Anthony Collins,) had made his selection from 
 all the Oriental and occidental manuscripts, of the worst 
 readings and the most discordant variations of our re- 
 ceived text, with the perfidious intention of composing a 
 text the most false ; such a man, we say (even in em- 
 ploying these variations justified by one alone of the 
 four or five hundred manuscripts of our libraries,) 
 would not be able, with all his bad intention, to pro- 
 duce from his labor a Testament less like ours, than 
 that of Martin is like that of Osterwald. You might 
 distribute it in place of the true text, with as little in- 
 convenience as you would find in giving to the French 
 Protestants, that of Martin rather than Osterwald's, or 
 Osterwald's rather than Martin's ; and with much less 
 scruple than you feel in spreading among the members 
 of the Romish Church, the version of Le Maitre De 
 Sacy. 
 
 It is true these latter books are only translations, 
 whilst all the Greek manuscripts present themselves as 
 original ; and it must be agreed that our comparison, in 
 this respect, is very imperfect. But it is not the less 
 adapted to establish the friends of the word of God, in 
 making them comprehend how utterly insignificant the 
 variations are. 
 
 But we advance to something more direct and more 
 precise. 
 
 In order to give all our readers some estimate, at once 
 of the number and the innocence of the received read- 
 ings in the manuscripts of our libraries, we will pre- 
 sent two specimens. The first table contains all the 
 
 VARIATIONS IN ALL THE EASTERN AND WESTERN MANU- 
 SCRIPTS, in the first eight chapters of the epistle to the 
 
VARIATIONS. y/ 
 
 Romans. The second contains the entire epistle with 
 ALL THR CORRECTIONS which the Celebrated Griesbachy 
 the oracle of modern criticism, thinks ought to be in- 
 troduced. 
 
 These passages have been selected promiscuously ; 
 and we declare that no reason, relative to our argument, 1 
 has made us prefer them to others. 
 
 We delight in presenting here these short documents 
 to those persons, whose position does not call them to 
 pursue the investigations of sacred criticism, and yet 
 who may have been somewhat perplexed by the at once 
 mysterious and imposing language so often employed 
 on this subject, by the rationah"sts of the last century. 
 To hear them, would you not have believed that mo- 
 dern science was about to give us a new Bible, to tear 
 Jesus Christ from the throne of God, to restore to man 
 calumniated by our theology, all his titles of innocence, 
 and to reform all the doctrines of our; antiquated or- 
 thodoxy? 
 
 As the first term of comparison, our columns pre- 
 sent, upon the first eight verses of the Epistle to the 
 Romans, merely the differences of the text of Martin 
 from that of Osterwald ; whilst the following columns, 
 instead of comparing only one manuscript with any 
 other one, will show the differences of our text from all 
 the manuscripts, which every critic down to Griesbach 
 has been able to collect. This indefatigable scholar 
 searched for the Epistle to the Romans, first, seven manu- 
 scripts in Uncial Letters^ or Greek capitals, believed 
 to be from thirteen to fourteen hundred years old, (the 
 Alexandrian in the British Museum ; that of the Vati- 
 can, and that of Cardinal Passionei, at Rome ; that of 
 Ephremi at Paris ; that of Saint-Germain^ that of 
 9 
 
98 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Dresden^ and that of Cardinal Coislin ; and finally a 
 hundred and ten manuscripts in cursive (small letters,) 
 and thirty others, mostly brought from Mount Athos, 
 and examined by the learned Matthei. who traveled 
 much in Russia and the East for this purpose. 
 
 For the four Evangelists, the same Griesbach has 
 been able to consult three hundred and thirty-five. 
 
 FIRST TABLE. 
 
 EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 
 
 Text of OsterwaM. 
 verse. 
 
 1. to be. 
 
 2. which . . promised before. 
 
 3. of the race. 
 
 4. and who, according to 
 the Spirit, . . was. 
 was declared. 
 
 with power. 
 
 the Spirit of hoUness. 
 
 to wit. 
 
 J. C. our Lord. 
 
 5. In order to lead the 
 Gentiles to the obedience 
 of the faith. 
 
 6. of the number of whom 
 you also are, you who 
 have been called. 
 
 7. called and saints, 
 grace and peace be 
 given to you from 
 God our father. 
 
 8. Before all things. 
 in regard to you aH. 
 is celebrated. 
 
 Text of Martin. 
 
 to be. 
 
 the which . . before promised. 
 
 of the family. 
 
 and who was according to 
 
 the Spirit. 
 
 was fully declared. 
 
 by power. 
 
 the Spirit of sanctiiication. 
 
 that is to say. 
 
 our Lord J. C. 
 
 in order to lead the 
 
 Gentiles to believe. 
 
 Among whom 
 
 you also are, you who 
 
 are called. 
 
 called to be Saints. 
 
 may grace and peace be 
 
 given to you by 
 
 God our father. 
 
 Firstly. 
 
 concerning you all. 
 
 is renowned. 
 
 These differences of the two French texts are suffi- 
 
VARIATIONS, 99 
 
 ciently insignificant ; and if any one should tell us that 
 in all the verses, one or other of the two is inspired of 
 God, our faith would receive from it a great aid. Now 
 you will see that the variations of the Greek manu- 
 scripts are still more insignificant. 
 
 Let us now observe on the same verses, the table of ^^ 
 the received text, compared with all the differences^ that 
 the hundred and fifty Greek manuscripts collected and 
 examined for the Epistle to the Romans, can present. 
 
 We shall not notice here the differences presented by 
 the ancient translations, nor those which pertain to punc- 
 tuation, (this element being nearly nothing in the most 
 ancient manuscripts.) 
 
 We shall translate the first column (that of the re- 
 ceived text) according to Martin, who is considered 
 more literal than Osterwald ; and we shall endeavour 
 to translate as exactly as possible the Greek readings 
 of the second column. 
 
 SECOND TABLE. 
 
 The received text, (that of El- Variations collected from all 
 zevir, 1624.) the Greek manuscripts to- 
 
 gether. 
 
 1. (No difference.) 
 
 2. By liis prophets, By the prophets. 
 
 [In only one manuscript in Paris.] 
 
 3. Who was born. Who was begotten, 
 
 [lu only one manuscript of Upsal, and 
 merely by the cliange of two letters. J 
 
 4. Who was declared. Who was before declared. 
 
 [In only one of 22 manuscripts of the 
 Barberini library.] 
 of J. C, our Lord. of J. C. our Gotl. 
 
 [In only one manuscript of Vienna.] 
 5 & 6. (No difference.) 
 
100 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 7. Who are at Rome, and dear- Who are in the love of God, 
 ly beloved of God, called. called. 
 
 [One only MS. the uncial of Dresden.] 
 Who are at Rome called, 
 Two MSS. only, that of St. Ger- 
 main, Uncial, and one of Rome, 
 small letters.] 
 of God our fathelr. of God the father. 
 
 [Only one MS. of Upsal.] 
 
 8. First. First. 
 
 [The difference cannot be expressed. 
 It is only in one MS.] 
 concerning you all. in regard to you all. 
 
 [Twelve MSS.] 
 
 We see it ; these nine or ten different readings are un- 
 important in themselves, and moreover they have in 
 their favour, only one or two out of the hundred and 
 fifty manuscripts, which have been consulted upon these 
 eight verses, if you except the last (" in regard to you 
 all," instead of "concerning you all,") which counts for 
 it twelve manuscripts, of which four are Uncial or 
 capital letters. 
 
 The differences between Osterwald and Martin are 
 three times as numerous ; and ordinarily they have a 
 much more important effect upon the meaning. This 
 comparison, if you extend it to all the New-Testament, 
 would possess the same character, and become even 
 more convincing. 
 
 Yet we presume it would be agreeable to those of 
 our readers who are strangers to such researches, to 
 offer them in a third table, still a new test of the in- 
 nocence of the variations, and of the nullity of the ob- 
 jection drawn from them. 
 
 This table will contain the entire collection of correc- 
 tions, which the learned Griesbach, the father of sacred 
 criticism, has thought proper to introduce into the text 
 
VARIATIONS. 1 1 
 
 of the Epistle to the Romans, after the long researches 
 which he and his predecessors have made upon the 
 manuscripts. 
 
 To appreciate fully the immensity of such labors, we 
 should have gone personally into this study. 
 
 At the same time we would remark to the readers of 
 this third table : 
 
 First, that Griesbach is. in general, accused by the 
 learned (such as Matthei, Nolan, Lawrence, Scholz 
 and others.) of being too eager to admit new readings 
 into the ancient text. The temptation is explained by 
 the habits of the human heart. The learned Whitby 
 had already, and not without reason, reproached Dr. 
 Mill for this ; who, however, had not admitted so many 
 corrections as Griesbach. 
 
 Secondly : — observe again, that we show in this ta- 
 ble, not only the corrections which the learned critic 
 has persuaded himself to adopt^ but those also which 
 he himself considers as only doubtful^ and to be pre- 
 ferred to the sacred text with some remaining distrust. 
 
 THIRD TABLE. 
 
 CORRECTIONS OF GRIESBACH IN THE ENTIRE EPISTLE TO 
 THE ROMANS. 
 
 ANCIENT TEXT. NEW TEXT. 
 
 (Martin's translation.) Corrected by Griesbach, 
 
 (and translated by us with the utmost 
 possible exactness.) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 verse. 
 13. to gather some fruit. To gather some fruit. 
 
 (There is here only an inversion of 
 the words.) 
 
 9* 
 
102 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 I am not ashamed. 
 
 17. of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 19. 
 
 21. 
 
 24. Wherefore also. 
 
 27. 
 
 29. Of injustice, of impurity, 
 of wickedness. 
 
 31. Without natural affection, 
 persons who are never 
 pacified, without mercy. 
 
 I am not ashamed. 
 
 (the difference cannot be expressed 
 
 by a translation.) 
 of the Gospel, 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 (difference of spelling.) 
 Wherefore. 
 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 of injustice, of wickedness. 
 
 without natural affection, with- 
 out mercy. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 9. indignation and wrath. 
 13. 
 
 wrath and indignation, 
 (the article the omitted.) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 22. to all and upon all them to all them that believe, 
 that believe. 
 
 (article the omitted twice.) 
 we conclude in fact, 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 
 25. 
 
 28. We then conclude. 
 
 CHAPTER rv. 
 
 1. 
 
 (order of words changed.) 
 Abraham our ancestor, 
 (indefinite article omitted.) 
 (article omitted.) 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 19. and not being weak in faith, he looked not, feeble in faith, 
 he looked not at &c. to. 
 
 Abraham our father. 
 4. 
 12. 
 13. 
 
 14. 
 
 1. 
 11. 
 12. 
 14. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (difference of spelling.) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (pronoun omitted.) 
 (are omitted.) 
 (it omitted.) 
 (to death omitted.) 
 
VARIATIONS. 
 
 1G3 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 6. that in which, being dead. 
 10. 
 14. 
 
 18. ' 
 
 20. 
 26. 1 render thanks to God. 
 
 being dead to that in which, 
 (difference of an accent.) 
 (difference of a letter.) 
 (difference of spelling.) 
 (/repeated for emphasis.) 
 thanks be to God. 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 1. (words omitted here, which are trans, 
 
 posed to the fourth verse. 
 11. by his spirit (Martin says : on account of his spirit. 
 
 on account of his spirit.) 
 26. to our infirmities. to our infirmity. 
 
 (another difference inexpressible.) 
 prays for us with groanings. prays with groanings. 
 
 35. (difference cannot be expressed.) 
 
 36, (order of the phrase changed.) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 (a difference in the order.) 
 
 (a difference in the spelling.) 
 
 works. 
 
 they. 
 
 who. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 for them. 
 
 (difference cannot be expressed.) 
 
 (difference of spelling.) 
 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 
 (change of the order and the spelling.) 
 
 11. 
 
 15. 
 
 31. works of the law. 
 
 32. for they. 
 
 33. whosoever. 
 
 1. for Israel. 
 
 5. 
 15. 
 19. 
 
 2. against Israel 
 Lord. 
 
 3. 
 
 6. If it is by grace, then it is 
 710 more of works; other- 
 wise grace is no more 
 grace; but if it be of 
 works, then it is no 
 more grace, otherwise 
 work is no more work. 
 
 CHAPTER Xr. 
 saying : against Israel 
 
 Lord. 
 
 («7Ki omitted.) 
 
 If it is by grace, it is no more by 
 
 works; otherwise grace is 
 
 no more crrace. 
 
104 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 7. 
 19. 
 21. 
 23. 
 
 30. you yourselves were. 
 
 11. serving the Lord. 
 
 20. If then thine enemy. 
 
 (difference inexpressiblft.) 
 (article omitted.) 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 (difference of onliography.) 
 you were. 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 9. Thou shait not steal, thou 
 shalt not bear false wit- 
 ness, thou shalt not covet. 
 
 (a pronoun repeated.) 
 
 (a pronoun omitted.) 
 
 serving the opportunity. 
 
 (this difference is caused by the 
 change of one letter, and the trans- 
 position of another.) 
 
 If thine enemy. 
 
 CHAPTER Xni. 
 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 (transposition of words.) 
 Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt 
 not covet. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 9. 
 14. 
 
 (a difference made by the addition of 
 
 two letters.) 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 3. 
 
 7. as Christ hath also receiv- 
 
 ed you, 
 
 8. now I say. 
 
 19. by the power of the spirit 
 of God. 
 
 24. 1 will go towards you, 
 when I shall depart to 
 go into Spain ; and I 
 hope to see you. 
 
 29. with abundance of bless- 
 ing from the Gospel of 
 Christ. 
 
 (a transposition.) 
 
 (the difference cannot be shown in 
 
 English.) 
 (difference inexpressible.) 
 as Christ hath also received us. 
 
 for I say. 
 
 by the power of the spirit. 
 
 when I shall depart to go 
 into Spain, 1 hope to see 
 you. 
 
 with abundance of Christ's bene- 
 diction. 
 
VARIATIONS, 105 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 2, (difference inexpressible.) 
 
 3. Priscilla. Prisca. 
 
 5. who is the first fruits of who is first fruits of Asia. 
 
 Achaia. 
 
 6. who has labored greatly who has labored greatly for 
 
 for us. you. 
 
 18, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Christ. 
 
 20. (amen omitted) 
 
 25. (GrJesbach thinks this verse ought 
 
 to be at the beginning of the xvth 
 
 Chapter.) 
 
 We then see clearly how insignificant those varia- 
 tions are, of which so much was said at first 
 
 Such has been the astonishing preservation of the 
 Greek manuscripts which have transmitted to us the 
 New-Testament. After having been copied and re- 
 copied so many times in Asia, Europe and Africa ; in 
 convents, in colleges, in palaces, or in parsonages ; and 
 that, almost without interruption, for fifteen hundred 
 years; after that, during the last three centuries, and 
 especially the last hundred and thirty years, so many 
 noble characters, so many ingenious minds, so many 
 learned lives have been consumed in labours till then 
 unrivalled in their extent, admirable in their sagacity, 
 and scrupulous as those of the Masorites ; after that, all 
 the Greek manuscripts of the New-Testament, buried 
 in private or monastic or national libraries both eastern 
 and western, have been searched ; after that they have 
 compared with them, not only all the ancient versions 
 of the Scriptures, Latin. Salidic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Scla- 
 vonic, Persian, Coptic, Syriac and Gothic ; but also all 
 the ancient fathers of the Church who have cited them 
 in their innumerable writings, both in Latin and in 
 
106 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Greek ; after so many researches ; see, by our speci- 
 men, what they have been able to find. 
 
 Judge them all from this one Epistle thus put fully 
 under your eye. It is the longest and the most important 
 pf the Epistles of the New-Testament, " the golden key 
 i>f the Scriptures," " the ocean of Christian doctrine." 
 It has four hundred and thirty-three verses ; and among 
 its four hundred and thirty-three verses, ninety-six 
 Greek words not found elsewhere in the New-Testa- 
 ment. And (admitting even all the corrections adopted, 
 or only preferred by Griesbach,) how many readings 
 have you found in it, which change even slightly the 
 sense of any phrase ? You have found five ! And 
 what are they ? We will repeat them ; 
 
 1. (Chap. vii. 6.) In place of: that in ichich .... 
 being dead, Griesbach reads : " being dead to that in 
 which.^^ And remark that here, the difference in the 
 Greek is in only one letter (an o in place of an e;) and 
 that on the other hand, the greatest number of the manu- 
 scripts were so much in favor of the old text, that since 
 Griesbach, Tittman, in his edition of 1824, has rejected 
 this correction, and that Lachman has likewise adopted 
 the reading of the old text in his edition of 1831 ; 
 (Scholz, however, has preserved the new.) 
 
 2. Chap. xi. 6. — In place of: if by grace, then is it 
 no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace ; 
 but if it be of works, then it is no more grace, othertvise 
 work is no mnre work. 
 
 Griesbach has retrenched the latter part of the phrase. 
 
 3. Chap. xii. 11. — In place of serving the Lord, 
 Griesbach reads : serving the opportunity. 
 
 It will be observed, that this correction is of two letters 
 in one of the Greek words ; and that also the number 
 
VARIATIONS. 107 
 
 of the manuscripts does not justify the change. Again 
 
 here, Whitby told Mill that more than thirty manu- 
 scripts, that all the ancient versions, that Clement of 
 Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerome, all the annotators of 
 the Greeks, and all the Latins, with the exception of 
 Ambrose, followed the ancient text ; and the two scho- 
 lars we have just named, (Lachman and Tittman,) the 
 one laboring at Berlin, the other a professor at Leipsic, 
 have restored the ancient text, in their respective editions 
 of the New I'estament. Scholz, whom the learned 
 world appears to prefer to all who have preceded him, 
 has done the same in his edition of 1836. 
 
 4. Chap. vi. 16 — In place of: whether of sin unto 
 death, or of righteousness — Griesbach reads : Whether 
 of sin, or of righteousness ; but he marks it with his 
 sign, which indicates merely a faint probability ; and 
 Tittman and Lachman, in their respective editions, have 
 also rejected this correction. Mr. Scholz has followed 
 them. 
 
 5. Chap. xvi. 5. — In place of Achaia, Griesbach 
 reads Asia. 
 
 We have omitted to re-notice the passage cut off from 
 chap. viii. 1, because it is restored in the fourth verse. 
 
 We see, then, that such is the admirable integrity of 
 the Epistle to the Romans. According to Griesbach, 
 four insignifica7it corrections in the whole epistle — 
 according to more modern critics, two alone, and those 
 the most unimportant of the five ; — and according to 
 
 Scholz, THREE ! 
 
 We repeat, that we have not chosen the Epistle to 
 the Romans, as a specimen, for any other reason than 
 its length and its importance. We have not taken the 
 
108 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 time to examine whether it presents more or fewer 
 variations than any other part of the New Testament. 
 
 We have just run over, for example, in Griesbach, 
 while re-perusing these last pages, the Epistle to the 
 Galatians, written at the same time and upon the 
 same subject as the Epistle to the Romans ; and we 
 have there found only the three following corrections 
 which may affect the sense, or rather, the form of the 
 meaning. 
 
 iv. 17. They would exclude us ; s«^?/, they would ex- 
 clude you. 
 
 iv. 26. She is the mother of us all, say : she is mo- 
 ther of us. 
 
 v. 19. Adultery, fornication, impurity, say : fornica- 
 tion, impurity. 
 
 These simple tables, we think, will speak to our read- 
 ers more forcibly than all our general assertions can do. 
 
 There are some truths which must be seen with our 
 own ejT-es. We have ourselves had the happy experi- 
 ence of this. We had read what others have said upon 
 the insignificancy of the different readings presented by 
 the manuscripts ; we had often studied the variations 
 of Mill, and the severe reproaches of his opponent, 
 Whitby ;* we had examined the writings of Wetstein, 
 of Griesbach. of Lachman, and of Tittman ; but when, 
 twice, in taking part in the labor of a new version of 
 the New Testament, we had to correct the French text 
 by the most esteemed variations, first to introduce and 
 then to cut them off, and then to replace, in French, the 
 sense of the ancient reading; then we had twice, as it 
 were, an intuition of this astonishing preservation of the 
 Scriptures ; and we have felt ourselves penetrated with 
 
 ' Exameu variant, lectionum, J. Millii. Lond. 1710. 
 
VARIATIONS. 109 
 
 gratitude towards that admirable Providence which has 
 ceaselessly watched over the oracles of God, to preserve 
 their integrity so fully. 
 
 Let the objection we are answering now be weighed. 
 Let us be shown, for instance, how three or four varia- 
 tions, which we have just passed in review, in the 
 Epistle to the Romans, and which, in the opinion of the 
 most modern critics, are reduced to two alone, or to 
 three, could render the original inspiration an illusion 
 to us. 
 
 We admit that, here and elsewhere in the sacred 
 books, of the two different readings of the manuscript, 
 one is the inspired word and not the other : we admit 
 that you must, in these few cases, divide or suspend your 
 confidence between two expressions; just so far the un- 
 certainty extends, but no further. 
 
 It is calculated that, in the seven thousand nine hun- 
 dred and fifty-nine verses of the New Testament, there 
 are scarcely ten or twelve in Avhich corrections in- 
 troduced by the new texts of Griesbach and Scholz, 
 at the close of their laborious investigations, have 
 any weight. These moreover do not for the most 
 part extend beyond the difference of a single word, and 
 sometimes even of a single letter. It may, perhaps, be 
 well again to introduce them here, as supplementary to 
 those which we have pointed out in the Epistle to the 
 Romans. 
 
 It has been customary to regard the following twelve 
 or thirteen corrections as the most important of those 
 which have been collected by Griesbach. The first 
 four have appeared important, only because they are 
 connected with the divinity of Jesus Christ. 
 
 1. (Acts XX. 28.) Instead of, "Feed the Church of 
 10 
 
110 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 God, which he hath purchased with his own blood ;" 
 the text of Griesbach has, " Feed the Church of the 
 Lord, which he has purchased with his own blood. 
 
 Here the difference of the reading preferred by Gj^s- 
 bach consists in a single letter (KY) instead of ( S Y). 
 Scholz preserves the ancient text. 
 
 2. (I Tim. iii. 16.) Instead of, " And it must be con- 
 fessed, the mystery of godliness is great. God has been 
 manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit," &c.; some 
 manuscripts read, " And it must be confessed, the mys- 
 tery of godliness is great, which has been manifested in 
 the flesh, justified in the spirit," &c. 
 
 But a few other manuscripts, which Greisbach haft 
 followed, read, " And it must be confessed, the mystery 
 of sfodliness is great ; that which has been manifested 
 in the flesh, has been justified in the spirit," &c. 
 
 Here, again,- the difference is in a single letter only, 
 or rather in only two portions of a letter. (Some man 
 uscripts, instead of «^', having J", and others 0.) 
 
 Scholz has not admined these corrections of Gries- 
 bach. Almost all the Greek manuscripts, according to 
 him, have Oeu^ (God). He says he found it in the 
 cio-hty-six manuscripts which he himself examined. 
 
 3. (Jude 4.) Instead of, '• Who deny our only ruler, 
 God and Lord, .Tesus Christ ;" the text of Griesbach 
 and that of Scholz read, " Who deny our only ruler 
 and Lord, Jesus Christ." Here the difference is only in 
 those two letters, ei\' (God,) omitted in the manuscript 
 which Griesbach prefers. 
 
 As to the opponents of the Divinity of Jesus Christ 
 having laid stress upon these first three corrections, in a 
 critical point of view, we do not marvel, (it is all they 
 can find ;) but in a doctrinal point of view we cannot un- 
 
VARIATIONS. 1 1 1 
 
 derstand it, because by their own confession, there are 
 numerous other passages without variations, in which 
 our Lord is called by the name of God, — the true God. 
 — the great God. No Greek manuscript for instance, 
 exhibits variations in the fii"St verse of the Gospel by 
 St. John : •• In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God."* 
 
 Furthermore, not a single Greek manuscript contains 
 any variation in the verse of the Epistle to Titus (ii. 
 13. :) " Looking for the manifestation of the glory of our 
 great God and Savior Jesus Christ." 
 
 It is known that Wordsworth, in order to convince 
 himself of the meaning which was attributed to this pas- 
 sage, (and to the following : — Eph. v. 5 : 2 Thess. i, 
 12; 2 Tim. iv. 1 ; Jude 4; 2 Pet. i. 1 ; 1 Tim. i. 1.) 
 at the period when the Greek was the living language, 
 did not shrink from the task of examining the volumi- 
 nous writings of seventy Greek and sixty Latin contem- 
 porary fathers ; and he found that they invariably un- 
 derstood these constructions in the same sense, as desig- 
 nating one only and the same person. During the space 
 of a thousand years (from the second to the twelfth cen- 
 tury) he found fifty-four authorities among the Greek, 
 and sixty among the Latin fathers, who unanimously 
 gave the same sense to the words of Paul (Titus ii. 13 :) 
 •• Our great God and Saviour." The hereticc them- 
 selves, he observes, during the long triumph of Arian- 
 ism, never once thought of translating this passage other- 
 wise than ourselves. 
 
 Doubtless (remarks the ArianvBishop Maximin, in 
 
 * One sinele manuscript in three hundred and fifty, of the eighth or 
 ninth century, puts an article before the name of God, which however 
 does not affect the sense. 
 
1 12 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 the fifth century,) the Son, according to the Apostle, is 
 not a little God (non pusillus sed magnus Deus,) but a 
 great God, according to those words of Paul (Titus ii. 
 13.) " looking for," &c.* 
 
 4. (1 John V. 7, 8.) Instead of, " There are three that 
 bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the 
 Holy Ghost, and these three are one {EN) ; and there 
 are three which bear witness] on earth, the Spirit, the 
 water, and the blood, and the three agree in this one" 
 (TO' ''EN]) the text of Griesbach reads, " There are 
 three which bear witness in the earth, the Spirit and the 
 water, and the blood ; and these three agree in that 
 ONE." {T(y"EN.) 
 
 This is doubtless the most important variation, and at 
 the same time the best supported ; both according to the 
 testimony of the manuscripts which have been preserved 
 to our time (upwards of one hundred and forty against 
 three,) and also by the universal silence of the Greek 
 fathers thereon. 
 
 We should deviate from our subject, were we here to 
 undertake a review of the historical evidences! and the 
 grammatical considerations, which on the other hand, 
 plead for the preservation of the ancient text ; we, there- 
 forp, confine ourselves to these two remarks of Bishop 
 Middleton. 
 
 First, Why is the word the three in the masculine 
 
 ' See the Six Letters of Wordsworth to Granville i^harp. 
 
 t Those of several Latin fathers of the second, third, fourth, and fifth 
 centuries ; those of the Latin Vulgate, more ancient than the most ancient 
 manuscripts of our pul)lic libraries (whii'h are said to be of the fifth or 
 end of the sixth century ;) and especially that of the Confession of Faith 
 publicly presented A. D. 484, by four hundred African Bishoi)s, to the 
 Itinir of the Vandals, who as an Arian, persecuted them, and demanded 
 an account of their doctrines.— (See the Dissertations of Mill, Griesbach, 
 Bengd, Wetstein, and Lee.) 
 
VARIATIONS. 113 
 
 in the Greek T^eTg — oi fiaoivoovfTF:^ whilst the words 
 spirit, loater, and blood^wiih. which ihey are connected, 
 are all neuter 1 It would have been necessary to say 
 jo'iu — xu fxuQxvQovi'xa. This irregularity, which is fully 
 warranted (by that which is grammatically termed the 
 principle of attraction.) if the passage remained entire, 
 becomes inexplicable when you would retrench the dis- 
 puted words. 
 
 Secondly, why especially the word this one (t6 £*', 
 the ONE.) if a certain one had not been spoken of in the 
 preceding words? This expression (to et',) in this 
 case, would be without example ! Bishop Middleton 
 devotes eighteen pages to it in his valuable book on 
 " The doctrine of the Greek Article," (8 vo. Cambridge, 
 1828. pp. 606 — 624.) " I cannot conceive," he remarks 
 in conclusion, " how this word, this one (to sp) can 
 be reconciled w^ith the retrenchment of the preced- 
 ing words. I am not ignorant that the majority of 
 learned men are in favor of this omission ; but taking 
 all together, I arn led to suspect that notwithstanding 
 the immense labor which has been bestowed upon this 
 notable passage, there remains yet more to do to eluci- 
 date the mystery in which it continues enveloped." 
 The learned Bengel (for yet other reasons,) said that 
 the two verses of this passage would remain united. 
 Adamant ind adhaerentid. 
 
 Scholz has retrenched, as Griesbach the three hea- 
 venly witnesses. 
 
 5. (Rev. viii. 13) Instead of, ^^ And I beheld and 
 heard an angel flying ^^ &,c. ; the text of Griesbach 
 and that of Scholz have " And I beheld and heard an 
 eagle flying.''^ 
 
 6. (James ii. 18.) Instead of, " Show me thy faith by 
 
 10* 
 
1 14 OBJECTIONS, 
 
 thy works ;" the text of Greisbach and that of Scholz 
 have, " Show me thy faith without works." 
 
 7. (Acts xvi. 7.) Instead of; " But the Spirit suffered 
 them not ;" the text of Griesbach and that of Scholz have ; 
 " But the spirit of Jesus suffered them not." 
 
 8. (Eph. V. 21.) Instead of "submitting yourselves 
 one to another in the fear of God ;" the text of Gries- 
 bach and that of Scholz have, " submitting jrourselves 
 one to another in the fear of Christ." 
 
 9. (Rev. i. 11.) Instead of " I am Alpha and Ome- 
 ga, the first and the last," the text of Griesbach suppres- 
 ses these words, which however he has preserved in the 
 8th verse ; as also in chap. xxii. 13. Scholz has made 
 the same correction. 
 
 10. (Mat. xix. 17.) Instead of " Whycallest thou me 
 good ?" the text of Griesbach reads., " Why do you 
 enquire of me concerning the good or (concerning good- 
 ness?") But Scholz does not admit this correction, 
 and has prtpserved the ancient text. 
 
 11. (Phil. iv. 13.) Instead of, "I can do all things 
 through Christ, which str^ngtheneth me," Scholz has, 
 "lean do all things through him who strengtheneth 
 me." 
 
 12. Lastly, (Acts viii. 37 ; ix. 5, 6; x. 6.) The text 
 of Greisbach and that of Scholz suppress the 37th verse, 
 and the words, " it is hard for thee to kick against the 
 pricks ; and he trembling and astonished said, Lord, 
 what wilt thou have m:; to do?" and, " I will tell thee 
 what thou must do." 
 
 Doubtless, I repeat, in these passages, beside the va- 
 rious readings wln'ch thf^ aianuscripts exhibit, it would 
 not be possibh^ to k-now infallibly which of the readings 
 is that, which ought to be regarded as the primitive text, 
 
Variations. 1 1^ 
 
 or word given by God; but as respects the sense of the 
 sentence, our incertitude will always be circumscribed 
 within very narrow and determined limits. I must, it is 
 true, choose between one word and another, between 
 one letter and another, but to this all my doubts are lim- 
 ited, and beyond this they are not at liberty to range 
 not only, in fact, have I the assurance that the remaindei 
 of the text is wholly and entirely from God, but I know 
 further, that between the two diverse readings which the 
 manuscripts present, one of the two is certainly the theo- 
 paeustic word. Thus you perceive, my uncertainty here 
 can only hesitate between the akernative of two readings, 
 almost always nearly identical one with the other; whilst 
 in the system of a partial inspiration, on the contrary, the 
 field of our doubts and incertitude would be illimitable. 
 If the language of the sacred scriptures has been, in 
 part, left to the choice (always fallible) of human wis- 
 dom ; and if divine wisdom (alone infliUible) has not 
 controlled and guaranteed it, 1 am unceasingly ex- 
 posed to the temptation of retrenching, modifying, or 
 adding something to the Scriptures. 
 
 Thus, then, all the efforts of the enemies of inspira- 
 tion, to overthrow our faith on this ground, have, in the 
 end, only served to establish it. They have compelled 
 the church to follow them in their investigations, and 
 immediately afterward to precede them in the same 
 work ; and what have we there discovered 1 It is, that 
 the text is even more pure than the most pious men had 
 dared to hope ; it is, that the enemies of inspiration, and 
 those of the orthodox doctrines, at least in Germany, 
 have been forced to admit it. They had hoped, after the 
 laborsof Erasmus, of Stephens, and of Mill,to find, among 
 the manuscripts of our libraries, readings more favorable 
 
116 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 to the Socinian doctrines than those which Beza and 
 Elzevif employed. Many even imagined that the un- 
 certainties would become so great, and the discrepancies 
 so grave, that all evangelical belief, positive, exclusive 
 as ihej termed it, would be overthrown. But it is not 
 so. It is now a process terminated; the plaintiffs are 
 nonsuited; the inquest having been made by modern 
 criticism, at their request; all the judges, even on the 
 rationalist benches,* have pronounced, with entire unani- 
 mity, that it is a lost case, and that the objectors must 
 search elsewhere for arguments and grievances. 
 
 When this question of the integrity of the original 
 text presented itself for the first time to the excellent 
 and learned Bengel, more than a hundred and twenty 
 years ago, he was terrified at it ; his honest and pious 
 soul was profoundly troubled by it. Then began on 
 his part, those labors of sacred criticism which gave a 
 new direction to this science among the Germans. 
 The English had preceded the Germans in it, but were 
 soon left behind them. Finally, after long researches, 
 Bengel, in 1721, happy and confirmed, trusting and 
 grateful, wrote to his pupil, Reuss — " Eat simply the 
 bread of the Scriptures, such as you find it ; and be not 
 disturbed, if perchance you find here and there a little 
 fragment of the millstone which has fallen into it. You 
 may now dismiss all the doubts which once so horribly 
 tormented me. If the Holy Scriptures, which have 
 been copied so often, and which have so often passed 
 through the imperfect hands of fallible man, were abso- 
 lutely without variations, the miracle would be so great, 
 that faith in it would no more be faith. I am aston- 
 
 * Read Michajlis, torn, ii, p. 266. Eichhorn. Einleitung, 2 th. S. 700. 
 Edit. Leips. 1S24. 
 
VARIATIONS. I td 
 
 ished, on the contrary, that there has resulted from all 
 the transcribings, a no greater number of different read- 
 ings " The manuscripts of the Comedies of Terence, 
 which are but six in number,* and which have been 
 copied a thousand times less frequenti} than the Ne\v 
 Testament, contain thirty thousand variations. 
 
 How can we fail to recognise the intervention of God 
 in this unanimous agreement of all the religious socie- 
 ties of the East and the West. — Everywhere the same 
 scriptures. — What differences of worship separate the 
 Christians from the Jews ! and yet go to our schools ; 
 examine our Hebrew Testaments : then go to their syn- 
 agogues, and ask their rabbis for their sacred rolls: 
 you will find them the same books, without the differ- 
 ence of a letter! — What differences of worship separate 
 the Reformed churches of Christendom from the follow- 
 ers of Rome ! and yet, examine again ; you will find 
 in our respective schools the same Greek Testament, 
 without the difference of an iota. We receive theirs, 
 as they receive ours, Erasmus or Beza, Ximenes or 
 Mill, Scholz or Griesbach. What distance separates 
 the Latin from this Greek Church who styles herself 
 also Catholic, but orthodox, apostolical, daughter of 
 Antioch, condemning the Romans as rebellious and schis- 
 matic sons ! yet ask each of them for their sacred texts ; 
 you will find no difference on this point ; the variations 
 do not make two distinct schools ; all use the same 
 manuscripts ; from priests and popes, Munich and 
 Moscow, you will hear but one testimony. We all 
 then, Greeks, Latins and Protestants, must possess the 
 
 • Archives du Christianisme. tome vii. No. 17. — Wiseman, Disc, on the 
 Relations of Science, tome ii. p. 189. 
 
118 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 same sacred book of the New Testament, without the 
 difference of a single iota ! 
 
 We have said enough on this great fact. We were 
 not obliged to do more than merely to state it, in order 
 to repel an objection ; for it took us away from our sub- 
 ject. Our mission was, to prove a doctrine, to wit, the 
 original inspiratio?t of the Holy Scriptures; and some 
 have supposed that they could oppose us with the objec- 
 tion that if this were a truth, yet it would be rendered 
 ineffectual by the alterations which this holy writing 
 must have undergone. We found it necessary to show 
 that these alterations were a vain and innocent phantom. 
 We presented a doctrine, we say ; but they have com- 
 pelled us to make a history ; we now return to the doc- 
 trine ; but, before returning, we must yet once more as- 
 sert, not only that the Scriptures were inspired in the 
 day when God caused them to be written ; but that this 
 word, inspired eighteen hundred years ago, is now in 
 our hands ; and we can still, holding in one hand our 
 sacred text, and in the other, all the admitted readings 
 collected by science from seven hundred manuscripts,* 
 exclaim with gratitude ; I hold then in my happy hand, 
 the eternal word of my God! 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Errors of Reasoning or of Doctrine. 
 
 " We leave ihe variations," other opponents will say, "and wc 
 admit that the sacred text may be regarded as the original language 
 of the prophets and of the apostles ; but this very text, pure as it 
 is, we cannot study, without perceiving the part of it which human 
 feebleness has made. We find in it reasonings badly conducted 
 and badly concluded, quotations badly applied, popular supersti- 
 
 • Bcholz has counted G74 msiiiuscripts for the Evangelist.s alone. 
 
ERRORS. 1 19 
 
 tions, prejudices and other infirmities, the inevitable tribute paid 
 by the simplicity of the men of God to the ignorance of their 
 times. ' Saint Paul,' says Jerome himself,* ' does not know how 
 to develops a hyperbaton, nor to conclixle a sentence ; and having 
 to do with rude people, he has employed the conceptions, which, 
 if, at the outset, he had not taken care to announce as spoken after 
 the manner of men, would have shocked men of good sense.' 
 Such being then the traces of infirmity which we can follow in 
 the Scriptures, it remains impossible to recognize in such a book 
 an inspiration that goes even to the lesser details of their language." 
 
 To these accusations against the Scriptures we have 
 a fourfold answer. 
 
 1. We set ourselves at once, with all the energy of 
 our conviction, against such reproaches. We maintain 
 that a more attentive and more serious study of the word 
 of God would reduce them to nothing ; and we protest 
 that they have no foundation but in the errors and pre- 
 cipitancy of those who advance them. We might show 
 it in repelling these accusations, one by one, in every 
 instance. It would be a task of greater length than 
 difficulty ; and this is not the place for it, because the 
 detail is immense. There is not in feet, a reasoning, 
 there is not a quotation, there is not a doctrine, which 
 the adversaries of the inspiration of the Scriptures have 
 not at some time made a subject of reproach ; and every 
 one knows, that the greater part of the objections which 
 may be cl^^arly stated in three words, cannot be clearly 
 refuted in less than three pages. In proportion then 
 as the men of the world renew their attacks, the church 
 must renew her replies ; and like those respectful and 
 indefatigable servants, who in the East, watch day and 
 night around the head of their king, she must constantly 
 
 * Comm. on Galatians (Bk. 11.)— Tit. (Bk. 1 on i. 1.) and Ephes.— (Bk. 
 11. on 3. 1.) 
 
120 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 hold herself by the side of the word of God, to repel 
 from it those swarms of objections which are seen, just 
 as fast as they are driven from one side, rising on the 
 other, and incessantly returning to plant anew^ their 
 sting. The experience of every age, and especially that 
 of the latter times has sufficiently shown, that before an 
 impartial examination, these difficulties, which they op- 
 pose to the Scriptures, vanish ; these obscurities are il- 
 luminated ; and quickly, unexpected harmonies, beauties 
 that until then no human eye had perceived, are re- 
 veah^d in the word of God by the objections themselves. 
 To-day, objects of doubt ; to-morrow, better studied, they 
 are incentives to faith; to-day, sources of trouble, to- 
 morrow they are proofs. 
 
 2. In the meantime we notice all these accusations 
 which the adversaries of the full inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures raise against this sacred book ; for it is an advan- 
 tage which they give us. Yes, we shall not hesitate to 
 say it ; in the hearing of such objections, we experience 
 at the same time, two opposite impressions of satisfaction 
 and of sadness ; of sadness in seeing men who recognize 
 the Bible as a revelation of God. not fearing at the same 
 time to raise against it so hastily the gravest accusa- 
 tions ; and of satisfliction, in considering with what force 
 such language at last confirms the doctrine we defend. 
 
 In the mouth of a deist, they would be objections to 
 which we must reply, but in that of a christian who ad- 
 vances them, it is a flagrant abandonment of his own 
 thesis, and an avowal of all the evil involved in such 
 abandonment. 
 
 We would be understood : it is not before the profess- 
 ed infid' 1 that we here maintain the plenary inspiration 
 of the Scriptures ; it is before men who profess to con- 
 
ERRORS. 121 
 
 sider the Bible as a revelation from God. Inspiration, 
 we have said to them, is a doctrine taught in this sacred 
 book : by its own testimony, all Scripture is given of 
 God, it is perfect, it is puie, it is gold seven times tried 
 in the fire. What reply have they made? They do 
 not reject, they say, such an inspiration, except in re- 
 gard to the language, the forms of speech, and the un- 
 important details ; otherwise they believe that a constant 
 providence directed the minds of the sacred writers, to 
 keep them from every grave error. But how do they 
 prove this thesis ? Is it to the language alone, is it to 
 the forms of speech, is it to insignificant details that they 
 confine this rejection of inspiration ? Alas ! hear them : 
 " there are in the doctrines, superstitions ; there are in 
 the quotations, misrepresentations, there are in the rea- 
 sonings, infirmities !" — You see then, that in order to 
 attack the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, they 
 come down thus into the ranks of the unbelievers, who 
 are casting stones at the word of God : and if they do 
 not wish, like them, to take God from the holy Bible, 
 they at least wish to correct God in the holy Bible. 
 Which of the two is most outrageous, it would be diffi- 
 cult to say. 
 
 We conclude then, that since the doctrine of ple- 
 nary inspiration can be combatted only by accusing the 
 word of God of error, we must cling the more firmly 
 to this declaration of the Scriptures, that "all Scripture 
 is given by inspiration of God." 
 
 3. But we have something yet more serious to add. 
 We ask : Avhere will you stop when you have once en- 
 tered on this path 1 And by what reasons will you in 
 your turn stop those who wish to go still beyond you 1 
 You dare to correct one part of the word of God : by 
 U 
 
122 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 what right then will you blame those who may wish to 
 correct the rest ? Beings of yesterday, whilst they are 
 traversing this earth as a shadow, with the eternal book 
 of God in their hands, they dare to say : This, Lord, is 
 worthy of thee, this is unworthy of thee ! They pre- 
 tend to select for themselves in the oracles of God, to 
 ascribe one part of it to the folly of man, to separate the 
 mistakes of Isaiah or Moses, the prejudices of Peter or 
 of Jude, the paralogisms of Paul, the superstitions of 
 John from the thought of God ! Lamentable rashness ! 
 We repeat it ; where will they stop in this fatal work ; 
 for they place themselves at the very table, on the one 
 side of which, are seated the Socinuses, the Grimaidis, 
 the Priestleys ; and on the other, the Rousseaus, the 
 Volneys, the Dupuis, Between them and Eichhorn^ 
 between them and William Cobbett, between them and 
 Strauss, where is the difference ? It is in the species, 
 not in the genus. It is in the quantity of the imputa- 
 tions of errors and of irreverent remarks ; it is not in 
 the quality. There is some difference in their boldness, 
 none in their profaneness. The one and the other have 
 found errors in the word of God ; they have both pre- 
 tended to rectify them. But, we ask, is it less absurd, 
 on the part of a creature, to wish to improve in God's 
 creation, the hyssop that cometh out of the wall, than 
 that of the cedar of Lebanon ; to pretend to rectify the 
 organization of a glow-worm, than to wish to increase 
 the light of the sun ? By what right will ministers, 
 who say that they see nothing but the language of Jew- 
 ish prejudices in the accounts given by the Evangelists, 
 of the demoniacs and the miracles of Jesus Christ driv- 
 ing out the impure spirits ; by what right will they pro- 
 I'ounce it strange that another sees in the miracles of 
 
ERRORS. 123 
 
 Saul's conversion, of the resurrection, of the multiplica- 
 tion of bread, or of the day of Pentecost, nothing but a 
 discreet and useful compliance with the ignorance of a 
 people fond of the marvellous ? By what authority 
 would a professor, who denies the inspiration of Paul's 
 arguments, blame Mr. De Wette for rejecting that of 
 the prophecies of the old Testament,* or of Mr. Wirg- 
 mann making his separation of the New Testament,^ 
 or Mr. Strauss changing into fable the miracles and the 
 very person of Jesus Christ? 
 
 Three, or four years since, a young minister of Berne, 
 put into our hands a manual of theology which, he said, 
 had been handed him in an academy in Eastern Switz- 
 erland. We have not retained the name of the author, 
 nor that of his residence ; but having, at the time, taken 
 notes of his principal arguments against the plenary in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures, we can reproduce here the 
 quotations by which he sought to prove that the holy 
 books, containing evident errors, cannot be entirely the 
 word of God. It will be understood that we do not 
 mean here to reply to him. We wish only to give a 
 specimen of his rashness. 
 
 ^' St. Paul says (1 Cor. v. 5.) that he had ' delivered 
 an incestuous man to Satan.' This passage, (evidently 
 fanatical ;) could it be inspired ! 
 
 '' He says to them (1 Cor vi. 3.) that ' we shall judge 
 the angels,' — a gnostic reverie without doubt. Could 
 such a passage have been inspired ! 
 
 * That was his opinion some j'enrs ago. We do not know whether 
 this professor, who.se science and candor in his translation of the New 
 Testament we admire, may not have retracted sucli assertions. 
 
 t That was the title of his book. — He intends by it, the separation or di- 
 vision of the New Testament, into Wurd of Gud, or moral precepts, and 
 Wurd of r,ian, or facts o{ the sensible world. 
 
124 OBJECTIONS 
 
 " He goes on even to say to them that ' in conse- 
 quence of unworthy communion many of them are sick, 
 and some are dead,' (1 Cor. xi. 30.) This passage 
 could not be inspired ! 
 
 " He says to them again, that ' all die in Adam,' — 
 (1 Cor. XV. 22) — Jewish superstition. It is impossible 
 that such a passage can be inspired ! 
 
 " And when Saint Paul assures the Thessalonians, 
 (1 Th. iv. 15.) and when St. James repeats (Jam. v. 8,) 
 that 'the coming of the Lord is near,' could so manifest 
 an error be inspired !"* 
 
 It is then in this manner that they dare to judge the 
 eternal word ! We do not yet know, we have said, 
 whether these doctrines, professed in Switzerland, ten or 
 twelve years since, were taught particularly at Zurich. 
 But. if they there had currency, we must exculpate the 
 magistrates of that city.f It was not they who called 
 Strauss into their country, to overthrow the faith of an 
 entire people ; for Strauss, it might be said, was al- 
 ready in their professorial chairs, if such doctors as this 
 were there giving instructions. They had seen them 
 with great scissors in their hands, cutting out of the 
 Scriptures the errors of the holy Apostles. What dif- 
 ference could they perceive between such men and him 
 whom they were calling? — a little more science, a little 
 more boldness and consistency in his principU s ; with 
 
 • We have not thought it our duty to reply to such Hccnsntions. It 
 would 1)6 to depart from our subject. The coniing of the Lord is near to 
 each one of un ; from one instant to another, three brtfiilis .>ep:u ale us 
 from it. When a iii;m dies, he is immediately tran.sported into the day 
 of Jesus Chri-st. As to the distance of that day relatively to this world, 
 judge from 1 Thoss. ii. 2. if the .\])ostle Paul vva.s mistaken. 
 
 T Allusion is here made to tlie call of Strauss to the professorship ot 
 ThecIo?y in till- University, by ilie magistrates; wliich was resisted by 
 forty thousand of the peo])U-, and resisted successfully. 
 
ERRORS. 125 
 
 a longer and sharper instrument in his more skilful 
 hands ; but scarcely more contempt in his heart for the 
 word of God ! We see but little difft-rence between the 
 several judges of the Sanhedrim who struck Jesus on 
 the face, because some struck fewer blows than others ; 
 and when sixty conspirators, in Pomppy's palace, over- 
 threw Caesar from his golden throne in the midst of the 
 Senate ; Casca, who first slightly wounded him with 
 his sword, was not less his murderer than Cassius 
 cleaving his hp-ad, or than the sixty conspirators shewing 
 him their blades on every side, and piercing him with 
 twenty-three wounds. Is then the teacher who denies 
 the inspiration of an argument or of a doctrine of the 
 Scriptures, less in revolt against the God of the Scrip- 
 tures, than he who rejects the inspiration of an entire 
 book ? We think he is not. 
 
 We conclude that, since in order to deny the plenary 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, we must enter into the road 
 of rashness, and give, by the first strokes of the sword, 
 the signal of all opposition to the word of God ; a closer 
 attention should be paid to this declaration of the Holy 
 Spirit : " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." 
 But we have yet another reflection. 
 
 4. You do not understand the divinity, the propriety, 
 the wisdom, the utility of such or such a passage of the 
 Scriptures, and therefore you deny its inspiration. Is 
 that an argument of any real value, we will not say in 
 our eyes, but in yours ? Who are you ? " W^hcn thou 
 goest into the house of God," feeble child of man. '• keep 
 thy foot ; be swift to hear, be slow to speak, and do not 
 offer tlie sacrifice of fools ; for they know not what they 
 do. God is in heaven, and thou art upon the earth."* 
 
 • Eccl. V. 1, 2. 
 11* 
 
126 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Who art thou then, to judge the oracles of God ? Has 
 not the Bible said of itself beforehand, that it would be 
 " a stumbling-block to some, and foolishness to others ;" 
 that "the natural*man should not comprehend it, that 
 indeed he could not, and that it is only to be known by 
 the Spirit ?"* Should you not then have expected to 
 feel some repugnance in your mind, in your heart, 
 even in your conscience, against its first instructions ? 
 Man must come back to his own place as an infirm, 
 ignorant and depraved creature. He can understand 
 God only by becoming humble. Let him bend the 
 knee in his closet ; let him pray, and he will compre- 
 hend. An argument is inconsequent, because you do 
 not apprehend it! a doctrine is a prejudice, because 
 you do not admit it! a quotation is inaccurate, because 
 you have not discovered its true meaning ! What would 
 remain in the world, if God should leave in it only what 
 you can explain ? The Roman Emperors, being able 
 to comprehend neither the faith nor the life of our mar- 
 tyrs, threw them to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, 
 and caused them to be dragged to the Tiber. It is thus 
 that men throw their ignorance as a vile grapple upon the 
 word of God, and drag to the scaflTold that which they 
 could not comprehend and which they have condemned I 
 We, recollect in writing these lines, an author, other- 
 wise honorable, but imbued with the wisdom of his age, 
 who undertook to prove that the reasonings of St. Paul 
 are not inspired. To show it, he cited, as a convincing 
 example, the passage in Galatians, iii. 16, in which 
 Paul designs not to prove, (observe it well, all the solu- 
 tion is there.) not to prove, but to affirm that the pro- 
 raise made by God to Abraham and his poslerily, re- 
 
 • 1 Cor. xi. 14. 
 
ERRORS. 127 
 
 garded not all his descendants^ (since it was sufficiently 
 manifest that his descendants by Hagar, by Keturah 
 and by Esau, had been rejected,) but a particular pos- 
 terity, elect and personal. And what does this pro- 
 fessor, in order to establish his thesis upon this passage? 
 He lends the apostle an argument so puerile, that the 
 smallest child of the Galatians might have reproved 
 him for it. Saint Paul, according to him, instead of 
 simply affirming a fact, reasoned from the singular of 
 a collective noun to prove that such a word could mean 
 to designate only one person ! " Absurd to us," he 
 says ; " this argument might have been good for Jews, 
 or the rude Gauls of Asia Minor. We give this one 
 example. It were easy to produce a hundred like it. 
 
 Might the author be permitted to refer in this matter 
 to his own experience, he would recal with as much 
 humiliation as gratitude, his first and his last impres- 
 sions produced by the Epistles of St. Paul. He had 
 already been convinced in his earliest years, that the 
 Bible is from God ; but he had not yet understood the 
 doctrine it teaches. He wished to respect the pages of 
 the apostle, because he had seen by other characters, 
 that the inimitable seals of the most High God were 
 attached to them ; but a secret trouble agitated him in 
 reading them, and turned him towards other books. St. 
 Paul appeared to him to reason falsely ; not to reach 
 his point ; to speak ambiguously and in an embarras- 
 sing manner ; to make long, spiral windings around 
 his subject ; and to say the things committed to him 
 quite otherwise than was designed by him who revealed 
 them. In a word, he felt, in reading them, as would a 
 tender and respectful son, by the side of a father who is 
 declining, who has lost his memory, and who talks 
 
128 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 stammering•l3^ Oh ! how would he conceal from others, 
 and not admit it to himself, that his venerable father is 
 sinking, and seems no more like himself! But as soon 
 as Divine grace had revealed to us this doctrine of jus- 
 tification by faith, which is the ardent and brilliant 
 flame of the Scriptures, then, each word became light, 
 harmony and life ; the reasonings of the apostle appeared 
 to us as limpid as the water from the rock, his thoughts 
 profound and practical, all his epistles the power o[ God 
 to salvation to them that believe. We saw abundant 
 proofs of divinity beaming from those very passages 
 which had given us so long disquiet, and we could say 
 with the joy of a discovery, and with the gratitude of a 
 tender adoration, as we felt vibrating within us, in 
 unison with the word of God, chords inimitable, and 
 until then, untouched : " Yes, my God, all thy Scrip- 
 tures are divinely inspired !" 
 But it is insisted that there are : 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 Errors in the Narrations ; Contradictions in the Facts. 
 
 " We will leave," say they, " if we must, all these just repug- 
 nances against the reasonings or the doctrines of the sacred wri- 
 ters ; in admitting, that upon these points, that which is difficult 
 to some, may be easy to others. But if now we appeal to facts, 
 if we show that there are manifest contradictions in the narrations 
 of the Bible, in its dates, in its references to contemporary history, 
 in its scriptural quotations ; you may then, perhaps, reproach us 
 for having seen them, for not being consistent with ourselves, and 
 for going in that beyond our own position. Notwithstanding this ; 
 those are facts which no inconsistency of reasoning can annul, 
 and which no argument can destroy. An argument no more de- 
 stroys, than creates facts. If, then, these contradictions exist, you 
 may, indeed, convict our doctrine of insutficiencv ; but they rise 
 three times as high against yours, to accuse it of error." 
 
ERRORS. 129 
 
 We will commence by admitting, that if it be true 
 that there are, as they say there are, erroneous state- 
 ments and contradictory accounts in the holy Scriptures, 
 their plenary inspiration must be renounced. But this 
 is not the case. These pretended errors do not exist. 
 
 We shall admit, without hesitation, that, among the 
 numerous attacks made on the m.inutest details of the 
 statements of our sacred books, there are some which, 
 at first sight, may occasion some embarrassment ; but 
 as soon as we contemplate them more closely, these dif- 
 ficulties are explained and vanish. We shall give some 
 examples, taking care to choose from among those 
 which the opponents of plenary inspiration have ap- 
 peared to regard as the most insurmountable. 
 
 We shall pref;\ce them with some observations. 
 
 1. The Scriptures have had, in every age, their ene- 
 mies and their defenders, their Celsuses as well as their 
 Origens, their Porphyrys as well as their Eusebiuses, 
 their Castellios as well as their Calvins, their Strausses 
 as well as their Hengstenbergs. Sixteen hundred years 
 ago, Malchus Porphyry, that learned and malignant 
 Syrian, who lived in Sicily under the reign of Diocle- 
 tian, and whom Jerome calls rabidum adreravs Chris- 
 tum canem* wrote fifteen books against Christianity. 
 Of these fifteen books, the fourth was directed against 
 the Pentateuch, the twelfth and the thirteenth against 
 Daniel ; and the first was entirely consecrated to collect- 
 ing all the contradictions [(ii-TlXojtag harTiocfuvri) 
 which he pretended he had found in the Scriptures.f 
 
 • A dog enraged against Christ. 
 
 t Tdv KuQ^rtiKov cviTKCvrjv vrr^pPoXri niaois iTpo0ePXfjixsvov, — Emplnying 
 agaivst us artifice, wilh the exaggeration that hatred "prompts, says Euse- 
 bius, in speaking o.'' him. Euseb. Prepar. Evangel, lib. x. chap, ix., and 
 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 19. 
 
130 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 From Celsus and Porphyry, down to the English infi- 
 dels of the eighteenth century ; and fiom them to 
 Strauss, who had done little more than copy them, ac- 
 cording to his own avowal ;* they have not ceased to 
 seek new contradictions, in comparing Scripture with 
 Scripture, line with line, word with word, detail with 
 detail. It was easy then to multiply them, and even to 
 find some that are specious, in a book, eminently com- 
 posed of anecdotes, where the narratives of the same 
 events are repeated under various forms, by different his- 
 torians, in different circumstances, with various objects, 
 and with greater or less development. From that, the 
 reader should perceive, that this fifth objection, which is 
 composed of only detached observations, and which re- 
 solves itself into an infinitude of little details, can be re- 
 futed only in detail and by detached answers. It is, ac- 
 cordingly, an exhaustless subject. To each passage an 
 objection, to each objection a reply. Our only general 
 answer then must be : examine, and the obscurity will 
 vanish. 
 
 Moreover it is understood by all parties, that the pre- 
 tended contradictions which the enemies of inspiration 
 present, have in themselves no religious importance, and 
 regard only dates, numbers or other very minute circum- 
 stances. But, if they cannot affect Christian doctrine 
 directly, they do not the less tend to overthrow the ple- 
 nary inspiration of the Scriptures. We mrjst then reply 
 to them, as the friends of religion in every age have 
 done ; and as has just been done with such honorable 
 success, by Mr. Hengstenberg of Berlin, and by Rous- 
 
 * This he has himself avowed, on the cruical review of the gospels ex- 
 amined and collected from Celsus to Paulus, and even to the fragmenis of 
 Wolfenbiiltel. 
 
ERRORS. 131 
 
 sel in France, by Barett, Haley, Gerard, Dick, Home 
 and others in England. 
 
 2. It is very easy to say in a general way and with a 
 peremptory tone, that there are contradictions in the 
 Bible: and it has often happened that unreflecting 
 Christians, although pious, have not given themselves 
 the trouble of looking more closely into the subject, and 
 have adopted loose maxims on inspiration, before hav- 
 ing sufficiently studied on one side, the general testimony 
 of the Scriptures on this doctrine, and on the other, the 
 nature of the objections which they have made. We 
 have seen them then looking into their own minds, 
 rather than the Bible, for a mitigated system of inspira- 
 tion, which might be reconciled with the supposed exist- 
 ence of some errors in the word of God. Such was 
 the doctrine of Socinus,* of Castellio.f and of some 
 others in the sixteenth century ; but it was then sternly 
 rejected by all pious men. " This is not," said Fran- 
 cis Turretin,! " to defend the cause against the atheists, 
 but basely to betray it." " We must not, for the sake 
 of reconciling them, admit that the Scriptures are false," ^ 
 said the learned and pious Peter Martyr, the " wonder 
 of Italy," as Calvin calls him. In our days, the re- 
 spectable Pye Smith II in England, and the worthy 
 Bishop of Calcutta,*![ have indulged in expressions, 
 which we deplore, and which probably they would cor- 
 rect, if they had to make them anew. And in Berlin, 
 the learned rector of the University, Mr. Twesten, whose 
 
 * De iiistoril. Scrip. t In Dialo£ris. 
 
 t Hoc noil est causam tueri adversus atheos, sed illara turpiter prodere. 
 Theol. elencht; torn. 1, p. 74. 
 
 § is'oii est eo concedeiiduin, ad ea concilianda, iit dicamus codicem sa- 
 crum rnendosuTn. On 1 Kings viii. 17. 
 
 Il Dcft-iice of Dr. HalTiier's Preface to Bible. 
 
 U xii. Lect. on Evid. of Christianity. 
 
1 32 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 labors and reputation we honor in other respects, has 
 not feared to saj in his Dogmatik,* that, "all is not 
 equally inspired in the Bible, and that if we admit no 
 errors in the details of the evangelical narrations, we 
 shall be thrown into inextricable difficulties to explain 
 them." And what examples does he give to justify, in. 
 passing, such maxims? He quotes two of the passages 
 which we are going to exhibit ; (the first, that of the 
 blind men of Jericho, the seventh, that of the census of 
 Cyrenius.) The reader will be able to judge fiom these 
 instances, of the facility with which men abandon the 
 testimony that the Scriptures give of their own entire in- 
 spiration. 
 
 We will now present some examples, both of these 
 imagined contradictions, and of the causes of this precip- 
 itancy in regarding as contradictory, certain passages, 
 which a little reflection might have reconciled. 
 
 We have said, and we repeat it, that not being able to 
 introduce many instances, we have taken pains to select 
 those which the opponents have considered most embar- 
 rassing. 
 
 Since the publication of the first edition of this work, 
 many pious persons have reproached us for solving dif~ 
 ficukies which did not trouble them, and for leaving un- 
 solved what to them needs explanation. We have but 
 one general remark to make on this point ; that as the 
 degree of difficulty is a relative thing, it is impossible 
 that one should be able to judge for all others ; and it is 
 impossible to meet all the difficulties which any truth 
 will present to some minds. 
 
 First Cause of Rash Conclusions. — The comple- 
 
 • Vorlesungeri liber die Dogmatik. torn. I. p. 421—429. ITamburg, 1829- 
 
ERRORS. 133 
 
 ment of the circumstances of two events which occurred 
 in the East, eighteen centuries ago, remains unknown, 
 because the sacred historians relate them to us with an 
 admirable brevity. Yet, men have hastened, because 
 the story does not explain the mode of reconciling two 
 of their features, to pronounce them contradictory ! No- 
 thing is more irrational. Suppose, to give an example 
 not in the Scriptures, that a Hindoo Pundit had just 
 been reading three succinct, but very accurate, histories 
 of the illustrious Napoleon. The first shall inform him 
 that the taking of Paris, preceded by a great effusion of 
 blood at the gates of that capital, made his abdication 
 necessary, and that an English frigate was to transport 
 him immediately to an island of the Mediterranean. A 
 second relates, that this great captain, conquered by the 
 English, who took possession of Paris without a blow, 
 was transported by them to St. Helena, whither Gene- 
 ral Bertrand wished to follow him, and where he fin- 
 ished his days in the arms of this faithful servant. A 
 third relates, that the fallen Emperor was accompanied 
 in his exile by the Generals Gourgaud, Bertrand, and 
 Montholon. All these statements are accurate, and yet, 
 " how many flat contradictions in so few words !" ex- 
 claims the learned citizen of Benares. " St. Helena, in 
 the Mediterranean !" Who does not know that it rises, 
 a great rock in the Atlantic ? First contradiction : one 
 of these books is false, it must be rejected. And again, 
 Paris taken without a blow ; and Paris taken after a 
 bloody combat at its gates ! second contradiction. — And 
 again, here one general, there three generals! third 
 contradiction. 
 
 Compare now these supposed contradictions with 
 12 
 
134 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 many of the objections raised against the narratives of 
 the Evangelists i 
 
 Fir si example. — Mark (xvi. 5.) tells us that the wo- 
 men saw A YOUNG MAN (one only.) seated on the right 
 side . . . who said to them : Be not afraid . . . you 
 seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified . . . he is 
 riseyi again. 
 
 A.jd Luke relates, (xxiv. 4.,) that two men 'presented 
 themselres to them . . . ivho said to them : Why seek 
 ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, he is 
 risen. 
 
 They present these passages to us as irreconcilable : 
 but wherefore? There is a difference, unquestionably ; 
 but there is neither contradiction nor disagreement be- 
 tween the statements. Must they be identical in order 
 to be true ? It is sufficient that they are true, especially 
 in histories so admirably succinct. Does it not often 
 happen to us, without ceasing to be exact, that we relate 
 to two persons successively the same story in two very 
 different ways ? And why might not the apostles do 
 the same ? St Luke tells us that two persons met the 
 women, while St. Mark speaks only of that one, who 
 having alone rolled away the stone, was seated at the 
 right side of the sepulchre, and who spoke to them. 
 Thus one of Napoleon's biographers mentions three 
 generals, whilst the other, with no less accuracy, speaks 
 of Bertrand alone. Thus Moses, after having shown 
 us three men in the apparition of Mamre, (Genesis 
 xviii.) immediately represents one of them speaking as 
 if he were alone, (v. 2, 10, 17.) Thus 1 might relate 
 the same event twice successively and in a very differ- 
 ent manner, without ceasing to be true : " I met three 
 men, who showed mo the direct road. Im"'taman, 
 
ERRORS. 13S 
 
 who put me in the right way." It' then, there is, in 
 the quoted passages, a striking difference, yet there is 
 not even the appearance of contradiction. 
 
 Second exam-pie. — Matthew (xx. 30,) says ; that as 
 Jesus was going out of Jericho^ followed by a great 
 multitude^ two blind men, sitting by the way-side, hear- 
 ing that Jesus loas -passing, cried, saying ; Have mercy 
 on us ! 
 
 And Mark (x. 46,) tells us ; as Jesus went out of Jer- 
 icho ivith his disciples and a great number of people, 
 blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side, begging. And 
 when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began 
 to cry out, and say, Jesus, have m.ercy on me. Luke, 
 also, (xviii. 35.) speaks of only one blind man. 
 
 What is there here, we still ask, of contradiction or 
 inaccuracy"? Of these two blind men whom Jesus, in 
 the midst of so many other works, healed at Jericho, one 
 more remarkable than the other, perhaps better known 
 than the other, spoke to Jesus in the name of both. 
 Mark speaks of him alone, he even tells us his name ; 
 but does not say that he was alone. Matthew then has 
 named them both. The narratives of the three evan- 
 gelists are equally true, without being exactly alike. 
 What is there extraordinary in this % 
 
 But, we are told, " there is a still greater difficulty in 
 this same narrative ;" let us hear it : 
 
 It is a third example. "Matthew and Mark inform 
 us that the event occurred as Jesus was going out of 
 Jericho ; whilst Luke tells us that it took place as Je.sus 
 was draiving nigh to Jericho. Palpable contradiction !" 
 has been uttered more than once. 
 
 How can you prove that? What do you know- 
 about it ? must be the reply. The details of this event 
 
136 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 are unknown to you, how can you show that these 
 statements are irreconcilable ; while on the contrary, 
 it is perfectly easy to harmonize them by a very simple 
 supposition. 
 
 St. Luke, as he does so often in the whole course of 
 his gospel, has united in his narrative, two successive 
 circumstances of the same event. Observe that it is he 
 alone of the three historians, who mentions the first 
 question ot Bavtimeus. Haii'mg heard the multitude 
 who were passing, he inquired what it was. This 
 question was proposed by the blind man before Jesus 
 entered the city of Jericho. Informed then as to the 
 character of this great propha whom he had never 
 known until then, he followed him, and joined the 
 crowd, who during the repast at the house of Zaccheus, 
 were waiting to meet Jesus as he should go out. It was 
 then they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was fassing. 
 (these words are in St. Luke.) Ho followed him thus 
 for some time ; the other blind man joined him ; and 
 their healing was not effected until the moment when 
 Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, loas going out of 
 Jericho, where he had stopped only to visit the happy 
 Zaccheus at his own house. 
 
 This simple explanation dissipates all the pretended 
 contradiction of these three texts. 
 
 Fourth example. — St. Matthew (ch. xxvii. 5 ) says 
 that Judas hung himself; Ptter, in the Acts (i. 18,) 
 says that falliyig headlong, he burst nsunder in the 
 mill si, and all his bowels gushed out. 
 
 Some have said, that here is contradiction. 
 
 We remember, that at Geneva, in a public confer- 
 ence, where we were drf nding this very thesis with 
 our dear friend, Professor Monod, then Pastor at Lyons, 
 
ERRORS. 137 
 
 he cited three analogous features of a lamentable death 
 of which he had been almost the witness. An unhappy- 
 man in Lyons, to be more sure of his destruction, and 
 to give himself a double death, placed himself upon 
 the window-sill of the fourth story, and then shot him- 
 self in the mouth with a pistol. The very same narra- 
 tor of this sad event, might, said he, have made three 
 different statements ; and yet all the three exact. In 
 the first, he might have described the entire occurrence ; 
 in the second, he could have said this man died by a 
 shot ; and in the third, he threw himself down from the 
 window ! 
 
 Such was also the voluntary punishment by which 
 the wretched Judas went to his own place. He hung 
 himself, and he fell down headlong : his body burst 
 open, and all his entrails gushed out. The statement 
 of only one more circumstance of this frightful death 
 would have given us the connecting link. It has not 
 been given us ; but who would therefore venture to 
 maintain that there is contradiction ? 
 
 Fifth example. — Here it appears to me desirable to 
 enumerate the majority of those cases in which various nu- 
 merical calculations may appear to be at variance ; as, for 
 instance, that of the talents of gold brought from Ophirto 
 king Solomon (1 Kings ix. 28 ; 2 Chron. viii. 18 ;) that 
 of the numbering of the Israelites in the time of David 
 (2 Sam. xxiv. 9 ; 1 Chron. xxi. 5 ;) that of the children 
 of the patriach Jacob, transported into Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 
 26,27; Deut. X. 22 ; Acts vii. 14.) <fcc. One single 
 circumstance, in addition to these rapid recitals, will at 
 once place them in accord before us. King Solomon 
 might, in the one case, have reckoned the gross amount 
 of his revenue, and in the other have deducted thirty tal- 
 12* 
 
1 38 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 ents therefrom for the expenses of the navy. The number- 
 ing of David might exhibit two results, according as it 
 included, or was exclusive of, the ordinary military force 
 (militia) already numbered throughout the kingdom 
 (288,000 men with their officers of every rank, 1 Chron. 
 xxvii. I ; 2 Sam. xxiii. 8.) Finally, there might be 
 sixty-six, seventy, or seventy-five persons for the family 
 of the Patriarch, according as we reckon, on the one 
 hand, Jacob with Joseph, and his two sons ; on the 
 other, Ifer, Onda and Dinah ; and to these latter maybe 
 added the wives of the eleven patriarchs We abstain, 
 however, from entering into the examination of these 
 details ; it is necessary only to point them out. 
 
 Sixth example. — St. Matthew, in the tvventy-seventh 
 chapter of his gospel (verses 9 and 10,) quotes, as from 
 Jeremiah, words which are not recorded in the book of 
 that prophet. " Then (he writes) was fulfilled that 
 which was spoken by Jeremy the frophet^ saying, and 
 they received the thirty pieces of silver, the price of 
 him that was valued, and whom [men) among the child- 
 ren of Israel did value ;" ^c. 
 
 This has been denounced as "an evident error!" 
 these words being only met with in the book of Zacha- 
 riah(xi. 13.) 
 
 We will not reply, with Augustine, that several 
 Greek manuscripts have only the words, " Then was 
 fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet;" let 
 us therefore follow those only which do contain the 
 name of Jeremiah.* It is true, that even in the present 
 day, among the Greek manuscripts of our public libra- 
 ries, there are two which do not record the name of this 
 
 * Possumus ergo dicere liis potiiis codiciUiis esse rredendum qui Jere- 
 misB uomen noa habent. — De Cuncensu Evang. lib. vii. c. 7. 
 
ERRORS. 1 39 
 
 prophet ; — and that among the most ancient versions, 
 the Syriac and Persic also, it is not recorded. This so- 
 kition, however, does not appear to us in harmony 
 with the ordinary rules of sacred criticism, and Au- 
 gustine himself ingenuously admits that he is not satis- 
 fied with it, because, even in his time, the majority of 
 Latin and Greek copies contained, in this sentence, the 
 name of Jeremiah. 
 
 Some learned men, consequently, presume that this 
 name might easily, by error, have crept into the text ; 
 and that the transcribers, having remarked in the mar- 
 gin these letters, Zov (which are used as an abridge- 
 ment of the name of Zechariah,) may inadvertently 
 have made it 'lot;, and they run it into the text, think- 
 ing they read the name of Jeremiah. But neither are 
 we satisfied with this explanation, because it rests on 
 only a hypothesis gratuitously opposed to the manuscripts 
 themselves, and because it opens the door to rash con- 
 clusions. Let us respect the integrity of manuscripts ! 
 In this lies our security. 
 
 I prefer, therefore, the explanation of Whitby, which 
 is this : we know by Jerome, he observes, that there ex- 
 isted in his day, an apocryphal book of the prophet Jere- 
 miah, in which the words quoted by St. Matthew are 
 found, letter for letter.* It is also known that the se- 
 cond book of Maccabees (ii. 1 — 9,) records many of 
 the actions and words of Jeremiah, which are taken 
 from another book, and not from his canonical prophe- 
 cies. Why, then, should not the words quoted by the 
 evangelist really have been pronounced by Jeremiah; 
 
 ' Lese nuper m quodam Hebraico volumine quod Nazarenae sectae Ile- 
 braens mihi abttilit, lliereniiffi apocryphum, in quohac ad vcrbum Scripta 
 repeii.— /i/erMtt in Malt, xxvii. 
 
140 OBJECTiOiSS. 
 
 and might they not have lived in the memory of the 
 church down to the time of Zechariah, who would then 
 himself theopneustically give them a place in holy 
 writ? as is the case in the traditional words of Enoch, 
 quoted in the epistle of Jude ;* or the traditional words 
 of Jesus Christ, quoted by St. Paul in the book of the 
 Acts.f What confirms the supposition, is, that the 
 words cited by St. Matthew, are only in part found in 
 Zechariah. Moreover, it is known that this prophet 
 loved to record the words of Jeremiah.J The Jews 
 were accustomed to say that the spirit of Jeremiah was 
 in Zechariah, and that the two prophets made one only. 
 Mede considers it very probable that chapters ix. x. and 
 xi. of Zechariah were primarily written by Jeremiah ; 
 now it is the last of these chapters which contains the 
 words quoted by St. Matthew. This evangelist could, 
 therefore, have given them as from Jeremiah, in the 
 same manner as the apostle Jude quotes as from Enoch 
 the words of his verses 14 and 15. 
 
 Seventh example. — Many difficulties have recently 
 been discovered, especially by the Germans, in recon- 
 cilinor the four evangelists in their accounts of the resur- 
 rection of the Lord. In order to abridge, we shall pre- 
 sent them all together, taking care to designate them in 
 the objection and in the reply, by the same letter of the 
 alphabet. 
 
 A. " According to Luke, the Gallilean women having returned 
 from the sepulchre, prepared their spices before the Sabbath (Luke 
 ixiii. 56;) whereas, nccording to Mark (xvi. 1, 2,) they had not 
 prepared them before Saturday evening, after the Sabbath. 
 
 B. According to Matthew, these women were only Mary Mag- 
 
 * Verses 14, 15. t Acts xx. 35. 
 
 X See Zech. i. 4 : Jer. xviii. 11 : Zech. iii. 8 ; and Jer. xxiii. 5. 
 
ERRORS, 141 
 
 dalene and the other Mary ; whereas, according to Mark, (xvi. 1,) 
 Salome was there ; and according to Luke, (xxiv. 10,) Joanna 
 and others. 
 
 C. According to Mark, (xvi. 2,) they went to the sepulchre at 
 sunrise : but according to John (xxi. 1,) it was yet dark. 
 
 D. If (as Matthew has itj the Jews had placed a guard at the 
 sepulchre, we can scarcely understand how v»omen could venture 
 to visit it with the intention of entering it. 
 
 E. Matthew (xxviii. 5.) tolls us that the women saw only one 
 angel at the tomb ; but Luke says (xxiv. 4,) that they r-av/ two ! 
 
 E. ?ilatthew (xxviii. 8,) tells us that the women having left the 
 sepulchre with fear and great joy, ran to inform the disciples of 
 what they had seen ; whilst Mark (xvi. 8,) says they were afraid, 
 and fled without speaking to any person, because they were ter- 
 niied. 
 
 G. Matthew (xxviii. 8,) says the women told the disciples what 
 had happened ; but John says that only Peter and himself were 
 informed. 
 
 H. According to the first three evangelists, Mary Magdalene, 
 having reached the sepulchre, saw there angels who informed her 
 that Jesus had risen ; while, according to John, (xx. 2,) she merely 
 said to the disciples that they had taken away the Lord, saying no- 
 thing about his resurrection, nor even about the angels, ^^ay, she 
 says — " and we know not where they have laid him." 
 
 /. Luke (xxiv. 12,) seems to imply that it was Peter alone who 
 went to inform the others ; whereas John (xx. 2,) says he was 
 with Peter. 
 
 K. If you attend only to the three first evangehsts, many wo- 
 men appear to have witnessed the apparition of the angels and the 
 resurrection of Jesus ; whereas John would imply that Mary 
 Magdalene alone was honored with these revelations. 
 
 L. Luke says (xxiv, 23, 24,) that Mary and the women return- 
 ing from the sepulchre, reported only the removal of the body of 
 Jesus, and the apparition of the angels ; that the}' had not seen 
 the Lord ; whereas Matthew (xxviii. 9.) says that Jesus appeared 
 to them while they were yet in the way. 
 
 Here then are eleven contradictions, not indeed affecting the 
 substance of the sacred narrative, and tvhich need not disturb our 
 faith, but which destroy all the theory of a plenary inspiration." 
 
142 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 This objection, we confess, did seem to us too super- 
 ficial and too frequently answered, to justify us no- 
 ticing it in the first edition of this work. But it has 
 been presented anew to us, and we deem it proper to 
 reply. 
 
 The day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for the 
 disciples, began at the first dawning of day (John xx. 1,) 
 and continued until midnight, (Luke xxiv. 29, 33, 36.) 
 The sepulchre where their Master had been laid, was 
 not far from their place of residence, since it is even 
 brought within the walls of the modern Jerusalem. The 
 disciples and the women might then easily go often and 
 in many ways to it, during this incomparable Sabbath. 
 But, as each one of the four evangelists has prescribed 
 to himself in this narrative, a remarkable brevity, it is 
 very evident that their statements concerning the num- 
 berless incidents of that day may easily appear at first 
 sight, confused. Each one must tell the truth, and only 
 the truth ; but none of them is ob]io:ed to tell the whole 
 truth. Their very conciseness then ma3r make their 
 harmony somewhat obscure at first. Each one had his 
 own object in his narration ; he pursued that, without 
 troubling himself to reconcile his statement with an- 
 other, whicli he knew must in fact correspond with his 
 own. What more can be required of them? One 
 speaks chiefly of Mary Magdalene, because Jesus chose 
 to appear first to her ; another of Peter, because Jesus 
 manifested himself to him, notwithstanding his crime, 
 and because he was called to one of the first ranks in 
 the Church of God ; two others mention the remarka- 
 ble interview at Emmaus, on account of the instructive- 
 ness and tenderness of the scene ; three others, finally, 
 
ERRORS. 143 
 
 speak of his appearing to the eleven, because they were 
 to be the foundations and pillars of the Church. 
 
 Moreover you can see in their histories many features 
 which indicate that they know much which they would 
 delight to relate, if they were not divinely directed to be 
 concise. We will give some examples. 
 
 1. You hear St. Paul saj^ng (1 Cor. xv. 5,) that Je- 
 sus was first seen of Cephas, and then of the twelve. — 
 Yet none of the evangelists has mentioned this appear- 
 ing to Peter. — Surely then it is well that Luke (xxiv. 
 34,) says in the most incidental way, while describing 
 a dialogue between Cleopas and others ; " the Lord has 
 appeared to Simon." But for this word the adversaries 
 of theopneusty would not have failed to say, Paul was 
 mistaken, and he has read the gospels carelessly, for 
 they have not said a word of this appearing, in all their 
 quadruple narrative. 
 
 2. Thus Luke also, who (in the 12th verse) speaks 
 only of Peter, takes care however, afterwards (24) to 
 make the disciples of Emmaus say ; " certain of them 
 that were with us, went to the sepulchre." 
 
 3. Thus too Mark, although he does not mention the 
 manifestation to the women, nor that to Peter, yet in- 
 serts this one word which intimates that he knew of 
 others ; '• Jesus appeared first (first !) to Mary Magda- 
 lene." 
 
 4. Finally John in writing the supplement to the 
 other gospels, while he speaks of Mary Magdalene 
 alone, thus indicates by the use of a single pronoun, 
 that she was not alone : " They have taken away the 
 Lord, and we do not know where they have laid him." 
 
 Thus then, to establish the charge of a contradiction 
 between the four parts of this history, it must be shewn 
 
144 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 that they are irreconcilable upon all the suppositions 
 which we are obliged to make concerning the succes- 
 sive events of the day. But who can do that? On the 
 contrary, it is perfectly easy to suppose a natural course 
 of events which would reconcile all these statements. 
 So far indeed is the problem from being insoluble, that 
 several perfectly satisfactory solutions have been made. 
 They have been founded upon different, but equally ad- 
 missible suppositions concerning the number and order 
 of visits to the sepulchre by Mary, the disciples and the 
 women. Olshausen, Hess and Griesbach reconciled 
 the difficulties by admitting that at day break Mary 
 Magdalene left her companions on the way to the tomb, 
 and arrived there first. John Le Clerc imagines that 
 Mary having come to the tomb the second time with the 
 disciples, remained there longer than they, and that the 
 other women went twice. Mr. Hengstenberg has made 
 still more simple but equally probable suppositions. 
 
 To this it is replied — " suck hypothesis do not deny 
 that there is a contradiction : they merely shew that 
 there may not be oner But what more can be required % 
 The opponents to inspiration do nothing more than this 
 in their turn. 
 
 Rather then than repl}^ separately to each one of the 
 eleven objections above stated, we shall content ourselves 
 with exhibiting the series of events such as we may im- 
 agine it from the four narrations. — It is almost the ar- 
 rangement proposed by Le Clerc in his Evangelical 
 Harmony. Others may prefer that presented by Ols- 
 hausen in his Biblical Commentary, or that of Mr. 
 Hengstenberg, very recently published in his Evangel 
 ical Gazette. — But it is immaterial ! Our account wil' 
 remove, one after another, the eleven pretended contra- 
 
ERRORS. 145 
 
 dictions. We employ the same letter for the solution as 
 for the objection which it answers. 
 
 A. Jesus had died on Friday evening at three o'clock. 
 The Sabbath, which was to commence three hours af- 
 terwards, was one of two-fold solemnity, being- the 
 weekly Sabbath and the Passover Sabbath. As it grew 
 late {Matt, xxvii. 46, 57 ; Mark xv. 34, 42,) Joseph of 
 Arimathea went to obtain from Pilate the body of Je- 
 sus : he had procured the right to dispose of it ; accom- 
 panied by Nicodemus, who caused a quintal of myrrh 
 and aloes to be carried to the sepulchre (John xix. 39,) 
 he had purchased a winding-sheet ; he had taken down 
 the body from the cross ; he had covered it with spices, 
 bound it in bands (John xix. 40,) and wrapped it in a 
 linen cloth (Luke xxiii. 53 ; Mark xv. 46 ; Matt, xxvii. 
 59 .;) then at last, being pressed for want of time, he 
 Hastened to lay it in a sepulchre near Golgotha. It 
 may readily be conceived then, that the holy women 
 (who had contemplated these funereal scenes from a dis- 
 tance, even to the moment when they closed the mouth 
 of the tomb with a great stone.) had very little time to 
 return home and prepare the spices which they had in 
 their possession. The Sabbath was just commencing : 
 and however holy their occupations seemed to them- 
 selves, they suspended them as the sun had disappeared : 
 nothing could interrupt for them the repose and silence 
 of this day. [r'lavy.aaui' — Luke xxiii. 56.) But as soon 
 as it was past (that is from six o'clock on Saturday even- 
 ing,) they ran to purchase spices, to complete their pious 
 preparations, which had been barely commenced. This 
 funereal operation required a considerable quantity of 
 myrrh, aloes and other substances ; and doubtless, the 
 previous evening they could not perceive from such a 
 13 
 
146 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 tiistance, that Nicodemus had already «ieposited in the 
 tomb a hundred pounds of perfume. 
 
 Every thing thus far then harmonizes ; and it is by 
 these touching details that Luke and Mark, each in his 
 place, would notice the humble respect paid by these 
 pious women to the Sabbath ] the one (Luke xxiii. 56,) 
 in shewing us with what submission they at first sus- 
 pended even the most sacred labors : and the other 
 (Mark xvi. 1,) with wivdt care they refrained from re- 
 suming them until the sacred season was past. 
 
 B. In the meantime they went out to go to the sepul- 
 chre. John mentions only Magdalene, because Jesus 
 Christ had chosen her to be the first witness of the great- 
 est of miracles, and because she was the essential actor 
 m his narrative. He takes care at the same time to 
 make her say ; '■' We know not where they have laid 
 him!" In general, the evangelists shew very little so- 
 licitude to accumulate evidence. And, if the apparition 
 with which the women were favored, had not been the 
 first, it is probable that the sacred historians would not 
 have mentioned it. We may infer this from the man- 
 ner in which Paul proceeds, (1 Cor. xv. 5, 8,) who men- 
 tions only the apostles and not the women. His com- 
 plete silence sufficiently explains to us the partial silence 
 <jf the evangelists.* 
 
 C. It was almost night (John xvi. 1,) when the women 
 left their house, with the spices, to ^o tu the sepulchre 
 
 * It is a remark of Hen;:steuberg. We recommend his dissertation to 
 those who are desiroii.-« of a more extejided explaiwition. In order to shew 
 aprivii, how improbalile rire ihe contradictions attributed to the evangel- 
 ists, he establishes that Mark evidently had under his eyes the work of 
 Matthew, and John that of l.uke. He says, "an attentive comparison of 
 T-uke (vii. 12) with .Toh;'. (vi. 3—10) will leave no doubt of this. John, in 
 order to make his gospel more completely a supplement of Luke's, bor- 
 rows nearly all his terms." 
 
ERRORS. 1 47 
 
 {a/c to fti'7]itnov j) but the sun was up when they cor- 
 rivcd there (e'-n' to fiirjuetor^ Mark xvi, 2.) — The twi- 
 lights in southern latitudes are very short. 
 
 D. They enquired on the wny, how they could roll 
 away the enormous stone with which the mouth of the 
 sepulchre was closed (Mark xvi. 3.) — During the re- 
 pose and silence of the Sabbath (Luke xxiii. 56,) how 
 could they have learned that guards were placed there ? 
 (Matthew xxviii. 66.) 
 
 E. In the meantime there was an earthquake. (Mat- 
 thew xxviii. 2.) An angel, brilliant as the lightning, and 
 clothed in a splendid robejhad descended from heaven, and 
 rolled away the stone. The guards, all terrified, after 
 becoming like dead men, had fled — But what was the 
 astonishment of the women, on arriving, to find it open 
 and empty ! A young man only, clothed in a white 
 raiment, was sitting on the right hand, within the sep- 
 ulchre. (Mark xvi. 5 ) Tv.o men in shining'garments 
 then showed themselves, (Luke xxiv. 4:) they were an- 
 gels. (Mark and Matthew mention only him who had 
 rolled away the stone, and had fpoken to them.) 
 
 F. In the meantime, the holy women, going speedih/- 
 from the sepulchre, fled away filled with fear and joy. 
 (Matthevv-. xxviii. 8: Marie xvi. 8.) They were care- 
 ful, in returning to the city, not to communicate to any 
 person, Avhat had happened. Were they afraid of the 
 svmhedrim? Or rather did they not wish to confine 
 the cheering news to the circle of those w^ho loved 
 him? — Notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, they 
 might meet a great number of Jews in the avenues and 
 squares of that immense city, where, during the festi- 
 vals, there were more than three million souls. The 
 governor Florus. in the year 65, counted there, says 
 
1 48 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Josephus, 250,000 paschal lambs ; which implies that 
 there were at least 2,500,000 worshippers, without 
 counting the sick, the unclean and the children.* 
 
 G. Having found the eleven and the other disciples, 
 the women related to them all that they had seen (Mark 
 xxviii. 8 ; Luke xxiv. 9.) But this story appeared to 
 them only a dream (Luke xxiv. 10.) Then Mary 
 Magdalene, turning more particularly to Peter and 
 John, assured them that at least, if their master 
 had not arisen from the dead, he was taken away (John 
 XX. 2.) 
 
 H. From the narrative even of John, Mary must 
 necessarily have told the disciples more than he has 
 directly reported : for he adds that they ran to the tomb, 
 and that as soon as John had seen the arrangement 
 of the grave clothes, he believed.— But, alas ! this lan- 
 guage of Mary — "they have taken away my Lord, and 
 I knovv' not where they have laid him," was but too 
 natural! — The transient appearing of the. angels had 
 not produced a sufficiently deep conviction to prevent 
 its being shaken by the«cold and incredulous reception 
 of her story by the apostles. These men to whom she 
 was accustomed to look up for guidance, had doubtless 
 more than once checked her active imagination. She 
 saw them treat her celestial vision as a revery. Then 
 she had no courage left to tell any thing more than the 
 vulgar and material part of the transaction. At least, 
 said she, the sepulchre is open, and the body is no longer 
 there ! 
 
 /. In the mean time, Peter, on hearing these words, 
 and whilst Cleopas was departing for Emmaus, arose, 
 says Luke, (xxiv. 12,) ran to the tomb, but not alone 
 
 • Hist, of Jew. Wars, II. 13. 
 
ERRORS. 149 
 
 (24 ;) and John tells us that he was accompanied by 
 "the other disciple whom Jesus loved" (John xx. 2, 3.) 
 John, being the younger, arrived the first : he did not 
 enter ; but, stooping down, he saw the linen bandages 
 lying on the ground. t*eter, stooping also, saw the 
 linen clothes (Luke xxiv. 12,) and the napkin with 
 which his head had been bound, lying by itself. He 
 had the courage to enter, and was astonished (Luke 
 xxiv. 12 :) but John did better ; he entered too, and be- 
 lieved. Then they returned home (John xx. 10. Luke 
 xxiv. 12.) — There is nothing discordant in all this. 
 
 K. In the mean time Mary Magdalene, who had 
 followed them, having returned to the sepulchre, re- 
 mained alone at the place, weeping, and distressed that 
 she could not find the body of her master. She stooped 
 to look into the interior of the sepulchre, and then it was 
 that two angels again presented themselves to her 
 view. They were seated, one at the head, and the 
 other at the foot of the place where the Lord had lain 
 (John XX. 11, 13.) — Immediately afterwards, Mary 
 having turn?d her head around, saw Jesus behind her, 
 — " go," said he to her, " to my brethren, and tell them : 
 I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and 
 your God !" — Mary hastened to announce to the disci- 
 ples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said 
 these things (John xx 18:) but they did not believe 
 her (Mark xvi. 10.) It is thus then, as Mark says (xvi. 
 9.) that Jesus appeared ^rs/ to Mary Magdalene. 
 
 Every thing here is natural, harmonious ; the his- 
 torians are in manifest accordance. — Only each one re- 
 lates some of the great events of that incomparable 
 day, Avithout deeming himself obliged to relate all. 
 
 L. The two disciples, on their departure from Jeru- 
 13* 
 
150 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 salem for Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 21, 24,) had as yet 
 learned only the first report of the women and the two 
 disciples ; the opening of the sepulchre, the removal oT 
 the body, the appearing of the angels ; but they had 
 not heard the last intelligence : the appearing of Jesus 
 to Peter and the second report of Mary (John xx. 18 ; 
 Mark xvi. 10.) — Now see what ensued. — After the ex- 
 ample of Magdalene, who had returned a second tim« 
 to the tomb after having informed the disciples of her 
 first discoveries, the other women also went there, while 
 .she was returning to the disciples : they had found the 
 sepulchre empty ; and, as they returned to attest to their 
 brethren that the body of Jesus could not be found, 
 Jesus had condescended to show himself to them, living 
 and full of sympathy. — They had v/orshipped him, and 
 he had said to them : " Fear not ! go tell my brethren 
 that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." 
 (Matthew, xxviii. 9, 10.) 
 
 Such is then the harmony of the sacred narratives. 
 This solution appears to us fully satisfactory. Another, 
 could be suggested, as we have said ; but this is suffi- 
 cient. We must confess, Ave cannot comprehend the 
 difficulties which some find there, nor why they should 
 lay such stress upon them. 
 
 Anothkr sourck of rash conclusions. — Certain 
 reigns, as that of Nebuchadnezzar, ns that of Jehoiakim, 
 and as that of Tiberius, have had two commencements : 
 and the dates which relate to them are pronounced 
 irreconcilable ; the first, before ascending the throne, 
 reigned three years with his father ; the second, reigned 
 un years with his father ; the third was associated with 
 Augustus in the government, from the 28th of August 
 
ERRORS. 151 
 
 of the year II of the Christian era, and yet did not suc- 
 ceed Augustus until the 19th of August of the year XIV.* 
 Some examples. — 2 Kings, xxiv. 8 ; and 2 Chron., 
 XXX vi. 9. See also Daniel, i. 1 ; ii. 1 ; Jeremiah, xxv. 1 : 
 2 Chron., xxxvi. 5 — 7. See also Luko iii. I. 
 
 Another source of rash conclusions. — It is fr«- 
 quently the case that the Holy Spirit has two very differ- 
 ent designs in relating the same fact in two different 
 Gospels ; and yet it is demanded by these objectors, 
 that the very same form should have been given in 
 every case to the narrative of the same event. And 
 when the narratives differ from each other, they pro- 
 nounce them inconsistent, and, in fact, contradictor}'- to 
 one another ! 
 
 Example. — The Holy Spirit, in the genealogy of 
 Jesus Christ, written in Matthew (i. 1 — 7.) designs to 
 shew Ihe Jews that, according to the rigor of their lau-, 
 Jesus Christ is the Son and heir of all the kings of 
 Jiiduh, by a legal descent; whilst the same Holy 
 Spirit, in the genealogy given by Luke, (iii. 23 — 38,) 
 designs to shov/ the Gentiles^ that Jesus Christ is the 
 Son of David by a natural descent. And because, 
 with this twofold d<sign, they give us, the one his 
 genealogy according to ihe laic, by Solomon, the Son 
 of David, and by Jacob, the father of Joseph. Mary's 
 husband ; and the other, his genealogy by nature, 
 through Nathan, another son of David, and through 
 Eli, the father of Mary, these objectors have, in their 
 icrnorance. pronounced their narratives contradictory If 
 
 ' Velleius Paferc. ii. c. 121. 
 
 t This difficulty is scarcely insisted on, any more. We can here only 
 indicate tlie mode of its solution. Its exposition requires a development 
 loo e.\tended for this volume. It may easily be found elsewhere. 
 
152 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Another source of rash conclustoxs. — A text 
 hadly translated produces a sense contrary to reason or 
 to history ; and immediately the sacred writer is ac- 
 cused of the grossest errors ! They do not examine 
 whether, in the purity of a better translation, the diffi- 
 culty would not vanish. 
 
 First example^ (it is likewise one of those cited by 
 Mr. Twesten :) — Luke, they tell ns, when he has spo- 
 ken (ii. 1.) of the census ordered by Csesar Augustus, 
 at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, adds these 
 words, in the second verse ; " this taxing was first 
 made, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria." 
 
 '• From this it would appear, that Luke was in flat 
 contradiction to contemporary history ; for, at the birth 
 of Jesus Christ, Judea was governed by Herod, whilst 
 Syria was governed by Satu minus, or rather, (from the 
 fifth year before the Christian era,) by Q,uintilius "Varus, 
 who succeeded him ; and during whose administration 
 Herod the Great died. The Cyrenius, (Publius Syrius 
 Q,uirinius.) under whom a second census was made, 
 was not Sent into the E.ist until at least eleven or twelve 
 years aft^r the birth of Jesus Christ. The historian 
 Josephus tells us,* in express terms, that this numbering 
 was made in the thirty-seventh year after the drfpat of 
 Anthony; and Ji-sus Christ was born, at the latest, 
 twenty-si.x years after that great event. It results ne- 
 cessarily, that St. Luke has confoimdrd two epochs and 
 two numberinos that were separated by an interval of 
 eleven years." 
 
 Before replying to this str^mw accusation, wo Avould 
 notice its extreme improltahilifv. even if we regard St. 
 Luke as an uninspired man. Can it be believed that 
 
 * Jud. Ant. xvii. Lj, xviii. 3. 
 
ERRORS. 153 
 
 Luke, the only one of the evangelists who was learned, 
 Luke the physician, Luke who afterwards speaks of 
 the census under duirinius, in referring- to that cele- 
 brated revolt under Judas the Galilean, by which all 
 Judea was agitated, and great numbers perished ;* Luke, 
 writing for all nations, a bock of history, of twenty-four 
 pages ; can it be believed that Luke was so for mista- 
 ken, as to place in the days of Herod the Great, an 
 event so important, and which had occurred but thirty 
 years before! What should we say of a physician in 
 our day, who, even in a simple conversation, should 
 put the battle of Austerlitz in the days of Catherine II.. 
 and of the national convention ? And if he should pub- 
 lish an account, containing such an anachronism, 
 what reception would his work meet from his contem- 
 poraries, even the most illiterate ? It has thus often 
 occurred, that in representing the sacred writers as con- 
 tradicting themselves, they are also represented to be so 
 stupid, as to involve almost a miracle ! 
 
 But we return to the passage. It is a parenthesis. 
 According to the accent which is placed upon the first 
 word, [uvxt]) it becomes either a demonstrative pronoun, 
 or a pronominal adjective ; and the phrase must then be 
 translated literally^ m the first case, by this first enrol- 
 ment ; and in the second case, b)'' the very first enrol- 
 ment. It is in this last sense that this word has been 
 rendered by the authors of the new version, published 
 some months since by a society of ministers in Swit- 
 zerland ; and this we think to be the true rendering. 
 
 There is nothing, then, in St. Luke's narrative, that 
 is not entirely natural and exact. After having spoken, 
 in the first verse, of an ordinance of Augustus, which 
 
 • Acts V. 37. 
 
154 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 began to be executed under Herod's reign, he apprises 
 us, in the parenthesis of the second verse, that this 
 enrolment must not be confounded with the too famous 
 census of which all Judea still preserved such tragical 
 recollections. The. very Jiist enrolmerU^ says he, was 
 made ivhile Cyrenius was yet goveraor of Syria. 
 This is the simple and literal translation of the Greek* 
 Second example : — St Paul.t according to our trans- 
 lation, says : there is a natural body, (in French, ani- 
 mal body,) and there is a spiritual body ; and this ex- 
 pression has been sometimes condemned as contradic- 
 tory. That which is corporenl, we are told, cannot be 
 spiritual, nor that which is spiiitunl, corporeal. '-Set 
 tie that ; a spiritual body !" (says the professor of The- 
 ology in the academy of Geneva, in his treatise upon 
 the use of reason in matters of fiith.) But all the diffi- 
 culty in settling that, lies in the unfaithfulness of the 
 translation. In the language of the Scriptures, the 
 word so inappropriately rendered animal in the French, 
 signifies endowd w'llh a soul, mored by a soul, [yeiou- 
 Fvog elg yu/r^v 'cC: aav ;) and the woid which is translated 
 
 * Olher.s, in tnking Trp'^^rr) in the sense of -rp'^r^pa, fis the TTjOwroj /loo fjv 
 of John llie F]!i|iiisf,(.l()hn i. ].", 30.) translate it thus: " tlii.s eniolnieiit was 
 made before tliM( Cyreniiis." '^.c. Tills Irinislatioii wonlil still he leiritimate, 
 althoLi'ih perhaps less natural, liecaiise the Greek would, in this sense, re- 
 fiemhie less the ordinary style of St. I.iiUp. 
 
 Traiislutfr's N'i!e.—\Ve confess ourselves a little in the dark as to the 
 author's meaning, while we (eel confident of liaviiig fairly rendered his 
 lancruage. To ns he leive-. the ditll< nlty unsolved. W'e therefoie pre- 
 sume to add that if Tr/j'-ri I'e rendered hffofp. and aniyp:i(ft~'i; be under- 
 stood after it, yon have ac()inplete>ense. ac -ordiuL' too with facts. Thus ; 
 "this same enndment whs heiore the enrolment by Cyrenius." S-c. And 
 as the HUtliiir sn2r'.'ests. I.nke knew ilie da'e of this famous taxinsr under 
 Cyrenius, which he calls i,i reporiinu Gamaliel's speech (.^cts5. 37.) '■'■the 
 taxing'" We refer the imjuisiiive to Tholuck's Cilaubwurdigkeit der 
 Evangr. Gesliichie, p. 156, edit. 2. 
 
 t 1 Cor. XV. 14. 
 
ERRORS. 155 
 
 spirili/al. signifies moved by the Spirit^ endowed by or 
 Villi, the Holy Spirit ; {nvevim e/mp,) says Jude, verse 
 19 ; ( yi^Oitet'og eig nftvf.nx Quionoiovv^,^ SayS St. Paul. 
 Tlinc is, liirn, nothing contradictory in speaking of a 
 gio rifled body endowed with the HoJy Spirit and moved 
 by the Eloly Spirit. 
 
 Third example: — It has been alleged, especially in 
 the bosom of the Romish Church, which uses the Vul- 
 gate, that the language of Elihu (Job xxxvii. 18.) is 
 tinctured with error. St. Jerome renders it — Tu for- 
 sita/L cum eo fabricates es cazlos, qui solidissimi quasi 
 (zre fiisi sunt ? — Hast thou indeed, with him, built the 
 heavens, which are very solid, as if they loere made of 
 molten brass ? 
 
 " This passage," we are told, " which contradicts so manifestly 
 the truth of facts, is that which the great Galileo quoted, when 
 defending before the court of Rome, the earth's rotary motion. 
 And he was |jcrfcctly justifiable, in quoting it ; and others are jus- 
 tifiable, who still quote it for the purpose of proving that we must 
 not expect to find the language of the Scri[)tures always exempt 
 from errors, when they treat of truths belonging exclusively to the 
 order and movements of matter." 
 
 But here again, all the mistake is in the translation. 
 It has ahnost as many errors as words. 
 
 First fault. — It is not said in the Hebrew, as molten 
 brass ;* but, as a brazen mirror ; which shews that 
 the comparison refers to the brilliancy, and in no wise 
 to the solidity of the heavens. 
 
 Second fault. — Nor is it said in the Hc-brew, thau 
 hast built, or cmistructed ; but, thoii hast spread out, 
 thou hast made an expanse ; which shews that space is 
 here referred to, jjnd not a solid fabric. 
 
 ' This objection lies rather against the Latin, than against our Englisb 
 version.— 7 Vans. 
 
156 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Third fault. — Tn supposing (what is not true) that 
 Elihu here speaks of the Heavens. This word, in the 
 Hebrew, is not used in the objective case, but in the da- 
 tive ; although the prefixed preposition ^ is sometimes, 
 it is said, taken accusatively, after the manner of the 
 Syriac. It should then have been rendered, not che 
 heavens; hut, for the heavens. 
 
 Fourth fault. — There is not a word said here about 
 the heavens. The word of the original is not tlT)^'!!?' but 
 Q^pntU- The Ixx, who translate the first of these words 
 four hundred and thiity-seven times by the heavens, have 
 translated the latter, in this verse, by nahnMt.ianx. a 
 term which has no relation to the heavens., and the 
 meaning of \Yhich in this place moreover, no one has 
 been able to comprehend. 
 
 Whatever may have been the object intended by this 
 Hebrew expression, whose meaning is unceitain, one 
 thing at least is certain ; it is that all idea of solidity is 
 perfectly excluded here ; and that on the contrary, the 
 expression designates that which is most attenuated and 
 subtile. Thus Buxtorf has rendered it — res tenuissima 
 et sublilissima ; Kimchi : jmlvis tenuissimus, qui ex- 
 suffiatus, oh tenuitatem evolat ; — most attenuated dust, 
 which, from its lightness, is blown away by a breath ; 
 and its root appears to signify : to grind, to waste. 
 (The waters wear away the stones, says Job xiv. 19,) — 
 It must then have been a great error, to make of it, a 
 vault of the most solid brass in the heavens. This word, 
 in fact, is employed in Isaiah, to designate the smallest 
 dust which adheres to the balance, without changing 
 its equilibrium (Isaiah xl. 15); it is twice translated by. 
 the air ('i'/v) i" '^^"^^ Ixx.* Eight limes by cloud 
 
 * 2 Sam. x.\ii. V.I. Ps. xviii. 12. 
 
ERRORS. 157 
 
 (^vscpeUfj ; and four times by cloud (^vecpog)* It is 
 rendered only once by firmament^ once by the heavens, 
 and once by the stars (uorou).! probably because God 
 has sown the stars in space, like dust. 
 
 Fifth fault. — Finally, the Hebrew has not the super- 
 lative very solid, but the simple adjective Jir7}i, fixed. 
 
 What then must be the meaning of this passage ? 
 We have already said, that it is impossible to find any 
 meaning in the translation of it by the Ixx ; as also no- 
 thing can authorize that of St. Jerome, on which the ob- 
 jection has been founded. If then we were now per- 
 mitted to hazard the translation of a sentence which has 
 been considered very obscure, we would render it liter- 
 ally by these words ; " hast thou made with him an ex- 
 panse for the fixed stars, jmre and brilliant as a molten 
 mirror ?"t 
 
 Fourth Examjjle. — St. Matthew (iv. 5.) immediately 
 after the first temptation, saj'S ; that then the devil led 
 Jesus into the holy city ; . . . and when this second 
 temptation was ended, he adds (v. 8.) in commencing the 
 description of the third ; that the devil led him again 
 upon a very high mountain, <SfC. ... St. Luke, on the 
 contrary, (iv. 5.) immediately after the first temptation, 
 says, that afterward the devil led him upon a high 
 mountaiu; and when this second temptation was ended, 
 he adds in commencing the account of the third : he led 
 him also to Jerusalem. . . 
 
 ■ Rosenmuller here renders it by : nubes, quae, etsi solutse et laxse, &.C., 
 clouds, which, although loose and open, &c. (Schol. in v. t. in Job.) 
 
 tJer. li. 9. 
 
 ; We adopt here the interpretation of the Chaldee paraphrase which at- 
 tributes the sense of mirror in this phrase, only to the lust word p21D, 
 and which translates ij^-, by appearance; " whose appearance is that of a 
 molten mirror." 
 
 14 
 
158 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 " Here then are two evangelists in evident disagree- 
 ment as to the order of the three temptations. Neces- 
 sarily one of them is wrong, in placing the last before 
 the second." Such is the objection. 
 
 You shall see this difficulty vanish likewise, as soon 
 as you quit the human versions, and go to the original. 
 We might cite here many other passages, chiefly in the 
 Epistles, where the meaning is obscured by a want of 
 sufficiently regarding the conjunctions and adverbs, ««/, 
 de y&Q, ovv^ Tore, &c. 
 
 Every one knows that St. Luke in writing his gospel, 
 has not described events in the order of time, but of na- 
 ture. Each of these methods has its own advantages. 
 in biographical writing. Among profane writers, for 
 example, Nepos has adopted the one, and Suetonius the 
 other. The translators of Luke, therefore, must pay 
 special attention to his language, and not lend him ad- 
 verbs of time, order and rank, which it never entered 
 his mind to employ, and which so awkwardly change 
 the meaning of his discourse. Restore here the Qreek 
 conjunctions, and you will quickly perceive the contra- 
 diction of the two French texts disappear. 
 
 St. Matthew, who always follows the chronological 
 order of facts, is careful to employ the adverbs with 
 great exactness, in the progress of his account of the 
 temptation : Toie^ioTs^nuhv^T^is^ioTe^ then, then, again, 
 thc7i^ then. But on the contrary, St. Luke, who has 
 not intended to pursue the same course, and who had 
 no other design than to shew us the three attacks to 
 which the Son of God had to submit his holy humanity ; 
 St. Luke scrupulously abstains from employing any ad- 
 verb of time or order, and contents himself with connect- 
 
ERRORS. 159 
 
 ing the facts of his narrative, ten times by the copula- 
 tive, AKD [yea] which our translations have so badly 
 rendered by the adverb then, or afterwards. 
 
 The contradiction then does not pertain to the sacred 
 text. 
 
 Another source of rash conclusions. — It has not 
 been sufficiently kept in mind that speeches and ac- 
 tions were repeated more than once during oui' Savior's 
 ministry ; so that some have very imprudently imagined 
 that they observed contradictions in certain statements 
 of two evangelists, where they found only an imperfect 
 resemblance, and where at the same time, they imagined 
 themselves to be reading identical facts. 
 
 Examples. — We have in the twofold miracle of the 
 multiplication of the loaves of bread, a very striking ex- 
 ample of the facility with which we may be led into er- 
 ror in this way. Twice Jesus Christ, moved with com- 
 passion for the people, nourished a starving multitude 
 in the desert. The circumstances of both miiachs have 
 many and striking points of resemblance. If it had 
 happened that two of the evangelists had related only 
 the first, and two others only the Sf^cond, the cavillers 
 had not failed to cry out at the identity of the facts and 
 the contradiction of the statements. '• What ! in the 
 one, five thousand men fed with five loaves ; and in the 
 othi-r, four thousand nun fed with seven loaves ! In the 
 one, twelve baskets full [x6(fi)oi'c) carried away ; in 
 the other, seven baskets (aTTfjjMuc !) What disagree- 
 ment !" Happily, if Luke and John have mentioned 
 only the first, Matthew and Mark have related both. 
 But for that : what a noise had such a passage made in 
 the school of the adversaries ! 
 
160 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 This remark may be applied to many features of the 
 New Testament ; for example, to the Lord's Prayer, 
 whicli was given, at least twice to the disciples, during 
 the ministry of our Lord. (Matt. vi. 9 ; Luke xi. 2.) 
 
 See also, Mathew xii. 39, and xvi. 1,4; Luke viii. 
 21, xi. 27, and Matthew xii. 49. Luke ix. 1, x. l,and 
 Matthew x. 1. 
 
 We will propose yet another example. 
 
 It does not appear, when Ave look closely at it, that 
 the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. vi. vii.) and that 
 which St. Luke gives us in the latter half of his 6th 
 chapter, were pronounced on the same occasion.* In 
 fact: I.Luke omits many sentences reported by Mat- 
 thew,! and he adds some others (v. 24 to 26;) 2. Mat- 
 thew notifies us that the Sermon which he reports, pre- 
 ceded the healing of the leper (viii. 3 ;) and Luke, that 
 his followed it (v. 12 ;) 3. Luke places MattheAV among 
 the number of those whom Jesus had already called to 
 the apostleship, and who descended from the mountain 
 with him before he delivered his discourse to them ; 
 while Matthew himself teaches us that the Sermon of 
 which he speaks, preceded his vocation by many days. 
 4. Finally, one of the discourses was delivered wpon a 
 mouiittiiri.^ whilst Jesus was seated, with his disciples 
 around him; the other, on the contrary, was delivered 
 in the plain, and under other circumstances. We pause 
 at this remark to assure those who may have heard al- 
 Icdged against the doctrine of inspiration, the pretended 
 contradiction of the sentence in which Matthew (ver. 
 40,) makes Jesus say; " If any man will take away 
 thy coat, [xmht'u) hi him have thy cloak [luajiov) 
 
 • See WIiitl)y on Matt. v. 5. 
 
 T For example, Mall. v. 13-39. All the chapter vi. and vii. 6—15. 
 
ERRORS. 161 
 
 also;" to that where, according to Luke, he said; 
 "Him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not, to take 
 the coat also."* No objection, we obsevvp, can be 
 made fiom this diversity, since these two sentences were 
 pronounced, on ditfeient days. 
 
 Yet, we ought also to say, because this remark is ap- 
 plicable to many other objections of the same kind; al- 
 though it may have been true that these two passages 
 had been quoted as the same fragment of the same dis- 
 course, their difference had not still caused us any kind 
 of surprise. We believe that the Holy Spirit, when he 
 quotes the Holy Spirit, is not limited to the employment 
 of the same terms, provided he preserves the same mean- 
 ing. A man of an exact mind, when he repeats him- 
 self or quotes himself, does not feel himself in the least 
 degree bound to carry his imitation to the very words. 
 And we think that the Lord's commandment was equally 
 represented in each of these two sentences of Luke and 
 Matthew, (refer to what we say upon the same sub- 
 ject, chap. iii. sect. 2.) 
 
 Ax\'0THER SOURCE OF RASH CONCLUSIONS. — Somptimes 
 a variation critically respectable, which removed a dif- 
 ficulty, has not been noticed: and they have preferred 
 to impute the contradiction to the sacred writer ! 
 
 Example. — " According to tlie three first evangelists (Mark xv. 
 •25, 33, 34; Matt, xxvii. 45, 4G; Luke xxiii. 44, bA.) our Savior 
 was suspended on the cross at the third hour ot' the da}' ; that is, 
 at nine o'clock in the morning; the sun was darkened at the sixth 
 hour ; and Jesus gave up the ghost at the ninth hour ; whereas 
 if St. John is to be behevt-d, (xix. 14,) the punisFiinejit rould not 
 have commenced before the sixUi Iloilt, (at mid-day.) Palpable 
 contradiction !" 
 
 * Luke vi. 29. 
 
 14* 
 
162 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Before replying to this difficulty, we shall present a 
 remark quite similar to that which we have already 
 made concerning the enrolment under Cyrenius. Was 
 it likely that the apostle John was ignorant of the length 
 of time occupied by the punishment of his master; and 
 could he make such a mistake as to substitute three 
 hours for six ; he who had remained before the cross ! 
 
 But, if we consult the Greek manuscripts of St. John, 
 we find four in small letters, and three in uncial or cap- 
 ital letters (among others, the famous manuscript of Be- 
 za preserved at Cambridge,) which here read, the third 
 hour instead of the sixth hour. The numbers, in the 
 Greek manuscripts, are often written in figures, that is, 
 by simple Greek letters ; and the 3, and the 6 being ex- 
 pressed by two letters easily confounded (the yduinu and 
 the enlcnjuof^) many ancients have thought that the 
 I'ariation was caused by this. Greisbach who has 
 marked this variation with a sign of preference, quotes 
 Severus of Antioch, and Ammonius in Theophylact; 
 and adds that the chronicle of Alexandria appealed in 
 favor of this reading to better copies, and even to the 
 original autograph [iSio'/elqop) of the gospel of St. John. 
 
 Another source of rash conclhsons. — The im- 
 port of certain features in a narrative is not compre- 
 hended, and the conclusion is eagerly come to, that the 
 author is in fault. 
 
 First example. — Jesus, in St. Matthew, (xxiii. 35, 36,) 
 denounces the Jews on account of their treatment of his 
 saints, and threatens them with the most terrible judg- 
 ments of God ; " that, (he remarks) upon this race (or 
 generation, yii-eav) may come all the righteous 
 blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous 
 
ERRORS. 163 
 
 Abel, unto the blood of Zachariah son of Barachias, 
 whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." 
 
 " There is certainly here (we are told) a grievous inadvertance ; 
 not, doubtless, on the part of Jesus Christ, but on the part of the 
 evangelist who reports his words, and whose memory must have 
 failed. We know, from thesecond book ofChronicles (xxiv. 21 .) that 
 this Zacharias, who was stoned by the Jews in the holy place (if ■^i,) 
 was the son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. ' This is, there- 
 fore, an evident error. It does not affect doctrine, and cannot, in 
 the slightest degree, be a ground of disquietude to our faith ; but 
 it suffices to demonstrate that the tlieopneitstic action could not 
 have descended, as has been pretended, to the choice of expres- 
 sions, or into the indifferent details of inspired narrations.' " 
 
 The answer is simple. We wish it were as easy to 
 render it as short as it seems to us conclusive ; we will 
 give it at once, briefly. There is no reference here to 
 the Zacharias of whom you speak ; the evangelist has 
 not, therefore, erred in not naming him, since he had 
 him not in his mind. In fact, do you not see the incom- 
 patibility of such a supposition with the thought of Jesus 
 Christ 1 What has he in view 1 — to recall the longr 
 catalogue of homicides of which an account would be 
 exacted from the race of the Jews. And whilst he takes 
 up their first murder, before the flood, at the very portals 
 of paradise, to make them responsible for it, — would you 
 desire that he should be content to refer, for the last, to 
 a crime committed more tlian eight centuries before he 
 spoke 1 He commences at the son of Adam, and would 
 you imagine that he could conclude with the son of 
 Jehoiada, and thus hold the Jews innocent of the blood 
 shed during 873 years, the most shameful period of 
 their history? Would it not have been more rational 
 to commence rather than to end with this Jehoiada ? 
 Were not the Jews far more responsible for their homi- 
 
164 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 cides, committed in their last nine centuries, than they 
 could be for blood which was shed before the deluge? 
 Had they not, for instance, pursued and killed, with fear- 
 ful fury, the prophet Urijah 240 years after Je- 
 hoiada? (Jer. xxvi. 23.) Which of the prophets (de- 
 mands Stephen) have not your fathers persecuted? and 
 they have slain them which predicted the coming of the 
 Just One." (Acts vii, 52.) There is, therefore, no 
 reference to the son of Jehoiada in the passage of St. 
 Matthew. 
 
 Our answer might terminate here ; but it will doubt- 
 less be asked, who, then, was the Zacharias of whom 
 Jesus Christ spake? If we did not know this, it would 
 not be a difficulty, and we might satisfy ourselves by 
 replying : — It was a righteous man, whom the Jews 
 slew, not only in the court of the temple [lov isqov) 
 as the son of Jehoiada ; but " between the temple [tov 
 ^ao'v) and the altar ;" and this righteous man was 
 the son of Barachias. The point, nevertheless, may be 
 carried farther ; for history enumerates to us two or 
 three others of the same name, sons of Barachias (;9«^a- 
 xiov or Baoonyov) among whom the opinions of learned 
 men are divided. 
 
 The first was " a man of understanding in the visions 
 of God," as he is represented in the second book of 
 Chronicles,* and who, it is believed, is the person spo- 
 ken of by Isaiah in his eighth chapter.! Bovvever, he 
 lived too short a time after the son of Jehoi^.da, for our 
 objections against the one not to have equal weight 
 against the other. 
 
 The second is the prophet Zechariah, son of Bere- 
 
 • Chap. xxvi. 5. 
 
 t Hieron. in Isai. viii. 2, in the Septuagint. Y.axapliv vUv 0apaxtov. 
 
ERRORS. 165 
 
 chiah, and grandson of Iddo, (Zech. i. 1,) who came 
 from Babylon with Zerubbabel, 325 years after the 
 days of Jehoiada, and whose writings form the last 
 book but one of the old Testament. Scripture, it is true, 
 has not recorded his raartydom, any more than that of 
 the other prophets, who were almost all persecuted and 
 put to death. 
 
 The temple and the altar had just been rebuilt by his 
 instrumentality, as by those of the prophet Haggai 
 (Ezra, iv. 14, 15 ;) and Zacharias, as it appears, was 
 killed "between the temple and this altar." We read 
 in the Targum^ or the Chaldee paraphrase of Jona- 
 than Ben Uziel (who, it is believed, was contemporary 
 with Jesus Christ,)* the following passage, which 
 proves to us that such was already, previously to the 
 time of our Savior, the tradition of the Jews concerning 
 this prophet, who was indifferently called the son of 
 Iddo and son of Barachias (Zech. i. 1 ; Ezra v. 1. vi. 
 14.) the paraphrast (Lam. ii. 20.) introduced the 
 " House of Judgment," answering to that lament of 
 Jeremiah: " The priest and the prophet, have they not 
 been slain in the temple of the Lord ?" " Was it well 
 of you to kill a prophet, as you did Zacharias, the son 
 of Iddo in the house of the sanctuary of the Eternal, 
 because he endeavoured to reclaim you from your evil 
 ways ?"t It may, therefore, be seen that Jesus Christ 
 might remind the Jews of the sacrilegious murder of 
 this prophet, the son of Barachias, the son of Iddo 
 with which the prophecy of the Old Testament was to 
 close. 
 
 There is, however another Zacharias, son of Bara- 
 chias (or of Baruch, (^uoov/ov) to whom the word 
 
 * Prolegon. of Walton, 12. t Whitby's Commentary on I^Iatt. xxiii. 35. 
 
166 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 of our Lord might be applied with still more probability. 
 Flavins Josephus malces him known to us in his inesti- 
 mable history of the Jewish wars, which has already 
 confirmed so many other prophecies of the New Testa- 
 ment. It is only three years before the last desolation 
 of Jerusalem, when there appears a Zacharias son of 
 Baruch, M'ho is massacred by Jewish zealots i?/, lite 
 midst of the holy place^^ey fdooj 7u5 tV^-o^)* and whose 
 body was thrown into the valley beneath the walls of 
 the mount of the temple. This was a righteous man, 
 whom, according to Josephus, they hated for his virtue, 
 influence, hostility to evil, and zeal for liberty. Fol- 
 lowing that terrible night, — " which was," says Jose- 
 phus, " the real commencement of the destruction of 
 Jerusalem," and in which the zealots murdered the chief 
 of the nation, the high priest Annanias, and soon after, 
 twelve thousand young men of the Israelitish nobility, 
 — these infuriated men affecting the formalities of jus- 
 tice, had dragged him before a tribunal of seventy 
 judges, who all, however, had the courage to declare him 
 innocent. Enraged at hearing his reproaches and 
 manly defence, they fell upon and slew him in the midst 
 of the lioly flace. This (consider several commenta- 
 tors,) was the last of the righteous whose blood would 
 be required at the hands of that homicidal race. Abel 
 was the first, Zacharias the last. On this account, 
 Jesus Christ, in the style of the prophets, employing the 
 past for the future, speaks of this crime as already con- 
 summated : " You slew him," says he to them, " between 
 the temple and the altar." 
 
 The historian Josephus, it is true, only speaks of 
 Zacharias as a just man, and not as a christian, or a 
 
 • Bell. Judaii Lib. 4. C. 19. 
 
ERRORS. 167 
 
 prophet ; but being a Jew, he could not use other lan- 
 guage, and we see him elsewhere (Antig. lib. xx. c. 8.) 
 only making mention of the apostle St. James (who 
 nevertheless, was also a piophet,) as a good man, whom 
 the high priest Annanias caused to be stoned, to the 
 great displeasure of all right-minded people,* during 
 the interregnum which succeeded the sudden death of 
 the governor, Festus. Neither has it appeared to us 
 that the difference in the terminations of the names 
 Barachias and Baruch suffices to destroy the argument 
 which results from etymological and radical resem- 
 blance. We see, in fact, in the New Testament, how 
 much it was the custom among the Jews, Hebrews, or 
 Hellenists to change the terminations of proper names. 
 (Silas and Sylvanusf, Prisca and Priscilla,J Lucas and 
 Lucius.)*^ However this may be, we once more con- 
 clude that this passage cannot have reference to the son 
 of Jehoiada, and we leave the reader to decide which 
 of the two personages whom we have indicated, was in 
 the mind of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Another source of rash conclusions. — The mear^- 
 ing of certain features of a narration is not seized; and 
 thoy rush to the conclusion, that the Avriter was mis- 
 taken. 
 
 Example. — Mark xi. 11, 14. Jesus cursed a fig 
 free ichich had only leaves, because it was not the sea- 
 son of figs. 
 
 " There is then doubtless an error there, one says : why seek 
 fruits out of the season when they may reasonably be expected T' 
 
 * ETTiiiAdcrrarwi/. 
 
 1 2 Cor. i. 19. 1 Thess. i. 1. Acts xv. 22, 34, 40; xvi. 25 ; xvii. 15, 
 
 t 2 Tim. iv. 19. Rom xvi. 3. Act.s xviii. 2, 26. 
 
 § Acts xiii. 1. Rom. xvi. 21. Philem. 24. 
 
168 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Yet there is nothing there that is not very simple. 
 If it had been the season for gathering figs, this tree 
 might have already been stript of its fruit, and its bar- 
 renness could not in that case have been determined sim- 
 ply from the absence of fruit. 
 
 But is a tree, the objector still replies, (to say in pas- 
 sing.) guilty for not bearing fruit? Why then punish 
 it ? We reply that in this miracle, which is a type, the 
 tree is no more unhappy than it is guilty ; and its suf- 
 fering is no more real than its morality. The one is as 
 completely s^^mbolical as the other. 
 
 .AnothePc source of rash conclusions. — This rule 
 has not been heeded (which we love to express here in 
 the very words of the great reformer of Italy, the excel- 
 lent Peter Martyr:)* "when passages are obscure, as 
 to their chronology, great care must be taken not to re- 
 concile them by imputing faults to the inspired book. 
 Wherefore, if sometimes it happens that we cannot ac- 
 count for the .number of the years, we must simply 
 avow our ignorance, and consider that the Scriptures 
 are expressed with so much conciseness, that it is not 
 possible for us always to discover at Avhat epoch we 
 must commence such and such a computation. It very 
 often happens that in the histories of the kings of Judah 
 and Israel, the respective numbers of their years can- 
 not be easily reconciled ; but these difficulties are ex- 
 plained and justified in many ways. 1. The same 
 year, commenced by one of the two, and finished by 
 the other, is attributed to both. 2. Often the sons 
 reigned with their fathers for several years ; which are 
 imputed sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. 
 
 • in his Commentary on 2 Kings xiii. 17, and 1 King.s xv. I. 
 
ERRORS. iby 
 
 3. There were often interregnums which the Scrip- 
 tures attribute sometimes to the predecessors, sometimes 
 to the successors. 4. Finnlly, it sometimes happens 
 that certain years in which oppressive and profane 
 princes reigned, are regarded as not having existed, and 
 are not counted." 
 
 The grand divisions of time, in the history of God's 
 people, are marked with great precision. — From the 
 entrance of Abraham into Canaan, to the entrance of 
 his grandson into Egypt, 215 years : thence 215 years 
 to the passage of the Eed Sea ; or, 430 years in the 
 whole, (Gal. iii. 17, Exod. xii. 40;) thence to the 
 foundation of the temple, 480 years (1 Kings ii. 1 ;) and 
 thence to the Babylonish captivity, 422 years. — But, 
 within these grand divisions of history, the precise and 
 coordinate arrangement of all the little intermediate 
 dates, the reconciliation of the figures presented to us 
 in narratives so concise, and of a period as ancient as 
 •he siege of Troy, (that of the Judges, that of Kings, 
 and that of Chronicles,) concerning the reigns and inter- 
 regnums, first of judges, then of kings, especially after 
 the subdivision of the twelve tribes into two distinct 
 kingdoms ; this arrangement, we say, presents nume- 
 rous difficulties, for which we sometimes do not possess 
 the means of solution. 
 
 We think that the examples which we have cited 
 thus far, are sufficient. We shall quote no more. What 
 we have said, may show the real value and weight of 
 the objections ;* for (we repeat it,) we have taken pains 
 to adduce those which are considered the most impor- 
 tant. Warned by these examples, and by so many 
 
 ' See for greater detail, the authors we have cited, and especially the 
 useful collection of Home. (lutroduciioii to the Study of the Scriptures,) 
 
 15 
 
170 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Others, let us then learn, if hereafter any difficuhies of 
 the same kind present themselves to us, to think as did 
 Julius Africanus the friend of Origen, sixteen hundred 
 years ago ; and as have done before and after him, all 
 men of God. " At all events, (said he in reconciling 
 the two genealogies of Matthew and Luke,) at all events, 
 certainly the gospel is every where true !" — To /./sVtoi 
 Evuyyskiov nufibtg uXi/deuai* 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Errors Contrary to the Philosophy of Nature. 
 
 '"It will be admitted," it has been sometimes said, " that the ap- 
 parent or real contradictions in the dates, the quotations and the 
 narratives of the Scriptures, may be susceptible of solution by the 
 resources of a more or less labored exegesis ; but there are others 
 which you cannot reconcile : they are all those expressions in 
 which the sacred writers are in manifest opposition to the laws of 
 nature now better understood. At the same time (we may add,) 
 if this argument against the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 is irrefutable ; it does not compromise, in the least, the divinity of 
 thtir doctrines, any more than the truth of the great religious 
 facts which they relate to us. In inspiring his apostles and his 
 propbets, God would make of us not scholars, but saints. We 
 might then, without danger, leave tlie holy Scriptures to speak ig- 
 norantly of the phenomena of the material world ; their prejudices 
 on such subjects are innocent, but unquestionable. Do you not 
 often lieur them speaking as if the earth was immovable, and the 
 sun in motion 1 This heavenly body, according to them, rises and 
 sets : ' its course is from one end of the heavens unto the other.' 
 (Ps. xix.) The moon and stars are likewise in motion ; the sun, 
 by the command of Joshua, stood immovable in the mid-heaven ; 
 it stands still over Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon. (Josh x. 12.) 
 'The earth is founded upon the seas.' (Ps. xxiv. 2.) 'Taken 
 from the water, it exists in the water.' ("2 Pet. iii. 5.) ' God has 
 laid \U foundations ; it shall never be moved.' (Ps. civ, 5.) Can 
 you admit that tliis is really the language of the Creator of the 
 heavens and the earth, speaking to bis creatures 1" 
 ' Eus-ebiuh Hist. Eclec. lib. 1. c. vil. 
 
ERRORS. ' 171 
 
 We shall reply to this objection ; and we rejoice to 
 meet it on our way, because the examination of it must 
 exhibit the glory of the Scriptures. 
 
 We freely admit, that if any physical errors were 
 fully proved to be in the Scriptures, the Scriptures could 
 not be from God. But we mean to show that there are 
 none ; and we shall dare to challenge the adversaries, 
 to produce one from the entire Bible. We are going 
 still farther ; and we shall show, on the contrary, how 
 much latent science is concealed under the simplicity 
 of its lano-ua^e. 
 
 We shall commence by saying something concern- 
 ing the miracle of Joshua, because it has often been ad- 
 duced for the purpose of combatting the plenary inspi- 
 ration, or even the divine mission of the men of God. 
 We have read the works of many infidels, who have 
 attacked it with their ordinary pride, and with that se- 
 vere irony which too often characterizes them. But 
 it is easy to answer them. We do not think of dis- 
 cussing here the manner in which the miracle was per- 
 formed ; but we wish to show by this example, with 
 what levity and precipitancy they have determined, 
 that because they did not comprehend certain passages, 
 they must, of course, be unreasonable. 
 
 The sun, on the day of the battle of Beth-horon, stood 
 still in the midst of the heavens, it is written in the 
 tenth chapter of Joshua ; and, there never luas a day 
 like it, before nor since. 
 
 In Germany, it has been said : This phrase, taken 
 in its natural meaning, appears to us absurd ; then it 
 is erroneous and totally human. Elsewhere it has 
 been said : It is absurd ; then we must give it another 
 meaning. But both have reasoned from false pre- 
 
172 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 raises. The fact is any thing but absurd : it is merely 
 miraculous. 
 
 We will present the objection in the words of a pro- 
 fessor of theology :* 
 
 " The most intrepid Methodist," says h'^, " would be constrained 
 to admit that, in the system of our globe, if the sun had stood still 
 for one single instant, or if the movement of the globe had been 
 retarded, the belligerent armies, and everything on the face of the 
 earth, would have been swept away like the chaflF before the tem- 
 pest. It is an expression which cannot be taken literally." 
 
 The enemies of inspiration produce this objection 
 for another purpose. The sacred historian, they say, 
 did not know the laws of nature — he is then unin- 
 spired. 
 
 And yet, it is this very objection itself which is an 
 error. In fact, if the miracle, in place of arresting 
 suddenly, in an indivisible instant, the rotation of our 
 globe, took only the short space of a few seconds to ac- 
 complish it by a gentle and continuous action, then you 
 have enough in this simple circumstance to assure you 
 that such a phenomenon could not have, mechanically, 
 any other sensible effect than to raise from west to east, 
 the waters spread over the surface of the earth. A 
 child might tell you, that a coach in rapid motion, 
 rushing against an impediment, may be dashed to 
 pieces, because the impediment is immoveable ; and all 
 the travelers, thrown out forward, will be hurled to 
 the ground. But let it be stopped by a continuous re- 
 sistance, which is applied gradually, for three or four 
 seconds ; then the smallest children seated m the vehi- 
 cle will remain unshaken from their seats ; they will 
 
 * Upon the use of reason in matter.s of faith.— Theol. Essays of M. Che- 
 neviere, Pastor and Professor, tome 1, p. 456. 
 
ERRORS. 173 
 
 not even be aware of the impulse, which, three seconds 
 before, they were receiving from the impetuous move- 
 ment of the horses, and which, without this precaution, 
 must have been sufficient to throw them to a great dis- 
 tance. 
 
 The rotation of the earth, is. at the equator, at the rate 
 of 1426 feet a second ; at Jerusalem, 1212 feet. This 
 is the speed of a ball at the moment of leaving a cannon, 
 projected by one fifth its own weight of powder : which 
 is capable (deducting the effect of atmospheric resist- 
 ance,) of elevating this projectile to the extreme height 
 of 24,000 feet; and yet a child of six years, in two- 
 thirds of a minute, could, without danger, destroy all 
 this force, b}^ the elastic and continued action of its fin- 
 gers. Commit to its little hands an eight pound can- 
 non-ball for forty seconds : and during the same time, 
 let another of the same weight fall freely through the 
 air, and from the height of mount Himalaya. At the 
 end of only forty seconds, the weight, after having 
 acted hy the same impulse upon the one and the other 
 of these projectiles, shall merely, in regard to the first, 
 have wearied the feeble fingers which hold it : while it 
 shall have imparted to the other a rapidity of motion, 
 equal to that of the rotation of the earth impressed on 
 the hill of Beth-horon in the latitude of Jerusalem. The 
 child does not imagine that he has been able in two 
 .birds of a minute, to destroy, by the continued action of 
 his little hand, a force capable of projecting a ball eight 
 thousand feet higher that Mount Blanc, and of cutting 
 lown at an immense distance, squadrons and ramparts 
 in the day of battle!* 
 
 • Translator's Note.— It has been suggested that the argument is not 
 learly stated. To us it is as clear as it is beautiful. Although we must 
 
 15* 
 
174 OBJECTIOKS. 
 
 Thus then, if God should have employed no more 
 than forty seconds, in the days of Joshua, to arrest by 
 n supple and successive resistance, the movement of our 
 g-lobe, the projecting- impulse from west to east, which 
 . a mass of iron of eight pounds would have felt in the 
 plain of Beth-horon, would have been no stronger than 
 the pressure felt to-day by the hand upon which you 
 lay such a v/eight. And if the mass instead of having 
 the form of a bullet, had had that of a quoit or of a cube, 
 there would not have been enough of that impulse to 
 make it overcome the resistance of friction, and change 
 its place upon the surface of the ground. 
 
 It will perhaps be objected, that the rotation of the 
 globe at Beth-horon was twenty-seven times more rapid 
 than the movement of a steam-carriage upon a rail-road. 
 True; but since the retarding force necessary to exhaust 
 a given impulse, is in inverse proportion to the time 
 employed, suppose the miracle accomplished in eighteen 
 minutes ; take eighteen minutes instead of forty seconds, 
 
 confess ourselves better satisfied with the simple solution furnished by the 
 fact that it was a miracle ; and of course he who had power to stay the 
 earth, could counteract other laws of matter, and prevent the consequen- 
 ces suggested. But if our author needs elucidation, we would add, that 
 he is replying to the objection that if the globe were stopped, it would 
 hurl every thing from its surface. He replies that this would not be the 
 result, provided, without an addition to the miracle, the arresting force 
 were applied gradually. And then to show how important an element in 
 physical force, time is, he says that a child can hold in his hand a cannon- 
 ball for forty seconds, and thus resist the same force of gravitation whicli 
 would project the same ball through '24,000 perjjendicular feet. Which he 
 thus demonstrates ; in 40 seconds gravitation acting on a cannon-ball pro- 
 jected by a certain force, would comi)letely overcome that force Hut 
 this same amount of gravitation (if not more, as it is nearer the earth's 
 surface tliHn the Hying ball,) is completely overcome by the child's hand 
 in holding the ball. Now a falling body would acquire in 24 (he says 40) 
 seconds,llie velocity of the earth at Beth-'.:oron. Ifaconstant force, there- 
 fore, equivalent to that of gravitation were ni>plled by the hand of omni- 
 potence for 24 seconds, it might reduce the earth to a stale of perfect rest, 
 without doing the least violence to any object upon its surface. 
 
ERRORS. 175 
 
 to Stop entirely the movement of the terrestrial globe at 
 the command of Joshua, and then " the contending ar- 
 mies instead of being swept away as by the tempest," 
 would no more have felt what was passing, than do, at 
 each station, the thousands of travelers who are stopped 
 upon a rail-road ! 
 
 Other difficulties, of the same character, have been 
 advanced respecting this miracle of Joshua. 
 
 " If the earth," it has been reraarketl, '' had suspended its move- 
 ment during ten hours, the power of the sun's attraction, acting 
 unconnectedly upon it, would at once have caused it to fall nine 
 hundred leagues in the direction of its powerful focus, and the 
 annual conditions of our orbit would thus have been sensibly de- 
 ranged." 
 
 This objection has no more reality than the preceding 
 one. The miracle, in fact, does not involve the slight- 
 est disturbance of the earth's progressive motion, but 
 merely of its rotation : for, according to the laws of ce- 
 lestial mechanics, the rotation of a planet on its axis is 
 entirely independent of the movement which is imposed 
 upon its centre of gravity, and which impels it in its 
 elliptical course. Experience had attested this, pre- 
 viously to its demonstration by astronomical science. 
 It had long been observed, that the velocity of the sun 
 (or rather of the earth) in its orbit, unceasingly varied 
 from one end of the year to the other, and notwithstand- 
 ing this, there exists not in nature a movement more 
 uniform than that which, to our eyes, causes the whole 
 celestial sphere to revolve. Observations upon the mo- 
 tion of the moon have proved that for upwards of two 
 thousand years, the sidereal day has not even varied the 
 hundredth part of a minute. 
 
 Let us suppose a double concussion communicated to 
 
176 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 the earth, above and below its centre in two opposite 
 and parallel directions ; and it will be explained how 
 rotation on its axis may have been suspended, without 
 its progressive motion being at all aflected. But I 
 pause. It would be rash, I will say, it would be puerile, 
 to pretend to enter into the details of the prodigy, in 
 order to account for the causes of it ; and I have been 
 desirous only to exhibit the vanity of the objections. 
 The truth, which they do not tell, is, that they find the 
 miracle too great for its object. But for men who be- 
 lieve in the great miracle of redemption by the Son of 
 God, nothing is too great ; all proceeds in just propor- 
 tions in the divine revelations. Moreover, and I hasten 
 to avow it, it would not even be necessary for me to ac- 
 count for this prodigy, by assuming so absolute an act 
 of almighty power, as the suspension of the revolution 
 of our globe. To effect it, God may have employed 
 only one of those numerous causes which divert light 
 from its course, and produce the countless illusions of 
 optical science ; some of those refractions, for instance, 
 which daily give new aspects, in various ways, to all 
 the stars of the celestial hemisphere. Is it not known, 
 that in the polar regions, the power of horizontal re- 
 fraction causes the sun to appear to the inhabitants of 
 those bleak countries, ten days before it is really above 
 'heir horizon ? Such might have been the cause of the 
 jniracle at Beth-horon. We decide nothing, — we do 
 not even suppose any thing. We would only say, that 
 the miracle was duly consummated, (whalf-vfr wer^' the 
 means by which it was produced,) provided to the eyes 
 of the inhabitants of Palestine, the sun stood slill in 
 Gibeofi^ and the moon in the valley of Ajalon. 
 
 Yet the Scriptures are reproached for having spoken 
 
ERPwORS. 177 
 
 upon the daily phenomena of nature, in a way that ap- 
 pears to show ignorance, and which is incompatible with 
 a plenary inspiration. According to the sacred writers, 
 the sun rises, the sun sets, the sun stops, the earth re- 
 mains firm ! It has been demanded that the Creator, 
 in speaking- to us through a book which he has in- 
 spired, should have showed us more clearly, that the 
 Spirit who directed the sacred historians, knew before 
 we did, the rotary motion of our globe, its periodical 
 revolution, and the relative immobility of the Sun. 
 
 Let us still farther examine this reproach. 
 
 We will first inquire of those who make it, if they 
 would have had the Bible speak like Isaac Newton. 
 Would they forget, that if God had spoken about 
 scenes of nature, — I do not say only, as he sees it, but 
 as the scientific men of future ages will see it, — then 
 the great Newton himself had understood nothing of it? 
 Besides, even the most advanced language of science is 
 not yet, and never will be, after all, any thing more 
 than the language of appearances. The visible world 
 is, much more than you imagine, a figure which passes 
 away, a scene of illusions and of phantoms. That 
 which you there call reality, is still in itself only an ap- 
 pearance relatively to a more elevated reality, and a 
 more profound analysis. In our ignorant mouth, the 
 word reality has nothing absolute ; it is a term totally 
 relative, and is employed in proportion as we think we 
 have reached a new round on. the ladder by which wc 
 come up from the depths of our ignorance. The hu- 
 man eye sees objects only under two dimensions, and 
 projects them all upon the same canvass, until the touch 
 and some experience have rendered to them the reality 
 of drpth, or a third dimension. Colours are accidents, 
 
178 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 and belong only by reflection and by illusion to the ob- 
 jects which present them to you. The very irapeii^v 
 trability of bodies, their solidity, their extension, are 
 after all, only an appearance, and present themselves to 
 us as a reality only in expectation of a profounder sci- 
 ence, which shall substitute another for it. Who may 
 tell us where this analysis is to stop ; and what wouKd 
 be our language concerning beings which are the most 
 familiar to us, if we were only endowed with one more 
 sense ; with antennse, for example, like the ant and the 
 bee ? The expression of appearances, provided it be 
 exact, is then among men, a language philosophically 
 correct ; and is that which the Scriptures ought to 
 adopt. Would you have the Bible speak to us of tlie 
 scenes of nature otherwise than as we speak of them to 
 one another in our social or domestic intercourse ; other- 
 wise than even the learned themselves speak of them to 
 one another ? When Sir John Herschell asks his ser- 
 vants to send some one to wake him exactly at mid- 
 night, for the observation of the passage of some star 
 over his meridian lens : does he think himself obliged 
 to speak to them of the earth, of her rotation, and of 
 :he moment when she shall have brought their nadir 
 into the plane of her orbit? I think not. And if you 
 should ever hear him converse, in the Observatory of 
 Greenwich, with the learned Ayric, you would see tha^ 
 even in this sanctuary of science, the habitual langua 
 of these astronomers is still just like that of the Scri 
 tures. For them, the stars rise, the equinoxes recede 
 the planets advance and are accelerated, stop and retro- 
 grade. Would you then have Moses speak to all the 
 generations of men, in a language more scientific than 
 that of La Place, of Arago and of Newton ? 
 
ERRORS. 179 
 
 But Still farther ; we adduce two general facts which 
 shine with a great light, when they are studied ; and 
 which immediately shew us in the Scriptures, the pen 
 ()f the Almighty God. Here, as every where else, the 
 objections when contemplated more closely, return back 
 on the objector, are recanted triumphantly, and become 
 arguments. 
 
 These two facts are analogous to that which you 
 may observe in the words of a learned astronomer, 
 conversing with his young children, and showing them 
 with his finger, the earth and the heavens. If you fol- 
 lowed him in these interviews, when his tenderness 
 stooping to their level, presents to their new-born intel- 
 ligence, images and v/ords which it can comprehend, 
 you would then quickly remark his respect for truth, 
 by a two-fold sign. First, he would never tell them 
 any thing that was not true ; and secondly, there would 
 be in his words many indications that he knows more 
 than he sees fit to communicate to them. He doubtless 
 would not pretend to teach them science : but on the 
 one hand, nothing in his discourse would contradict its 
 principles ; and on the other, many of his words would 
 already indicate, that although silent about these prin- 
 ciples, still he comprehended them. Afterv.-ard, when 
 his children, having become men, shall review his 
 ;vords ; not only will they find them exempt from all 
 rror, but they will also recognize that they were skil- 
 ■TiUy chosen, as being already in preestablished harmo- 
 ny with science, and as presenting it to them in its 
 germ, although they could not comprehend it. In pro- 
 portion as their own knowledge shall increase, they 
 will see with admiration, under the reserve and the sim- 
 plicity of his language, concealed wisdom, learned ex- 
 
180 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 actness, turns of phraseology, and forms of expression, 
 which were in harmony with facts, then unknown to 
 them, but long known by him. 
 
 Such is the double observation that every attentive 
 reader may make upon the language of the Scrip- 
 tures. They speak poetically, but precisely, the true 
 language of appearances. We there hear a father who 
 condescends to speak to the smallest of his children, but 
 in such a manner that the elder can never discover a 
 single word of his conversation contrary to the true posi- 
 tion o-fthe things which he has made, and in such a man- 
 ner too, that often he drops without affectation, words 
 enough to show them that all that which they have 
 learned of his works for four thousand years, he knew 
 before them, and better than they now do. It is thus, 
 that in the Bible, eternal wisdom addresses its children. 
 In proportion as they grow, they see the Scriptures 
 made for their riper age, adapted to their developments, 
 appearing to grovv with them, and always presenting to 
 them the two facts which we have noticed ; on the one 
 hand, absence of all error ; on the other, indirect but in- 
 contestable indications of a science which preceded all 
 that of man. 
 
 First fuct. There is no physical error in the word 
 of God. If there were, we have said, this book could 
 not be from God. God is not a man that he should lie, 
 nor the son of man that he should err. In order to be 
 understood by us, he must, unquestionably, stoop to our 
 feebleness ; yet to stoop to it, is not to partake of it : and 
 his language will always attest his condescension, never 
 his ignorance. 
 
 This remark is more important than it at first ap- 
 
ERRORS. 181 
 
 pears to be. It becomes brilliant when surveyed more 
 closely. 
 
 Examine all the false theologies of the ancients and 
 moderns ; read, in Homer or Hesiod, the religious codes 
 of the Greeks ; study those of the Budhists, those of the 
 Brahmins, those of the Mohammedans : you will find 
 in them not only systems revolting in their views of the 
 Deity, but you will there meet the grossest errors con- 
 cerning the material world ; their theology will doubt- 
 less be revoking to you ; but their natural philosophy 
 too and their astronomy, always bound to their religion, 
 will present the most absurd notions. 
 
 Read in the Chon-King and the Y-King of the Chi- 
 nese, their fantastic theories about the five elements 
 (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water,) and of their power- 
 ful influences upon affairs both human and divine. 
 
 Read in the Shaster, in the Pouran, in the four books 
 of the Vedham, or law of the Hindoos, their shocking 
 cosmogony. — the moon, they tell us is 50,000 leagues 
 higher than the sun ; it shines by its own light ; it ani- 
 mates our body. The night is formed by the descent 
 of the sun behind the Someyra mountains, situated in the 
 middle of the globe, and many thousand leagues high. 
 Our earth is flat and triangular, composed of seven sto- 
 ries, each of which has its own degree of beauty, its in- 
 habitants and its sea. The first story is made of honey, 
 the second is of sugar, the third of butter, the fourth of 
 wine ; and finally all the mass is carried on the heads 
 of innumerable elephants which, in shaking themselves, 
 cause the earthquakes. In a word, they have placed 
 the whole history of their gods in the most fantastical, 
 and yet the most indissoluble relations to the physical 
 16 
 
1 82 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 world, and to all the phenomena of the universe. The 
 missionaries to India too, have often declared that a teles- 
 cope, silently placed in the midst of the holy Benares or 
 the ancient Ava, would be a battery powerful as thunder, 
 ,to overthrow all the systems of Bramah and ol Budh. 
 
 Read again the philosophers of Greek and Roman 
 antiquity; Aristotle. Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch, Cicero. 
 How many sentences do you find, of which one alone 
 would suffice to compromise all our doctrine of inspira- 
 tion, if it should be found in any book of the Bible ? 
 Read the Koran of Mohammed, representino- moun- 
 tains as being made, to hinder the earth from beino- 
 moved, and representing it as held by anchors and 
 cords. What do I say ? Read even the cosmogoivy 
 of Buffon, or some of the ironies of Voltaire upon 
 the doctrine of a deluge, or upon the fossil animals of a 
 primitive world. We will go still farther. Read 
 again, we say, not the absurd reasonings of the Pagans, 
 of Lucretius, of Pliny, or of Plutarch, against the theory 
 of antipodes, but even the fathers of the Christian church. 
 Hear the theological indignation of the admirable Au- 
 gustine, who said that it was opposed to the Scriptures : 
 and the scientific eloquence of LuctantiuSj who believes 
 it to be contrary to good sense. '• Num aliquid loquun- 
 iur /" exclaims he ; is any one so simple as to believe 
 that there are men with their feet above their heads, 
 trees having fruits hanging upward, rain, snow, and 
 hail falling upward ! " To answer you," he says, 
 "they pretend that the earth is a globe ?" " Quid dicam 
 de Us nescio^ qui^ cum sequel aberraverint^ constanter in 
 sttiUilid perseverant, et vanis vana defendunt I One 
 knows not what to say of such men, who onc€ in an 
 
ERRORS. 183 
 
 error, engulf themselves in their folly, and maintain ab- 
 surdity by absurdity !"* 
 
 Hear too Boniface the legate, representing Virgilius 
 to tiie Pope as a heretic, for his views on this subject ; 
 hear Pope Zachary treating this unfortunate bishop as 
 hnmo malignus, — a malignant man : " If it be proved," 
 writes he, " that Virgilius maintains, that there are other 
 men under this earth : assemble a council condemn him, 
 drive him from the church, and depose him from the 
 priesthood!" Still later, hear the higher clergy of 
 Spain, and especially the imposing council of Salaman- 
 ca, indignant at the geographical system by which 
 Christopher Columbus was seeking a world. Hear, at 
 the epoch of Newton's birth, the great Galileo, " who 
 mounted," says Kepler, " upon the highest walls of the 
 universe," and who vindicated by his genius as well as 
 by his telescope, the unknown and condemned system 
 of Copernicus ; see him, groaning, at the age of eighty 
 years, in the prisons of Rome, for having discovered the 
 m.ovement of the earth, after having been compelled ten 
 years previously, (the SSth of June, 1633,) to pronounce 
 these words before their highnesses in the palace of the 
 holy office : " I, Galileo, in the seventieth year of my 
 age, on bended knees before your eminences, having be- 
 fore my eyes, and touching with my own hands the 
 holy Scriptures, I abjure, I curse, and I detest the error 
 of the earth's movement" 
 
 What should we not have been justified in saying of 
 the Scriptures, if they had spoken of the phenomena of 
 nature as all the ancient sages have spoken ; if they had 
 referred every thing to four elements, as was done for so 
 long a time ; if they had called the stars crystal, as 
 
 • Of false wisdom, liv. iii. chap. 24. 
 
184 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 Philolaus of Crotona ; and if, as Empedocles, they nad 
 enlightened the two hemispheres of our globe with two 
 suns ; if they had said, as Leucippus, that the fixed stars, 
 heated by the quickness of their diurnal motion around 
 the earth, enkindled the sun with their fires ; if they 
 had formed the heavens and the earth, as Diodorus Si- 
 culus and all the Egyptian sages, by the motion of air 
 and the ascension of fire ; or if they had said, as Philo- 
 laus, that the sun has only a borrowed light, and that 
 it is only a mirror which reflects back on us the 
 light of the celestial spheres ; if they had made it, as 
 Anaxagoras, a mass of iron larger than Peloponnesus, 
 and the earth a mountain, whose roots go infinitely deep ; 
 if they had spoken of the heavens as a solid sphere to 
 which the fixed stars are attached, as have done, with 
 Aristotle, almost all the ancients ; if they had called the 
 celestial v^ault a firmamentuvi or a axeqifa/jta^ as their 
 interpreters, both Latin, Greek and English have done ; 
 if they had spoken, as has been until recently done 
 among a Christian people, of the influence of the move- 
 ments of the heavens upon the elements of this lower world, 
 upon the characters of men and upon the cause of human 
 affairs? Such is the natural propensity of all people to 
 this superstition, that, in spite of their religion, the an- 
 cient Jews, and the Christians themselves, have alike fall- 
 en into it. The modern Greeks, says D' Alembert,* have 
 carried it to excess ; scarcely is there found one of their 
 authors, who. on every occasion, docs not spoak of pre- 
 dictions by the stars, of horoscopes, of talismans ; so that 
 there was scarcely a house in Constantinople and in all 
 Greece, which was not built according to rules of apo- 
 ielesmatic astrology. The French historians observe, 
 
 * Encycl. ou Diet. rais. des Sciences, etc. tome 1, p. 663, (Luca, 1758.) 
 
ERRORS. 185 
 
 that astrology was so in vogue under Catharine de Me- 
 dici, that nothing important could be undertaken without 
 consulting the stars ; and under Henry III., and even 
 Henry IV., in the conversations of the court of France, 
 inquiry was made of nothing but the predictions of as- 
 trologers. We have seen, toward the close of the last 
 century, says Ph. Giulani,* an Italian send to Pope In- 
 nocent XI., a prediction in the form of a horoscope, con- 
 cerning Vienna, then beseiged by the Turks, and which 
 was very well received. And in our days, the count 
 Boulainvilliers has written quite seriously on this subject. 
 But now, open the Bible; study its fifty sacred au- 
 thors, from that admirable Moses, who held the pen in 
 the desert, four hundred years before the Trojan war, 
 even to that fisherman, the son of Zebedee, who wrote 
 fifteen hundred years afterwards, in Ephesus and Pat- 
 n:ios, under the reign of Domitian ; open the Bible, and 
 search if you can there find any thing like this. — No. — 
 None of these mistakes which the science of every age 
 discovers in the books of the preceding ages ; none of 
 those absurdities especially, which modern astronomy 
 discovers in such great numbers in the writings of the 
 ancients, in their sacred codes, in their philosophies, 
 and in the most admirable pages of even the Christian 
 fathers, none of those errors can be found in any one of 
 our sacred books ; nothing there will ever contradict 
 that which, after so many ages, the investigations of the 
 scientific world have revealed to us as sure, concerning 
 the state of our globe and of the heavens. Go carefully 
 through the Scriptures, from one end to the other, seek- 
 ing for such spots ; and whilst you give yourself up to 
 this examination, remember that it is a book which 
 
 t Encyc. ou Diet. rais. des Sciences, &c. tome 1, p. 6C4. 
 
 16* 
 
186 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 speaks of everything, which describes nature, which 
 recounts its grandeurs, which narrates its creation, which 
 tells us of the formation of the heavens, the light, the 
 waters, the atmosphere, the mountains, the animals and 
 the plants; it is a book v/hich teaches us the first revolu- 
 tions of the world, and which also predicts to us its last; 
 it is a book which relates them in circumstantial histo- 
 ries, which exalts them in a sublime poetrvj and which 
 sings them in fervent hymns ; it is a book full of oriental 
 imagination, of elevation, of variety and of boldness ; it 
 is a book which speaks of the celestial and invisible 
 world, and at the same time of the earth and of things 
 visible : it is a book to which nearly fifty writers of 
 every degree of cultivation, of every state, of every con- 
 dition, and separated by fifteen hundred years from one 
 another, have successively contributed ; it is a book writ- 
 ten first in the centre of Asia, in the sands of Arabia, or 
 in the deserts of Judea, or in the courts of the Jewish 
 temple, or in the rustic schools of the prophets of Bethel 
 and of Jericho, or in the sumptuous palaces of Babylon, 
 or upon the idolatrous banks of Chebar ; and afterwards, 
 in the centre of western civilization, in the midst of the 
 Jews and of their ignorance, in the midst of polytheism 
 and its idols, as in the bosom of pantheism, and of its sad 
 philosophy ; it is a book whose first writer had been for 
 forty years, the pupil of those Egyptian magicians, who 
 regarded the sun, the stars and the elements, as endowed 
 with intellig(nice, reacting upon the elements, and gov- 
 erning the world by continual effluvia ; it is a book 
 whose first writer preceded, by more than nine centuries, 
 the most ancient philosophers of ancient Greece and of 
 Asia, Thalos and Pythagoras, Zaleucus, Xenophon, 
 Confucius ; it is a book which carries its descriptions 
 
ERRORS. 187 
 
 even to the plains of the invisible world, even to the 
 hierarchies of angels, even to the most remote periods of f 
 the iLiture, and to the glorious scenes of the last day; : 
 now. seek in its 50 authors, seek in its 66 books, seek 
 in its 1,189 chapters, and its 31.173 verses. . . Seek one 
 alone of those thousand errors with which the works' 
 of the ancients and the moderns are filled, when they 
 speak either of heaven or of earth, or of their revolutions, 
 or of their elements; seek, you will not find. 
 
 Its language is unconstrained, open ; it speaks of 
 every thing, and in every strain ; it is the prototype, it 
 has been the inimitable model, nay, the inspirer of all 
 the most elevated productions of poetry. Ask Milton, 
 the two Racines, Young, Klopstock. They will tell 
 you, that this divine poetry is of all the most lyric, the 
 boldest, the most sublime ; it rides on a cherub, it flies 
 upon the wings of the wind. And yet this book never 
 does violence to the facts nor to the principles of a sound 
 philosophy of nature. Never will you find a single sen- 
 tence in opposition to the just notions which science has 
 imparted to us, concerning the form of our globe, its 
 magnitude and its geology ; upon the void and upon 
 space; upon the inert and obedient materiality of the 
 stars ; upon the planets, upon their masses, their courses, 
 their dimensions or their influences ; upon the suns 
 which people the depths of space, upon their number 
 their nature, their immensity. So too in speaking of the 
 invisible world, and of the subject of angels, so new, 
 so unknown, so delicate, this book will not present you 
 a single one of its authors, who, in the course of one 
 thousand five hundred and sixty years of their writing, 
 has varied in describing the character of charity, hu- 
 mility, fervor and purity which pertains to these mys- 
 
1 88 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 terious beings. So too, in speaking of the relations of 
 the celestial world to God, never has one of these fifty 
 writers, either in the Old or the New Testament, written 
 one single word favorable to this incessant pantheism 
 of the Gentile philosophy. Nor shall you find one 
 of the authors of the Bible who has, in speaking of the 
 visible world, let fall from his pen one only of those . 
 sentences which, in other books, contradict the reality 
 of facts ; one who makes the heavens a firmament, as do 
 the Seventy, St. Jerome, and all the Fathers of the 
 Church j one w^ho makes of the world, as Plato, an 
 intelligent animal ; one who reduces everything below, 
 to the four physical elements of the ancients ; one who 
 thinks with the Jews, with the Latins and the Greeks, 
 with the better spirits of antiquity, with the great Taci- 
 tus among the ancients, with the great De Thou among 
 the moderns, with the sceptical Michel Montaigne, that 
 " the stars have dominion and power, not only over our 
 lives and fortunes, but our very inclinations, our dis- 
 courses, our w^lls ; that they govern, impel and agi- 
 tate them at the mercy of their influences ; and that (as 
 our reason teaches us and finds it,) all this lower world 
 is agitated by the slightest movement of the heavenly 
 bodies.* You will not find one who has spoken of the 
 mountains as Mohammed did, of the cosmogony as Buf- 
 fon, of the antipodes as Lucretius, as Plutarch, as Pliny, 
 as Lactantius, as St. Augustine, as the Pope Zachary. 
 Surely if there was found in the Bible, only one of those 
 errors which abound in the philosophers, ancient as well 
 as modern, our faith in the plenary inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures would be more than endangered ; we should have 
 
 • Essais, liv. ii. ch. 12. Facta etenim et vitas hnminum suspendit tA 
 astria. 
 
ERRORS. 189 
 
 (0 admit that there are errors in the word of God, and 
 that these erroneous sentences appertain to a fallible wri- 
 ter, and not to the Holy Spirit ; for God is not a man that 
 he should lie; there is in him no variableness, nor shadow 
 of turning ; and he to whom lying lips are an abomina- 
 tion, cannot contradict himself, nor dictate that which is 
 false. 
 
 There is, then, no physical error in the Scriptures ; 
 and this great fact, which becomes always more admir- 
 able, in proportion as it is more closely contemplated, 
 is a striking proof of the inspiration which has dictated 
 to their writers, even in the choice of the least expres- 
 sion. But there is still another fact. 
 
 Not only has the Bible admitted no false sentence or 
 expression, but it has also employed words which make 
 us recognize, in a way that cannot be mistaken, the sci- 
 ence of the Almighty. His great object, doubtless, was, 
 to reveal to us the eternal grandeurs of the invisible 
 world, and not the barren secrets of that which perishes. 
 Yet it often happens that his language, when it is atten- 
 tively regarded, gives a glimpse of knowledge which it 
 is not aiming to teach, but of which he cannot be ig- 
 norant, since knoicledge is in him a profound abyss. 
 Not only does he never say any thing false to us, even 
 incidentally ; but also, you will often light upon words 
 which shall discover to you the voice of the world's 
 Creator. You will often remark there, a wisdom, a 
 prudence, an exactness, of which the past ages never 
 had a suspicion, and which the discoveries alone of the 
 telescope, of modern calculation and modern science, 
 have enabled us to appreciate ; so that its language will 
 carry, in these features, the evident characters of the 
 most entire inspiration. The discreet and unusual 
 
190 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 choice of its expressions, the nature of certain details, 
 whose perfect propriety and divine harmony with facts 
 were not revealed until three thousand years afterward, 
 the reserve in the use of words, sometimes the very 
 boldness and strangeness of the language at the time 
 when it was written ; — all these signs will show you 
 the learned One 'par excellence^ tlie Ancient of days, 
 who is addressing children unquestionably, but who 
 speaks like the father, and who knows all his house. 
 
 When the Scriptures speak of the form of the earth, 
 they term it A Globe !* When they speak of the po- 
 sition of this globe in the bosom of the universe, they 
 suspend it upon nothing ; [T'\TT^'2>'2, ^3^-)t When they 
 speak of its age, not only do they put its creation, as 
 well as that of the heavens, at the beginnings that is, 
 before the ages, which they cannot or will not number ; 
 but they are also careful to place before the breaking up 
 of chaos and the creation of man, the creation of the 
 angels, of the archangels, of the principalities, and of 
 the powers ; their trial ; the fall of some, and their 
 ruin ; the perseverance of others, and their glory. 
 When they speak afterward of the origin of our conti- 
 nents, and of the later creation of plants, animals, and 
 men, they give then to this new world, and to our proud 
 race, an age so young, that the men of every period and 
 nation, and even our modern schools, have foolishly re- 
 volted from it ; but an age to which they have had to 
 consent, since the labors of De Luc, of Cuvier, and of 
 Buckland, have so fully demonstrated that the surface 
 of the globe, as well as the monuments of history, and 
 those of science, were about to command for it the assent 
 
 • Isa. xl. 22. Job xxvi. 10. Prov. \iii. 27. 
 
 t Job xxvi. 7. KpCjuii^MP y")f fi"! oviivog, say the LXX. 
 
ERRORS. 191 
 
 of the learned as well as the vulgar. When they speak 
 of the heavens, they employ, to designate and to define 
 them, the most philosophic and the most elegant expres- 
 sion ; an expression which the Greeks, in the Septua- 
 gint, the Latins in the Vulgate, and all the Christian 
 Fathers, in their discourses, have pretended to improve, 
 but which they have distorted, because it seemed to 
 them opposed to the science of their day. The hea- 
 vens, in the Bible, are the expanse; (3^'^pl)* they are 
 the vacant space, or ether, or immensity, and not the 
 firmavientum of St. Jerome ; nor the cTTpqiui^m of the 
 Alexandrian interpreters ; nor the eighth heaven^ firm, 
 solid, chrystalline, and incorruptible of Aristotle and 
 of all the ancients. And although the Hebrew term, 
 so remarkable, recurs seventeen times in the Old Tes- 
 tament, and the Seventy have rendered it seventeen 
 times by ajsqiMvux^ (firmament,) never have the Scrip- 
 tures in the New Testament, used this expression of the 
 Greek interpreters in this sense, f When they speak 
 of the light, they present it to us as an element inde- 
 pendent of the sun, and as anterior, by three epochs, to 
 the period in which that great luminary was formed :\ 
 anticipating thus the systems of moderns, which lead us 
 to suppose with the great Newton, that the universe 
 contains an ether, perfectly subtle, highly elastic, exist- 
 ing every Vv^here, whose contractions and dilitations 
 produce not only the varied phenomena of light, but 
 those even of gravitation. — When they speak of the cre- 
 ation of the plants, they make them vegetate, grow, and 
 bear seed, before the appearing of the sun, and under 
 
 * Gen. i 6. Pj=. xix. 1. 
 
 t They have used it once, but to designate something totally different 
 from the heavens. 
 X Gen. i. 4, 14, 
 
192 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 conditions of light, moisture, and heat quite different 
 from those by which the vegetables of our day are 
 nourished ;* and it is thus that they reveal to us, for 
 many thousands of years, an order of things which the 
 fosil botany of our day has just declared incontestable, 
 and of which the necessity is attested by the gigantic 
 forms of vegetables recently discovered in Canada and 
 in Baffin's bay — some, as Mr. Marcel de Serres,t re- 
 sorting, to explain it, to a terrestrial magnetism at that 
 time more intense, or to aurorse boreales more luminous ; 
 others, as M. de Candolle,J to a great inclination to the 
 ecliptic (although in reality, according to the famous 
 theorem of La Grange, the Mecanique Celeste confines 
 this variation of the planetary orbits within very narrow 
 limits.)^ When the Scriptures speak of the air, the 
 gravity of which was unknown before Galileo ; they 
 tell us that at the creation, " God gave to the air its 
 WEIGHT (bp!r)2') and to the waters their just measure."! 
 When they speak of our atmosphere and of the upper 
 waters ;^ they give them an importance which modern 
 science alone has justified ;** since, from their calcula- 
 tions, the force annually employed by nature, for the 
 formation of the clouds, is equivalent to an amount of 
 labour which the entire human race could not accom- 
 plish in 200,000 years. ft And when they separate 
 the inferior from the superior waters, it is by an ex- 
 
 ' Gen. i. 12. 
 
 t Memoires de Marcel de Serres. X Biblloth. Universelle, Iviii. 1835. 
 
 § The oscillations of the Ecliptic on both sides of its mean position, can- 
 not he more than 1 1-3°. 
 
 I! Job .xxviii. 25. TT Gen. i. 7. 
 
 *• See the calculations of Leslie. 
 
 tl Annuaire du bur. des longit, 1835, p. 196. Arago, in this calculation, 
 supposes that 800,000.000 form the population of the globe, and that only 
 the half of this number are able to work. 
 
ERRORS. 193 
 
 panse^ and not by a solid sphere, as their translators 
 would have it. When they speak of the mountains, 
 they distinguish them as primary and secondary ; they 
 represent them as being- born ; they make them rise ; 
 they make them melt like wax ; they abase the valleys ; 
 in a word, they speak as a geological poet of our day 
 would do. " The mountains were lifted up, O Lord, 
 and the valleys were abased in the place which thou 
 hadst assigned them !"* When they speak of the hu- 
 man race, of every tribe, color and language, they give 
 them one only and the same origin, although the phi- 
 losophy of every age has so often revolted against this 
 truth, and while that of the moderns finds itself com- 
 pelled to acknowledge it.f When they speak of the 
 interior state of our globe, they declare two great facts 
 long unknown to the learned, but rendered incontesta- 
 ble by recent discoveries ; the one, relating to its solid 
 crust, the other to the great waters which it covers. In 
 speaking of its solid covering, they teach us that, while 
 its surface gives us bread ; beneath, (n''i1?in) it is on 
 FIRE \% elsewhere, that it is reserved unto fire, and that 
 it will be burned in the last times, with all the works 
 which are found therein. t^ And when they speak of 
 the waters that our globe contains, they refer to them 
 as the only cause, at least in this relation, of the im- 
 mense inundations which have (according to the learned 
 themselves) completely and for a long time submerged 
 it, at different periods. And while the learned tell us 
 
 * Ps. xc. 2 ; xcvii. 5 ; civ. 6, 8, 9; cxliv. 5. — Prov. viii. 25. — Zech. xiv. 4, 8. 
 
 ^ See Sumner : The Records of the Creation, vol. 1, p. 286; also Prof. 
 Zimmerman ; Geographical history of man. Wiseman's 3d Discourse on 
 the natural history of the human race, vol. 1, p. 149. 
 
 4 Job, xxviii. 5 ; literally : " beneath, it is overturned, and as on fire." 
 
 § 2 Peter iii. 7—10. 
 
 M7 
 
194 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 of the shallowness of the seas ; while ihey assure us 
 that an elevation of the land, only 656 feet, or legs than 
 twice the height of the tower of Strasburg would suf- 
 fice to cause the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, St. George's 
 Channel and the British Channel to disappear ; and 
 that Mount Blanc, removed into the depth of the Pacific 
 Ocean, would be sufficiently high, to appear there as 
 an island ; whilst La Place has thought we may infer 
 from the elevation of the tides, that the mean depth of 
 the ocean does not exceed 3280 feet, (the height of the 
 Salene or Heckla ;) while they thus prove to us how 
 insufficient the seas are for the immense inundations our 
 globe has undergone — the Scriptures teach us, that 
 " the earth is standing out of the water and in the wa- 
 ter,"* and that its solid crust covers a great abyss 
 (uZll t^'^nSl') whose waters broke out C^^^'pl^lD) with 
 violent dashings,t at the epoch of the deluge, as at that 
 of the chaos and of the numberless ages which had 
 preceded it. 
 
 Whea they speak of the deluge, they suppose inun- 
 dations and disorder, such as infidels of former times 
 have ever considered too mighty for belief ; and yet, in 
 the present day, geologists rather feel them to be insuf- 
 ficient to account for all the devastation they find in ex- 
 amining the earth. — When tbi/ey recount the circum- 
 stances and the progress of this immense submersion, 
 they reveal facts which the science of moderns has not 
 yet fully adopted, but which it cannot contradict, any 
 more than it can other facts . — an internal fire, which 
 raising the temperature of the seas and of the deep wa- 
 ters, caused on the one side, an enormous evaporation 
 and impetuous rains, as if the flood-gates of heaven 
 
 • 2 Peter, iii. 5. t Gen. vii. 11. 
 
ERRORS. 195 
 
 were opened ; and on the other, an irresistable dilation, 
 which not only raised the waters from their depths, 
 broke up the fountains of the great abyss, and raised 
 its powerful waves to the level of the highest mountains,* 
 but which caused immense stratifications of calcareous 
 carbonate, under the double action of a great heat and a 
 pressure equivalent to 8000 atmospheres. When they 
 would describe the state of our globe at the period pre- 
 ceding the breaking up of its chaos, they suppose an in- 
 ternal heat, and cover it entirely with waters in a state 
 of liquidity.t ¥/hen they tell us of the creation of the 
 birds and of the fishes, they give them a common ori- 
 gin ; and it is Imown that modern naturalists have es- 
 tablished between these two classes of animals, intimate 
 relations, imperceptible to the eye, but revealed by anat- 
 omy, even in the microscopic form of the globules of 
 their blood.:]: When they arrest the sun, that is to say, 
 the rotation of the earth, in the days of Joshua, the son 
 of Nun ; the moon must also stay her progress in the 
 same degree and for the same cause as the sun ; a pre- 
 
 * Water is dilated 1-23, in passing from The temperature of ice- 
 melting to that of water-boiling. An elevation of from 16 to 17 degrees 
 Reaumur will then increase iis volume 1-111. Now we find by an easy 
 calculation, that the quantity of water necessary to submerge the earth 
 to the height of 1-1000 of the radius of our globe is equal to 1-333 of its 
 entire volume, or 1-111 of its third If then we suppose that the one-third 
 of the terrestial globe is metallic (at the mean specific gravity of 12 1-2;) 
 that the second third is solid (at the weight of 2 1--2;) and that the re- 
 maining third is water ; then, 1st, the mean specific gravity of the entire 
 globe will be equal to 5 1-2 (agreeably to the conclusions of Maskeline and 
 of Cavendish;) and 2dly, it will have been sufficient for the submersion 
 of the earth to the height of 6,-36S metres, or 154G metres above Mount 
 Blanc ; that the temperature of the mass of the water in the days of the 
 deluge, should have risen to 16 degrees of Reaumur. This was very nearly 
 the hypothesis of Sir Henry Englefield. 
 
 t Gen. i. 2. X Memoirs of Dr. J. L. Provost at Geneva. 
 
196 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 caution, says Chaubard,* that an astronomy ignorant 
 .if our diurnal motion woul-d never have imagined ; 
 since after ail, the purpose of this miracle was but to 
 prolong the day.f When they represent the Lord as 
 coming like the lightning, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 at the last day, they again bear testimony to the rotation 
 3f the earth, and to the existence of the antipodes ; for 
 at this solemn hour it will be, say they, day for one por- 
 tion of mankind, and at the same time night for another 
 portion. I When they describe the past and future 
 wealth of the land of Canaan, to which a wonderful 
 fertility of vegetation is promised for the latter times, 
 they term it rich, not only in springs, but in subterrane- 
 ous waters ; and seem to anticipate the excavations by 
 which the moderns have learned to fertilize a sterile 
 country.^ When they speak of the languages of men, 
 they give them a primitive unity that seems to be con- 
 tradicted by our first study of the different idioms of na- 
 tions, but which a more profound examination confirms. 
 When they describe the deliverance of Noah, they give 
 to the ark dimensions which at first sight we pronounce 
 too limited. Had we been charged with the narrative, 
 we should have increased them a hundred fold ; but a 
 study of the subject has proved them sufficient. When 
 they speak of the number of the stars, instead of suppos- 
 ing a thousand (1026) as does the catalogue af Hippar- 
 
 • Elements of Geology by Chaubard, vol. i. 8vo. Paris. The niithor 
 there establishes by numerous arguments, the chronological coincidence 
 of the miracle of Joshua with the deluges of Ogyges and of Deucaliou. 
 He remarks that these two inundations refer to the same ejjoch, last the 
 Kame period of time, are accompanied by the same catastrophes, and pro- 
 duce currents in the sea from west to east. 
 
 t Josh. X. 12. X Luke, xvii. 31, 34. Mat. xxiv. 
 
 § Deut. viii. 7. '* A land of brooks of water, of I'oun tains and deeps that 
 spring out of valleys and hills;" (nT^nP,.) See also Isa. xxxv. 6. E». 
 xxxi. 4. Ps. Ixxviii. 16. 
 
ERRORS. 1 97 
 
 chus or of Ptolemy ; while in the two united hemi- 
 spheres the most practised eye can see but 5000 ; while 
 the human eye, before the invention of the telescope, 
 could perceive but 1000 in the clearest night ; the 
 Scriptures pronounce them innumerable ; and like 
 Herschel, they compare them to the sand of the sea ; 
 they tell us, that with his own hand and in infinite 
 space, God has sown them lilce the dust ; and that not- 
 withstanding- their number, •' he calls them all by their 
 names." When they speak of this immensity, listen 
 with what learned and sublime wisdom they depict it ; 
 how prudent they are in their noble poetry, how philo- 
 sophical in their sublimity ; '= the heavens declare the 
 glory of God ; the expanse showeth his handy-work ; 
 there is no speech nor language where their voice is 
 not heard." When they speak of the relation of the 
 stars to this sublunary world ; instead, like the ancients, 
 of supposing them animated, instead of ever attributing 
 to them an influence over humarf events, as did, for so 
 long a time, the Christian people of Italy and of France, 
 even to the period of the reformation ; they are, say 
 they, inert matter, brilliant, v^ithout doubt, but disposed 
 and guided by a creating hand : the heavens, even the 
 heaven of heavens move with the order, the entirenes:-^ 
 and the unity of an army advancing to battle. " Lift up 
 your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these 
 things, that bringeth out their host by number ; he 
 calleth them all by names, by the greatness of his 
 might, for that he is strong in power, not one faileth." 
 " Why sayest thou, oh Jacob, and speakest, oh Israel ; 
 my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is 
 passed over from my God ?"* When they describe the 
 
 • Isaiah xl. 26, 27. 
 
 17* 
 
198 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 heavens, they are careful to disting-uish them ; first^ as 
 the heaven of the birds, of the tempests, of the powers 
 of the air, and of evil spirits ; then the heaven of the 
 stars ; and lastly, the third heaven, even the heaven of 
 heavens. But when they speak of the God of all that ; 
 how beautiful their language, and at the same time, 
 how tender ! " The voice of his thunder is in the hea- 
 vens," say they,* " but the heavens, even the heaven of 
 heavens, cannot contain Him."t " To whom, then, 
 will ye liken Him ? or what likeness will ye compare 
 unto Him ? He has set his glory above the heavens. 
 Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in 
 heaven. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whi- 
 ther shall I flee from th)-- presence ?" J But when they 
 seem to have said enough of all these visible grandeurs : 
 these are yet, say they, but the beginning of his ways ; 
 and how little a portion of him is known ! And lastly, 
 when they seem to have told all the grandeurs of the 
 Creator of all these immensities, listen yet again : " He 
 counts the number of the stars, and calls them all by 
 name ; at the same time that He healeth the broken in 
 heart, and bindeth up their wounds. § He puts your 
 tears into his bottle ; the sparrow falls not to the ground 
 without his care ; even the hairs of your head are 
 numbered. 11 The eternal God is thy refuge, and under- 
 neath are the everlasting arms.l" Oh, my God, how- 
 manifold are thy works ; how excellent are they, but 
 thou hast put thy mercy above all thy name. Open 
 thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out 
 of thy law."** Again, in the midst of all these gran- 
 
 • Ps. Ixxvii. 19. f 1 Kings, viii. 27. 
 
 ^ Isaiah xl. 18. Ps. viii, 1; cxiii. 6; cxxxix. 7. 
 
 yPs. cxlvii. II Ps. Ivi. 8. Matt. x. 29, 30. 
 
 f Deut. xxxiii. 2C, 27. *• Ps. cxxxviii. 2; cxix. 18. 
 
ERRORS. 199 
 
 deurs — '• Whence then cometh wisdom ? And where is 
 the place of understanding ? The depth saith ; it is 
 not in me. God understandeth the wa}?- thereof, and he 
 knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends 
 of the earth, and seeth the whole heavens : to make 
 the weight for the winds ; and he weigheth the waters 
 by measure. When he made a decree for rain, and 
 a way for the lightning of the thunder, then did he 
 see it and declare it ; he declared it ; yea, and searched 
 it out. And unto man he said ; behold the fear of the 
 Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is under- 
 standing."* 
 
 Such then is the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures ; 
 thus then we see beams of light reflected from heaven, 
 when we had thought to detect only error. If with 
 deferential touch you draw the obscure veil, with which 
 they are sometimes covered for your sake, you will be- 
 hold there a majestic light ; for, like Moses, they 
 descend from the sacred mount, and bring to you the 
 tables of testimony in their hands ! There, where 
 you feared darkness, you have found light ; there, where 
 an objection has been started, God produces a fresh wit- 
 ness of the truth ; where a doubt had existed, he puts 
 an assurance. 
 
 So far as this seventh objection is concerned, we find 
 difficulties converted into proofs of the inspiration of the 
 sacred volume ; and we see in the light of this and of 
 many other facts, that every page gives evidence that 
 the entire Bible is the word of God. 
 
 Let us listen to another and the last objection. 
 
 • Job xxviii. 
 
200 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 The very acknoioledgment of St. Paul. 
 
 We are sometimes told, that — 
 
 " It would be superfluous to dispute the fact of the partial and 
 interrupted inspiration of the Scriptures, since oven the Apostle 
 Paul has plainly decided the question. Has he not been ever 
 careful to distinguish betvpeen those passages which he uttered by- 
 inspiration, and those advanced in his own name, as a Christian 1 
 Does he not, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, express very 
 clearly, three several times, this distinction, in answer to different 
 questions addressed to him on the subject of marriage 7 And first, 
 in the 25th verse of the 7th chapter, when he says ; ' Now con- 
 cerning virgins, I have no cummandment op the Lord ; 3''et I 
 give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord 
 to be faithful.' Then in the 10th verse, where he writes ; ' unto 
 the married / command, (yet not I, but the Lord ;) let not the 
 wife depart from her husband, and let not the husband put away 
 his wife.' And finally, in the 12th verse he adds ; ' but to the 
 rest speak I, not the Lord ; if any brother hath a wife that be- 
 lieveth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him ; let him not put 
 her away,' &c. It is then easily seen by t?iese three sentences. 
 that there are passages in the epistle of this apostle, that are of 
 Paul, and other passages which are of God ; that is to say, insi)i.red 
 passages, and passages uninspired.''^ 
 
 The answer is obvious. When the objectionable pas- 
 sages are more closely examined, it will be found that 
 they cannot be adduced as proof against the doctrine of 
 a full inspiration. 
 
 Far from limiting the divinity of apostolic language, 
 these verses, on the contrary, speak as only the fullest 
 and most sovereign inspiration could authorize. St. 
 Paul could speak thus, only by placing his epistles, if 
 I may so say, as St. Peter has done* on the level with 
 
 * 2 Peter iii. 6. 
 
ERRORS. 201 
 
 THE OTHER sacred writings : nay, we must say ; above 
 THEM, (inasmuch as we there hear a more recent and 
 binding expression of the will of our Lord.) Let us 
 examine this point. What does the apostle of Jesus 
 Christ seek in this chapter? He there treats of three 
 cases of conscience ; concerning one of them, God has 
 commanded nothing and interdicted nothing. " So then 
 he that giveth her in marriage, doth well. I speak this 
 by PERMISSION, and not of comma-tidment^ but as an apos- 
 tle I give from the Lord, merely counsel ;" and he is 
 careful to add in the fortieth verse ; " I think also that 
 I have the Spirit of the Lord." The Lord would leave 
 you free herein, says the apostle ; he will place no 
 snare in your path ; and if you care not to follow the 
 general advice that is given to you, you violate no com- 
 mandment, and commit no sin \ only, " he that mar- 
 rieth, doeth well ; he that marrieth not, doeth better." 
 
 In regard to the other case however, be careful ; for 
 HERE IS A COMMANDMENT OF THE LoRD. He has already 
 made known his will.* and I have nothing new to de- 
 clare unto you. But the Old Testament and Jesus 
 Christ have spoken. It is not therefore /, the Apostle 
 of Jesus Christ, it is the Lord, who already has made 
 known his will unto you. " And unto the married I 
 command, yet not I, but the Lord ; let not the wife de- 
 part from her husband, and let not the husband put 
 away his wife." (v. 10, 11.) 
 
 For the third case, that of the brother who finds him- 
 self bound to an unbelieving wife ; you had a command- 
 ment from the Lord in the Old Testament. I come to 
 revoke it, and I think also that 1 have the spirit of the 
 Lord. I abolish then the former commandment, and 
 
 •Matt. V. 31, 32; Mai. ii. 14. 
 
202 OBJECTrONS. 
 
 am charged to replace it by a contrary order. It is not 
 the Lord (v. 12) who forbids you to put away an un- 
 believing wife ; it is "/, Paul an Apostle, not of men, 
 neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, 
 who raised him from the dead."* 
 
 We see then, with the clearness of noon-day : — the 
 Apostle instead of appealing to the ancient word of the 
 Lord, revokes it, to replace it by a contrary order ; so 
 that this passage, very far from weakening the inspira- 
 tion, confirms it strongly ; since it would have been no- 
 thing less than an outrageous blasphemy, if the Apostle 
 had not felt, that in using this language, he was the 
 mouth of God ; and if he had dared to say by his own 
 authority — " It is not the Lord, it is I. I myself tell 
 you, and not the Lord : if any man have an unbelieving 
 wife, let him not send her away." The Lord had given 
 a contrary commandment. f 
 
 We must then acknowledge that these verses of St. 
 Paul, far from authorizing the supposition of any min- 
 gling of human wisdom in the Scriptures of the New 
 Testament ; are there to attest that, in their epistles and 
 in the most familiar details of their epistles, the Apostles 
 were the mouth of God, and ranked themselves not only 
 as successors of Moses and the ancient Prophets, but 
 even above them ; as a second message from God must 
 supersede that which was before it, and as the New 
 Testament must surpass the Old, if not in excellence, at 
 least in authority. 
 
 We have heard some oppose our doctrine yet again, 
 by citing as an acknowledgement of the intermission 
 and imperfection of his inspiration, those words of St. 
 Paul ; in which, after having related to the Corinthians 
 
 • Gal. i. 1. t Deut. xxiv. 2 ; 1 Kings xi. 2 
 
ERRORS. 203 
 
 his rapture to the third heaven, he adds : " whether in 
 the body or out of the body, I cannot tell, God know- 
 eth."* Can it be supposed, say they, '-that the Holy 
 Spirit was ignorant how this miracle was accomplished ? 
 Such a passage must be from Paul, and not from God." 
 
 We answer that, although the Holy Spirit was not 
 ignorant of it, Paul Avas ; and that the Holy Spirit chose 
 that Paul should inform us of his own ignorance. Shall 
 we forget that God has always employed the personal- 
 ity of the sacred writers, in the Sacred Scriptures, to re- 
 veal himself to us ; and it is thus that he has ever chosen 
 to instruct his Church 7 When David speaking by the 
 Spirit, cries in the Psalms, that he knows his transgres- 
 sions, that his sin is continually before him, — and that 
 he was conceived in sin ; it is surely not the Holy Spirit 
 who knows his own transgressions, and whose sin is con- 
 tinually before him; but it is the Holy Spirit who for 
 our sakes, has put the language of repentance in the 
 heart and on the lips of his humiliated prophet. It is 
 in a sense analogous to this, that he made St. Paul say ; 
 '• whether it were in the body, I know not ; God 
 knows." 
 
 We have not yet examined all these objections. 
 Three now remain, which we would rather call eva- 
 sions ; because instead of resting as the others do, on 
 some argument or facts ; they are rather systems, by 
 which a portion of the Scriptures is withdrawn from the 
 divine influence of Theopneusty. It remains for us to 
 investigate them. 
 
 ' 2 Cor. xii. 4. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE EVASIONS. 
 
 Several systems of exceptions have been proposed. 
 Some, while they admit that the thoughts of the Scrip- 
 tures have been given by God; maintain notwithstanding, 
 that the style and the expressions are human ; — others 
 have excluded from inspiration, the purely historical 
 books ; — others again have Avished to exclude certain 
 details, which to them appear too vulgar and too unedi- 
 fying to be attributed to the Holy Spirit. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Could Inspiratio'ii regard the Thoughts, ic'ithout extending 
 also to the Language 7 
 
 " The prophets and apostles," say some, " in writing their sacred 
 books, were inspired in thought, without doubt ; but we must be- 
 lieve that they were then left to themselves in the clioice of lan- 
 guage ; the ideas were given by God, and the expression by man. 
 The task of the sacred writers, resembles somewhat that of a 
 man, to whom very highly colored pictures are presented ia quick 
 succession ; while he is bidden to describe them, just so far as his 
 eye maj' have rested on them. It is thus that the Holy Spirit may 
 have presented sacred truths to the minds of the evangelists and 
 prophets, leaving them only the care of expressing them; and this 
 manner of conceiving of their labor, will account satisfactorily for 
 the diversities of style that their writings present." 
 
 We reply ; 
 
 1. That this theory is directly contrary to the testi- 
 mony of the Scriptures. The Bible declares to us, that 
 it has been written, " not in the words which man's wis- 
 
THE THOUGHTS INSPIRED. 20C 
 
 dom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth."* 
 They call themselves ; " the word of God, the words of 
 God, the voice of God, the oracles of God, the Holy 
 Scriptures, the Scripture of God.f" A scripture or writ- 
 ing is composed of letters and of words, and not of in- 
 visible thoughts only : now " all Scripture is given by 
 inspiration of God," v^'eare told. That which is ^VRIT- 
 TEN, is then inspired of God [deoTtpevarog ■^) and that 
 which is inspired of God, is the whole Scripture, that 
 is, all that is written (^naaa /o«gf7J.)| 
 
 2. If this theory is anti-biblical, it is also very irra- 
 tional. 
 
 The thoughts of our fellow-men clothe themselves in 
 words. Spirits are revealed to us only in their fleshly 
 tabernacles. You learn their character, you know their 
 will and experiences, you even suspect their existence, 
 and you enter into relation with them, only Avhen they 
 are clothed with flesh, and have received organs by 
 which they manifest themselves to you. My most inti- 
 mate friend is known to me. only by the language of 
 his person, voice, and actions. If he had not these, in 
 vain might he dwell beside me for twenty years ; he 
 would be to me as if he were not. 
 
 To pursue this thought; such is to us the inevitable 
 dependence of the soul on its organs, and of ideas on 
 words, that we not only learn the existence of the one 
 by the language of the other; but even after hearing 
 their voice, we perceive their true character, only just 
 so far as we have the assurance, that the organ is a 
 faithful interpreter of the mind, that the word is the ex- 
 act image of the idea, and the proposition that of the 
 thought So long as a fear may be admitted, that lan- 
 
 * 1 Cor. ii. 13. t passim. Rom. iii. 2 ; Acts vii. 38. J 2 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
206 
 
 guage has not been the obedient and competent servant 
 of the will, we can have no confidence that we may not 
 be mistaken. Although we should know that God 
 himself had breathed the purest thoughts of heaven into 
 the soul of a writer, in order that we might have a sure 
 revelation of them by his words ; yet must he always 
 give us the assurance that these words are well chosen, 
 that they reflect the divine thoughts with exactness, and 
 that they reproduce without change, all the objects de- 
 posited in the secret places of the writer's soul. 
 
 Language is then the wonderful mirror that reflects 
 to us the depths of the mind. 
 
 Suppose you were a son in affliction, and that God, to 
 comfort you, should present you for a few moments, in 
 a glass, the ever-loved features of your mother ; would 
 it satisfy you that he caused it to approach very near to 
 you, and in such a position that the light from the object 
 should reach your eyes abundantly ? Certainly not, if 
 the mirror has a curve, a flaw, or a stain. Uneven and 
 faithless in its reflection, how would it console you? 
 You would, it is true, have near you, the smiling fea- 
 tures of a mother, her heart would seem to beat near 
 yours, with lively emotions; her inimitable look would 
 convey to you the ardent expression of her maternal 
 wishes and her august blessing ; but all would be in vain; 
 •you would see only the eye of a stranger, perhaps only 
 a hideous expression, only a deformed being and a re- 
 volting expression. Oh, my good mother, this is not 
 then thyself! you would exclaim. 
 
 These reflections will suffice to show us, how irrational 
 
 is the idea of receiving with exactness and certainty, the 
 
 thoughts of others, while their language is inaccurate 
 
 and uncertain. Can you arrive at their idea in any 
 
 18 
 
THE THOUGHTS INSPIRED. 207 
 
 Other wa}^, than by their words ? And without the 
 words of God, how are you confident that you possess 
 the thoughts of God? 
 
 3. This tlieory of a divine revelation, wherein you 
 have the inspiration of thought and not of language, is 
 necessarily so irrational, that it cannot be sincere, and 
 raust soon deceive even those who have received it ; be- 
 fore they are aware of it, it leads them down much lower 
 in their argument, than their first thesis had seemed to 
 indicate. Listen to them. " If the words are of man," 
 say they ; " the thoughts are of God." 
 
 And how do they prove this to you ? Alas ! yet 
 again, by attributing to this word of God, contradictions, 
 mistakes, ignorance. Is it then the words only that they 
 condemn ; or do they not rather find these pretended 
 errors in the thoughts, much more than in the lan- 
 guage? This must be the consequence of denying the 
 inspiration of the words; for, a revelation of the mind 
 of God demands always an inspiration of the v/ord of 
 God. 
 
 4. This theory is not only anti-biblical, irrational, 
 and hurtful ; it is also arbitrarily assumed ; it is but a 
 gratuitous hypothesis. 
 
 5. Again, — it is very useless, for it proves nothing. 
 You find it difficult, you say, to conceive how the Holy 
 Spirit can dictate the words of the sacred Scriptures; but 
 can you better explain how he has suggested the 
 thoughts ? Can you, for example, more readily ex- 
 plain how God revealed to Moses the knowledge of all 
 the scenes of creation, or to St. John, that of all the 
 scenes of the latter day ; than to imagine how he dicta- 
 ted to them the narrative of it ; whether in the Hebrew 
 or the Greek tongue ? 
 
208 EVASIONS. 
 
 6. Bear with us still. — The extreme inconsistency of 
 this theory must strike every attentive mind ; since even 
 they who maintain it the most earnestly, are often com- 
 pelled to admit, that the largest portion of the Scriptures 
 require the inspiration of God, even to their very 
 
 WORDS. 
 
 Suppose that the Holy Spirit should now command 
 you to go out on the public square, and proclaim there 
 in Russ or Tamul, " the wonderful things of God ;" 
 what would be your position, if he were to inspire only 
 the thoughts, without giving you the words ? You 
 would have before your eyes, the third heaven, and in 
 your heart, the transports of archangels ; yet must you 
 remain mute and stupid before this multitude of men. 
 To render your inspiration useful to them, the periods, 
 sentences and smallest words of your discourse must all 
 be given you. What do I say? Your own thoughts 
 might well be dispensed with, provided you could utter, 
 even without fully comprehending them, the thoughts 
 of God in the words of God. Let us carry this suppo- 
 sition back to Jerusalem and to the persons of the 
 Apostles. When the fishermen of Capernaum and 
 Bethsaida, assembled in their upper chamber on the 
 day of Pentecost, received command to descend, that 
 they might go and publish to this people, assembled 
 from every nation under heaven, " the wonderful things 
 of God," in Latin, in Parthian, Persian, Chaldaic, Cop- 
 tic, Arabic ; was it not needful that the words should 
 be given them ? What could they have done with the 
 thoughts, without the words ? Nothing ; yet Avith the 
 inspired words, they could convert ihe world ! 
 
 At a later period, when, in the Corinthian Church, 
 the saints who had received miraculous powers, spake 
 
THE THOUGHTS INSPIRED. 209 
 
 in the midst of assembled maltitudes, in strange lan- 
 guages, and called to their aid another faithful brother 
 to whom the gift of interpretation had been granted, 
 that their unknown language might be received and un- 
 derstood by their hearers, was it not equally necessary 
 that the words and all the sentences should be wholly 
 dictated to them !* when all the Prophets, after having 
 written the sacred pages, applied themselves to meditate 
 upon them, with such respect and care, as they would 
 have shewed to the oracles of a strange prophet ; w^hen 
 they meditated upon them night and day ; " searching 
 what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which 
 was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand 
 the sufTerings of Christ and the glory that should fol- 
 low;'"! ^vas it not also necessary that all the words 
 should have been given them ? When Moses describes 
 the creation of the world and the breaking up of chaos ; 
 when Solomon describes eternal wisdom, when David 
 repeats, a thousand years in advance, the prayer of the 
 Son of God on the cross ; when Daniel gives in detail, 
 and without a full comprehension of it himself, the fu- 
 ture and far off destiny of the world and of the church; 
 and when at last, St. John continues in his own prophe- 
 cy, the revelations of the prophet Daniel, must not the 
 smallest word have been given them ? And in reading 
 them, do not all interpreters acknowledge that the 
 smallest word substituted for another, the tense of a 
 verb chosen incorrectly, or a particle imprudently 
 placed, might make an utter perversion of the truth 1 
 
 We must then determine, that since so large a portion 
 of the Scriptures, is of necessity inspired, even in the 
 language ; the theory of an inspiration of thoughts, and 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiv. 1 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. 
 
 18* 
 
210 JEVASIONS 
 
 not of language, is supreniely inconsistent. There are 
 not two kinds of divine words in the Holy Scriptures ; 
 thove are not two kinds of oracles of God. If " the 
 holy men of God spake as they were moved by the 
 ^Spirit," all the sacred letters were divinely inspired, and 
 ^that which is divinely inspired in the holy letters, is 
 " ALL THE Scripture. " 
 
 But these last reflections carry us back to a point, at 
 once more simple and more important. Let us examine 
 it carefully ; for the question has been displaced. It has 
 been said that the sacred writers were inspired of God ; 
 and ibhas been asked, in what degree were they so in- 
 spired ? This was not however the object that should 
 have been sought. 
 
 7 We have said, that our investigation refers to the 
 book, and not to the writers. You believe that God 
 always gave them the thoughts, and not always the 
 words ; but on the other hand, the Scripture says that 
 God gave them always the words, and not always the 
 thoughts. While they w^ere writing, God could inspire 
 their thoughts with more or less life, vividness, purity, 
 elevation ; this excites my love, but does not exercise 
 my faith. This is to me the all important fact ; the 
 Scriptures, which they have transmitted to me, without 
 comprehending their meaning, at least without ever 
 comprehending them fully — the Scriptures are inspired. 
 
 St. Paul may have been under a mistake, when ap- 
 pearing before the council of priests, and not recognis- 
 ing the high priest of God, he dared to s^y to him : 
 " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall." It matters 
 little, however, since I know that when he wRrrEs the 
 WORD OF God, it is Jesus Christ that speaks in him.* 
 
 • 2 Cor. xiii. 3. 
 
THE THOUGHTS INSFIRED. 211 
 
 St. Peter may have been deceived in his thoughts, 
 when, refusing to believe that God could send him to 
 the heathen, he remembered not, " that in every nation, 
 those that Serve God, are accepted of him." It is possi- 
 ble he was in a still greater error, when in Antioch he 
 compelled St. Paul to withstand him face to face, in the 
 presence of all, because he was to be blamed, and 
 walked not in the faith of the Gospel.* But what mat- 
 ters this, I again repeat, at least in connection with my 
 faith ? It cares not to know at what time, or in what 
 degree, Paul, John, Mark, James, were inspired in 
 their minds, or sanctified in their hearts. What inter- 
 ests it, before all other considerations, is, to know that 
 all the sacred pages were divinely inspired ; that their 
 written words were the words of God ; and that in giv- 
 ing them to us, they spake " not in the words which 
 man's wisdom, teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost 
 teacheth."t [ovx iv didixxioig avdo(xmU'i]g aocplag 
 lb)'oig-^) that it WAS not then they who spake, but 
 the Holy Ghost ;J in a word, that God hath spoken 
 BY the mouth of all his Holy Prophets, since the 
 world began. § 
 
 The sacred writers were sometimes inspired, but the 
 Holy Scriptures always. The time, the extent, the de- 
 gree, the interruptions of the inspiration of the men of 
 God are not for us, objects of faith ; but this is an object 
 of faith, that the Scripture is divinely inspired, and that 
 the whole Scripture is divinely inspired. " Not a tittle 
 of it must pass away." 
 
 There is doubtless an inspiration of the thoughts, and 
 
 * Gal. ii. 14. 1 1 Cor. ii. 13. 
 
 X Mark xiii. 11, § Acts iii. 21 ; Luke i. 70. 
 
212 EVASIONS. 
 
 also an inspiration of the words The first makes the 
 Christian, the second the Prophet. 
 
 A true Christian is inspired in his thoughts ; " the 
 Spirit reveals to him the dee^p things of God.* Flesh 
 and blood have not revealed to him the counsels of God 
 and the glories of Jesus Christ ; it is God the Father ;t 
 for the Holy Spirit guides him into all truth ;J and no 
 man can say, Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." § 
 Every true believer is then inspired in his thoughts, but 
 not in his words. He is a Christian, but not a prophet. 
 The most sacred words of Cyprian, of Augustine, of 
 Bernard, of Luther, Calvin, Beza, Leighton, are only 
 the words of men on truths of God ; venerable, precious, 
 powerful words they are, without doubt, and worthy of 
 our attention, on account of the wisdom that has been 
 given them, and the abundant expressions of the mind 
 of God which they contain ; but after all, they are hu- 
 man words, they are sermons, not revelations. With 
 the Prophet, it is far otherwise. He may have, or he 
 may not have the thoughts of God in his thoughts ; but 
 
 so LONG AS HE SPEAKS AS A PROPHET, SO long will hc 
 
 have the words of God on his lips. 
 
 " The spirit of the Lord will speak by him, and his 
 word will be on his tongue." |j He will be the mouth 
 of God ; whether an intelligent or an unintelligent 
 mouth, whether voluntary or involuntary; it matters 
 little, if from it fall the oracles of God, and I receive 
 from it the mJnd of my God clothed in the language of 
 my God. 
 
 In a word, one may be a Christian, without having 
 on his lips the words of God ; and one can be a pro- 
 
 • 1 Cor. ii. 10. t Matt. xvi. 17. t .John xvi. 13. 
 
 § 1 Cor. xii. 3. 11 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, 2. 
 
THE THOUGHTS INSPIRED. 213 
 
 phet, without having either in his heart or mind, the 
 thoughts of God ; but one cannot be a Christian, with- 
 out having in his heart the thoughts of God ; and one 
 cannot be a prophet, without having on his lips the very- 
 words of God. 
 
 We shall presently establish the point, that in the 
 language of the Bible, a prophet is a man, to whose lips 
 God conveys for a time, those words he will have ut- 
 tered on earth. Such an one prophecies only by inter- 
 vals, " as the spirit gives him utterance."* Like Saul, 
 he might be a prophet but twice during life ; or like his 
 soldiers, but once.f Then might he pronounce the 
 words of God, either understanding or not understarid- 
 ing them ; often even without knowing beforehand that 
 /ie u'ft.*. to prophecy, and sometimes even without it'is/i- 
 ing it. 
 
 Daniel tells us that when he wrote his last pages, he 
 did not himself know what the spirit had caused him to 
 write.;]: When Caiaphas uttered prophetic words, " he 
 spake not of himself J ^ He had the loill. but neither the 
 knowledge nor understanding of what God made him 
 speak. § When Balaam went three times to the sum- 
 mit of the rock, to curse Israel ; and three times, words 
 of blessinof proceeded from his lips, in spite of himself 
 '• because the most High had met him, and put these 
 words in his mouth ;"|| he had the consciousness of it. 
 but he had neither the full knowledge of the meaning 
 of the words, nor a cordial icill in uttering them. When 
 the armed men of Saul had sought David in Rama, and 
 the Holy Spirit had so come upon them, that they like- 
 wise prophesied ; and w^hen Saul thrice sent others of 
 
 * Acts ii. 4. 1 1 Sam. x. xix. J Dan. xii. 8, 9. 
 
 § John xi. 51. II Num. .\xiii. 16, 
 
214 EVASIONS. 
 
 them, who also thrice prophesied, and when the wicked 
 Saul repaired thither himself, even to the great well on 
 his way to Najoth ; and God (to show forth his power, 
 and the better to manifest to us what a prophet is and 
 what his word is ;) caused his Holy Spirit to come upon 
 tiis unbelieving man ; when he continued thus on his 
 way, prophesying ; when the word of God was on those 
 profane lips, and he prophesied day and night before 
 Samuel, '• what then happened to the Son of Kish ?"* — 
 " Was Saul indeed then among the prophets ?" — yes ; — 
 and Saul had also the consciousness of his state, and of 
 the part he acted as prophet ; but he had neither fore- 
 seen it nor loilled it, nor probably had he, a full under- 
 standing of what he uttered. 
 
 When the old prophet was seated amicably at table 
 with the man of God, whom he had just turned from 
 his path, by an unbelieving and carnal good-will ; and 
 when on a sudden, by a power from above, loud and 
 menacing words proceeded from his lips against his im- 
 prudent and guilty host;! he prophecied Avith a con- 
 sciousness of what he did, but he prophecied without 
 willing it. What do I say 1 Did not God utter his 
 voice in the air, before Moses and all the people on 
 Mount Sinai? Has he not caused it to be heard on the 
 pillow of a child, in the tabernacle of Shiloh ; in the 
 ears of the three Apostles and the two saints recalled 
 from the invisible world, upon Mount Tabor ; in the 
 ears of John the Baptist and all the people on the oanks 
 of the Jordan? Let it then be well understood, these 
 are the hoi?/ loritings [tu ienn yodujuaTu ,-) aH thai is 
 written, both the phrases and the words are divinely in- 
 spired ; they are dsonvEvgroi. We inquire then con- 
 
 • I Sam. xix. 23, 24. 1 1 Kings, xiii. 21. 
 
THE THOUGHTS INSPIRED. 215 
 
 cerning the word, and not the men who have written it. 
 Their state is comparatively unimportant in this inves- 
 tigation. The Spirit could associate in a greater or less 
 degree, their individuality, their consciousness, their 
 memories, their affections with what he made them say; 
 and you are in no wise obliged to know any thing of 
 this ; but that which is most needful for you to know is, 
 as St. Peter hath it, " that no rROPiiETic writing came 
 by the tvill of man, but that holy men of God spake as 
 they were moved by the Holi/ GhostP* So at the sup- 
 per of Belshazzar, they were little anxious to know 
 what was passing in the fingers of that terrible hand 
 projected from the v/all by the side of the chandelier ; 
 while on the contrary, every thought of the guests was 
 directed to the words that it traced on the plaistering of 
 the wall : " Mene, Me?ie, Tekel Upharsin ;" because 
 they v.'ell knew that these words were of God ; so it 
 matters little to you, as an object of faith, to know what 
 Avas passing in the mind of Mark, of Luke, of John, and 
 of Matthew, while they were writing the scroll of the 
 Gospels. Rather let every look be turned to those 
 words w\iich they have written, because you know that 
 these words are of God. Whether the prophet be holy 
 as Moses, or wise as Daniel, hostile to his God as Caia- 
 phas, ignorant of God when he speaks to men, as the 
 prophets of Corinth, unholy as Balaam ; what do I say ? 
 insensible as the hand on the wall of the palace in 
 Babylon ; without form, without body, without soul, as 
 the open air in which was heard the voice of God on 
 Sinai, on the banks of the Jordan, or on Tabor — little 
 matters it, yet again we say, except in those cases when 
 even their personality might form an essential part of 
 
 2 Pet. i, 21. 
 
216 EVASIONS. 
 
 their revelation. Thy thought, oh! my God; thy 
 thought and thy words, they concern me. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Should the Histoncal Books be excluded from the Inspired 
 Portions of the Bible ? 
 
 "We admit," it is said, "that inspiration may have reached 
 even to the choice of expressions, wherever this miraculous work 
 was necessary ; to state doctrines, for instance, to declare a history 
 of the past more ancient than the birth of the mountains, or to 
 announce a future which none but God can know. But should 
 we go so far as to maintain that contemporary men had need of 
 the Holy Spirit, for stating facts of which they themselves had 
 been witnesses, or which they had heard others relate ; to tell us. 
 for example, of the humble marriage of Ruth in the village of Beth- 
 lehem, or the emotions of Esther in the palace of Shushan, or the 
 catalogue of the Kings of Israel and of Judah, their reigns, their 
 lives, their deaths, their genealogies 7 Luke, for example, who 
 from Troas, had accompanied the Apostle to .Terusalem, to Caesarea. 
 to the island of Malta, and even to Rome : had he not recollections 
 enough to tell us how Paul was seized in the portico of the tem- 
 ple, how his nephew warned him in the fortress, of the conspirarr 
 of forty Jews ; how the captain led the lad to the Tribune, and 
 how the Tribune taking him by the hand, led him aside an J asked 
 him what he knew ? Did he then need for facts so simple, and 
 so familiar to him, a continual intervention of power from above ' 
 We think not ; and we maintain, that it is not necessary, nor even 
 rea.«onable to believe, that all the historical jiassages of the New 
 Testament are inspired." 
 
 To such objections, our first answer is always very 
 simple ; " all Scripture is given by inspiration of God ;" 
 "thou hast known, Timothy, the holy books; but, all 
 these holy books are given by the breath of God."* 
 We have not heard the Holy Spirit make a single ex- 
 ception any where to these declarations ; and we do not 
 
 • 2 Tim. iii. 14, 16. 
 
THE IIISTOE.ICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 217 
 
 acknowledge in any man, nor in any angel, the right 
 of hazarding one. 
 
 But still further. If it were permitted to put one 
 book of God before another ; if we must select in the 
 firmament of the Scriptures, the more glorious constel- 
 lations and stars of the first magnitude, we should cer- 
 tainly give the preference to the historical books. In 
 fact : 
 
 1. It is to the historical books, that the most brilliant 
 and the most respectful testimony is rendered by the 
 prophets in the Old Testament, and by the apostles in 
 the New. Which book of the Old Testament is holier 
 than the Pentateuch ; and what is grander in the New, 
 than the four Gospels ! Is it not of the historical books 
 alone that it is written ; " the law of the Lord is perfect, 
 converting the soul ; the testimonies of the Lord are 
 sure, making wise the simple ; they are pure, more to 
 be desired than gold ; the words of the Lord are pure 
 words, as silver tried in the furnace, seven times refined? 
 Happy then is he, who takes pleasure in them and med- 
 itates therein night and day."* 
 
 2. Remark, too, with what respect our Lord himself 
 quotes them ; and how, in quoting them, he is pleased 
 to show that divine decrees lie couched in their minutest 
 details, and sometimes even in the employment of a sin- 
 gle word. 
 
 3. The histories of the Bible have not been given. 
 merely to transmit to future ages the memory of events 
 already past; they are presented to the Church of all 
 ages, to exhibit to her the character of God by facts ; 
 they are there like a mirror of providence and of grace ; 
 they are destined to reveal to her the thoughts of God, 
 
 • Psalm cxix. 95—129. 
 
 19 
 
218 EVASIONS. 
 
 the designs of God, the invisible things of God, his 
 heaven, his glory, his angels, and those mysteries which 
 " the angels desire to look into;'* But all that requires 
 the most entire Theopneusty. 
 
 , 4. But still further : the historical Scriptures are 
 given to reveal to us the deep things of man. It has 
 l)een said of the word of God. that " it is quick and 
 powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, pierc- 
 ing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and of the 
 spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner 
 of the thoughts and intents of the heart." That is true 
 of the written woid, as of the personal word of God, 
 because the one is the lano-uaj^e of the other ; but it is 
 emphatically true of the historical word. Do you not 
 see that this word, in its narrations, is a two-edged 
 sword, and that it searches the conscience ? And just 
 as it describes to you that which took place on our 
 globe in the days of chaos, when the Holy Spirit moved 
 on the face of the deep ; so it still tells you the things 
 which pass in the depths of the human heart, the mys- 
 teries of the invisible world, and the secret interference 
 of the angels of God in the affairs of men ; it reveals to 
 you secret motives, hidden faults, and human thoughts, 
 which, without it, had not been known until that last day, 
 in whose light every thing shall be revealed. Is it thus 
 that men relate events 1 
 
 5. The historical Scriptures had need, moreover, of 
 the most entire theopneusty, to relate to us without 
 error, the mysterious intervention of angels in the af- 
 fairs of the world, of the church and of heaven. — Can 
 there be a more delicate, new or difficult subject to pre- 
 sent properly? — These pure and ardent creatures, so 
 
 * 1 Pet. i. li.'. 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 219 
 
 humble and so sublime, whose existence the Bible 
 alone has revealed, differ as much from men as the 
 heavens from the earth. Nothing resembling the an- 
 gels was ever imagined by any people, by their poets 
 nor their sages. No ; the very suspicion of their na- 
 ture and existence cannot be found. — It is very evident 
 then, that it would have been impossible, without a con- 
 stant operation of God, that the narratives of the Bible, 
 in treating such a subject, could have avoided betraying 
 the narrowness of our conceptions ; and that the sacred 
 historians should not frequently have exaggerated on 
 one side or the other, either in giving them attributes 
 too much like man's or too much like those of God. 
 All nations have delighted in imagining invisible beings, 
 inhabiting the celestial regions, and endowed with every 
 excellence which man admires. But all their concep- 
 tions have been grovelling, puerile, and vulgar, com- 
 pared with the angels of the Bible. How terrestrial, 
 passionate, selfish, impure and often odious are these 
 fantasies ! — Behold the gods, the demi-gods, and the 
 whole Olympus of the ancients ; behold the fairies, the 
 genii and the sylphs of the moderns ; behold even the 
 angels of the Bible disfigured in the writings of men, 
 in the apocrj-pha of Enoch, for instance, in many of the 
 mthers, in the legends of Rome, and even the more re- 
 cent creations of the French poets ; winged passions, 
 devout puerilities, sacrilegious idols, immortal egotists, 
 celestial wickednesses, deified impurities I — But study 
 the angels of the Scriptures : not only is every thing 
 there grand, holy and v/orthy of God : not only is that 
 character at once ardent and sublime, compassionate 
 and majestic, con.stantly suggested by their names, their 
 attributes, their employments, their residences, their 
 
220 EVASIONS. 
 
 songs, their contemplations of the depths of redemption 
 and the ineffable joys of their charity ; but that which 
 chiefly strikes us, is the perfect harmony of the whole : 
 it is that all their features harmonise, and that all these 
 attributes make a beautiful, symmetrical and perfect 
 whole. 
 
 In a word, all this doctrine, sustained from one end 
 of the Scriptures to the other, during fifteen centuries, 
 presents to us a unity which alone vvould convince of 
 the reality of its object, but which also carries the most 
 striking evidence of their entire theopneusty. 
 
 Whilst all the mythologies speak of the inhabitants 
 of the moon and the planets, the Bible has not one 
 word about them ; it says nothing of the second hea- 
 ven ; but it describes with as much fulness as precision 
 the sublime inhabitants of the third heaven, or the hea- 
 ven of heavens. — This subject recurs in them constantly, 
 and under the most varied forms. — Their descriptions 
 of angels are numerous, never tedious, full of details, 
 independent, too, of each other. We there see them in 
 every situation in heaven and on the earth, before God 
 and with men, ministers noAv of mercy now of vengeance, 
 plunged in the rays of divine glory, standing before God, 
 adoring him night and day ; but also employed in the 
 service of the most humble saints, assisting them in their 
 distresses, their journeys, their prisons, their dying-bed ; 
 and finally coming at the last day upon the clouds of hea- 
 ven, with the Son of Man, to separate all the wicked 
 from his kingdom, and to gather his elect from the four 
 winds. 
 
 And who were these historians of the angels ? Let 
 it not be forgotten ; some were shepherds ; some kings, 
 or soldiers, or priests, or fishermen, or taxgathcrers ; 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 221 
 
 some, writing in the days of Hercules, of Jason and the 
 Argonauts, three hundred years before the Trojan war ; 
 others, in the age of Seneca, Tacitus and Juvenal. And 
 we see no variation in their descriptions. Unlike men, 
 they are always like themselves. We are polluted, 
 they are perfect; we are selfish, they burn with love; 
 we are haughty, they are gentle. We are vain and 
 •proud in a body which the worms shall consume, they are 
 humble in their glory and immortality. Sometimes we 
 would worship them ; " See thou do it not," they ex- 
 claim, " for I am thy fellow-servant."* We are troubled 
 with lusts, they are fervent in spirit ; they neither marry 
 nor are given in marriage, because they can never die.f 
 We are unfeeling, they are compassionate ; we suffer 
 poor Lazarus to lie groaning and famished at our gates, 
 and our dogs lick their sores ; but they come to carry 
 his spirit to Abraham's bosom ;| they lift their shouts 
 of joy when a sinner is converted ; and yet, Jesus says, 
 the angels of one of these little ones continually behold 
 the face of God in heaven. § — Behold the angel of all 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 Now, let each one ask himself how, without a con- 
 stant theopneusty of all the historical books, it could 
 happen that through so many ages not one of these 
 authors has ever suffered to escape him one word con- 
 cerning the angels, either too respectful, like the Romish 
 liturgies, or too low, after the manner of many of the 
 fathers ; and how, under their pens, not one discordant 
 feature has marred the perfect harmony of this inim- 
 itable creature, nor derogated from the ever amiable 
 dignity of this sublime creation. 
 
 * Rev. xxii. 9. + Luke xx. 36. 
 
 t Luke xvi. 22. § Matt, xviii. 10 
 
 19* 
 
222 EVASIONS. 
 
 Yet once more, this unit}-, this purity, this perfec- 
 tion do not come from man ; it is of God ! and "we 
 should recognize that here as elsewhere it was neces- 
 sary that the Holy Spirit should himself watch over 
 the entire narrative of the historians, and himself be the 
 guarantee for their minutest expressions. 
 
 6. But this is not all. See again how, even without 
 the knowledge of the authors themselves, the Bible his- 
 tories are full of the future. While relating to us past 
 events, " they are types for us Avho should live in the 
 latter times.'"* They relate, it is true, national or do- 
 mestic scenes ; but, whilst they are relating, Jesus 
 Christ is there incessantly and prophetically portrayed 
 in all his manifestations and in all his characters. See 
 the history of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, of Isaac, 
 of Joseph, of Moses, of the immolated Lamb, of the de- 
 liverance from Egypt, of the column of fire, of the 
 manna, of the Rock, which was Christ.f of the goat 
 Azazel. of all the sacrifices, of Joshua, of David, of Sol- 
 omon, of Jonah, of Zerubbabel. The entire history 
 must be adduced, to render justice to this truth. Read 
 again, in order to appreciate it, the pages of St. Paul 
 upon Hagar, Sarah, Aaron, or Melchisedec. 
 
 A little reflection will excite our admiration at the con- 
 stimt presence and power of inspiration in every part of 
 these Scriptures; and it will convince us that if there 
 are any pig^'S of the Bible which needed to be inspired 
 in every line and every word, they are those of the his- 
 torical books. They preach, they reveal, they teach, 
 they legislate, they prophesy. 
 
 bo not, then, compare them to other histories ; they 
 have altog( ther another end, totally another rank. 
 
 • 1 Cor. X. 6-11. tlCor. X. 4. 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 223 
 
 This plennry inspiration was indispensable to them, 
 that they might state, without any error, facts beyond 
 the range of human knowledge. The}'- needed it, in 
 describing the creation of the universe, the breaking up 
 of chaos, the birth of light, the establishing of mountains, 
 the ministration of angels, the secret counsels of God* 
 the thoughts of the human heart and its unknown de-' 
 fects. They needed it when they prefigured Christ by 
 a thousand types, unperceived by the writers themselves ; 
 they needed it for exhibiting thus, even in their narra- 
 tions of the past, the characteristic features of the Mes- 
 siah, his sufferings, his death, and the glories which 
 were to follow. They needed it to speak suitably even 
 of the events which were known to them ; to suppress 
 some, to present others, to distinguish between them, to 
 judge them; and thus to show, in them, the mind of 
 God. Tliey needed it, to describe with accuracy, and 
 in the precise measure of the mind of God and of the 
 Church's future necessity, the national or domestic 
 scenes, which were to convey in themselves the t3^pes 
 of redemption, to prefigure the latter days, and to pos- 
 sess a great significancy, thousands of years after their 
 occurrence. They needed it for the degree of their 
 communicativeness, for that of their reserve, for the dis- 
 creet employment of their expressions, and for that ad- 
 mirable circumspection which they have been enabled 
 uniformly to observe. 
 
 7. We could wish we had time here to speak of their 
 dramatic power (if such an expression may be allowed) 
 — of that divine and undefinable power — that mysterious 
 and ever fresh attractiveness which belongs to all their 
 narratives, which captivates the mind in every clime : 
 in which, throughout life, we find, as in the scenes 
 
224 EVASIONS. 
 
 of nature, a charm always new ; and which, after having 
 arrested and engaged our affections in early youth, have 
 a still stronger hold upon the heart, when hoary years 
 find us on the verge of the tomb. There must surely bo 
 something super-human in the very humanity of terms 
 so familiar and so artless. Men know not how to write 
 thus. Who will tell us the secret of this cnptivnting 
 power ? Where is it to be found ? We should find it dif- 
 ficult to explain, perhaps : it seems to consist in an inefili- 
 ble blending of simplicity and depth, of what is unexpect- 
 ed and what is natural, of local scenes and spiritual reve- 
 lations : it is, because these recitals are at once rapid and 
 natural ; because they present details, yet are concise ; it 
 is, in the harmony and truth of the sentiments ; it is man, it 
 is nature, in unaflected reality. In a word, we must be sen- 
 sible (even withoutbeingabletoaccountforthesensation,) 
 that he who speaks here, knows all the most secret and 
 intimate chords of the human heart, and touches them at 
 will, with a hand light and yet powerful, in the exact de- 
 gree which his own wisdom dictates. Reperuse the scenes 
 of Ruth and Boaz in the fields of Bethlehem, those of 
 Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, of David and Jona- 
 than, of Elijah and Elisha, of Naaman the Syrian, of the 
 widow of Sarepta, of the Shunamite ; and far above all 
 these, of the life and death of the Son of Man : afterwards 
 search through the whole range of human writings, 
 and see if you can discover any thing at all comparable. 
 Read, if you will, the four Vedahes, or the volumi- 
 nous collection of Pautbier, the sacred books of the 
 East, Confucius, Manou, Mohammed ;* and see, if in 
 
 * The Sncreil Books of the East, (includinjr ihe Chou-Kiiig, or Rook par 
 excellence, the Scii-Chou, or the four books of ('onfuriiis anJ his disci- 
 ples o!i nioriils; Uieliiws of Muiioii, first legishitor of IikUh, tc.) 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 225 
 
 any part of them you can find eight lines, which can be 
 compared with the incomparable narrations of Scripture. 
 But for the fear of too extensive dissertation, we could 
 have wished to have entered into some comparisons, and 
 to have taken alternately the history of similar facts 
 from the Old Testament and from the Koran : from the 
 New Testament and from the Pseudo-gospels ; from 
 the patriarchal scenes of Genesis, and from those which 
 men have depicted wherever they have become histo- 
 rians. Re-peruse, for instance, in Moses, the life of 
 Joseph; his infancy, his temptation, his sorrows, down 
 to that inimitable scene of the eleven children of Jacob 
 appearing before their brother ; to the '■ God be gra- 
 cious unto thee, my son^^ (xliii. 29,) and to the " / Jo- 
 stfK'' (CIGI'' ^^5*^') which at no age can be re-perused 
 without new emotions : afterwards, take up this same 
 history in Mohammed ; read his twelfth chapter, enti- 
 tled '• Joseph," extending to the number of one hundred 
 and eleven verses, and beginning thus : — " We have 
 caused this book to come down from heaven in the Arab 
 language, in order that it may be understood ; and we 
 are going to relate the most beautiful history which we 
 have revealed to thee in this Koran." Oh no ! It 
 must be said of the historical Scriptures, even in this 
 respect, that never has man, either before or since, rela- 
 ted events as they relate them. 
 
 8. Probably their divine conciseness has not been 
 sufficiently remarked nor admired. If you would ap- 
 preciate the Scriptures in this respect, compare them 
 with the biographies written by men, or with the codes 
 of doctrines which they give us, when they are unin- 
 spired. See, for example, the modern Jewish or the 
 Latin Church. Whilst the former have identified their 
 
226 EVASIONS. 
 
 two Talmuds with the Scriptures, by ascribing to them 
 the same divine authority ; the one of which, (that of 
 Jerusalem,) makes a large folio volume ; and the other, 
 (that of Babylon.) which is the most popular, and which 
 all their teachers are required to study, is a work of 
 twelve folio volumes ;* and whilst the Romish Church, 
 in her Council of Trent, has declared that " she receives 
 with the same affection and reverence which she gives 
 the Scriptures, her traditions concerning faith and prac- 
 tice ;" that is to say, the immense repository of her sy- 
 nodical acts, of her decretals, of her bulls, of her canons, 
 and of the writings of the holy Fathers ;t — Compare 
 all this with what the Holy Spirit has done in the 
 Bible ; and admire there the celestial wisdom of its in- 
 imitable brevity. 
 
 Who of us having been, for three years and a half, 
 the constant witness, the intimate friend, of such a man 
 as Jesus Christ, could have put, in sixteen or twenty 
 short chapters, or in eight hundred lines, the history of 
 all that life, of his birth, of his youth, of his miracles, 
 of his ministry, of his preachings, of his sufferings, of 
 his death, of his resurrection, and of his ascension into 
 the heavens ? Who of us could have recounted so 
 much goodness, without a reflection ; so many sublime 
 thoughts, without an emphasis; so many sufferings, 
 without complaints ; so much injustice, without bitter- 
 ness ; so many innocent infirmities of the master, or so 
 many culpable infirmities of the disciples, without the 
 
 ' The last edition of AmsterdaiTi. Maimonides has made a lenrned ex- 
 tract from it ill his Yad Tlachazaka. See Prideaux' Hist, of the Jews. 
 Amsterdam, vnl. ii. page 130. 
 
 t ConiKil of Ti*nt, session 4, first and second decrees, published, Ap. 
 •28th, ir)4G. — Hellannine de rerhn Dei. lib. 4, cap. 3, 5, 6. — Colon, lib. ii. cap. 
 24, 34, 35 — Buile, traitc I. l)u Perron against Silenus. 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 227 
 
 leact concealtnent ; so much ingratitude in their bjse 
 abandonment of him, so much resistance, so much 
 hardness of heart, without an apology and without a 
 comment ? Is it thus that men relate events or describe 
 character? 
 
 Who of us, again, could have distinguished that 
 which must be cursorily presented, from that which 
 must be related in detail ? Who of us, for instance, 
 would have thought that the whole creation of the 
 world must be told in one chapter of thirty-one verses ; 
 then the trial, the fall and condemnation of our race in 
 another chapter of twenty-four verses ; whilst so many 
 chapters and pages must be devoted to the construction 
 of the Tabernacle and its furniture, because in it was 
 contained for future ages, a continual and typical pic- 
 ture of Jesus Christ and his redemption? Who of us, 
 for the same reason, would have employed the fifth 
 part of Genesis in relating the history of only one of 
 Jacob's twelve sons, whilst two chapters would have 
 appeared to him sufficient to make nearly seventeen 
 hundred years, from the fall of Adam to the deluge ? 
 Who among ourselves would have thought of men- 
 tioning only four women (and such women!) in the 
 forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, 
 and have told of the incestuous Tatnar, the impure Ra- 
 hab, of Ruth the Moabitess, and the adulterous wife of 
 the injured Uriah, without a single accompanying re- 
 flection ? Who of us, after having shared for ten 
 years in the labors of St. Paul, his dangers, his impris- 
 onments, his preachings and his prophetic gifts, could 
 have related twenty-two years of such a life, without 
 saying one word of himself, and with(tt]t showing to 
 other men, except by the mere change of the personal 
 
228 EVASIONS. 
 
 prcnoun,* that from Troas to Jerusalem and Caesarea, 
 and that from Jerusalem and Csesarea, even to Malta 
 and to Rome, he had been his suffering companion, 
 faithful and indefatigable? To discover who this was, 
 we must learn from Paul, who, in his last prison wrote 
 to Timothy ; " in my first defence, no man stood by me, 
 all forsook me ; Luke alone was with me."t Holy 
 and celestial reserve ; humble and noble silence ! The 
 Divine Spirit alone could have taught him ! 
 
 Where would you f]nd,amongalhheuninspiredhisto- 
 rians, a man who could have written like St. Luke, the 
 Acts of the Apostles ; who could have related in thirty 
 pages, the ecclesiastical history of thirty of the most 
 brilliant years of Christianity, from the ascension of the 
 Son of Man above the clouds of heaven, to the impris- 
 onment of St. Paul in the capital of the Roman world? 
 Incompara' ]e history ; at once short and grand ! What 
 do we not find there ? — preachings to the Jews, to the 
 Greeks, before the tribunals, before the Areopagus, and 
 before the Sanhedrim, in public places and before a pro- 
 consul, before synagogues and before kings ; admirable 
 descriptions of the primitive church ; miraculous and 
 dramatic scenes in its bosom ; interventions of angels to 
 deliver, to warn and to punish ; controversies and divi- 
 sions in Christian assemblies; new institutions in the 
 church ; the history of her first council and its synodical 
 epistle; commentaries on the Scriptures; accounts of 
 heresii s ; judgments of God, solemn and terrible ; ap- 
 paritions of the Lord, by the way, in the temple and in 
 the prison , detailed conversions, often miraculous, 
 and singuhrly varied ; that of ^neas, that of the Eu- 
 nuch, and that of the captain Cornelius, that of the Ro- 
 
 • Acts xvi. 10. t 2 Tim. iv. 16, 11. 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 229 
 
 man jailor, that of the pro-consul, that of Lydia, that of 
 ApoUos, that of a numerous people at Jerusalem ; with- 
 out speaking of those that were merely commenced, as 
 in the emotions of King Agrippa, in the troubles of 
 Festus, in the professions of Simon of Samaria, in the 
 anguish of Pilate's wife, in the terrors of Felix, in the 
 kindness of the captain Julius. In it we also find mis- 
 sionary journeys, diverse solutions of cases of con- 
 science : permanent divisions upon external things, be- 
 tween Christians of different classes ; mutual prejudices, 
 disputes between brethren and between apostles ; bursts 
 of passion ; explanations, and at the same time, triumph 
 of the spirit of charity over obstacles; communications 
 from one military officer to another, fiom pro-consul to 
 pro-consul ; resurrections ; revelations made to the 
 church to hasten the calling of the gentiles ; collections 
 for the poor of one church by those of another ; pro- 
 phecies ; national scenes ; punishments inflicted or pre- 
 pared ; arraignments before Jewish tribunals or Roman 
 municipal authorities, before governors and kings ; 
 christian meetings from house to house ; their emotions, 
 their prayers, their charity, their doubts ; a persecuting 
 king smitten by an angel and consumed by worms, at 
 the very moment when, to repeat the gratification he 
 had given the people by the murder of one apostle, that 
 of another was now prepared by his orders ; persecu- 
 tions in every form, by synagogues, by princes, by mu- 
 nicipal officers, by Jews or by mobs ; deliveran -es of 
 godly men, now by a child, now by an angel, now by 
 a Roman tribune, now by a sea-captain, by Pagan ma- 
 gistrates, or by idolatrous soldiers ; tempests and ship- 
 wrecks, which by the accuracy of their nautical details 
 (we have witnessed it,) still charm the seamen of our 
 20 
 
230 EVASIONS. 
 
 day ; and all that, in thirty pages, or twenty-eight short 
 chapters. Admirable brevity ! Did not this concise- 
 ness require the Holy Spirit of God, this choice of de- 
 tails, this style, so pious, so varied, so brief so richly 
 significant, which employs so few words, while it 
 teaches so many things? Fullness, conciseness, clear- 
 ness, simplicity, elevation, practical richness ; behold 
 the book of ecclesiastical history which the people of 
 God needed ! 
 
 It is true ; yet we repeat, it is not thus that men write 
 history. 
 
 Could you find upon the earth, a man capable of 
 relating the assassination of his mother, with the calm- 
 ness, the sobriety, the self possession, the apparent want 
 of passion, which distinguish that four-fold history of 
 the Evangelists relating the punishment of that Jesus, 
 whom they loved more than any mother is loved, more 
 than life is loved ; of that Jesus whom they adored : of 
 that Jesus whom they had seen prostrate in Gethse- 
 mane ; then betrayed, forsaken, led to Jerusalem v/ith 
 his hands bound, and finally nailed naked upon the 
 cross, while the sun withdrew his light, while the earth 
 was rent, and while he who was raising the dead, was 
 himself reduced to the state of the dead ! Was it not 
 necessary that each line, each word of such a history, 
 should be written under the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit, that a suitable selection might be made amidst a 
 world and an age of reminiscences ? 
 
 9. This entire guidance was also necessary for that 
 prophetic reserve which the sacred historians have been 
 able to exercise in so many respects, and for that pru- 
 dence altogether divine, which manifests itself not only 
 in their teachings, but in their silence ; not only in 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROrHETICAL. 231 
 
 the terms which they emplby. but in those which they 
 avoid. 
 
 See them, for example, when they speak of the mo- 
 ther of Jesus. What divine foresight, what prophetic 
 wisdom, both in their narrations and in their expres- 
 sions ! How easy it was in their ardent adorations of 
 the son, to have expressed themselves concerning the 
 mother, in terms too reverential ! Would not one sin- 
 gle word, which might so easily have escaped in the 
 imprudence of their first emotions, have forever author- 
 ized that idolatry of future ages towards Mary, and the 
 crime of that worship which is now rendered her? 
 But that word they have never uttered. But have they 
 not merely gone so far as to call her the mother of 
 God ? No, not even that ; although he was to them 
 Emmanuel, the Man-God, the Word who was in the 
 beginning with God, u'ho was God, and who was made 
 flesh. Hear them ; what will they say of her, after 
 the death and resurrection of the Savior ? One single 
 sentence; and then perpetual silence! '=All those 
 continued in prayer with the women, and with Mary, 
 the mother of Jesus and with his brethren. (Hi omnes 
 erant perseverantes in oratione cum mulieribus, et Ma- 
 ria matre Jesu et fratribns ejus.") They mention her 
 there, neither the first nor the last; she appears there, 
 as the mother of Jesus, among the brothers of Jesus 
 and the Galilean women. And what will they say of 
 her bf'fore the death of Christ? Remark it, for it is 
 not thus that men relate. Among all the words which 
 Jesus may have said to his mother from the opening of 
 his mission, they have selected but three to report to 
 us. This is the first : " Woman," (when she interfered 
 with his ministry just commenced, and asked him to 
 
232 EVASIONS. 
 
 perform a miracle.) " woman, (woman !) what have I 
 to do with thee ?"* When afterwards a woman in 
 the crowd, exclaimed in her enthusiasm, " Happy the 
 womb that bare thee !" " Say rather, said he, happy 
 is he who heareth the word of God, and keepeth it."t 
 That is the second. Now hear the third ; his mother 
 and brethren were shaken in their faith ; they had 
 heard it said; he is beside himself, (dicebant enim ; 
 quoniam in furorem versus est ;) and one came and 
 said : " Thy mother and thy brothers are without, de- 
 siring to speak with thee." " Who is my mother ?" 
 replied he : and stretching his hand towards his disci- 
 ples said, " Behold my mother. Every woman who 
 shall do the will of my father in heaven, the same is 
 my mother. Ecce mater mea," And when ; finally, 
 he saw her from his cross, he no more called her mo- 
 ther ; but he bequeathed her to the disciple whom he 
 loved, saying : " Woman, behold thy son ; John, be- 
 hold thy mother ; and from that hour, that disciple re- 
 ceived her to his house," not to adore her, but to pro- 
 tect her, as a feeble and suffering being whose soul a 
 sword had pierced. 
 
 Is it then thus, we again ask, that men write history ; 
 and must it not be that the prophetic Spirit was the sole 
 narrator of all these facts ? 
 
 We should love to quote other examples ; they pre- 
 sent themselves in a throng bt^fore our eyes at this mo- 
 ment, and it is a sacrifice to us to wiihhold them; for 
 the more closely these historical books are studied, the 
 more the prophetic wisdom of the Spirit of God which 
 has dictated them, there reveals itself in the details at 
 first the most unperceived. We should love to signal- 
 
 • John ii. 4. t Luke xi. 27. 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 233 
 
 ize among others, the altogether prophetic wisdom with 
 which the Holv Spirit often, when he relates an impor- 
 tant fact more than once, tak^'S care to vary his expres- 
 sions, in Older to prevent false interpretations which 
 might be given to his words, and to condemn before- 
 hand, the errors which in after times might be attributed 
 to them. We would cite, for example, the remarkable 
 and unanticipated manner in which the tenth precept of 
 the decalogue is repeated in D'-uteronomv,* with a re- 
 markable transposition of its first terms ; the Holy- 
 Spirit wishing thus to confound prophetically the arti- 
 fice by which the teachers of the church of Rome should 
 see fit, fifteen centuries afterwards, to divide this com- 
 mandment into two, thus to conceal their nefarious ab- 
 duction of the second commandment: "thousbalt not 
 make unto thee any images . . . thou shalt not bow 
 down to them nor serv^e them " We should love to 
 show again the varied expressions by which the Holy 
 Spirit has showed to us the divine institution of the 
 Lord's Supper, and has often paraphrased It, in order to 
 make us the bf-tter understand what Christ intended by 
 it, and to condemn in advance, the carnal sense which 
 men should afterwards give to the words : " Tins is my 
 blood, this CUP is the new covenant in my blood ;" and 
 he has also said : '-this cup is the communion or commu- 
 nication of the blood of the New Testament." We 
 could wish to point out the prophetic wisdom, by which, 
 in order to confound those who should pretend in future 
 times, that Judas did not take part in the last supper (and 
 that he went out before it, or did not come In until after 
 it,) the Holy Spirit has taken care to inform us by Mark 
 and Matthew,! that Jesus announced the treason of Ju- 
 
 • Deut. V. 21 : Exod. xx. 17. t Matt. xxvi. 21, 26 ; Mark xiv. 19, 23. 
 
 20* 
 
234 EVASIONS. 
 
 das before the Supper, Judas being present ; and by 
 Luke, that he announced it after the communion, Judas 
 being present.* We should love to show among all 
 the writers of the New Testament, the constant sobriety 
 of their words, when the relation of pastors to their 
 churches is spoken of; and that admirable prudence 
 with which they have always abstained from applying, 
 even in one single instance, to the ministers of the 
 Christian church, the name of priest ; and have merely 
 appropriated to them the title of elders, which was 
 given to the laity of Israel, to distinguish them always 
 from the sacerdotal race (that represented Jesus Christ. 
 and that was to cease when the true and only priest 
 should have appeared.) We should love too, to point 
 out that prudence with which they avoid leading a soul 
 to any other pastor, or any other director ('<"^'/}''/T»??),t 
 than Jesus Christ; and with which, in recommending 
 deference to their spiritual guides, they have taken care 
 to name them always in the plural, in order never to 
 authorize from the Scripture this idea so natural to the 
 pastor and to the flock, that every soul must have its 
 pastor among men: " Call no man upon earth, your 
 Father, and be ye not called Master, for one is your 
 Master, even Christ." What precaution, what reserve 
 in the narrations, in order never to give too much to 
 man, and to recount the great things which '• God had 
 done by the apostles,"J so that each one should be 
 abased before God, and all the glory be ascribed to him, 
 and that every servant of the Lord might learn to say 
 with the last prophet of the Old Testament and the first 
 of the New : " he must increase but I must decrease." 
 
 • Luke xxii. 19, 23. t Matt, xxiii. 8, Itt 
 
 + Acts xiv. 27 ; Rom. xv. 18 ; 1 Cor. iii. 6. 
 
THE HISTORICAL BOOKS PROPHETICAL. 235 
 
 We repeat, that it is almost doing- violence to our- 
 selves, to have the Bible before us, and quote no more 
 of it. 
 
 From all these features reunited, we must then con- 
 clude, that if all Scripture is divinely inspired ; the his- 
 torical books exhibit this divine intervention more 
 strongly than all the others ; they show the necessity 
 of it more clearly ; they attest that for such pages, it 
 was indispensable that the invisible and powerful hand 
 of the Holy Spirit be placed upon that of the sacred 
 writer, and that he guide it from the first line even to 
 the last ; more than men was required, more than 
 learned men, more than holy men, more than minds 
 enlightened and superintended, more than angels, more 
 than archangels ; God must do it. 
 
 We will say then with Origen : " The sacred volumes 
 breathe the plenitude of the Spirit ; and there is nothing, 
 either in the prophets, in the law, in the gospels, or in 
 the apostles, which does not come from the plenitude 
 f the majesty of God ;'"* And with St. Ambrose : 
 " Drink from both cups, the Old and the New Testa- 
 ments, because in each you drink Christ. Drink Christ, 
 that you may drink the blood by which you are re- 
 deemed ; drink Christ, that you may drink his truth. — 
 The Holy Scriptures are drunk, and the divine Scrip- 
 tures are devoured, when the juices of the eternal word 
 descend into the veins of the mind and into the strength 
 ofthesoul."t 
 
 * Homil. Il.in Jerem.cap. l. 
 
 t "Utrumqiie poculum bibe veteris et Novi Testamenti, quia ex utroque 
 Christum bibis. Bibe Christum, ut bibas sanguinem quo redemptus es; 
 bibe Christum, ut bibas sermor.es ejus.— Bibitur Scriptura sacra, et devo- 
 ratur Scriptura divina, cum in venas mentis ac vires animi succus verbi 
 descendit eteTni."— Ambrose in Psalm I. Ennrratio. 
 
236 EVASIONS. 
 
 " But what then," it has sometimes been said ; " must 
 we believe that the letter of the Pagan Lysias, or the 
 haran/jue of Gamaliel the Jew, or the discourses of 
 Job's severe friends were inspired words ?" — Surely, 
 no ; no more than those of Cain or Lamech — of Rab- 
 shakeh or Satan. But the sacred writers were as really 
 led by God to transmit them to us, as to report to us the 
 song of Mary in the hill-country, or that of the seraphim 
 in the year of king Uzziah's death, or that of the celes- 
 tial army at Bethlehem. The Holy Spirit is not al- 
 ways the author of the words which he relates ; but he 
 IS always their historian. 
 
 But there is still another evasion, which is adopted in 
 order to separate one part of the scriptures from the 
 Theopneusty. If it is not the most serious objection, it 
 is at least one of those the most frequently repeated. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Would the Apparent lasignijicance of Certain Details of the Biile, 
 justify lis in separating them from the Inspired Portion? 
 
 " Does it comport with the dignity of inspiration to accompany 
 the thought of the Apostle Paul, even into those vulgar details 
 into which we see him descend in some of his letters 1 Would 
 the Holy Spirit condescend to dictate to him those public salutations 
 which terminate his epistles ; — or those medical counsels to Tim- 
 othy concerning his stomach and his often infirmities ; — or those 
 commissions with which he charges him, with regard to his parch- 
 ments and a certain cloak which he had lefl at the house of Carpus 
 at Troas, when he was leaving Asia 1" 
 
 The reader will suffer us to beseech him to be cau- 
 tious of this objection, when, holding the Bible in his 
 hands, he happens not to recognize on the first perusal, 
 the signs of God's hand in such or such a passage of 
 the word. Let those imprudent hands not cast one 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOBIE DETAILS. 237 
 
 verse of it out of the temple of the Scriptures. They 
 hold an eternal book, all of whose authors have said 
 with St. Paul : " And I think that I too have the Spirit 
 of the Lord !" If then, he does not yet see any thing- 
 divine in such or such a passage, the fault is in him, 
 and not in the passage. Let him rather say with Ja- 
 cob: "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it 
 not !"* This book can sustain the light of science ; for 
 it will bear that of the last day. The heavens and the 
 earth shall pass ; but none of its words shall fail, not 
 even to the least letter. God declares to every one that 
 heareth the words of this prophecy ; that if any one 
 shall take away from the words of this book. God will 
 take away his part from the book of life.f 
 
 Let us examine more closely the alleged passages. 
 St. Paul from the depths of his prison, sends for his 
 cloak. He has left it at the house of Carpus, in Troas, 
 and he entreats Timothy to hasten to him before winter ; 
 and not forget to bring it to him. This domestic detail, 
 so many thousand times objected against the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, from the days of the Anomians of 
 Avhom St. Jerome speaks : J this detail seems to you too 
 trivial for an apostolic book, or at least too insignificant 
 and too foreign from all practical utility, for the dignity 
 of inspiration. Unhappy however, is he who does not 
 perceive its pathetic grandeur. 
 
 Jesus Christ also, on the day of his death, spoke of 
 his cloak and of his vesture.^ Would you. have this 
 passage taken away from the inspired volume ? It was 
 
 • Gen. xxviii. 16. t Rev. x.xii. 18, 19. 
 
 X See Proemium in Epist. ad Philem. 
 
 § We suppose the author to attribute to Christ, what is said about his 
 garments, because the language in the Psalm is— "t???/ vesture," &c.— 
 Trans. 
 
238 EVASIONS. 
 
 after a night of fiitigue and anguish. They had led 
 him about the streets of Jerusalem for seven successive 
 hours, by the light of torches, from street to street, fiom 
 tribunal to tribunal, buffeting him, covering him with a 
 veil, striking his head with staves. The morrow's sun 
 was not yet risen, before they had bound his hands with 
 cords, to lead him again from the high priest's house to 
 Pilate's Prsetorium. 'i'here, lacerated with rods, bathed 
 in his own blood, then delivered for the last punishment, 
 to ferocious soldiers, he had seen his garments all 
 stripped off^ that they might clothe him in a scarlet 
 robe, whilst they bowed the knee before him, placed 
 the reed in his hands, and spit upon his face. Then, 
 before laying his cross upon his bruised frame, they 
 had replaced his garments upon his wounds, to lead 
 him to Calvary; but, when they ^vere about to proceed 
 to the execution, they took them away for the third 
 time ; and it is then that, stripped of every thing, first 
 his cloak, then his coat, then of even his under-dress, he 
 must die naked upon the malefactor's gibbet, in the 
 view of an immense multitude. Was there ever seen 
 under heaven, a man, who has not found these details, 
 touching, sublime, inimitabh^? And was one ever seen, 
 who, from the account of this death, thought of retrench- 
 ing as useless or too vulgar, the history of these gar- 
 ments which they divided among them, — or of this 
 cloak for which they cast lots? Has not infid< lity 
 itself said in speaking of that event, that the majesty of 
 the Scriptures astonished it, that their simplicity spoke 
 to its heart ; that the death of Socrates was that of a 
 sage, but Jesus Christ's, that of a God!* — and if the 
 divine inspiration was reserved for a mere portion of 
 
 * J. J. Rousseau. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 239 
 
 the holy books, would it not be for these verjr details? 
 Would it not be for the history of that love, which, after 
 having lived upon the earth poorer than the birds of the 
 air and the foxes of the field, was willing to die still 
 poorer, deprived of all, even to its cloak and its under- 
 garments, and fastened naked to the malefactor's gibbet 
 with the arms extended and nailed to the wood 1 Ah ! 
 be not solicitous for the Holy Spirit ; he has not dero- 
 gated from his own majesty ; and so far from thinking 
 that he was stooping too low in announcing these facts 
 to the world, he had hastened to recount them to it : and 
 that too, a thousand years in advance. At the period 
 of the Trojan Avar he already was singing them upon 
 the harp of David : " They have pierced my hands and 
 my feet," said he, '' they look and stare upon me, they 
 part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my 
 vesture."* 
 
 But it is the same Spirit who would show us St. Paul 
 'Writing to Timothj^, and requesting him to bring his 
 cloak. Hear him ; he too is stripped of every thing. 
 In his youth, he was already eminent, a favourite of 
 princes, admired of all : but now he has left every thing 
 for Christ. It is now thirty years and more, that he 
 has been poor, in labors more than the others, in wounds, 
 more than they, in prison oftener ; five times he had 
 received of the Jews forty stripes save one ; thrice was 
 he beaten with rods ; once he was stoned ; thrice he 
 has suffered shipwreck ; often in journeyings ; in perils 
 upon the sea, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert: 
 in watcbings oft, in hunger and in thirst, in cold and 
 nakedness-f (we quote his own words.) Hear him now:* 
 behold him advanced in age ; he is in his last prison ; 
 
 • Psalm, xxii. 18, 19 : John, xix. 23, 24. t 2 Cor. xi. 2.3—27. 
 
240 EVASIONS. 
 
 he is at Rome ; he is expecting his sentence of death ; 
 he has fought the good fight ; he has finished his 
 course, he has kept the faith ; but he is cold, winter is 
 coming on, and he is poorly clad ! Buried in a dun- 
 geon of the Mamerline prisons, he is so much despised, 
 that even all the Christians of Rome are ashamed of 
 him, and that at his first appearing-, no man was will- 
 ing to befriend him. Yet, he had received, ten years 
 before, while a prisoner at Rome, and loaded with 
 chains, at least some money from the Philippians ; who, 
 knowing his sufferings, united together in their indi- 
 gence, to send him some succor. But now, behold 
 him forsaken ; no one but St. Luke is with him ; all 
 have abandoned him ; winter is approaching. He 
 would need a cloak ; he has left his own, two hundred 
 leagues off, at the house of Carpus in Troas ; and no 
 one in the cold prisons of Rome would lend him one. 
 Has he not then left every thing, with joy, for Christ; 
 has he not esteemed all the glory of this world as dross 
 that he might win Christ ; and does he not suffer all 
 things cheerfully for the elect's sake ?* We were our- 
 selves at Rome, last year, in a hotel, on a rainy day, in 
 the beginning of November. Chilled by the piercing 
 dampness of the cold, evening air, we had a vivid con- 
 ception of the holy apostle in the subterranean dungeons 
 of the capitol, dictating the last of his letters, regretting 
 the absence of his cloak, and intreating Timothy to 
 bring it to him before the winter ! 
 
 Who would then take from the inspired Epistles so 
 striking and pathetic a feature ? Does not the Holy 
 Spirit carry you to the prison of Paul, to astonish you 
 with this tender self-renunciation and this sublime pov- 
 
 • Phil iii. 8. 2 Tim. ii. 10. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 241 
 
 erty ; just too, as he shewed you with your own eyes, 
 his charity, sometime before, when he made him write 
 in his letter to the Philippians : " I weep in writing to 
 you, because there are many among you, who mind 
 earthly things, whose end is destruction ?" Do you not 
 seem to see him in his prison, loaded with chains, while 
 he is writing, and tears are falling upon his parchment? 
 And does it not seem to you that you beheld that poor 
 body, to-day miserably clothed, suffering and benumbed ; 
 to-morrow beheaded and dragged to the Tiber, in ex- 
 pectation of the day when the earth shall give up her 
 dead, and the sea the dead which are in it ; and when 
 Christ shall transform our vile bodies, to make them 
 like unto his own glorious body ? And if these details 
 are beautiful, think you they are not also useful ? And 
 if they are already useful to him who reads them as a 
 simple historical truth, what will they not become to 
 hini who believes in their Theopneusty, and who says 
 to himself: oh my soul, these words are written by 
 Paul; but it is thy God who addresses them to thee? 
 Who can tell the force and consolation, which, by their 
 very familiarity and naturalness, they have for eighteen 
 centuries, conveyed into dungeons and huts ! Who can 
 count the poor and the martyrs, to whom such passages 
 have given encouragement, example and joy ? We just 
 now remember, in Switzerland, the Pastor Juvet, to 
 whom a coverlet was refused, twenty years ago, in the 
 prisons of the Canton de Yaud. We remember that 
 Jerome of Prague, shut up for three hundred and forty 
 days in the dungeons of Constance, at the bottom of a 
 dark and loathsome tower, and going out only to appear 
 before his murderers. Nor have we forgotten the holy 
 Bishop Hooper, quitting his dark and dismal dungeon, 
 21 
 
242 EVASIONS. 
 
 with wretched clothes and a borrowed cloak, to go to 
 the scaffold, supported upon a staff, and bowed by the 
 sciatica. Venerable brethren, happy martyrs ; doubt- 
 less you then remembered your brother Paul, shut up 
 in the prison of Rome, suffering from cold and naked- 
 ness, asking for his cloak ! Ah ! unfortunate he, who 
 does not see the sublime humanity, the tender grandeur, 
 the fore-seeing and divine sympathy, the depth and the 
 charm of such a mode of teaching ! But still more un- 
 fortunate perhaps he, who declares it human, because 
 he does not comprehend it. We would here quote the 
 beautiful remarks of the respectable Haldane on this 
 verse of St. Paul. '• This passage, if you consider the 
 place it occupies in this Epistle, and in the solemn 
 farewells of Paul to his disciples, presents this Apostle 
 to our view, in the situation most calculated to afft ct us. 
 He has just been before the Emperor ; he is about to 
 finish his days by martyrdom ; his departure is at hand, 
 the crown of righteousness is reserved for him ; behold 
 him on the confines of two worlds ; in this which he is 
 about to leave, ready to be beheaded, as a malefactor, 
 by the orders of Nero ; in that which he is going to en- 
 ter, crowned as a just man by the Lord of lords ; in this, 
 abandoned of men ; in that, welcomed by angels ; in 
 athis, needing a poor cloak to cover him ; in that, cov- 
 ered with the righteousness of the saints ; clothed upon 
 with his heavenly tabernacle of light and joy ; so that 
 mortality is swallowed up of life." 
 
 Ah, rather than object to such a passage, thereby to 
 deprive the Scriptures of their infallibility, we should 
 there recognize that wisdom of God, which, so often by 
 one single touch, has given us instructions, for which, 
 without that, many pages would have been ne. °ssary. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OP SOME DETAILS. 243 
 
 We should adore that tender condescension, which, 
 Stooping even to our weakness, is pleased, not only to 
 reveal to us the highest thoughts of heaven in the sinn- 
 plest language of earth, but also to offer them to us un- 
 der forms so living, so dramatic, so penetrating, often 
 compressing them in order to render them more intelli- 
 gible, within the narrow space of a single verse. 
 
 It is then thus that St. Paul, by these words thrown 
 at hazard even into the last commission of a familiar 
 letter, casts for us a rapid flood of light over his min- 
 istry, and discovers to us by a word, the entire life of 
 an Apostle ; as a single flash of lightning in the even- 
 ing, illuminates in an instant, all the tops of our Alps; 
 and as persons sometimes show you all their soul by a 
 single look. 
 
 How many striking examples of this could we quote. 
 They present themselves in crowds ; but we are obliged 
 to restrain ourselves ; and we should in fact rather 
 confine ourselves to the very passages which the objec- 
 tor selects. 
 
 Yet we must say before going any farther ; we al- 
 most blush to defend the word of God under this form ; 
 and we ftel for this species of apology, a kind of con- 
 scientious disgust. Is it entirely proper ; and can we 
 ffive ourselves to it without irreverence? Care must 
 be taken at all times, as to the manner of defending the 
 things of God ; lest we imitate the imprudence of Uzzah, 
 who reached out his hand to hold up the ark of God, 
 because the oxen had slipped. The wrath of God, we 
 ire told, burned against his indiscretion.* If it is well 
 understood on both sides, that a word is in the canon of 
 ihe oracles of God, why defend it as worthy of him, by 
 
 • 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7. 
 
244 EVASIONS. 
 
 human reasons ? You might, without doubt, defend it 
 against unbelievers ; but with men who recognize the 
 divinity of the Scriptures, is it not to wrong this word : 
 is it not to take a false position, and touch the ark as 
 Uzzah did ? If this word should present itself to our 
 eyes as a root out of a dry ground ; were it without 
 any charm ; were there neither form nor comeliness, 
 nor any thing in it to make it desirable ; still ought you 
 to venerate it and expect every thing for it, from him 
 who has given it. Is it not then to fail of your duty to 
 him ; to attempt when he speaks, to prove by argument, 
 the respect which is his due?- Should I not be asham- 
 ed, when my Savior and my God has been showed me, 
 rising from supper, taking a basin, girding himself with 
 a napkin, and coming to wash the feet of his disciples ; 
 should [ not be ashamed to set myself to proving, that, 
 in spite of all that, he is still the Christ ! Ah ; I would 
 rather adore him more than ever ! But it is so ; the 
 majesty of the Scriptures will stoop even to us. Do 
 you see it there rising from the table, laying aside its 
 robe, putting on the dress of a servant, and kneeling be- 
 fore sinners to wash their feet? " If I do not wash 
 thee, thou hast no part with me." Is it not then, in this 
 very humiliation that it reveals itself with the greatest 
 charm, as the voice of the humiliated Word ? Could 
 we mistake it, and could we rank ourselves for an in- 
 stant by the side of those who do not know it? 
 
 It seems to us, that there is no arrogance comparable 
 to that of a man, who, recognising the Bible as a book 
 of God, pretends after all, to assay it with his hand ; to 
 separate the pure from its impure, the inspired from the 
 uninspired, God from man. It is to overthrow all the 
 foundations of faith ; it is to make it no more a belief in 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 245 
 
 God, biU a belief in man. It ought then to be enough 
 for us that a chapter or a word makes part of the Scrip- 
 lures, to induce us to believe it divinely good ; for God 
 has pronounced upon it, as upon the creation : " I have 
 seen every thing that I have made, and behold, all is 
 ■ good." We will never then say, I find this word ad- 
 mirable, therefore it is of God ; and still less, I do not 
 see its utility, therefore it is of man. God preserve us 
 from it ! But we will say, it is in the Scriptures ; then 
 it is from God. It is from God ; then it is useful, it is 
 wise, it is admirable ; if I do not see it such yet, the 
 fault is in me alone. 
 
 We regard as utterly misapplied, this protection which 
 the wisdom of man would extend to that of God ; we 
 hold as an outrage, this gross stamp with which it pre- 
 tends to legalize the Holy Scriptures, and this absurd 
 signature with which it dares to authorize their pas- 
 sages. 
 
 If then we here proceed to prove the divine wisdom 
 of certain passages which some have dared to pronounce 
 human, it is not to found their divinity upon the judg- 
 ments of man's better informed wisdom, nor preposter- 
 ously to make them respected, merely on account of the 
 beauty which is there revealed. Our respect has pre- 
 ceded a particular examination ; it was founded upon 
 the fact that the passage is written in the oracles of God. 
 From that time, before having seen, we have believed. 
 We then intend to refute the objection, merely by pre- 
 senting some examples of its rashness. Let us hear yet 
 two or three passages to which some have pretended to 
 refuse the honors of inspiration, because, on a superficial 
 examination, they have thought them to be without 
 spiritual bearing. We can here quote only a very small 
 21* 
 
246 EVASIONS. 
 
 number. A sentence may be pronounced useless or 
 vulgar in four words ; but to show that the objection is 
 founded in misapprehension, pages would be requisite. 
 
 One of the passages which we find frequently placed 
 in the front, when they would justify a distinction be- 
 'tween that which is inspired and that which is unin- 
 spired in the word of God, is the recommendation of St. 
 Paul to Timothy, on account of his bad digestion, and 
 the maladies under which this young disciple was suf- 
 fering : " drink no more water, but a little wine, for thy 
 stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."* 
 
 At the same time, if you examine this passage more 
 closely, what an admirable and living revelation will 
 you find, of the greatness of the Apostolic vocation and 
 of the amiableness of the Christian character. Remark 
 first, that it was pronounced as in the temple of God ; 
 for, immediately before, you have these solemn words: 
 " I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and the elect angels, that thou observe these things with- 
 out preferring one before another, doing nothing by par- 
 tiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man ; neither be 
 partakers of other men's sins : keep thyself pure. 
 Drink no more only water." We see that it is in the 
 presence of their common Master and of the holy an- 
 gels, that St. Paul would speak to his disciple. Enter- 
 ing then into the same temple, to understand him, and 
 placing ourselves at the same height, in arraigning our- 
 selves as he did, " before the Lord Jesus and his holy 
 angels ;" then we shall quickly recognize how manj- 
 beauties these passages reveal in the ministry of the 
 Apostles, and in the ways of the Lord towards his own. 
 The celebrated Chrysostom hud well understood it, 
 
 • 1 Tim. V. 23. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 247 
 
 when preaching upon these very words, he observed 
 with so much feeling, how little the most ardent and the 
 most useful servants of God ought to be surprised, if it 
 ever happens that the Lord sees proper to try them, as 
 Timothy was tried, by infirmities in their lungs or in 
 their head, or in their stomach ; if he puts some thorn 
 in their flesh, and if he thus buffets them by some angel 
 of Satan, in order to increase on the one hand their sym- 
 pathy, their meekness, their tenderness of heart, their 
 cordial affections, their tender compassions ; and on the 
 other, their patience, self-renunciation, self-denial, and 
 above all, their spirit of prayer. Reperuse seriously, 
 and as in the light of the last day, this beautiful parage 
 of the Apostle ; and immediately in the narrow space 
 of this single verse, you shall, admire the many precious 
 instructions the Holy Spirit w'UDuld here give us, besides 
 those which the pious bishop 'of Constantinople has re- 
 marked. How many words an&'almost chapters would 
 have been necessary to say so much under another 
 form ! You Avill again learn there, for example, the 
 sobriety of this young and ardent Timothy : he had 
 wished, like St. Paul, to " keep his body under ;" he 
 drank only water — he abstained entirely from wine. 
 You will there see in the third place, with what tender 
 and paternal delicacy the Apostle reproved him, either 
 for his imprudence, or for an austerity which he carried 
 too fir. You will there see again, with what wisdom 
 the Lord authorizes and invites by thpse words, the men 
 of God to take the necessary care of their health, at the 
 same time however, that he has thought best to dimin- 
 ish it by sickness. You will there see, in the fifth 
 place, with what prophetic foresight this word placed 
 in the mouth of an apostle, condemns in advance, the 
 
248 EVASIONS. 
 
 human traditions which, in future days were to forbid to 
 the faithful, the use of wine as an impurity. You will 
 there see, in the sixth place, with what tender solicitude, 
 what sympathy, what paternal vigilance, the Apostle 
 Paul, in the midst of his high functions, and despite the 
 "care of all the churches from Jerusalem to Ulyrium. 
 and of those from Ulyrium even to Spain," which came 
 upon him, was still not unmindful of the personal cir- 
 cumstances of his beloved disciple, of his health, of the 
 infirmities of his stomach, of his frequent maladies and 
 of his imprudent habits of daily regimen. You will 
 there learn again, a historical fact which will cast for 
 you a useful light upon the nature of the miraculous 
 gifts. In spite of the interest of St. Paul for the ailments 
 of his disciple, it was not possible for him to restore 
 Timothy, even for him who had so often healed the 
 sick, and even raised the dead ; because the apostles, 
 (and we learn it too by this verse, as by the sickness of 
 Epaphroditus)* had not received the continual gift of 
 miraculous power, any more than that of theopneusty ; 
 and that this virtue must be renewed to them for every 
 special occasion. 
 
 But if all these lessons of the apostle are important, 
 and if we receive them all thus in one single verse, and 
 in the manner most calculated to affect us ; oh ! how 
 uoautiful they become, and how penetrating they are, for 
 a simple and Christian heart, as soon as it is assured 
 that this is not merely the word of a good man ; that it 
 is not even that of an apostle merely ; but that it is the 
 voice of its God, who will teach it in so affecting a man- 
 ner, sobriety, fraternal affection, tender interest for the 
 health of others, the usefulness of afflictions and of in- 
 
 * Philip, ii. 27. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 249 
 
 firmities for the most zealous servants of God ; and who, 
 
 to give us all these precious lessons, deigns to address 
 us by the mouth of a simple creature ! For, the Lord 
 is good; he has placed his tender compassions above all 
 his works ; the heavens are his throne, and the earth is 
 his footstool ; he counts the stars ; he heals the broken- 
 hearted, and he treasures our tears in his phials.* 
 
 The salutations of St. Paul at the close of his epis- 
 tles, are often objected to, which are, they sajr^ " only 
 the ordinary compliments that we all employ in closing 
 a letter. There is nothing unworthy of an apostle," it 
 has been admitted ; " nor is there any thing there in- 
 spired. The Holy Spirit has let the pen of Paul run 
 on there, in order that he might give free course to his 
 personal affections, as we ourselves should allow a se- 
 cretary to terminate alone, by the usual compliments, a 
 letter, whose hrst pages W8 had dictated to him. Con- 
 sult, for instance the last chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Romans. Is it not sufficiently evident that the apostle 
 there abandons himself during sixteen verses, to the en- 
 tirely personal reminiscences of his friendship ? Had 
 this dry catalogue of all these persons need of the Holy 
 Spirit? The Apostle points out eighteen of them by 
 name, without counting all those who were to be saluted 
 collectively in the house of Aquilas, in that of Narcis- 
 sus, as in that of Aristobulus. These verses do not re- 
 ■^uire inspiration ; and it would at the most, have been 
 sufficient, in order to have them written, that the Holy 
 Spirit should have exercised that superintendence, under 
 which they wrote when left to their personality." 
 
 We fear not to avow it ; we take pleasure in recol- 
 lecting here those sixteen verses so often objected to ; 
 
 ' Ps. cxlv. 9 ; Isa. Ixvi. 1 ; Ps. Ivi. 8, 9. 
 
250 EVASIONS. 
 
 for they are, on the contrary, of the number of those 
 passages, the divine wisdom of which commends itself; 
 and if you look closely at them, you will immediately 
 admire with us, the fecundity, the condescension, and 
 the elevation of this mode of instruction ; you will there 
 find under the most practical and natural form, a living 
 picture of a primitive church. You will there discover 
 with lively interest, the relations of the members to on8 
 other ; and vou will there see to what heio-ht even 
 
 an( 
 
 you wi 
 
 the most ignorant and the most feeble members were 
 raised in its bosom. 
 
 Hear first with what tender interest, the Apostle re- 
 commends to the charity of the Church in Rome, that 
 humble woman who was making, as it appears, a jour- 
 ney from Corinth into Italy, for her temporal affairs. 
 She was a beloved sister, who had given herself to the 
 service of the saints, and who had not feared to open 
 her house to a great number of the faithful, and to Paul 
 himself, notwithstanding the perils of this hospitality. 
 She was the servant of the Church of Cenchrea. It 
 was necessary then that the brethren who were at Rome, 
 should welcome her in the Lord, and that they should 
 administer to her wants. See again, the example which 
 the apostle furnishes us, in a few words, of that christian 
 urbanity which should characterize all the mutual re- 
 lations of the children of God. Admire how, while 
 he passes so rapidly in review, the brethren and the 
 sisters of the Church of Rome, he can spread, even over 
 this nomenclature that is called arid, the sweet unction 
 of his charity. He has some words of encouragement 
 and tender esteem for each one of them, he there recalls 
 the generous hospitality of Phebe, the dangers of death 
 which Aquila and his wife had braved for him : the 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 251 
 
 honor of Epinetus as having heen the first of the Acha- 
 ians converted to Christ; the great labors of Mary, of 
 Andronica and of Jiinia, who had even preceded him 
 in the faith : his christian love for Amplias ; the evan- 
 gelical works of Urbanes, the tried fidelity of Apelles ; 
 the multiplied labors of Tryphena and Tryphosa in the 
 Lord, and those of the beloved Persis. What an appeal 
 again to the conscience of every serious reader, is this 
 rapid catalogue ! See then, ought he to say to himself, 
 the character of the faithful whom he washed to be sa- 
 luted in the Church of Rome ! And if the same apostle 
 was writing a letter to the Church, in which I myself 
 occupy a place, what would he say of me ? Would 
 my name be found there ? Could he there add, that I 
 receive as Phebe, the saints into my house ; that I hold, 
 as Aquila and Priscilla, christian meetings under my 
 liappy roof? that I have, as Mary, taken much pains 
 for the ministers of the Lord ; that I have suffered for 
 Jesus Christ, as Andronica and Junia ; that I am a man 
 approved in Christ, as Apelles ; that I am elect in our 
 Lord, as Rufus : that I am, as Urbanes, his companion 
 in work ; that I labor in our Lord, as Tryphena and 
 Tryphosa : and that I even labor much, as the beloved 
 Persis I 
 
 But see above all, what a lesson for Christian women, 
 is contained in these admirable verses. In the simple 
 familiarity of the salutations which terminate this letter, 
 how he shows them the elevation of their calling ! 
 What an important part is there assigned them in the 
 church, and what a place in heaven ! Without having 
 yet seen the city of Rome, Paul mentions there, by 
 their own name, and as his companions in labor, as 
 many as nine or ten vromen. There is first^ besides 
 
2S2 EVASIONS. 
 
 Phebe, that admirable Piiscilla, that happy wife of the 
 happy Aquila, who had even exposed herself to pun- 
 ishment for the apostle, and to whom all the churches 
 of the Gentiles were grateful. Then came a woman 
 named MaVy, who had, says he, labored much for the 
 apostles ; there was Tryphena and Tryphosa, who la- 
 bored still in the Lord ; there was Persis, who was 
 particularly dear to him, and who had laboured much 
 in the Lord ; there was Julia, there was the sister of 
 Marcus : there was perhaps Olympas ;* there was 
 finally the venerable mother of Rufus. And observe, 
 in passing, with w^hat respect he names this woman, 
 and with w4iat delicacy he salutes her by the endearing 
 name of mother. Is not that the christian politeness 
 which he recommended to these same Romans in the 
 12th chapter of this letter : '• Salute Rufus, elect in the 
 Lord, writes he, and his mother who is also mine !"t — 
 What a touching model too do these same verses pro- 
 pose to husbands and wives, in the persons of Aquila 
 and Priscilla! — You see them here in Romie ; you 
 may have seen them, five years before, driven from 
 Italy by the Emperor Claudius, arriving at Corinth, 
 and receiving the apostle Paul into their house ; then, 
 eighteen months afterwards, departing Mdth him for 
 Asia, and living at Ephesus, where they had already a 
 church in their house/| and where they welcomed with 
 so much success, the young and brilliant Apollos, who, 
 notwithstanding his talents, found himself happy in 
 placing himself in the school of their christian conver- 
 sation and charit)^. Now that Claudius had just died 
 and given place to Nero, you see them, scarcely re 
 
 • This may be a woman's name, but more probably it is a man's, 
 t Rom. xii. 10. % 1 Cor. xvi. 9. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 253 
 
 turned to Rome, already consecrating their new dwell- 
 ing to the church of God. It is at their house that the 
 saints assemble ; and you here learn again, as in pass- 
 ing, that these two had not hesitated to expose together 
 their lires for that of St. Paul. 
 
 But, besides all these lessons which, in these sixteen 
 little verses, are offered to your consciences, you may 
 likewise learn from them, two facts of great importance 
 in the history of the Church. And first you see there, 
 with the simplest and fullest evidence, that at that day, 
 no one in Rome thought of such a thing as the episco- 
 pacy, nor popeship, nor primacy, nor even of the pre- 
 sence of Peter. Do you not recognize a prophetic 
 foresight in the care which the Holy Spirit has taken to 
 introduce into this epistle to the Romans, that which he 
 has done for no other of the fourteen letters of St. Paul, 
 and to terminate it thus b}'' a long catalogue of the wo- 
 men and the men most esteemed at that time in all the 
 Church of Rome? Behold then the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles, who, twenty years after his conversion, in 
 writing to them, salutes at least twenty-eight of their 
 number by their names, and many others besides, bv 
 collective designations, and who says not one word to 
 them of the Prince of the Apostles, as he is called, of 
 the vicar of Jesus Christ, of his superior, the chief of 
 the universal Church, of the founder of the Romish 
 Church ! St. Peter was the Apostle of the Circumci- 
 sion, and not of the Gentiles :* his place was in Jeru- 
 salem ; it is there we must look for him, and it is there 
 St. Paul had always found him. In his first journey, 
 three years after his conversion, Paul visits him there, 
 and remains fifteen days in his house. f In his second 
 
 * Gal. ii. 7, 8, 9. t Gal. i. IS. 
 
 22 
 
254 
 
 EVASIONS, 
 
 journey, for the first council, he meets him there again. 
 In his third journey, in the year 44, at the epoch of the 
 death of Herod Agrippa, St. Peter is still living at Je- 
 rusalem.* In his fourth journey, seventeen years after 
 his conversion,! St. Paul again finds him there, in the 
 capacity, mark it well, of Apostle, not to the Gentiles, 
 but to the Circumcision. And when at last he is on 
 his fifth and final journey, he w^rites to the Romans and 
 to the Galatians , and then, that all the Church mio-ht 
 fully understand that Peter is not at Rome, and that he 
 has never been there, Paul shall take pains to salute by 
 their names, all of the most distinguished Christians of 
 Rome, even of the women. What bishop is there of 
 our day, in the Latin sect, who would dare to write a 
 letter in sixteen chapters to the Church of Rome, with- 
 out uttering a word in it, either of St. Peter, or of him 
 whom they call the Vicar of Jesus Christ? J 
 
 But there is another historical fact, still more inter- 
 esting, to the knowledge of which, these sixteen verses 
 which have been called useless, lead us by the most 
 striking features. See, in the very details of these 
 short salutations, by what humble instruments, and yet 
 with what expansion, the gospel had in so short a time, 
 established itself in the mighty Rome. No apostle had 
 put his foot there,^ and yet see what had been already 
 the progre.^^s of the word of God, through the labors of 
 merely travelers, artisans, merchants, women, slaves 
 and freed men who happened to bo at Rome ! Already 
 had Jesus Christ disciples there, even in the palaces of 
 the Jewish princes who resided near the imperial court, 
 
 • Acts, xii. 1, 3. t Gal. ii. 7. 
 
 J See on this subject, Uie excellent dissertation of the Rev. Mr. Bost; 
 "Du pouvoir de :^t. Pierre dans I'Eglise." Geneva, 1833. 
 $ Rom, J. 11, 13, 14, 15 : xv. 22. 
 
INSIGNIFICANCE OF SOME DETAILS. 255 
 
 and even among- the pagans who served nearest the per- 
 son of Nero. St. Paul requests that among- other 
 Christians, they would salute from him, first, " those of 
 the household of Aristobulous," and secondly, " those of 
 the household of Narcissus, who were in the Lord." 
 Now, the first of these great personages was the brother 
 of Agrippa the great, and of the impure Herodias ; the 
 second was the powerful favorite of the emperor Clau- 
 dius. Agrippina did not cause his death, until the close 
 of the year 54. 
 
 Ah ! let every one who calls himself a Christian, re- 
 nounce for ever, those rash sj^stems, in which man lifts 
 himself against the words of the Scriptures, to dispute 
 their propriety ; in which he dares to take away from 
 God's Bible such a passage, such a sentence, to make 
 of it (at least as to that passage or that sentence,) a hu- 
 man Bible ; and in which he makes himself responsi- 
 ble likewise for all the rashness of the boldest scholars, 
 v/ho imitate in respect to a whole book, his treatment 
 of a single verse. What idea has he of the sacred 
 writers, when he imagines them capable of the gross 
 folly of mingling their ov.-n oracles with the oracles of 
 the Almighty '? We recollect an insane man, a pen- 
 sioner of our hospitals, whose hand-writing was still so 
 good, that a minister of Geneva employed him to tran- 
 scribe his sermons. Conceive of the confusion of the 
 minister, w^icn in receiving his manuscripts, he found 
 (that this unfortunate man had imagined he could en- 
 rich every page by adding his own thoughts. Yet the 
 distance between a lunatic and a minister, be he holy as 
 Daniel, and sublime as Isaiah, is less than between 
 Daniel or Isaiah and Eternal Wisdom ! 
 
256 EVASIONS. 
 
 Arrived then, thus far, we would, before proceeding 
 any farther, recommend to our readers, to observe in 
 using sacred criticism, three precautions, the importance 
 and necessity of which, the doctrine of inspiration should 
 make them feel 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OP THE USE OF SACRED CRITICISM, IN ITS RELA- 
 TIONS TO THEOPNEUSTY. 
 
 We would be understood. Far from us be the 
 thought of casting the least disparagement on the labors 
 of this useful science ! We honor them, on the con- 
 trary ; we call them necessary ; we study them ; we 
 consider all the ministers of the gospel bound to know 
 them ; and we believe that the Christian church owes 
 them the highest gratitude. Sacred criticism is a noble 
 science. It is so by its object : to study the history of 
 the sacred text, its canons, its manuscripts, its versions, 
 its witnesses and its innumerable quoters ; — it is so by 
 its services: how many triumphs gained over infidelity, 
 how many objections put to silence, how many miserable 
 doubts for ever dissipated ! — it is so by its history : how 
 many eminent men have consecrated to it either the 
 labors of a pious life, or the powers of the finest genius ! 
 — it is so, finally, by its immense labors, which no one 
 perhaps can estimate, if he has not studied it. 
 
 God preserve us then from ever opposing faith to 
 science ; faith, which lives upon the truth, to science 
 which seeks it ; faith, which goes directly to the hand 
 of God to seize it, to science which seeks it more indi- 
 rectly elsewhere, and which often finds it ! Every 
 thing that is true in one place, is in preestablished har- 
 mony with that which is true in another and higher 
 place. Faith knows then at once, and before having 
 seen any thing, that every truth of science will be in 
 22* 
 
258 SACRED CRITICISM. 
 
 harmony with its testimony. If then, every true science, 
 whatever, is always the friend of faith, sacred criticism 
 is more than its friend ; it is almost its relative. But 
 if it is honorable, useful, necessary, it is all that, only 
 so long as it remains true, and keeps its place. So far 
 as it does not abandon the sphere assigned it, it is worthy 
 of our respect ; but as soon as it wanders, it must be re- 
 strained ; it is then no more a science, it is a crazy divi- 
 nation. Now, as it has three temptations to quit this 
 sphere, we therefore desire to recommend here three 
 precautions to the young men who study it. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Sacred Crilidsm is a Scholar, and not a Judge. 
 
 In the first place, critical science is no longer in its 
 own place, when, instead of being a scholar, it wishes 
 to be a judge ; when, in place of collecting the divine 
 oracles, it composes them, decomposes them, canonizes 
 them, uncanonizes them ; and when it makes itself 
 oracular ! Then it tends to nothing less than to over- 
 throw faith from its foundation. This we are going 
 to show. 
 
 Employ your reason, your time and all your intel- 
 lectual resources to assure yourself if the book which is 
 put into your hands, under the name of the Bible, con- 
 tains in fact the very oracles of God, whose first de- 
 posite was confided, under the divine providence, to the 
 Jews ;* and of which the second deposite, under the 
 same guardianship, was remitted to the universal church 
 from the apostolic times. Assure yourself then, whe- 
 ther this book is authentic, and whether the copyists have 
 
 * Romans iii. 1,2. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A SCHOLAR. 259 
 
 not altered it. All this labor is legitimate, rational, 
 honorable ; it has been abundantly done by others be- 
 fore you ; but if the investigations of others have not 
 satisfied you, resume them, pursue them, instruct us ; 
 and all the churches of God will thank you for it. But 
 after all this labor, when you have well established that 
 the Bible is an authentic book, when science and reason 
 have clearly showed you that the unquestionable seals 
 of the Almighty God are attached to it; and that He 
 has there placed his divine signature ; then hear what 
 science and reason loudly proclaim to us ; then, sons of 
 men, hear God , then, siirsum oculi, flexi jjoplites, sur- 
 sum corda ! then, bow the knee ! lift the heart on high, 
 in reverence, and in humiliation ! Then science and 
 reason have no longer to judge, but to receive ; no 
 longer to pronounce sentence, but to understand. It 
 is stiil a task, and it is a science, if you please ; but it is 
 no more the same ; it is the science of understanding 
 and of submitting. 
 
 But if, on the contrary, after receiving the Bible as 
 an authentic book, your wisdom pretends to constitute 
 itself the judge of its contents ; if, from this book, which 
 calls itself inspired, and which declares that it will judge 
 vou yourself at the last da}'-, it dares to retrench anv 
 thing ; if, sitting, as the angels in the last judgment,* 
 to draw up the book of God on the banks of science, to 
 gather the good into its vessels, and to cast away the 
 bad, it pretends there to distinguish the thought of God 
 from that of man ; if, for example, to cite only one case 
 of a thousand, it dares to deny, with Michaelis, that the 
 first two chapters of Saint Matthew are from God, be- 
 cause it does not approve their Scriptural quotations ; 
 
 • Matthew xiii. 48. 
 
260 SACRED CPcITICISM. 
 
 then, to deny the inspiration of Mark, and that of Luke, 
 because it has found them, it saj^s, contradictory to St. 
 Matthew ;* in a word, if it thinks it can subject the 
 book, recognized as authentic, to the outrageous control 
 of its ignorance and of its carnal sense ; then, we must 
 reprove it ; it is in revolt, it judges God. Then, it is 
 an enormity, reproved as much by reason as by faith. 
 It is no longer science, it is enchantment ; it is no more 
 progress, it is obscuration. 
 
 Let us compare to the wretched labors of theologians 
 upon the word of God, the more reasonable course pur- 
 sued by the naturalists in their studies upon his works. 
 Here, at least, we claim in advance as an axiom, that 
 all the objects of creation have ends full of wisdom and 
 harmony. Here, science applies itself, not to contesting 
 these ends, this wisdom, these harmonies ; but to dis- 
 cover them. Here, what is called progress in science, 
 is not the temerity of controlling the works of God ; it 
 is the happiness of having investigated them, of having 
 better recognised their wonders, of having been able to 
 propose them under some new aspects to the admiration 
 of the world, and of having thus found new inducements 
 again to cry : 
 
 What grandeur infinite ! 
 What divine harmony 
 Results from their accordance ! 
 
 Why then should not Christians treat the works of 
 God in redemption, as naturalists do the works of God 
 in creation? why, if, among the pagans themselves, a 
 physician, the great Galen, could s:iy : ''that in de- 
 scribing the different parts of the human body, he was 
 composing a hymn in honor of the Creator of the body," 
 
 • Introduf.tion to N. T. by Michaiilis, t. 2, p. 17 ; t. ]. p. 206 to 214. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A SCHOLAR. 261 
 
 why should not the Christian comprehend, that to de- 
 scribe with truth, the different parts of tlie word of God. 
 would be always '- to compose a hymn in honor of 
 him who had made it?" Thus thoug-ht the apostolic 
 Fathers ; thus, for example, the pious Irenaeus, disciple 
 of Polycarp, the pupil of St. John : " The Scriptures," 
 said he, " are perfect. In the Scriptures let God ever 
 teach ; and let man ever learn! it is thus that from the 
 bosom of the 'polyphony of their instructions, an admi- 
 rable sym,phony is heard in us all, praising in hymns 
 the God who made all things."* 
 
 If some one should come to tell us that there exists a 
 very studious nation, among whom the science of na- 
 ture, taking a new direction, has commenced immense 
 labors, for the purpose of showing that there are mis- 
 takes in creation ; plants badly constructed, animals 
 badly contrived, organs badly adapted ; . . . what would 
 you think of this people and of their great labors? 
 Would you believe that science was advancing there ? 
 Would you not rather say that they were obscuring it, 
 degrading it, and that they were there wearying them- 
 selves, learnedly to discover the art of being ignorant ? 
 Inexplicable as the anatomists have found the use of 
 the liver in the human body, or of the antennae in that 
 of the insects, they have not therefore blamed nature ; 
 they have accused only their own ignorance in regard 
 to it ; and they have waited. Why then, when you do 
 not yet discover the use of a word in the Scriptures, 
 would you blame any other than yourself, and why 
 do you not wait ? 
 
 * "Sic, per dictionum multas voces, una consonans melodia in nobis 
 sentietur, laudan.s hymnis Deum qui fecit omnia." According to the 
 Greek preserved by John Daniascenus; 6ta tit; t:ov \ilc(7)v iruyvipoiviai. 
 'ill uvjKpdivov ni\os iv finiv diadriireTai. (Adv. Hiereses, lib. ii. 2. 47 ) 
 
2$2 SACE.ED CRITICISM, 
 
 This thought is not new ; a pious man expressed it, 
 better than we, sixteen hundred years ago, and preached 
 it with unction to the men of his time. We have found 
 ourselves happy, whilst we were writing it, <o meet it 
 in Origen, (in the thirty-ninth of his homilies,) " If 
 ever says he, in reading the Scriptures,* thou happenest 
 to strike against a thought which becomes to thee a 
 stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, accuse only 
 thyself (u/t/Jj aeuvToy ]) do not doubt that this stum- 
 bling-stone and this rock of offence has a great mean- 
 ing {s/Ptv iwriuuTa^) and is to accomplish this promise: 
 * he that believeth in me, shall not be confounded. 'f 
 Commence then by believing, and quickly thou shalt 
 find, in this imaginary stumbling-block, an abundant 
 (ind, holy ulilily \ If we are commanded not to speak 
 idle words, because we must give account of them at 
 the last day, how much more should we think in regard 
 to the prophets of God, that every word proceeding 
 from their mouth, had its work to do and its use !§ I 
 believe then that for those who know how to use the 
 excellence of Scripture, each one of the letters written in 
 the oracles of God, has its end and its work (f ('/«C'^t«j,) 
 even to an iota, or tittle . . . and as among plants, 
 there is not one without its virtue ; and as at the same 
 lime it pertains only to those who have acquired the 
 science of botany, to be able to tell us how each one 
 ought to be applied and prepared, in order to become 
 useful ; so also, whoever is a holy and, spiritual botanist 
 of the word of God (f(g Soiavixog saTiv 6 dying xul 
 nftuuujiito;^) he, collecting each iota and each element, 
 shall find the virtue of this word, and shall recognise 
 
 * Origeiies adiimHiitiiis, Horn, xxxix, in Jeremiah xliv. 22. 
 t Rom. jx. 33. X WoWiji/ otp.Xet av dyiav. ' § "EpyariKOv nv. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A SCHOLAR. 263 
 
 that nothing in that which was written, is superfluous 
 (ort ovdef naoilxei.) Will you have another compari- 
 son ? Each member of our body has its function, for 
 which it has been placed in its position by the great 
 Architect. Yet it does not pertain to every one to 
 know their uses and their powers, but only to those 
 physicians who have studied anatomy ... I consider 
 then the Scriptures as ' the collection of the 'plants of 
 the word^ or as ' the perfect body of the word.^ Bui 
 if you are neither a botanist of the Scriptures, nor an 
 anatomist of the prophetic words, do not imagine there 
 is in them any thing superfluous ; and when you can- 
 not find the reason for what is written, do not blame 
 the holy letters ; blame not them, but yourself alone 
 for it."* Thus spake Origen ; but we could find simi- 
 lar thoughts in the other Fathers, and particularly in 
 Bishop Irenseus, nearer yet to the apostolic times. f 
 
 At the same time we must again remark, this preten- 
 sion to judge the word of God, overthrows all the foun- 
 dations of faith. It would indeed render faith impossi- 
 ble in the hearts of all those who have the least degree 
 of consistency. This is but too easily proved. 
 
 That a soul may receive life, it must receive faith ; 
 that it may have faith, it must believe God ; that it may 
 believe God, it must begin by renouncing the prejudices 
 of its own wisdom concerning sin, the future, judgment, 
 grace, itself, the world, God, every thing. Has he not 
 written ; that " the natural man receiveth not the things 
 of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness unto him; 
 neither can he know them because they are spiritually 
 
 * And he adds : Tovto jxoi to Ttpooifitop kipriTai Ka66\cKcii, XP'l'^if^ov eivat 
 dwafisvop CIS b\>)u r/jv ypd(j)Tiv, Ivd irporpaTtoiaiv ol QeXovres npoaex^'v rfi 
 avayvo)aEt, pnoiv napanlpncadai dvc^Lrl^TOi/ Kui dve\spivvr}rov ypdjijxa. 
 
 * 'renasus, Adv. Hasres, book ii.,c. 47 
 
264 SACRED CRITICISM. 
 
 discerned."* The gospel then will shock either his 
 reason or his conscience, or both. And yet he must 
 submit to it upon the testimony of God alone ; and it is 
 only after having thus received it, that he will recognize 
 it as being " the wisdom of God and the power of God 
 to every one that believeth." You see that we must be- 
 lieve without seeing ; that is to say, that the gospel, be- 
 fore it has been comprehended, must confound our own 
 wisdom, abase our pride, and condemn our self-right- 
 eousness. How then could you ever make it accepta- 
 ble to men who might be so unfortunate as to imitate 
 you, and who would, like you, wait to have every thing 
 approved, in order to receive every thing? Imbued 
 with your principles, they will impute to man every 
 thing in the scriptures which shocks their carnal sense. 
 They will believe that they must reject the apostle's 
 prejudice, concerning the consequences of Adam's sin, 
 the Trinity, expiation, eternal punishment, the resurrec- 
 tion of the body, the doctrine of demons, election, the 
 gratuitous justification of the sinner by faith, perhaps 
 also those concerning miracles. How then, if he has 
 the misfortune of doing as you do, will a man ever find 
 life, peace and joy, by means of faith ? How could he, 
 like Abraham, hope against hope? How could he, a 
 miserable sinner, ever believe himself saved ? He must 
 pass his days in doctrines, vague, vaporous, uncertain ; 
 and his life, his peace, his love, his obedience must re- 
 main, even unto death, such as his doctrines ! We con- 
 clude then, with this first counsel : make the science of 
 criticism a scholar ; do not make it a judge. 
 
 • 1 Cor. ii. 14, i. 23. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A HISTORUN, 265 
 
 SECTION 11. 
 
 Let Sacred Criticism be a Historian^ and not a Conjurer. 
 
 There is, in regard to the inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures, another precaution, no less important for us in 
 employing this science. 
 
 The work of sacred criticism is to gather facts con- 
 cerning the Scriptures ; do not permit it to lead you into 
 vain hypotheses. It would thus do you much harm. 
 It ought to be a historian ; do not make it a prophet. 
 When it divines, do not listen to it, turn the back upon 
 it, for it would make you lose your time and more than 
 your time. Now, the safeguard of the faithful, here, is 
 again, the doctrine of inspiration, such as we have de- 
 scribed it ; we mean, the inspiration not of the men, but 
 of the book. 
 
 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God : thus 
 the authentic book of the Scriptures declares to us. " But 
 what was passing in the understanding and conscience 
 of the sacred writer ?" On that the Bible is silent, and 
 that we shall never be required to know. The misun- 
 derstanding of this great principle has occasioned an im- 
 mense loss both of time and of words. The Scriptures 
 are inspired, whether the author had or had not the pre- 
 vious knowledge of that which God was about to cause 
 him to write. Let any one then, study, in each book of 
 the Bible, th'e peculiarities of its style, of its language, 
 of its reasonings, and all the circumstances of its sacred 
 writer ; Ave could see nothing but good in these re- 
 searches ; they are useful, legitimate, respectful ; and 
 that is truly science. Let him there have sought, by 
 these very characters, to fix their date ; and determine 
 23 
 
266 SACRED CRITICISM. 
 
 the occasion of their being written ; we should yet see 
 only that which is instructive and proper in such a study. 
 It may be useful, for example, to know that it was un- 
 der Nero that Paul wrote to the Jews ;* •• Let every 
 soul be subject unto the higher powers." It may be 
 well to know that St. Peter had been married more than 
 twenty-three years, when St. Paul reminded the Corin- 
 thians,t that this apostle (the first of the popes, as some 
 call him,) was still leading his wife about with him in 
 all his apostolical journeys, and that the other apostles. 
 and that even St. James (reputed the first of the pillars 
 of the church,) J was doing the same thing. All this is 
 still science. We value highly, for the church of God, 
 every labor which makes her understand a passage bet- 
 ter : yes, were it only one passage, one single word of 
 the holy Scriptures. But when you pass on to crude 
 hypotheses ; when you embrace a thousand conjectures 
 concerning the sacred writers, to make their word de- 
 pend on the hazard of their presumed circumstances, in- 
 stead of regarding their circumstances as prepared and 
 chosen of God in reference to their ministry ; when yon 
 subordinate the nature, the abundance or brevity of these 
 instructions to the more or less fortunate concurrence of 
 their ignorance or of their recollections : — this is to do 
 grade inspiration, and to bring down the character of 
 the word of God ; it is to lay deep the foundations of 
 infidelity ; it is to forget that " men of God spake as 
 they were moved [(fegouefoi) by the Holy Ghost, not 
 in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which 
 the Holy Ghost teacheth. "§ 
 
 It has been asked ; " did the Evangelists read each 
 
 * Rom. xiii. 1. 1 1 Cor. ix. 5. 
 
 i Gal. ii. 9. § 1 Cor. ii. 13 ; 1 Pet. i. 21. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A HISTORIAN. 267 
 
 Other's writings?" And what is that to me, if they 
 were all " moved by the Holy Ghost ;'' and if, like the 
 Thessalonians, I receive their book, ''not as the word 
 of man, but as it is, in truth, the word of God." Let 
 this question be proposed in its place, it may be entirely 
 innocent ; but it is so no longer when it is discussed as 
 it has been, and when so much importance is attached 
 to it. Can the solution of it throw light on one single 
 passage of the sacred books, and establish their truths 
 more firmly ? We do not believe that it can. 
 
 When we hear it asked, (as Dr. Mill* and Professor 
 Hugt do ; and as Dr. LardnerJ and Professor Michae- 
 lis§ do not ask ;) whether St. John had read the Gospels 
 of the other three ; if St. Mark and St. Luke had read 
 the Gospel of St. Matthew before writing their own ; 
 when we hear it asked, whether the Evangelists did 
 any thing more than describe with discernment, the 
 most important portions of oral traditions, (as Dr. 
 Gieseler does;||) when we see great volumes written 
 upon these questions, to attack or defend these systems, 
 as if faith and even science were truly interested in it, 
 and as if the answers were very important to the Chris- 
 tian Church ; when we hear it affirmed that the first 
 three Evangelists had consulted some original docu- 
 ment now lost ; Greek, according to some : Hebrew, 
 according to others ; (as John Le Clerc at first dreamed, 
 and as Kopp, Michaelis, Lessing, Niemeger, Eichhorn, 
 and others,!^ have imagined sixty years after him;) 
 when we see men plunging still farther into this ro- 
 
 • Millii Prole?. §108. 
 
 t Einleilnnp'indieSchriften des N. Testnm. Stntorart. 1821. 
 
 J Vol. vi. pages 220, 250. § Introd. &-c. torn. 1. p- 112, 129. 
 
 9 Historisch-Kr tis( hfr Versuch &c. Minden, 1818. 
 
 1 Home's Introduction, vol. ii. p. 443. edit. 181S. 
 
268 SACRED CRITICISM. 
 
 mantic field ; when we see them reaching the compli- 
 cated drama of the Bishop of Landafi]* with his first 
 Hebrew historical document, his second Hebrew dog- 
 matic document, his third Greek document, (a transla- 
 tion of the first ;) then his documents of the second 
 class, formed by the translation of Luke, and Mark, and 
 Matthew, which finally reduces the sources to seven, 
 \vithout counting three others, peculiar to St. Luke and 
 St. Mark ; or even, again, when we see Mr. Veysie,+ 
 in England, and Dr. Gieseler, in Germany, deriving 
 either the first three Gospels, or the four Gospels, from 
 apocryphal histories previously circulated among the 
 Christian churches ; when we see the first of these 
 Doctors determining, that Mark has copied them with a 
 more literal exactness than Luke, on account, they say, 
 of his ignorance of the Greek ; while Matthew's Gos- 
 pel, written at first in Hebrew, must, doubtless, have 
 been translated afterward into Greek, by a person Avho 
 modified it, to make it correspond with Mark and Luke, 
 and, finally, gave it to us as we have it ; when we see 
 these systems exhibited, not in a few phrases, in the in- 
 dulgence of a light curiosity, but so many and such 
 great volumes written upon them, as if they involved 
 the interests of the kingdom of God ; oh ! we must say 
 it, we feel, in the view of all such science, a sentiment 
 profoundly painful. But, after all, is that science? Is 
 judicial astrology a science? No ; and these men are 
 no longer philosophers : they have abandoned facts ; 
 they prophesy the history of the past ; they are, alas ! 
 the astrologers of theology. It is believed, in astrono- 
 my, that a book of observations upon the feeblest satel- 
 
 * Bishop Marsh'8 Michaelia, vol. iii. part ii. p. 3C1. 
 t Veysie's Examination, p. 56. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A HISTORIAN.. 269 
 
 lite discovered near Uranus, or upon the discovery of 
 a second parallax found accompanying some star, or 
 upon a simple spot on the moon, is a precious 
 acquisition to science , whereas, all the writings of 
 Count Boulainvilliers, and three hundred volumes upon 
 the barbaric sphere, upon the influences, the aspects, or 
 the horoscopes of the seven planetary bodies, can be 
 only folly and a vain encumbrance to science. Thus 
 we shall esteem very highly, in the studies of sacred 
 criticism, every thing which can throw any additional 
 light upon the least passage of the Scriptures ; but what 
 good can these crude hypotheses ever effect? They 
 turn you from the luminous roads of science as well as 
 of faith ; the mind, in pursuing them, is wearied in the 
 chase of vanity ! Vain and boisterous labor of vapor- 
 ous conjectures borne upon the clouds ! No good can 
 come of these wretched studies, which teach us to doubt, 
 where God teaches us to believe ! '• Who is he, saith 
 the Lord, that darkeneth the counsels of the Most High, 
 by words without knowh dge ?" 
 
 Would to God ind^-ed that there were nothing more 
 in these studies than vain fantasies and an enormous 
 loss of time ! But it is worse than the dissipation of 
 time : faith is engulphed in them ; the mental eye is 
 fascinated by them, and they turn away our studious 
 youth from hearing the first and great author of the 
 Scriptures. It is evident that these idle researches can 
 proceed only from a want of faith in the inspiration of 
 the Scriptures. Admit inspiration for a moment ; admit 
 that Jesus Christ has given his apostles the ttwj xul it, 
 ike how and the what of that which they were to write; 
 admit that God has made his apostles recount the life 
 of Jesus Christ, as he has made them describe his ses- 
 23* 
 
270 SACRED CRITICISM. 
 
 sion at the right hand of God ; and immediately you 
 will perceive that all these hypotheses are reduced to 
 nothing. Not only do they teach you nothing, and can 
 teach you nothing ; but they change the very exercise 
 of your faith ; they sap by degrees the doctrine of in- 
 spiration ; they indirectly enfeeble the testimony of 
 God, its certainty, its perfection ; they turn your pious 
 thoughts from their true direction, they mislead our 
 youth who were seeking the living waters at the well 
 of the Scriptures, and leave them thirsting in the sandy 
 deserts, far from the fountains that spring up to life 
 eternal. What do they find there after all ? Broken 
 cisterns, clouds without water ; or at least perhaps, 
 those fantastic streams which the sun of vain glory will 
 paint for a few days, like a deceitful mirage in the des- 
 erts of this world. 
 
 What should we think of a theologian who should 
 pretend that he was going to seek in the instructions 
 of Joseph the carpenter, or in the lessons of the schools 
 of Nazareth, the origin of the discourses of Jesus Christ, 
 of his doctrines and of his parables ? Idle and perni- 
 cious, you would exclaim. — But, the same must be. 
 said of all those conjuring systems which wish to ac- 
 count to us for the construction of the Scriptures, with- 
 out supernatural aid. Idle and pernicious ; say we, — 
 admit inspiration, and all this labor vanishes as a foolish 
 fantasy. The Scriptures are the word of God ; they 
 are dictated by him ; and we know that " prophecy 
 came not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men 
 of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."* 
 The history of the nephew of St. Paul warning his un- 
 cle in the prison of Antonias, is inspired of God, al- 
 • 2 Peter i. 21. 
 
SACRED CRITICISM A HISTORIAN. 271 
 
 though Luke may have heard it twenty times from the 
 mouth of the apostle, before having- received it from the 
 Holy Spirit ; this history is as fully inspired as that of 
 the invisible angel, who was sent from God to smite the 
 king of the Jews upon his throne, in the city of Csesarea. 
 The history of the striped and spotted sheep of Jacob is 
 as much dictated by God, as the history of the creation 
 of the heavens and of the earth. The history of the fall 
 of Ananias and of Sapphira is as inspired as that of Sa- 
 tan and his angels. 
 
 Yes ; without doubt, the apostles consulted one com- 
 mon document ; but this document, as bishop Gleig has 
 well expressed it,* " is no other than the very preaching 
 and life of our divine Savior." Behold their prototype. 
 
 When therefore you hear it asked, from what docu- 
 ments Matthew could have drawn his history of the 
 birth of Jesus Christ, Luke that of his first years, Paul 
 that of the apparition of the Savior to James, or the 
 words of the Savior upon the blessedness of giving, 
 Hosea the tears of Jacob, and Jude the prophecy of 
 Enoch, or the contention of Michael for the body of 
 Moses, answer : they have drawn them from the same 
 • urce whence Moses learned the creation of the hea- 
 vens and the earth. " The Holy Spirit," says the illus- 
 trious Claude, " has employed the pen of the evangelist 
 and apostles, of Moses and the prophets ; he has fur- 
 nished the occasions of writing ; he has given these 
 both the will and the power to do so ; the matter, the 
 order, the arrangement, the expressions are by his im- 
 mediate inspiration, and by his direction." 
 
 We have just said that a sound doctrine of inspiration 
 
 • Remarks on Michaelis, Introd. to N. T, p. 32, et seq. ;— Home's introd. 
 ii. p. 458, ed. 1818. 
 
272 SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 would shelter our studious youth from the excessive 
 aberrations of modern criticism, at the same time that 
 they might draw from this noble science, all the benefits 
 that it can impart. The first of these errors, we have 
 already said, is to pretend to judge the Scriptures, after 
 having received the collection as authentic. The se- 
 cond is, to surrender ourselves to dangerous specula- 
 tions concerning the sacred books. But a third reflec- 
 tion still remains to be made on the relation of science 
 to the great question which occupies us. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Sacred Criticism is not the God^hUthe Door-Keeper of tlie Temple. 
 
 This reflection presents itself at once under the form 
 of advice and of argument ; we shall indulge in the ad- 
 vice, only as it leads to the argument ; for we do not 
 forget that our task, in this book, is to establish Divine 
 inspiration, and not to preach it. 
 
 First ; the counsel. 
 
 Science is a door-keeper, who conducts you to the 
 temple of the Scriptures , never forget then, that she is 
 not their God, and that her dwelling-house is not the 
 temple. In other terms, beware that you do not stop at 
 sacred criticism, even in reference to the mere scie^nce 
 of Theology ; it will leave you in the street, for it never 
 crossed the threshold of the temple. 
 
 Now; the argument. If you really enter into the 
 temple of the Scriptures, you will not only find written 
 there with the hand of God, upon all the walls, that 
 God fills it. and that he is universally there ; but you 
 will also find the proof of it in your own experience ; 
 you will see it in every part ; you will feel it through- 
 
THE DOOR-KEEPER OF THE TEMPLE. 273 
 
 out. In Other words ; when we read the oracles of 
 God with care, we find there, not only frequent declara- 
 tions of their entire theopneusty, but we also receive in 
 our understanding and in our heart, by unexpected 
 flashes, often from a single verse, or by the power of a 
 single word, a profound conviction of the divinity which 
 is imprinted on every part of them. 
 
 As to the counsel, it must not be imagined that we 
 have given it for the purpose of discrediting the investi- 
 gations of science ; we offer it, on the contrary, for their 
 advancement and perfection. For, it too often happens, 
 that the prolonged study of the externals of the sacred 
 book, of its history, of its manuscripts, of its versions, 
 of Its language, so absorbs the attention of those who 
 yield themselves to it, that they become inattentive to its 
 most intimate characteristics, to its sense, to its design, 
 to the moral power which it developes, to the beauties 
 revealed in it, to the life diffused through it. And as 
 there exist necessary relations between these charac- 
 teristics and the exterior forms, two great evils result 
 from these studies, to him who pursues them. 
 
 As man, he stifles his spiritual life, and compromises 
 his eternal life by them. But it is not of this evil that 
 we speak in these pages. As a scholar, he compro- 
 mises his science, and by these studies renders himself 
 incapable of a sound appreciation of the very objects of 
 that science. It remains incoherent, hime, and conse- 
 quently straitened and groveling. Can he know the 
 temple ? He has seen but its stones ; he knows nothing 
 of the Shechinah ! Can he comprehend the types ? 
 He does not conceive of their antetype ; he has seen 
 nothing but altars, sheep, knives, utensils, blood, fire, 
 incense, costumes and ceremonies ; he has not seen the 
 
274 SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 redemption of the world ; the future, the heaven, the 
 glory of Jesus Christ ! And in this condition, he has 
 not been able to seize even the relations which these ex- 
 ternal objects bear to one another ; because he has not 
 understood their harmony with the whole. 
 
 A learned man without faith, in the days of Noah, 
 who might have studied the structure of the ark, would 
 not only have perished in the deluge, but he would also 
 have remained in ignorance of a great portion of the 
 very objects which he pretended to understand. 
 
 Imagine a Roman traveler in the days of Pompey 
 the Great, attempting to describe Jerusalem and the 
 temple. Having arrived in the city on the Sabbath, he 
 goes directly to the holy place with his guide ; he 
 walks around it; he admires its enormous stones; he 
 measures its porticoes ; makes inquiries about its an- 
 tiquity, its architects ; he passes its gigantic gates, 
 opened every day at sunrise, and shut at mid-day by 
 two hundred men ; he sees the Levites and the singers 
 in thousands, proceeding to the temple in order, arrayed 
 in their linen garments. In the interior, the sons of 
 Aaron clothed in their sacred robes, are performing 
 their rites ; while the psalms of the royal prophet re- 
 sound under the vaulted ceiling, and thousands of singers, 
 accompanied by instruments, respond to each other in 
 their sublime antiphonies ; whilst the law is read, the 
 Avord is preached, and the souls who wait for the conso- 
 lation of Israel, soar with delight to the invisible gran- 
 deurs, and thrill at the thought of that God, with whom 
 is abundant redemption ; whilst the aged Simeons lift 
 their thoughts to that glorious salvation constantly 
 longed for ; whilst more than one publican is smiling 
 his breast, and returning to his house justified ; whilst 
 
rHE DOOR-KEEPER. OF THE TEMPLE. 275 
 
 more than one young heart is consecrating- itself to 
 God, like Nathanael ; and whilst more than one poor 
 widow, under the impulse of holy zeal, is casting her 
 two mites into the treasury of God ; whilst so many 
 prayers, invisible but ardent, are mounting towards hea- 
 ven, .... what is this traveler doing ? — he is count- 
 ing the columns, admiring the pavements, measuring 
 the courts, examining the assembly, drawing the altar 
 of incense, the candlestick, the table of shew-bread, the 
 golden censer ; he then goes out, mounts to the battle- 
 ments of the fortress, descends to the Xystus or to the 
 Cedron, traverses the walls, all the while, counting his 
 steps, returns to his hotel, to digest his observations and 
 prepare his book. He may boast, indeed, of having 
 seen the people, the worship and the temple of the He- 
 brewff ; he will publish his volume ; and his numerous 
 readers will open it for information : and yet even in 
 relation to the very information he wished to impart, 
 how many false judgments will he have made ; how 
 many errors will those who are worshipping in the tem- 
 ple, be able to detect in it ! 
 
 Listen then to our counsel, in regard to the interests 
 of your own science merely. On account of the indis- 
 pensable relations which exist between the eternal ends 
 of the word of God and its external forms, you cannot 
 form a solid judgment of the latter, without taking cog- 
 nizance of the former. 
 
 If you desired to learn the character of a physician, 
 you would do well to inform yourself of his country, of 
 his studies, of the univprsities which he has attended, 
 and of his certificates of recommendation ; but, if on the 
 first visit, he should at once tell you all your complaints ; 
 if he should awaken impressions and a sense of miseries, 
 
276 SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 until then vaguely felt, but whose secret reality you 
 should recognise, the moment he defined them ; and if, 
 above all, he should finally make you take the only 
 remedy which ever could have relieved you ; oh ! then 
 would not such an experience tell you much more about 
 him, than his diploma? 
 
 This then, is the counsel which we venture to give, 
 to all those of our readers who have paid any attention 
 to sacred criticism. Read the Bible, study the Bible in 
 itself and for itself; ask it, if you please, where it took 
 its degrees, and in what school its writers studied ; but 
 come to its consultations, like a patient longing to be 
 healed ; bestow as much care upon acquiring the expe- 
 rience of its words as you have given to the study of its 
 diplomas, of its language and of its history ; then you 
 shall be not only healed (which does not concern our 
 present investigation,) but you shall be enlightened. 
 " He that healed me, the same said unto me, take up 
 thy bed and walk. Whether he be a sinner, I know 
 not ; only one thing I know ; that whereas I was 
 blind, I now see."* 
 
 The author would here relate, what a thirst he had 
 for apologetic writings, during the early stages of his 
 studies ; how Abbadie, Leslie, Huet, Turretin, Grotius, 
 Littleton, Jennings, Reinhardt and Chalmers, were his 
 habitual reading ; and how, harassed by a thousand 
 doubts, he found no relief, no conviction nor satisfaction 
 in any thing but the Bible itself It bears witness to it- 
 self, not only by its assertions, but by its effects ; as the 
 light, as the heat, as life, as health ; for it carries in its 
 beams, health, life, heat, light. You might prove to 
 me, by sound calculations, that at this moment the sun 
 
 • John i.x. 25. 
 
THE DOOR-KEEPER. OF THE TEMPLE. 277 
 
 should be upon the horizon; but what need have I of 
 youY proofs, when my eye beholds it, and its rays are 
 bathing and quickening- me? 
 
 Read the Bible then ; complete your science, arrange 
 It. It shall convince you ; it shall tell you whether the 
 Biule comes from God. And when you shall have 
 heaid it in a voice which casts down with power, or 
 which lifts up with tenderness, a voice sometimes more 
 powerful than the sound of mighty waters, sometimes 
 sweet and gentle, as that which Elijah heard whisper- 
 ing ; " the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suf- 
 fering, slow to anger, the God of consolation, the God 
 forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin ;" oh then, we 
 venture to predict, you will feel that the single perusal 
 of a psalm, of a narrative, of a precept, of a verse, of a 
 word in a verse, will instantly prove to you more pow- 
 erfully the divine inspiration of all the Scriptures, than 
 all the most eloquent and most solid reasonings of 
 learned men or of books have before done. Then you 
 shall see, you shall hear, you shall feel that God is 
 there in every part ; then you will not ask it any more, 
 whether it is all inspired : for you will feel it to be the 
 powerful and efficacious discerner of the thoughts and 
 intents of the heart, sharper than any two-edged sword, 
 piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the 
 spirit, and the joints and the marrow ; bringing up your 
 {ears from a deep and unknown fountain, casting you 
 down with a resistless power, and raising you with a 
 tenderness and with sympathies which are found only 
 in God. 
 
 Thus far we have only given you advice ; but we 
 mean to show you in what respect these considerations 
 can at the same time be presented, if not as a proof, at 
 24 
 
WS SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 least as a powerful presumption in favor of a verbal in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures. We shall show our readers 
 a three-fold experience in them, which, at all limes, has 
 carried profound conviction to other Christians, whose 
 testimony ought at least to appear to them worthy of 
 the most sincere consideration. 
 
 Certainly one of the strongest proofs of the divinity 
 of the Scriptures, is this majesty which fills us with 
 astonishment and respect ; it is the in^iposing m^^*- of 
 this book, composed during fifteen hundred years by so 
 many authors, some of whom wrote two centuries be- 
 fore the time of Hercules, of Jason and the Aroonauts ; 
 others in the heroic times of Priam, of Achilles and 
 Agamemnon ; others in the days of Thales and Pytha- 
 goras ; others in the age of Seneca, of Tacitus, of Plu- 
 tarch, of Tiberius and Domitian ; and who yet pursued 
 one and the same plan, and advanced constantly, as if 
 they themselves understood it, towards that one great 
 end. the history of the world's redemption by the Son 
 of God. It is this vast harmony of all the Scriptures 
 through so many ag^es ; this Old Testament alike with 
 the New, filled with Jesus Christ; this universal his- 
 tory which nothing can stop, which relates the revolu- 
 tions of Empires even to the end of time, and which, 
 'when the pictures of the past are finished, continues 
 them by those of the future, up to the moment when the 
 empires of the world will have become the possession 
 of Christ and his saints. On the first page, the earth 
 created to receive the man who sins not ; on the follow- 
 ing pages, the earth accursed to receive man who sins 
 always ; on the last page, the new heavens and the new 
 earth to receive man who will sin no more : on the first 
 page, the tree of life forbidden, paradise lost, sih enter- 
 
THE DOOR-KEEPER OF THE TEMPLE. 279 
 
 ing the world by the first Adam, and death by sin ; in 
 the last page, paradise regained, life restored to the 
 world by the second Adam, death vanquished, all mourn- 
 ing ended, the image of God reestablished in man, and 
 the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God. 
 Surely there is in this majestic whole, which begins be- 
 fore the days of man, and which continues even to the 
 end of time, a powerful and heavenly unity, an undevia- 
 ting, universal and immense convergence, whose gran- 
 deur seizes the attention, surpasses all our human con- 
 ceptions, and proclaims the divinity of its author as irre- 
 sistibly as can in a summer's night, the aspect of the 
 heaven's brilliant stars, and the thought of all these 
 worlds of light, which revolve night and day in the im- 
 mensity of space. MvQia q^ila xul ai'ftq^o)ict^ says one 
 of the Fathers of the Church.* But beside the beauties 
 of this whole, which the Scriptures present, we have 
 still something to contemplate no less glorious, which 
 reveals to us also the action of God in their minutest 
 points, and which attests to us their verbal inspiration. 
 
 Three orders of persons, or rather three orders of ex- 
 periences, furnish us this testimony. 
 
 First, if you consult ministers who have devoted their 
 whole lives to the meditation of the Scriptures, for the 
 daily nourishment of the flock of Christ, they will tell 
 you, that the more they have given themselves to this 
 blessed study, and have applied themselves to look 
 closely into the oracles of God, the more has their ad- 
 miration for the letter of the Scriptures increased. Of- 
 ten surprised by unexpected beauties, they there recog- 
 nise, even in the slightest expressions, divine foresight, 
 
 * " Myriads of objects in acrord and perfect harmony." Theophilus ad 
 Autolyc. lU). i. c. 35. See also Justin Martyr, ad Graecos cohort, c. 8. 
 
280 SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 profound relations, spiritual grandeur, which became 
 manifest merely by a more exact translation or a more 
 profound attention to the details of a single verse. They 
 will tell you that the minister of God, who for a long 
 time holds before the eyes of his mind, some text of 
 Scripture, feels himself soon compelled to use the lan- 
 guage of the naturalist studying with the microscope, a 
 leaf of the forest, its texture, its nerves, its thousand 
 pores and innumerable vessels. " He who made the 
 forest, made also the leaf!" he exclaims. Yes, replies 
 the other, and " he who made the Bible, made also the 
 verses that compose it." A second order of experiences, 
 the testimony of which we here invoke, is that of the 
 interpreters of the prophecies. They will unitedly tell 
 you, with what evidence, when they had given time to 
 this study, they recognized, that in these miraculous 
 pages, it must needs be, that each verse, each word, 
 without exception, even the particle apparently the most 
 unimportant, has been given by God. The slightest 
 change in a verb, in an adverb, or in the simplest con- 
 junction, might lead the interpreter into the most serious 
 error. And it has often been remarked, that where the 
 prophecies that are now fulfilled, were misapprehended 
 before their fulfilment, it has proceeded in a great de- 
 gree, from the fact that they have failed in attention to 
 some of the details of their text. We might here cite 
 many examples, by way o.f illustration. 
 
 But there is slill a third order of persons who te.stif^'- 
 more strongly, if possible, the full inspiration of the 
 Scriptures, even of their smallest points. These are the 
 Christians who have ft-lt their power, first in ihe con- 
 version of their souls, then in the various conflicts, af- 
 flictions and trials that have followed it. Go, seek in 
 
THE DOOR'KEEPER OF THE TEMPLE. 281 
 
 the biographies of these men who were great in the 
 kingdom of God, the moment when they passed from 
 death to life, by the knowledge of Jesus Christ ; ask 
 also in turn, the Christians around you who have them- 
 selves experienced this virtue of the word of God ; they 
 will give a unanimous testimony. They will tell you 
 that when the sacred Scriptures, taking hold of their 
 conscience, cast them down at the foot of the cross, there 
 to reveal to them the love of God, to bathe them in the 
 tears of gratitude and joy ; what affected them thus, was 
 not the whole of the Bible, nor was it a chapter ; it was 
 a verse ; almost Invariably, it was a word, in this verse ; 
 yea, it was a word which penetrated like the sharp 
 pointed sword wielded by the hand of God. They felt 
 it to be living and efficacious, a discerner of the thoughts 
 and affections of the heart, entering the very soul, pierc- 
 ing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and 
 of the joints and marrow. It was a virtue of God which 
 concentrated itself in one single word, which made it 
 become to them as "a fire and as a hammer that break- 
 eth the rock in pieces."* They will tell you that the 
 more studious they have become of the holy word, the 
 more also have they felt growing, by intimate and deep 
 experience, their respect for its least important parts ; 
 because they have found it, as St. Paul says, " mighty 
 through God, to the pulling down of strong holds ; cast- 
 ino- down imaofinations and every hitjh thino- that exalt- 
 eth itself against the knowledge of God, biinging into 
 captivity every t^LOught, to the obedience of Christ."! 
 They had read in the moment of their need, a psalm or 
 some words of the prophets, or some sentence of the 
 epistles, or some narrative of the sacred history ; and 
 
 • Jer. xxiii. 29. t 2 Cor. x. 4, 5. 
 
 24* 
 
282 SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 whilst they were reading, behold a word came to seize 
 their conscience with a force unknown, drawing-, irre- 
 sistible. It was but a word ; yet this word remained 
 upon their soul, spoke to it, preached to it, sounded 
 there as if all the bells of the city of God were ringing 
 to call them to fasting, to bend the knee, to pray, to meet 
 Jesus Christ, to hope, to rejoice. It was but a word, 
 but this word was of God. It was in appearance, but 
 one of the most delicate chords of this heaven-descended 
 harp ; but this chord was tuned in unison with the hu- 
 man heart ; harmonies sounded forth, unexpected, deli- 
 cious, omnipotent, which moved all their being, and was 
 as the voice of many waters. They felt then, that that 
 chord was attached to the very heart of God, and that its 
 harmonies came from heaven. They there recognised 
 the appeal of Jesus Christ ; and his word was to them 
 powerful as that single word, " Mary !" which aston- 
 ished Mary Magdalene near the sepulchre. — Like her, 
 they exclaimed, " Rabboni, my Master ! It is then thy 
 voice, oh my Savior ; thou callest me ; I recognise thee ! 
 Ah ! behold me. Lord ; I give myself to thee ; speak, 
 thy servant heareth thee." 
 
 Such is then the voice of the Church ; such has been 
 in all ages the unanimous testimony of the saints ; this 
 inspiration which the Bible attributes to itself, we, they 
 say, have recognised. We believe it, not only because 
 it attests it, but also because we have seen it, and be- 
 cause we can ourselves render testimony of it by a 
 happy experience, ahd an irresistible sentiment. 
 
 We might adduce such examples by thousands. Let 
 us content ourselves with naming here two of the no- 
 blest spirits that huve influenced the destinies of the 
 Church, and serv( d as guides to humanity. Let us re- 
 
THE DOOR-KEEPER OF THE TEMPLE. 283 
 
 member how the two greatest luminaries of ancient and 
 modern times were kindled ; and how it was one single 
 passage of the Scriptures which came, prepared of God, 
 to shed upon their souls the light of the Holy Spirit. 
 Luther, an Augustinian monk, was going to Rome ; he 
 was still sick upon his bed, at Bologna, in a strange 
 country, bowed down under the weight of his sins, be- 
 lieving himself about to appear before God. It was 
 then that the 17th verse of the first chapter of the Epis- 
 tle to the Romans ; " The just shall live by faith," came 
 to enlighten all his being, as a ray from heaven. This 
 single sentence had seized him twice with resistless 
 power ; first at Bologna, to fill him with strength and 
 an inexpressible peace ; then afterwards at Rome itself, 
 to cast him down, and to lift him up, whilst with an 
 idolatrous crowd, he was dragging his body on his 
 knees, up the fabulous staircase of Pilate. This word 
 commenced the western reformation. " Transforming 
 word for the Reformer and the Reformation ;" exclaims 
 my precious friend. Merle D'Aubigne. It was by it 
 that God then said : " Let there be light, and there was 
 light." " In truth," says the Reformer himself, - I felt 
 myself as it were, entirely renewed; and this word was 
 for me the very gate of paradise." '• Hie me prorsus 
 renatum esse seiisi, et apertls portis in ipsum Paradi- 
 sum i/iirasseJ^* 
 
 Are we not here reminded again of the greatest of 
 the doctors of Christian antiquity, that admirable Augus- 
 tine, when in his garden near Milan, unhappy, without 
 peace ; feeling too, like Martin Luther, a storm in his 
 soul ; lying under a fig tree ; ^- jacians voces miserabiles, 
 et dimiUens habenas lacrymis ;" groaning and pouring 
 
 • L. Opp. lat. in Praef. 
 
284 SACRED CRITICISM 
 
 out abundant tears ; he heard from a young voice, sing- 
 ing- and repeating in rapid succession : " Tidle. lege, 
 ToLle^ lege /" take and read, take and read. He went 
 to Alypius to procure the roll of Paul's Epistles which 
 he had left there ; adrlpui, aperai, et legi in silentio ; 
 he seized it, he opened it, and he there read in silence 
 the chapter on which his eyes first alighted. And when 
 he came to the 13th verse of the 13th chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans, every thing was decided by a 
 word. Jesus had conquered ; and that grand career of 
 the holiest of the Fathers there commenced. A word, 
 a single word of God had kindled that glorious lumi- 
 nary which was to enlighten the church for ten centu- 
 ries ; and whose beams gladden her even to this present 
 day. After thirty-one years of revolt, of combats, of 
 falls, of misery; faith, life, eternal peace came to this 
 erring soul ; a new day, an eternal day arose upon it. 
 
 After these words, he desired no more ; he closed the 
 book ; his doubts had fled. With this sentence, a stream 
 of light and security was poured into his soul ; and all 
 the night of his doubts vanished. " Nor would I read 
 any farther ; there was no need of more ; for with the 
 end of this sentence the light of salvation was infused 
 into my heart, and all the darkness of doubt fled away."* 
 
 There is yet one other experience of the same charac- 
 ter, which we esteem too striking to pass over, although 
 its testimony may be lightly esteemed, except among 
 those who already believe. The further an individual 
 advances in the christian life, and receives a more abun- 
 dant measure of the Spirit of God, the more remarkable 
 
 * Nee ultra volui legere. nee opus erat; statim qnippe eum fine hujuscw 
 sententitE, quasi luce seciirit!iti» infiisa cordi nieo, onine:s dubitatic««is ten- 
 ebrae diffugerunt. "—Co«/css/ons, Book viii. ch. 12. 
 
THE DOOR-KEEPER OF THE TEMPLE. 285 
 
 will be the opposite characters which on the one hand 
 the Scripture, and on the other, the most esteemed writ- 
 ings of men will assume in his mind. He will be ob- 
 served to be increasingly independent of the works and 
 words of men, because he has learnt that they can yield 
 him no further instructions ; or that, at least, after a sin- 
 gle perusal, there remains nothing to receive. How 
 blessedly otherwise is it with the Scriptures ; how con- 
 trasted the attention he will pay to them : ever more and 
 more convinced of the w^isdom they reveal, and of their 
 divine power, — ever increasingly affected by their small- 
 est word, — ever better able to feed upon and enjoy, by 
 day or by night, their single passages and fragments. 
 There is, in this fact, for those who can appreciate it, 
 much that is impressive and interesting. 
 
 Such is then the threefold testimony which we de- 
 sired to produce, and by which the Church attests to us 
 that there is a wisdom and a power of God diffused 
 through the minutest parts of the Holy Word ; and 
 that all the scriptures are divinely inspired. At the 
 same time, let it be understood, that we have not pre- 
 tended, in this appeal, to impose the experience of one 
 upon another. Proofs from feeling, we are aware, are 
 proofs only to those who experience it. They have un- 
 questionably, an irresistible force for those Avho, by ex- 
 periencing its power, have had a living evidence of the 
 divinity of the word of God ; but nothing would be less 
 logical than to give them as demonstrations to those 
 w^ho are strangers to them. If you had had these ex- 
 periences, you would have been already more than con- 
 vinced, and our argument might be spared. We have 
 then presented them to you only as strong historical pre- 
 sumptions, hoping to dispose you by this means, to re- 
 
286 SACRED CRITICISM, ETC. 
 
 ceive with more favor and with more prompt submis- 
 sion, the scriptural proois which we are about to submit 
 to you. An entire generation of educated and pious 
 men, we tell you, attest to you for ages, and by a three- 
 fold experience, that by a closer study of the word of 
 God, they have been led to recognise on evidence, the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, even in their minutest parts. 
 Let this be to you, at least a powerful recommendation 
 to hear respectively and without prejudice, the testimo- 
 nies of the Bible to its own nature. We are about to 
 furnish these testimonies ; but, in the mean time, we ask 
 that this voice of the Church may be to you as that cry 
 from a neighboring house : take and read, take and 
 read. Go take your Bible, my brother ; adripe, aperi, 
 lege in silentio ; take, open, read in silence ; and you 
 yourself shall feel how far its inspiration extends, and 
 you also shall say to yourself with Augustine, after so 
 many combats and so many tears : no more doubt, for 
 the morning star has arisen upon my heart ! — and you 
 will have no need to read any farther, in order to banish 
 every doubt. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIDACTIC SUMMARY OF THE THEOPNEUSTIC 
 DOCTRINE. 
 
 We have now defined and refuted ; it remains for us 
 to prove. But it must be done by the word of God 
 alone. If God reveals himself, it is for him to tell us, 
 in this very revelation, to what extent he has designed 
 to do it. Far be from us all vain hypotheses on such a 
 subject. They could contain nothing more than our 
 own phantasies, which might dazzle the eye of our 
 faith, but could not enlighten it. The great question is, 
 the entire question ; what do the Scriptures say? 
 
 It has been asked if the Bible is inspired even in its 
 language. We have affirmed that it is. In other 
 words, (for we have cheerfully consented to reduce our 
 entire thesis to this second expression, equivalent to the 
 first,) it is asked if the men of God have given us the 
 Scriptures exempt from all error, great or small, posi- 
 tive or negative. Our answer to this, is affirmative. 
 
 The Scriptures are composed of books, of phrases 
 and of words. Without making any hypothesis upon 
 the manner which God lias adopted for dictating the 
 one and the other, we maintain, with the Scriptures, 
 that this word is of God, without any exception, — and 
 if any one should still ask us, how God dictated all the 
 words of his book to the sacred writers, we should de- 
 lay our answer, until some one should show us how 
 God dictated all its thoughts ; and we should remind 
 him of that child who said to his father : " My father, 
 
288 RETROSPECT. 
 
 where did God get his colors to paint all the cherries 
 such a beautiful red?" "My child, I will tell you, 
 when I shall have learned how he painted all the leaves 
 such a beautiful green." This is all our thesis. 
 
 But, what have we done to establish it? We have 
 not yet proved it ; the Bible alone can do that. Let us 
 then review what we have accomplished. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Retrospect. 
 
 To exhibit the doctrine more clearly, we have 
 thought that before coming to its proofs, it would be 
 useful to examine the different objections which, it has 
 encountered, and the hypotheses which have often been 
 substituted for it. For that purpose, we have first en- 
 deavored to put our finger upon the original error of 
 all those false systems which evade inspiration, by pre- 
 tending to explain it. — It is the book, we have said, 
 that is inspired ; it is of the book we treat, and not of 
 the writers. We may dispense with believing in the 
 inspiration of the thoughts ; but we cannot dispense 
 with believing in that of the language. If the words 
 of the book are dictated by God, what are the thoughts 
 of the writer to me ? He might have been an idiot, 
 but that which came from his hand, must still be the 
 Bible ; whereas, if the thoughts, and not the words 
 were given, it is not the Bible that he gives me, it is 
 little more than a sermon. — Yet we have taken great 
 care to qualify. The Scriptures are entirely the w^ord 
 of man, and the Scriptures are entirely the word of God. 
 This, in our view, is one of their sublimest features. 
 Admire them, O man ! for they have spoken for thee 
 and like thee : they have come to meet thee, all clothed 
 
RETROSPECT. 289 
 
 With humanity ; the eternal Spirit (in this respect at 
 Itast, and in a certain degree,) has made himself man, 
 to speak to thee, as the eternal Son has made himself 
 man, to redeem thee. To this end he chose, before all 
 time, men '• subject to like passions" with thee. For 
 that, he foresaw and he prepared their character, their 
 circumstances, their style, their manner, their time, their 
 path ; and it is through this that the gospel is the ten- 
 derness and sympathy of God, as it is the " wisdom and 
 power of God." 
 
 Yet we have been obliged to consider the objections. 
 The individuality of the writers so constantly impressed 
 on the sacred books, has been particularly alleged as 
 an evidence that their inspiration was intermittent, im- 
 perfect, and mixed with the fallible thoughts of human 
 wisdom. Very far from overlooking the fact thus objected, 
 we hn ve both admitted it, and adored in it alike, the wis- 
 dom and the goodness of God. But of what importance 
 to the fact of the Theopneusty, is the absence or con- 
 currence of the emotions of the sacred writers? God 
 can employ them or dispense with them. When he 
 speaks to us, must he not do it in the manner and style 
 of men ? And if the Almighty makes use of second 
 causes in all his other works, why should he not do it 
 in Theopneusty ? Besides, we have said, this individu- 
 ality, thus objected, shows itself equally in the parts of 
 the Scriptures the most incontestably dictated by God. 
 This system of a gradual and intermittent inspiration 
 presents at once the characteristics of complication, te- 
 merity and puerility ; but that above all, which con- 
 demns it, is, that it is directly contrary to the testimony 
 which the Scriptures give of themselves. After all, let 
 no one think that the employment of the personal know- 
 25 
 
290 RETROSPECT. 
 
 ledge and feelings of the writers was accidental. No ; 
 all these different writers were chosen before the foun- 
 dation of the world, for the work to which they were 
 destined ; and God prepared them all for it, like St. 
 Paul, from their birth. Oh ! how admirable are the 
 sacred books in this very respect : how incomparable 
 they appear ; how quickly we recognise in them the 
 abundance of that divine power, which caused them to 
 be written ! 
 
 Some have also objected the necessity of transla- 
 tions, and their inevitable imperfection ; others, the nu- 
 merous variations in the ancient manuscripts from 
 which the Bible has been printed. We have answered, 
 that these two fads can in no way affect the question 
 with regard to the primitive text ; — were the apostles 
 and the prophets commissioned to give us a Bible en- 
 tirely inspired and without any mixture of error ? 
 That is the question ; but at the same time we have 
 been able to triumph with the Church, in view of the 
 condition of these sacred manuscripts and the astonish- 
 ing insignificance of the variations. The providence 
 of the Lord has watched over the inestimable deposit. 
 
 Again, it is objected against verbal inspiration, that 
 the Apostles have, in the New Testament, made use. 
 and such use of the version of the Septuagint : but we 
 have, on the contrary, reminded you that in the sovereign 
 and independent manner in which they have employed 
 it, you have a new proof of the agency of that Spirit 
 who led them to speak. 
 
 Finally, it has even been objected, that after all, there 
 arc errors in the Scriptures ; and these errors have been 
 cited. We have denied the fact. Because some state- 
 ment in some sentence has not at once been compre- 
 
RETROSPECT. 29 1 
 
 bended, the word of God hns immediately been blamed 
 for it. We have wished to give some example of the 
 imprudence and error of these reproaches ; but at the 
 same time, we have hastened to come directly to this 
 objection, to show its authors that they can attack the 
 inspiration of the language, only by imputing error to 
 the thoughts of the Holy Spirit. What rashness! In 
 saying of the Bible, as Pilate did of Jesus Christ, 
 '• what evil hath it done ?" they bring it to their judg- 
 ment-bar ! what v/ill you then do to those who buffet 
 it, who spit upon it, and who say to it; "prophecy; 
 Vv'ho is he that smote thee ?" Ah ! come down from 
 your tribunal, come down ! 
 
 The language of the Scriptures has been accused of 
 erroneous expressions, which betray in the sacred 
 authors, an ignorance, elsewhere very pardonable, it 
 has been said, of the constitution of the heavens and of 
 the phenomena of nature. But here as elsewhere, the 
 objections examined more closely, are changed into sub- 
 jects of admiration ; for, in making us grind the dia- 
 monds of the Holy Scriptures, they have made us bring 
 out unexpected beauties, which but serve to discover to 
 us new reflections of its divinity. W'hilst you cannot 
 find in the Bible any of those errors which abound in 
 the sacred books of all the heathen nations, and in ail 
 the philosophers of antiquity, it betrays in a thousand 
 ways, in its language, the science of the Ancient of days; 
 and you will immediately recognise, both by the expres- 
 sions which it employs, and by those which it avoids, 
 that this language was, for thirty centuries, in an intel- 
 ligent and profound harmony with the eternal truth of 
 facts. That which you have known since yesterday, it 
 says. I did not mention to you, but I knew it from eternity. 
 
292 RETROSPECT. 
 
 The passages of St. Paul too, in which he distin- 
 guishes that which the Lord says, from that which he 
 himself says, have been used as objections. We believe 
 we have showed that, on the contrary, he could not have 
 given a more convincing proof of his inspiration, than 
 the boldness of such a distinction ; since, with an author- 
 ity wholly divine, he was there revoking the laws of 
 the Old Testament. 
 
 That was not all ; we have had to reply to other ob- 
 jections, which present themselves rather under the 
 form of systems, and which would pretend to exclude 
 from inspiration, a part of the book of God. 
 
 Some have been willing to admit the inspiration of 
 the Bible, and to dispute only that of its language ; but 
 we have suggested, first, that there exists so necessary 
 a connexion of the thoughts with the words, that a com- 
 plete inspiration of the first, without a full inspiration of 
 the latter, cannot be conceived of We have desired to 
 show how irrational such a conception would be : and 
 to this end, we have pointed out its illusion, since those 
 who make it, find themselves forced, the moment they 
 would sustain it, to attack the thoughts of the Scripture, 
 as well as its language, and to impute errors to the sa- 
 cred writers. 
 
 We have elsewhere reproached this fatal system with 
 being nothing else than a human hypothesis ; fantasti- 
 cally assumed, without being authorized by any thing 
 in the word of God. It also inevitably leads, we have 
 said, to the most contemptuous suppositions concerning 
 the word of God ; whilst at the same time, it does not 
 remove a single difficulty from our mind; since after 
 all, it only substitutes for on'e inexplicable operation of 
 God, another which is no less so. 
 
RETROSPECT. 
 
 293 
 
 But again, we have added ; what is the use of this 
 system, since it is incomplete, and since by the admis- 
 sion even of those who sustain it, it is applicable only to 
 one part of the Scriptures ? Others again have some- 
 times wished to concede to us the full inspiration of 
 certain books, but to exclude from it the historical 
 writings. We have showed not only that every dis- 
 tinction of this kind is gratuitous, rash, opposed to the 
 terms of the Scriptures ; but also, that these books are 
 perhaps, of all the Bible, those whose inspiration is the 
 most attested, the most necessary, the most evident ; 
 those which Jesus Christ has cited with the greatest re- 
 spect ; those which most powerfully search the heart, 
 and which tell the secrets of the conscience. They 
 foretell the most important future events, in their least 
 details ; they constantly announce Jesus Christ ; they 
 describe the character of God; they teach doctrines; 
 they legislate ; they reveal. They shine with a divine 
 wisdom, both in that which they say, and in that w^hich 
 they suppress; in their prophetic reserve, in their sub- 
 lime moderation, in their plenitude, in their variety, in 
 their brevity. To write them, we repeat, required more 
 than men, more than angels. 
 
 It has generally been asked, if we could discover any 
 divinity in certain passages of the Scriptures, too vulgar 
 to be inspired. We believe we have showed how much 
 wisdom, on the contrary, shines in these passages, when, 
 instead of judging them hastily, we seek in them the 
 teachings of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Finally, we have entreated the reader to go directly 
 to the Scriptures, and to consecrate to studying them by 
 themselves, with prayer, the time which he may re- 
 cently have employed in judging them ; and we have 
 25* 
 
294 CATECHISM. 
 
 warranted him, upon the testimony of all the Church, 
 and from a threefold experience, that the divine inspira- 
 tion of the least parts of the Holy Scriptures shall 
 quickly reveal itself to him, if he can study them with 
 respect. 
 
 We have desired that this work should not wear so 
 theological an aspect, that christian women and other 
 persons unacquainted with certain theological studies, or 
 with the s-acred languages, should fear to undertake the 
 perusal of it. At the same time we should fail to accom- 
 plish one part of our design, if the doctrine had not been 
 stated, on some points, with more precision. We shall 
 then ask that, to avoid being led, under another form, to 
 too extended developments, we may be permitted to state 
 it here, more didactically, and to review it in a short 
 catechism. We shall do scarcely more than indicate 
 the place of the points already stated, and we shall give 
 a little expansion to those only of which we have not 
 yet spoken. 
 
 SECTION 11. 
 
 Short CaLecheLical Essay on the Principal Points of the Doctrine. 
 
 I. What do we then understand by Theopneusty? 
 Theopneusty is the mysterious power exercised by 
 
 the Spirit of God over the authors of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, to make them write them, to guide them in the 
 employment of even the words they were to use, and 
 thus to preserve them from all error. 
 
 II. What is said of the spiritual power which was 
 exercised over the men of God, while they were writing 
 their sacred books ? 
 
 It is said that they were carried or impelled 
 (q)eQ()UEvoi) not by a human will, but by the Holy 
 
CATECHISM. 295 
 
 Spirit-, so thatthej'- presented at that time the things of 
 God, " not with the words which man's wisdom teach- 
 eth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth."* God, saith 
 the apostle,t at sundry times, and in divers manners, 
 {^TiolL'U£^>C:g Hul TToXuTuonCg) has Spoken by the pro- 
 r-HETs ;" sometimes in granting them the understanding- 
 of that which he was leading them to say ; sometimes 
 without giving it to them; sometimes hy dreamsif and 
 by visions,^ which he afierward led them to relate; 
 sometimes by words given internally (Ao-o) sididOeio^^) 
 which he led them immediately to utter ; sometimes by- 
 words sent externally, (Ao^w Tigo^ogiJiO)^) which he led 
 them to repeat. 
 
 III. But what was passing in their heart and in their 
 understanding, whilst they were writing? 
 
 We do not know. This fact, moreover, subjected to 
 great varieties, could be for us, neither an object of . 
 6ci<^nce nor of faith. 
 
 IV. But ; have not the modern authors who have 
 written upon this subject, often distinguished in the 
 Scriptures, three or four degrees of inspiration ? 
 
 This is a vain divination ; and this supposition, more- 
 over, is in contradiction with the Word of God, which 
 knows but one kind of inspiration. There is nothing 
 true in this question, except the suggestion of what men 
 have done. 
 
 V. Do we not see at the same time, that the men of 
 God were profoundly instructed, and often even pro- 
 foundly moved by the holy things which they were 
 
 • 2 Pet. i. 21 ; 1 Cor. ii. 13. t Hebrews i. 1. 
 
 JNumo. xii. 6; Job xxxiii. 15; Daniel i. 17; vii. 1; Gen. xx. 6; xxxi, 10; 
 1 Kings iii. 5; Matt. i. 20.; ii. 12—22; Acts ii. 17. 
 
 § Num. xii. 6; xxiv. 4; Job vii. 14; Psalms Ixxxix. 26; Matt. xvii. 9; 
 Acts ii. 17 ; ix. 10, 12 ; x. 3, 17, 19 ; xi. 5 ; xii. 9 ; xvi. 9, 10 ; 2 Cor. xii. 1, 2. 
 
296 CATECHISM. 
 
 leaching, the future things which they were predicting^ 
 and past events which they were relating ? 
 
 They might be, without doubt ; they were so most 
 generally ; but it was possible that they should not be ^ 
 and when they were thus instructed, it was in very dif- 
 ferent degrees, of which we remain ignorant, and the 
 knowledge of which is not required of us. 
 
 VI. What must we then think of those definitions of 
 Theopneusty, in which the Scriptures seem to be repre- 
 sented as the merely human expression of a purely di- 
 vine revelation ; for instance, that of Baumgarten,* who 
 says that inspiration is only the means by which reve- 
 lation, at first immediate, became mediate, and arranged 
 itself in a book ? 
 
 These definitions are not exact, and ma)-- give rise to 
 false ideas of Theopneusty. 
 
 I say that they are not exact. They contradict facts. 
 Immediate revelation does not necessarily precede in- 
 spiration ; and when precedyig it, is not its measure. 
 The vacant air has prophesied ;t a hand coming out of 
 the wall has written the words of God ;| a dumb ani- 
 mal reproved the folly of a prophet;^ Balaam prophe- 
 sied against his will ; Daniel, without comprehending 
 it; and the Corinthian christians, without even know- 
 ing the words which the Holy Spirit had put upon 
 their lips.[i 
 
 Still farther, I say that thpse d^-finitioiis engender or 
 conceal false notions concerning Theopneusty. They 
 suppose, in fact, that inspiration is but the natural ex- 
 
 * De discr. rev. et insp.— Medium quo revelatio immediata, mcdiata 
 facta, inque Vibros relata est. 
 
 t Gen. iii. 14, &c. iv. 6; Exod. iii. 6, &:c. xi.x. 3, &c. ; Deut. iv. 12; Matt 
 lii. 17 ; xvii. 5, &.c. 
 
 i Dan. V. 5. § 2 Peter ii. 16. 8 1 C«w. xiv. 
 
CATECHISM. 2^ 
 
 pression of a supernatural revelation, and that the men 
 ef God had only to record humanly, in their books, 
 that which the Holy Spirit had made them see divinely 
 in their imderstanding. Inspiration is more than that. 
 The Scriptures are not only the thought of God, elabo- 
 rated by the spirit of man, to diffuse itself through the 
 words of man ; they are the thought of God, and the 
 word of God 
 
 VII. The Holy Spirit having, in every age, enlight- 
 ened the elect of God, and having, moreover, imparted 
 to them, in ancient times, miraculous powers ; in which 
 of these two orders of spiritual gifts must we rank 
 Theopneusty ? 
 
 We must place it in the order of gifts extraordinary 
 and entirely miraculous. The Holy Spirit, in all ages, 
 enlightens the elect by his powerful and internal influ- 
 ence, testifies to thern of Jesus,* anoints them from the 
 holy One, teaches them all things, and convinces them 
 cf all truth.! But, besides these ordinary gifts of illu- 
 mination and of faith, the Holy Spirit has bestowed ex- 
 traordina,ry gifts upon men charged with promulgating 
 and writing the oracles of God. The Theopneusty is 
 one of the latter gifts. 
 
 VII. Is then the difference between illumination and 
 inspiration in kind, or only in degree ? 
 
 The difference is in kind, and not merely in degree. 
 
 IX. Yet have not the Apostles received from the 
 Holy Spirit, in addition to inspiration, illumiJiation in 
 an extraordinary measure, and in its most eminent 
 degree ? 
 
 In its most eminent degree, is what no one can aflirm ; 
 in an extraordinary degree, is what no one can contra- 
 
 ' John XV. 26. 1 1 John ii. 20, 27 ; John xiv. 15, 26 ; vii. 3S, 39. 
 
298 CATECHISM. 
 
 diet. The Apostle Paul, for example, had not " re- 
 ceived the gospel from man, but by revelation of Jesus 
 Christ."* 
 
 He wrote " all his letters," Saint Peter tells us,t 
 not only with words which the Holy Ghost teacheth ;J 
 but also as were the other Scriptures (of the Old 
 Testament,) according to the wisdom given unto him."^ 
 He had the knowledge of the mystery of Christ. |[ 
 Jesus Christ had not promised to his Apostles to give 
 them a mouth only, but also wisdom to testify of him.^ 
 David, when he seemed but to speak of himself, in the 
 Psalms, knew that it was of the Messiah that his words 
 must be understood ; " because he was a prophet, and 
 knew that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, 
 God would raise up Christ to sit on his throne."** 
 
 X. Why then should we not say, that Theopneust)'- 
 is only illumination in its highest and most abundant 
 degree? 
 
 Beware of saying it ; for you would then have an 
 idea of inspiration, narrow, confused, contingent, and 
 always uncertain. In fact ; 
 
 1. God, who has often united both these gifts in the 
 same man, has likewise often designed to separate them, 
 to show us that they differ essentially one from the other, 
 and that when united, they are still independent. Every 
 true Christian has the Holy Spirit ;tt but every Chris- 
 tian is not inspired ; and a man may speak the words 
 of God, without having received either the affections or 
 the vivifying lights which they impart. 
 
 2. It can be showed clearly by a great number of ex- 
 
 • Gal. i. 12-16; 1 Cor. xv. 3. t 2 Peter iii. 15, 16. J 1 Cor ii 13 
 5 2 Peter iii. 15, 16. 11 Eph. iii. 3. -n i,uke xxi. 15. 
 
 •• Acts ii. 30. ft Jolui vii. 20, 27 ; Jer. xxxi. 34 ; John vi. 45. 
 
CATECHISM. 
 
 299 
 
 amples, that one of these gifts was not the measure of 
 the other, and that the theopneusty of the prophets, 
 held no more proportion to their intelligence than to 
 their holiness. 
 
 3. So far was one of these gifts from being the mea- 
 sure of the other, that it can even be affirmed, that the 
 theopneusty appears the more clearly, the more the 
 illumination of the sacred writer is inferior to his in- 
 spiration. When you see the prophets, the most en- 
 lightened of the Spirit of God, bending over their own 
 pages, after having written them, and seeking to under- 
 stand the meaning of that which the Spirit who was in 
 them, had just made them express, it must become evi- 
 dent to you, that their theopneusty was independent of 
 their illumination. 
 
 4. In supposing even the illumination of the prophet 
 elevated to its highest degree, it was at the same time, 
 never at the height of the divine thought: and there 
 might be, in the word that had been dictated to him, 
 much more meaning than the prophet yet saw. David, 
 without doubt, in singing his psalms* knew that they 
 pointed to " Him who was to be raised up of the fruit 
 of his loins to sit on his throne forever." The greater 
 part of the prophets like Abraham their father, saw the 
 day of Christ ; they rejoiced in it ;t " they sought what, 
 or what manner of time the Spirit which was in them 
 did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings 
 of Christ and the glory that should follow ;"J . . 
 and yet, our Savior tells us that the simplest christian, 
 the least (in knowledge) in the kingdom of God, knows 
 more concerning it, than the greatest of the prophets. § 
 
 * Acts ii. 30. t John viii. 56. t 1 Pet. i. 11. 
 
 §Mat. xj. 11; Michaelis Introd. torn. i. page 116—129. Fr. Translat. 
 (This author thinks that, in this passage, the least means the least prophet.) 
 
300 CATECHISM. 
 
 5. These gifts differ from each other by essential 
 characteristics which we shall presently point out. 
 
 6. Finally, it is always the inspiration of the book 
 which is presented to us as an object of faith, never the 
 internal state of him "who writes it. His knowledge or 
 his ignorance does not affect in the least the confidence 
 which I owe his words ; and my soul ought always to 
 look not so much to his knowledge, as to the God of 
 all holiness, who speaks to me by his mouth. The 
 Lord designed, it is true, that the greater part of his 
 historians should be also the witnesses of that which 
 they related. This was, without doubt, in order that 
 the world might hear them with more confidence, and 
 might not be able to excite reasonable doubts as to the 
 truth of their narratives. But the Church, in her faith, 
 looks much higher, the intelligence of the writers is to 
 her imperfectly known and comparatively indifferent : 
 that which she knows, is their inspiration. She never 
 goes to look for the source of it in the bosom of the 
 prophet ; it is in that of her God. " Christ speaks in 
 me," says St. Paul to her ; " and God hath spoken to 
 our fathers by the prophets."* '• Why then look ye 
 upon us," say all the sacred writers to her, " as though 
 it were by our power, or our holiness that we had done 
 this work ?"t Look up ! 
 
 XL If there e.xist then, a specific difference between 
 the two spiritual graces of inspiration and illumination ; 
 in what must we say that it consists? 
 
 Although you could not say, yet you would not be 
 the less obliged, for the preceding reasons, to declare 
 that this diff 'rence exists. In order to be able thoroughly 
 to answer this question, you must understand the na 
 
 * 2 Cor. xiii. 3 ; Ileb. i. 1, (ti/.> t Acts iii. 12. 
 
CATECHISM, 301 
 
 ture and the mode of both these gifts ; whilst the Holy 
 Spirit has never explained to us, either how he pours 
 the thoughts of God into the understanding of a chris- 
 tian, or how he places the word of God on the lips of a 
 prophet. At the same time, we can here point out two 
 essential characteristics, by which these two operations 
 have always showed themselves distinct. One of these 
 characteristics relates to their duration, and the other to 
 their degree. 
 
 As to the duration, the illumination is continued; 
 while the inspiration is intermittent ; as to the measure, 
 illumination has degrees, whilst inspiration does not ad- 
 mit them. 
 
 XII. What do we understand by continued illumi- 
 nation and intermitted inspiration ? 
 
 The illumination of a saint by the Holy Spirit is a 
 perman'^nt work. When it has commenced for him at 
 the day of his new birth, it then goes on increasing, and 
 accompanies him with its light to the very end of his 
 career. This light, without doubt, is but too much ob- 
 scured by his unfaithfulness and his negligence ; but 
 it never more entirely withdraws from him. '• His 
 path,"' saith the wise man, '• is as a shining light, that 
 shineth more and more unto the perfect day."* " When 
 it has pleased God, who separated him from his mo- 
 ther's womb, to reveal his Son in him,"t he preserves 
 even to the end, the knowledge of the mystery of Jesus 
 Christ, and can always explain its truths and its glories. 
 As '• it is not flesh and blood that have revealed these 
 things to him, but the Father,"^ this anointing which 
 he hath received of the holy one,§ abideth in him, says 
 
 • Prov. iv. IS. t Gal. i. 1.5. 
 
 J Gal. i. 16. § 1 John li. 20—27. 
 
 26 
 
302 CATECHISM. 
 
 St. John, and he hath no need that any one teach hini : 
 but as the same anointing teacheth him of all things, 
 and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught 
 him, they shall abide in him." Illumination then 
 abides with the believer ; but it is not thus with mirac- 
 ulous gifts, nor with Theopneusty, which is one of these 
 gifts.* 
 
 As to miraculous gifts, they were always intermittent 
 among the men of God, if we except Jesus only. The 
 Apostle Paul, for example, who at one time resuscitated 
 Eutychus, and through whom C4od performed acts of 
 extraordinary powder, so that handkerchiefs and gar- 
 ments that had touched him only, healed the sick on 
 whom they were laid; at other times could neither 
 comfort his colleague Trophimus, nor his dear Epaph- 
 roditus, nor his son Timothy.f Such is the case with 
 Theopneusty, which is merely the most excellent of 
 miraculous gifts. It was exercised only at intervals in 
 the prophets of the Lord. The prophets, and even the 
 Apostles, who (as we shall show) were prophets and 
 more than prophets,;!; ^^^ ^^^ prophecy so often as they 
 themselves desired. Theopneusty was granted them at 
 intervals ; it descended upon them according to the will 
 of the Holy Spirit [xa6\hg ibnrevfia edlSou uvioig aq.dfy- 
 yEodar^) for " prophecy came not by the will of man," says 
 St. Peter, " but they were filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 and spake as the Spirit gave them utterance.''^ God 
 spake by the prophets (eV tolg Tr^o^iJTa/c,) says St. Paul, 
 when he willed, at dififerent times, and by diiTerent ways 
 [nolv^utQOK, 7To).vTo6nu)g.) " On such a day and at such 
 a time," it is often written, " the word of Jehovah came 
 
 * I Cor. xiv. 1 ; Acts xx. 10. t 2 Tim. iv. 20 ; Phii. ii. 27 ; 1 Tim. v. 23 
 J Eph. iii. 4, 5; iv. 11 ; Rom. xvi. 25—27. § Acts ii. 4. 
 
CATECHISM. 303 
 
 losuchaone(>i^s^ rtTfT' '1iT^n''t") "The tenth year. 
 at the twelfth day of the tenth month, the word of Jehovah 
 canie to me/' said the prophet.* " In the fifteenth year 
 of the reign of Tiberius, the word of God came to 
 John, son of Zacharias." (e'^e'reTo ^rifia Qeov sni lanii- 
 vr^v ;)f " and on the eighth day, Zacharias, his father, 
 was filled with the Holv Spirit, and prophesied, say- 
 ing . ."t 
 
 Thus then, we should not think that the divine infalli- 
 bility of the language of the prophets (and even of the 
 Apostles.) continued beyond the time of accomplishing 
 their miraculous task, or that in which the Spirit made 
 them speak independently of Theopncusty, they were 
 most frequently illuminated, sanctified, guarded by God 
 as every holy believer in our day might be ; but then, 
 they spake no longer as, '• moved by the Holy Ghost ;" 
 their words might still be worthy of the most respect- 
 ful attention ; but it was then a saint who spake ; it was 
 no longer God : they had again become follible. 
 
 XTII. Can we cite examples of this fallibility of their 
 language, independently of Theopneusty ? 
 
 Such examples are numerous. In the Scriptures we 
 often see men, who were for a time the mouth of Je- 
 hovah, afterward becoming false prophets, and falsely 
 pretending, after the Spirit had ceased to speak by them, 
 that they still uttered the words of the most High ; " al- 
 though the Lord had not sent them, neither commanded 
 them, nor spoken unto them." " They spake a vision 
 of their own heart, and were then no more the mouth 
 of the Lord."§ 
 
 Without even speaking here of such wicked men, as 
 
 • Jer. i. I : xxix. 1. and elsewliere. T Luke iii. 1, 2. 
 
 X Luke L 59—67; 41, 42. § .ler. xiv. 14 ; xxiii. 11, 15 ; Ezek. xiii. 2, 3. 
 
304 CATECHISM. 
 
 the profane Saul or Balaam, who were for a long time 
 numbered among the prophets, can it be thought thai 
 all the words of king David are infallible during the 
 whole of that long year which he passed in adultery ? 
 Yet these, say the Scriptures, are " the lai^t words of 
 David, the sweet singer of Israel: the Spirit of the 
 Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue."* 
 Can it be thought that all the words of the prophet 
 Solomon were still infallible, when he fell into idolatry 
 in his old age, and the safety of his soul became a pro- 
 blem to the Church of God? Yet farther, to come 
 down to the holy apostles a^nd jjrnphets of Christf can 
 it be thought that all the language of Paul himself was 
 infallible, and that he could still say that Christ spake 
 by him,| while there was a sharp contention ('Txoof(;CT</65) 
 between him and Barnabas ?§ Or, when mistaking in 
 the midst of the Council, the person of the high priest, 
 he '• insulted the prince of his people," and cried , God 
 shall smite thee thou whited wall ! Or yet again, (as 
 some doubt may rest on the character of this reproof,) 
 can it be thought that all the words of the holy apostle 
 Peter were infallible, when at Antioch, he showed 
 himself "so reprehensible" i^nuTpyiMouho; ;') when he 
 feared the messengers of St. James ; when he used hy- 
 pocrisy ; and when he compelled the apostle Paul, "to 
 resist him face to face in the presence of all, because he 
 walked not uprightly according to the tiuth of the Gos- 
 pel," (oi)x T^f oodonodtjaug .?) 
 
 XIV. What inference should we draw from this first 
 point of diffin-ence between illumination and inspiration, 
 as to the duration of these gifts? 
 
 •2 Sam. xxiii. 1,2. t Eph. iii. 5. 
 
 J 2 Cor. xiii. 3. § Acts xv. 33. 
 
CATECHISM. 305 
 
 We must conclude: 
 
 1. That these two operations of the Holy Spirit differ 
 in essence, and not in degree only ; 
 
 2. That the infallibility of the sacred writers has de- 
 pend" d not on their illumination (which, although 
 granted in an extraordinary measure to some among 
 them, was nevertheless common to all the saints,) but, 
 on thrir Theopneusty only; 
 
 3. That the Theopneustic words, having been all 
 miraculously given, are all likewise the words of God; 
 
 4. That our faith in each portion of the Bible, being 
 no longer founded on the illumination of the writers, 
 but on the inspiration of their writings, need never give 
 itself to the perplexing study of their internal state, of 
 the degree of their light, or of their sanctification ; but 
 must lean on God in every thing, on man in nothing. 
 
 XV. If the illumination and inspiration of the pro- 
 ph(ts and apostles has varied so much in the duration 
 of these gifts, how has it been as lo the degree to which 
 they possessed them 1 
 
 Illumination has degrees ; Theopneusty cannot admit 
 them. A prophet is more or less enlightened of God ; 
 but his word is not more or less inspired. It is inspired, 
 or it is not ; it is of God, or it is not ol God. In it there 
 is neither measure nor degree, neither increase nor de- 
 crease. David was illuminated of God ; John the Bap- 
 tist was so far more than David ; a simple christian may 
 be so in a higher degree than was John the B;iptist ; an 
 apostle still exceeded this christian ; and Jesus Christ is 
 yet in this, superior to this apostle. But the inspired 
 word of David, what do I say? the inspired word of 
 even Balaam, is of God equally with that of John the 
 Baptist, of Paul, or of Jesus Christ ! It is the word 
 26* 
 
306 CATECHISM. 
 
 OF God. The most illuminated saint cannot speak by 
 inspiration ; while the most wicked, the most ignorant 
 and the most impure of men can prophesy ; for " he 
 speaks not of himself (ugo' eavrov, oux itnev^) but by 
 Theopneusly ((UAd nuocprirevcTai.)* In a truly re- 
 generated man are always found the divine and the hu- 
 man spirit, which act at the same time, the one enlight- 
 ening, the other obscuring; and illumination will in- 
 crease in proportion as the action of the Divine Spirit 
 surpasses that of the human. These two elements have 
 also existed in the prophets, and above all. in the apos- 
 tles. But thanks to God, our faith in the language of 
 the Scripture depends not on the unknou'n issue of the 
 conflict between the flesh and the spirit in the soul of 
 the sacred writers. Our faith ascends directly to the 
 heart of God. 
 
 XVI. Can great evil result from the doctrine accord- 
 ing to which, the language of inspiration would be but 
 the human expression of a superhuman revelation ; and 
 if v/e may so express ourselves, but a natural reflection 
 of a supernatural illumination? 
 
 One of these two evils must ever result from it: 
 either the oracles of God will be brought down to a 
 level with the words of the saints ; or these will be 
 raised to a level with the Scriptures. This is a fatal, 
 but inevitable consequence ; the one or the other form 
 of which is reproduced in every age. All truly regen- 
 erated men, being enlightened by the Holy Spirit ; it 
 follows, according to this doctrine, that they all possess, 
 though in different degrees, perhaps, the element of in- 
 spiration ; so that, according to the arbitrary idea you 
 shall have formed of their spiritual condition, you will 
 
 * Juhnxi.51. 
 
CATECHISM. 307 
 
 be inevitably led, now to assimilate them to the sacred 
 writers, now to raise them to the rank of men inspired 
 from above. 
 
 XVII. Can instances be produced of religious com- 
 munities, where the first of these evils has been realized? 
 I mean, where men have been led, by this means, to 
 lower the Scriptures to a level with the words of the 
 saints? 
 
 All the theories of the learned among the Protestants, 
 which suppose some mixture of error in the Scriptures, 
 are founded upon this doctrine; — from Semler and Ani- 
 mon, to Eichhorn, Paulus, Gabler, Schruster, and Res- 
 tig ; — from De Wette, to the more respectful systems 
 of Michaelis, of Rosenmuler, Scaliger, Capellus, John 
 Le Clerc, or Vossius. According to these systems, the 
 divine light, by which the intellect of the sacred writers 
 was illuminatt'd, might experience a partial eclipse, by 
 the unavoidable influence of their natural infirmities, of 
 a defect of memory, of an innocent ignorance, of a pop- 
 ular prejudice ; so that their writings bear the mark of 
 it, and we can there discover where the shades have 
 fallen. 
 
 XVIII. Can we show that there are also religious 
 societies, in which the second of these evils has been 
 consummated ; I mean, where, from having chosen to 
 confound inspiration with illumination, they have raised 
 saints and learned men to the rank of the theopneustic, 
 or inspired men? 
 
 For, specimens of this, we might adduce, above all 
 others, the Jews and the Latins. 
 
 XIX. What have the Jews done? 
 
 They have regarded the rabbins of the ages succeed- 
 ing the period of the dispersion, as gifted with an infal- 
 
308 CATECHISM. 
 
 libility, that has placed them on a level with (if not 
 above,) Moses and the prophets. They have, without 
 doubt, attributed a species of divine inspiration to the sa- 
 cred writings ; but they have forbidden any explanations 
 of the oracles, except those furnished by their traditions. 
 They have called the immense body of those command- 
 ments of men, the oral laio^ (pjg D^^lDtiJ H^Tri) ^^^ ^^'^' 
 trine^ or the Talmud^ (TT/^bil) disting-uishing it as 
 Mishia^ or Second Law, (nDt2?)2) ^"^'^ ^^ Gemarah ; 
 complement, or perfection, (55^7^^)- They have pro- 
 claimed it as transmitted by God to Moses, by Moses to 
 Joshua, by Joshua to the prophets, by the prophets to 
 Esdras, by Esdras to the Doctors of the great Syna- 
 gogue, and by these to the Rabbis Antigonus^ Sncchoj 
 Skemaia^ Hiliel Schammai ; until, at last, Judas the 
 holy committed it to the Traditions, or Repetitions of 
 the law, (j*|Tj*CJ^ devTEQ^aetg^) which, in later times, 
 with their Com.mentary, or Complement, (the Gema- 
 rah^) formed the Talmud of Jerusalem, and then that 
 of Babylon. 
 
 " One of the greatest obstacles we find among the 
 Jews," saj^s the missionary M'Caul, " is their invinci- 
 ble prejudice in favor of their traditions and commenta- 
 ries ; so that we cannot persuade them to purchase our 
 Bibles without notes or comments."* 
 
 "The law, they say, is salt; the Mishna, pepper; 
 the Talmuds, spices." " The Scriptures are water ; the 
 Mishna, wine ; the Gemarah, spiced wine." " My son," 
 says Rabbi Isaac, " learn to pay more attention to the 
 word of the Scribes, than to the word of the law." 
 " Turn your children," (said Rabbi Eleazar, upon his 
 death-bed, to his scholars, who were asking him the 
 
 • Letters from Warsaw, March 22, 1827. 
 
CATECHISM. 309 
 
 way of life,) '• turn your children from the study of the 
 Bible, and put them at the feet of the Sages." " Learn, 
 my son, (says Rabbi Jacob,) that the words of the 
 Scribes are more excellent than those of the Prophets."* 
 
 XX. And what has resulted from these enormities ? 
 
 By them, millions and millions of immortal souls, 
 however far they have wandered on the earth, however 
 wearied and heavy laden, however despised and perse- 
 cuted in every place, have been able to carry, among 
 all the nations of the world, the book of the Old Testa- 
 ment untouched and complete, and not to tease reading 
 it in Hebrew, every Sabbath, in thousands of syna- 
 gogues, for eighteen hundred years ; . . . . yet without 
 being able to recognise in it, that Jewish Messiah whom 
 we all adore, and the knowledge of whom would be 
 their instant deliverance, as it is one day to be their hap- 
 piness and their glory I 
 
 " And Jesus said unto them, full well ye reject the 
 commandment of God, that ye may keep your own 
 
 traditions."! 
 
 XXr And what have the Latins done ? 
 
 They have considered the fathers, the popes, and the 
 Councils of the successive ages of the Church of Rome, 
 as endowed with an infallibility which puts them upon 
 the level with, if not above Jesus, and the prophets and 
 apostles. They have, it is true, greatly diflered fi'om 
 each other upon the doctrine of the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures ; and the faculties of Douay and Louvain, 
 
 * In Uie .Tenisalem Talmud.— Encycl. method., at the word Juifs. 
 
 t M;irk vii. 9, 13, and Matt. xv. 3. 9. The Jews of the present day are 
 besiuiiiMg, at length, to recognize the evil character of their traditions. 
 "The time has arrived," says the Jewish doctor Creisenach, "when the 
 Talnind will bring the Jewish religion to a declining state of the most hu- 
 miliating character, if every Jewish teacher do not promptly declare that 
 its statutes are of human origin, and admit of change." 
 
316 CATECHfSM. 
 
 for example, have set themselves strongly* against the 
 opinion of the Jesuits, who were unwilling to see in the 
 operation of the Holy Spirit, any thing more than a di- 
 rection, which preserved the sacred writers from error : 
 but they have all forbidden any other explanation of the 
 Holy Scriptures, than that which is according to the 
 traditions.! They believed they had a right to say, in 
 all their Councils, with the apostles and prophets of 
 Jerusalem ; " It hath seemed good to the Holy Spirit 
 and to us." They have declared that it belonged to 
 them to jud^ the true sense of the Holy Scriptures. 
 They have called the immense body of these human 
 commandments, the oral Latv, unwritten traditions, the. 
 umvritten Law. They have styled them : transmitted 
 from God, and dictated by the mouth of Jesus Christ, or 
 of the Holy Spirit, by a continuid succession. 
 
 " Seeing," says the Council of Trent,J " that the sav- 
 ing truth, and the discipline of manners is contained in 
 the written books and the unwrittf-n traditions, which 
 having been received by the Aposths, from the mouth 
 of Jesus Christ, or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in 
 the succession of time, have been handed down even to 
 us ; following the example of the Apostolic Fathers, 
 the Council receives with the same affection and rever- 
 ence (pari pietatis et reverentias aff'tctu,) and honors all 
 the books of the Old and New 'J'estamfnt, (seeing God 
 is their author,) and likewise the traditions concerning 
 faith and practice, as having been dictated by the mouth 
 of Jesus Christ or of the Holy Spirit, and preserved in 
 
 * Censure of 1588. 
 
 T Council of Trent, Sess. 4,2(1. derree of 28th April, 154G. Bellarmin, 
 De Eccl. lih. iii. cap. 14 ; lib. iv. cap. 3, 5, 6, 7, 8. Cof on, 111), ii. Cap. 24, 34, 
 35. Du Perron contre Tileniis. 
 
 t Council of Trent. 1st decree. Session 4. 
 
CATECHISM. 311 
 
 the Catholic Church by a perpetual succession." " If 
 any one does not receive the said books entirely, and 
 with all their parts, as holy and canonical, as they have 
 been accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church, and 
 in the ancient vulgar translation," (that of Jerome,* 
 which abounds, especially in Job and the Psalms, in 
 very serious and very glaring faults, and has even been 
 abundantly corrected in after times by other Popes.) 
 " or, ingood earnest, despises the said traditions, let him 
 be accursed!" 
 
 They have also put the bulls of the Bishop of Rome 
 and the decrees of their synods above the Scriptures. 
 '• The Holy Scriptures," they say, " do not contain all 
 that is necessary to salvation, and are not sufficient."! 
 " They are obscure."^ " It is not for the people to 
 read the Holy Scriptures. § We must receive with 
 obedience of faith, many things that are not in the Scrip- 
 tures."! We must serve God according to the tradi- 
 tions of the elders."*1F 
 
 The Bull Exsiirge of Leo. X.** puts in the number 
 of Luther's heresies, his saying : " that it is not in the 
 power of the church or Pope to establish articles of 
 faith." 
 
 The Bull unigenitusW condemns forever, as being 
 " respectively false, captious, scandalous, rash, perni- 
 
 * It was in vain that at the Council, the Abbey Isidor Clarius represent- 
 ed that there was rashness in attributing inspiration to a writer who him- 
 self declared that he had none. Fra Paolo, Tom. 1, liv. ii. Sec. .51. 
 
 t Bellarmin de verbo Dei, lib. iv. 
 
 X Id. lib. iii. Charon, Verite 3. Coton lib. ii. Cap. 19. Bayle Traite. 
 
 § Bellarmin, de verbo Dei, lib. ii. cap. 19. 
 
 I! Bellarmin. lib. iv. Cap. 3. Coton, lib. ii. Cap. 24. Du Perron contre 
 Tileniis. 
 
 ^ Bellarmin, lib. iv. Cap. 5. Coton, lib. ii. Cap. 34,35. Councilor Trent, 
 Sess. 4. •* 15-20 Con no. Harduini, T. ix. p. 1893. 
 
 n Of Clement XI. of September 8, 1713. 
 
312 CATECHISM. 
 
 cious, suspected of heresies, savoring of heresies, here- 
 tical, impious, blasphemous, etc." the following propo- 
 sitions : '• It is useful, at all times, in all places and for 
 all sorts of persons to study the Scriptures, and to know 
 their spirit, their piety and their mysteries ;" (Luther on 
 I Cor. xvi. 5.*) '• The reading of the Holy Scriptures 
 by a man of business, shows that it is for all the world ;" 
 (Luther on Acts, viii. 28. f) '" The holy obscurity of the 
 word God is not a reason why the laity should not read 
 it;" (on Acts, viii. 31.") " The Sabbath ought to be 
 sanctified by the reading of books of piety, and especially 
 of the Holy Scriptures. It is the milk which God him- 
 self, who knows our hearts, has given them. It is dan- 
 gerous to attempt to wean him from it ;" (on Acts, xv. 
 21.) '■ It is an illusion to imagine that the knowledge 
 of the mysteries of religion ought not to be communi- 
 cated to that sex, (the female) by the reading of the holy 
 books, after that example of the confidence v/ith which 
 Jesus shows himself to the Samaritan woman." " It is 
 not from the simplicity of woman, but from the proud 
 sciejice of man, that the abuse of the Scriptures has 
 arisen, and that have arisen the heresies ;" (on John iv. 
 26.) " It is, to shut the mouth of Jesus Christ to chris- 
 tians, to snatch from their hands the holy book, or to 
 keep it closed to them, in depriving them of the means 
 of understanding it ;" (1 Thes. v. 2.) " To forbid the 
 reading of the Bible to christians, is to refuse the light 
 to the children of light, and to inflict on them a kind of 
 excommunication," (Luke, xi. 33. J) 
 
 More recently, in 1824, the Encyclical letters of 
 Pope Leo XII., complain grievously of the Bible So- 
 cieties, " which violate say they, the traditions of the 
 
 ' Propos. 79. t Prop. 80. J Prop. 82, 83, 84, 85. 
 
CATECHISM. 313 
 
 Fathers, and the Council of Trent, in scattering the 
 Scriptures in the vulgar languages of all the nations," 
 '^ You are aware, venerable brethren, that a certain So- 
 ciety called the Bible Society is audaciously wandering- 
 through the world ; which aims, in contempt of the tra- 
 ditions of the most holy fathers (!!!) and contrary to 
 the well known decree of the Council of Trent, to trans- 
 late vigorously and by every means, or rather to per- 
 vert the Scriptures into the common languages of the 
 nations."* " in order to turn away this pi st," adds he, 
 '•our predecessors have published many constitutions, 
 . . . tending to show how pernicious to faith and prac- 
 tice is this perfidious invention."! 
 
 XXII. And vvhat is the result of these enormities? 
 
 It is that, by them, millions and millions of immortal 
 souls in France, in Spain, in Italy, in German}'', ia 
 America, even in the Indies, although they possess 
 every where, the books of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments uninjured and complete, although they have not 
 ceased to read them in Latin every Sabbath, in thou- 
 sands of temples, during twelve hundred years, . , . 
 have been turned away from the fountain of life ; have 
 given, like the Jews, '-more attention to the words of 
 the scribes than to those of the law," have turned away 
 their children, according to the counsel of Eleazar, 
 " from the reading of the Bible, to place them at the 
 feet of the wise men ;" have found, with Rabbi Jacob, 
 '• the words of the scribes more excelltnt than those of 
 
 • "Non vos latet, venerandi fratres, Societatem qiiamtiam, dictam vulgo 
 BiBLicAM, per totum orbem audaciter vagari, quae, spretis S. S. Patriim 
 traditionibcs (! ! !) et contra notissiimim Tridentini conoilii decretum, in 
 id collatis viribus ac modis omnibus iiifendit, iil in vulgares liiignas natio 
 nam omnium sacra vertantur vel poiius pervertanfur Biblia." 
 
 I Ut ostendatur quantopere fidei et moribus vaferriniuni hocce inventum 
 noxium bii ! 
 
 26 
 
314 CATECHISM 
 
 the prophets." It is thus that they have been able to 
 maintain for twelve centuries, doctrines the most con- 
 trary to the word of God,* upon the worship of images ;t 
 upon the exaltation of the priesthood ; upon their 
 forced celibacy ; upon their auricular confessions ; upon 
 the absolution which they dare to give ; upon the ma- 
 gical power which they attribute, even to the impurest 
 of them, of creating their God by the two Latin words, 
 opere ojperalo ; upon an ecclesiastical priesthood of 
 which the Scriptures have never spoken : upon the in- 
 vocation of the dead ; upon the spiritual preeminence 
 of the city which the Bible has called Babylon : upon 
 the unknown tongues in worship ; upon the celestial 
 empire of the blessed but humble woman, to whom 
 Jesus himself said ; " woman, what have I to do with 
 thee ?" — upon the mass ; upon the forbidding the cup 
 to the laity ; upon the forbidding the Scriptures to the 
 people ; upon the indulgences : upon purgatory ; upon 
 the universal episcopacy of an Italian priest ; upon the 
 forbidding of meats ; so that just as they annul the only 
 priesthood of the Son of Man, in establishing other 
 priesthoods by thousands ; just as they annihilate his 
 divinity in recognising thousands of demi-gods or dead 
 men, present in every place, hearing every where the 
 'most secret prayers of men, protecting cities and king- 
 doms, accomplishing miracles in favor of their adorers ; 
 . . . they in the same manner annihilate the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, in recognising by thousands, other 
 
 * Exodus, XX. 4. 5. 
 
 t Qujsqiiis elan^uerit erga venerahilium imaginum adorfitionem {npoa- 
 /n5»'r)ff(»')'<iinranailipmarizat saiicta nostra et niiiversalis synodus ! "Who- 
 soever shall begin to be itKlilfcreiU toward the adoration of the venerable 
 images, liirn does? our lioly and general synod anathemafize !" (was it 
 written to the Emperor, in the name of all the Second Council of Nice.) 
 Cone. torn. vii. p. 583.) 
 
CATECHISM. 315 
 
 writings which share its divine authority, and which 
 surpass and engulf its eternal infallibility ! 
 
 It is against just such pretensions made by the here- 
 tics of his day, that St. Ireneus said ; " when we would 
 convince them by the Scriptures, they treat the Scrip- 
 tures as if they were imperfect, or wanting authority, or 
 uncertain, and as if the truth could not be found there 
 without the aid of tradition, because the latter was given^ 
 not by writing, but by the living voice."* 
 
 " Well do ye make void the commandment of God 
 by your tradition !" said the Savior. f (Mark vii. 9.) 
 
 XXI I.I. Without pretending in any way to explain 
 how the Holy Spirit may have dictated the thoughts 
 and the words of the Scriptures (since the knowledge of 
 this mystery is neither given, nor required.) what may 
 we recognise in this divine action ? 
 
 Two things ; first, an impv/se^ that is an action upon 
 the will of the men of God, to lead them to speak and 
 to write ; and secondly, a suggesL'wn^ that is to say, 
 an action upon their understanding and upon their 
 organs ; to produce, ?'?i them, more or less exalted 
 notions of the truth which they were about to utter ; 
 and from them, human expressions the mc-st divinely 
 adapted to express the eternal thought of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 XXIV. Must we yet admit that the sacred writers 
 were but the pens, the hands, the secretaries of the Holy 
 Spirit ? 
 
 They have been, without doubt, the pens, the hands, 
 the secretaries ; but they have been almost always, and 
 in different degrees, living pens, intelligent hands, docile 
 
 • Adv. Hares, lib. iii. cap. 2. 
 
 t Bene irritum faciiis praeceptnm Dei, ut traditionem vestram servetis! 
 
316 CATECHISM. 
 
 secretaries, moved and sanctified by the truths they ut- 
 tered. But in order that even in these cases, our faith 
 might rest on God, and not lean upon man, the Holy 
 Spirit has chosen on many other occasions, to employ 
 ignorant hands, inert pens, and secretaries without light 
 and without holiness. 
 
 XXV. At the same time, has not the word of God 
 often been written in reference to particular occasions ? 
 
 Yes, without doubt ; and the occasion was as much 
 prepared by God, as the writer. " The Holy Spirit," 
 says Claude,* " used the pen of the evangelists, . . . 
 and of the prophets. He furnished them the occasions 
 of writing ; he gave them the desire and the strength for 
 it ; the matter, the form, the order, the arrangement, 
 the expression, are of his immediate inspiration and of 
 his direction." 
 
 XXVI. But may we not clearly recognise, in tne 
 greater part of the sacred books, the individual charac- 
 ter of the writer ? 
 
 We are careful not to overlook it ; and on the con- 
 trary, we admire this feature. The individual character 
 so far as it comes from God, and not from sin and the 
 fall, was prepared and sanctified of God, for the work to 
 which God had destined it. 
 
 XXVn. Ought we then to think that every part of 
 each one of the Sacred books of the holy Scripture was 
 equally inspired of God 1 
 
 The Scripture, in describing itself, admits no distinc- 
 tion. All the sacred books, without any exception, are 
 the word of the Lord. The entire Scripture, says 
 Saint Paul (^nuaa yv^qn'/,) is inspired of God. 
 
 This declaration, we have already said, Ts susceptible 
 
 • Claude, posthumous works, vol. iv. p. 228. 
 
CATECHISM. 317 
 
 of two constructions, according as we prefer to place the 
 verb understood before or after the Greek word which 
 we here translate by inspired of God. Both these con- 
 structions irrefutably establish that, in the thought of 
 \he apostle, all, without exception, in each book of the 
 Scriptures, is indited by the Spirit of God. In fact, in 
 both, the apostle equally attests that these sacred let- 
 ters (r« itfju yQuu/Liuju.) of which he had just spoken to 
 Timothy, are all, theopneustic Scriptures. 
 
 Now, we know that in the days of Jesus Christ, the 
 whole church designated only one and the samk col- 
 lection OF BOOKS, as the Scripture., or the Scriptures., 
 or the holy letters., or the law and the prophets., {yQ''^TV^^ 
 or ri )'o'i{f?;,t or (it ygoKfal^ or 6 voi^og aal ol nqocpiiTai.^ 
 or 7d If-qix yoa!.iiiuTu.\\) They were the 22 Sacred 
 Books which the Jews received from their prophets^ 
 and about which they were perfectly agreed.l" 
 
 This entire and perfect theopneusty of the Jewish 
 Scriptures was so entirely, in the days of Jesus Christy 
 the doctrine of all this ancient people of God (as it was 
 that of Jesus Christ, of Timothy, and of St. Paul,) that 
 wc read this testimony of it in the Jewish general, Jo- 
 sephus (who had already attained to his thirtieth year,** 
 at the epoch when the apostle Paul was writing his se- 
 cond epistle to Timothy ) Never, says he, in speaking 
 of '• the 22 books"tt of the Old Testament, which he 
 
 • 2 Peter, 1-20 ; John, xix. 37. t John x. 35 ; xvij. 12. 
 
 X John V. 39 ; Matt. xxi. 42 ; xxvi. 54 ; Rom. xv. 4 ; 1 Cor. xv. 3. 
 
 § Acts xxiv. 14 ; Luke xvi. 16, 29, 31 ; Matt. v. 17, 18; John x. 34. 
 
 E 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16. H See Krebs & Lcesner or 2 Tim. iii. 15. 
 
 •* He was born in the year 37. See his life. Edit. Aurelise Allobr, p. 999l 
 
 tt AffJiinst Appion, lib. 1, p. 1037. d,vo (idva rrpdi toU eiK'XJi [iv(i\tau 
 Our Bibles reckon thirty-nine books of the Old Tes-tament, but Josephus 
 and the early Jews, by combinins the books of Samuel, the Kings and 
 Chronicles; and by putting Ruth with Judges, as a single bo(ik ETa 
 with Nehemiah, Jeremiah with the Lamentati©ns ; and,^lttbtly, Hosea wiltt 
 
 2T* 
 
318 CATECHISM. 
 
 calls jn id la Yo<xauaru, the Scriptures, as St. Paul here 
 calls them la iegu ygauyuju, the holy Scriptures, 
 " Never, although so many ages have already passed 
 away, has any one dared either to take away from 
 ^it, or TO ADD to it, or to transpose any part of it;* 
 'for it is for all the Jevs^s, as a thought born with 
 them [TIA^I ds avincpvioi^ egilv^^ from their earliest in- 
 fancy,! to call them the instructions of God, to abide 
 in them, and, if necessary, to die with joy to maintain 
 them." 
 
 " They are given us (he says again) by the inspira- 
 tion which comes from God (;{«Td t^»^ Bniufoiav tvJi^ 
 (kno 10V dtov.) But as to the other books composed 
 after the time of Artaxerxes, they are not regarded as 
 worthy of the same faith." J 
 
 We do not cite these passages of Josephus here as an 
 authority for our faith, but as a historical testimony, 
 which shews us in what sense the Apostle Paul spoke, 
 and which attests to us that in mentioning the sacred 
 letters (xd isqu ygdufiara^) and in saying that they are 
 all Theop'/ieustic writings, he would attest to us, that 
 there was nothing in the Sacred books, which was not 
 dictated by God. 
 
 Now, since the books of the New Testament are teoa 
 YQ('iujLt(xja, holy Scriptures^ the Scripture^ the hnly let- 
 ters, as well as those of the Old ; since the Apostles 
 have placed their writings, and St. Peter, for example, 
 has placed all the epistles of Paul {ndiuug lag 
 
 the eleven minor prophecies wliich follow him, reduce the number of 
 their sacred hooks to seventeen. 
 
 • Ovre nPpL'6EINzlI rr.c OhStv, ovre ^ I'EAEIN avT(2v, ovre METylGEl- 
 N.-'II Tcrn\jii}KCV. 
 
 t E'<(0ijj tK mi Trpo'jrrii ycviatwi dj/o^d^iev ui'ra 0EOY AOTMATA. Ac- 
 cording to others ; from the first generation. 
 
 i Jlicreo}i h Oiixi- tjxoiai //((wrat. 
 
CATECHISM. 319 
 
 iniajoXug,) in the same rank as the other Scriptures 
 (^(b; aul Tu; lomu; FPAfliJ^ ;) .we must infer thence 
 that all is inspired of God, in all the sacred books of 
 both the Old and the New Testament. 
 
 XXVIII. But if all the sacred books (id hqa yqau- 
 fiuru) are theopneustic, how can we recognise such or 
 such a book as sacred, and another as not sacred ? 
 
 It is in a great measure a question altogether his- 
 torical. 
 
 XXIX. Yet have not the Reformed Churches main- 
 tained that it was by the Holy Spirit that they recog- 
 nised the divinity of the sacred books ; for example, the 
 confession of fiith of the Churches of France, does it 
 not say in its fourth article, that, " we know these books 
 are canonical, and a very sure rule for our faith, not so 
 much by the common accord and consent of the Church, 
 as by the testimony and persuasion of the Holy Spirit, 
 W'hich enables us to distinguish them from other eccle- 
 siastical books ?" 
 
 This maxim is perfectly true, if you apply it to the 
 whole collection of the sacred books. In this sense the 
 Bible is evidently a book uuTOTTiaio;. which has need 
 onli/ of ilself. to produce belief in its divinity ; for to 
 him who studies it '• with sincerity and as before God,"* 
 it presents itself with evidence and by itself, as a mira- 
 culous book ; it reveals the secrets of the conscience ; 
 it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It 
 has foretold the future ; it has changed the face of the 
 world : it has converted souls ; it has created the church. 
 It produces thus in the hearts of men, "a testimony and 
 an interior persuasion of tht; Holy Spirit," which attests 
 Its inimitable divinity, ind-p^nd' ntly of any human testi- 
 
 * 2 Cor. ii. 17. 
 
320 CATECHISM. 
 
 niony. But we do not think that any one can confine 
 himself to this mark, to discern such or such a book, 
 such or such a chapter, such or such a verse of the 
 word of God, and to establish its celestial origin. We 
 ought to admit as divine the entire code of the Scrip- 
 tures, before each of its parts can have proved to us by 
 itself, that it is of God. It is not for us to judge this 
 book ; it is this book that shall judge us. 
 
 XXX. Yet has not Luther said* in starting from a 
 principle laid down by St. Paulf and by St. John,J that 
 " the touchstone by which we may recognise certain 
 Scriptures as divine, is this ; do they preach Christ, or 
 do they not preach him ?" And, among the moderns, 
 has not Dr. Twesten said " that the different part of the 
 Scriptures are more or less inspired, just in proportion 
 as they partake of the character of f reaching Christ ; 
 and that inspiration extends to words and historical state- 
 ments only in that which relates to the christian con- 
 science, in that which comes from Christ, or that which 
 serves to show us Christ V'^ 
 
 Christ is, without doubt, the way, the truth, and the 
 life ; the spirit of prophecy without doubt, is the wit- 
 ness of Jesus ;1| but this touchstone in our hands, may 
 indicate falsely ; 1st, because many writings speak ad- 
 mirably of Christ, without being inspired: 2dly, be- 
 cause although every thing, in the inspired Scriptures, 
 relates to Jesus Christ, we cannot at first, detect this di- 
 vine character ; and, 3dly, in fine ; because we ought to 
 BELIEVE, before sei:ing it, that " all Scripture is profit- 
 able for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
 
 • In his prefRce to .Tames and .Tiide. t 1 Cor. iii. 9, 10; 1 John iv. 2. 
 
 X Ob sie Christum treihen. oder nicht. 
 
 § Vorlesuiigen uber die Dogmatik, 1829, 1. B. p. 4'?l-429. 
 
 1 John xiv. 6. Kev. xi.x. 10. 
 
CATECHISM. 321 
 
 tion in righteousness ; that the man of God may be per- 
 fect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work."* 
 
 XXXI. What reasons have we then for recognising 
 as sacred, the books which now form the collection of the 
 Scriptures 1 
 
 For the Old Testament, we have the testimony of the 
 Jewish Church ; and for the New Testament, the tes- 
 timony of the Universal Church. 
 
 XXXII. What are we here to understand by the 
 testimony of the Jewish Church ? 
 
 We must understand the consent of all the Jews, 
 Egyptians and Syrians, Asiatics and Europeans, Sad- 
 ducees and Pharisees,! ancient and modern, good 
 and bad. 
 
 XXXIII. What reason have we for holding as di- 
 vine, the books of the Old Testament, which the Jewish 
 Church has given us as such ? 
 
 It is written that " the oracles of God were committed 
 to them :"J which signifies that God, in his wisdom, 
 chose them to be, under the almighty control of his pro- 
 vidence, sure depositories of his written word. 
 
 XXXIV. Should our faith then depend on the Jews ? 
 The Jews have often fallen into idolatry ; they have 
 
 denied the faith ; they have killed their prophets ; they 
 have crucified the King of kings ; they have hardened 
 their hearts for nearly two thousand years ; they have 
 filled up the measure of their sins, and " wrath is come 
 upon them to the uttermost."^ Yet, "the oracles of 
 
 • 2 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 t See Josephus, against Appion, book 1, p. 1037. — Philo in Eichhorn. — 
 Joseph in Nov. Repert., p. 239. — De JEgyptici.s Judaeis. cf. Eichhorn Ein- 
 leit ins. A. T. P. I. § xxi. p. 73, 89, 91, 113, 114, 116.— De Sadducaeis, § xxxv. 
 p. 95.— Et Semler(App. ad liberal, v. T. interpret, p. 11.— Eichhorn., Allg. 
 Bibl. der. bibl. Literal T. iv. p. 275,276.) 
 
 T Romans iii. 2. § 1 Thess. ii. 16. 
 
358S5 CATECHISM. 
 
 God were committed to them ;" and, although these 
 oracles condemn them ; although a veil remains upon 
 their hearts when they read the Old Testament ;* al- 
 though they have, for ages, despised the word of God, 
 and adored their Talmud ; they have not been able 
 not to give us unharmed and complete the book of the 
 Scriptures ; and the historian Josephus might yet say 
 of them, that which he wrote of them eighteen hundred 
 years ago : " after that so many ages have already 
 passed away.t no one, among the Jews, has dared to 
 ADD, RETRENCH or TRANSPOSE any thing in the Holy 
 Scriptures."J Have we not here cause for perpetual 
 gratitude and admiration 1 Flow great is the interval 
 of time which has elapsed between the times of the Jews 
 and of Christians ! and yet both they and we possess 
 the same sacred books, without even the difference of a 
 single letter. 
 
 XXXV. What have then been the securit}?-, the cause 
 and the means of this fidelity of the Jews? 
 
 We shall answer to this question very briefly. Its 
 security has been the promise of God; its cause has 
 been the providence of God ; and its means has been 
 the concurrence of the five following circumstances: 
 
 1st. The religion of the Jews, which has carried even 
 to superstition, their respect for the letter of the Scrip- 
 tures ; 
 
 2d. The indefatigable labors of the Masorites, who 
 have watched over it with so much care, even in its 
 least accents ; 
 
 3d. The rivalship of the Jewish sects, none of which 
 
 * 2 Cor. iii. 15. t ToaovT-)\> yap aH'Ovi's TlSn :rap'jJx^'<^T05. 
 
 t See this quotation at the xxvii. question. 
 
CATECHISM. 323 
 
 would ever have authorized the unfaithfulness of the 
 others ; 
 
 4th. The extraordinary dispersion of this people into 
 all the countries of the world, long before the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem ; for " Moses of old time hath in every 
 city, (pagan) them that preach him, being read in the 
 synagogues every Sabbath day;"* 
 
 5ih. Finally, the innumerable multitudes of the copies, 
 of the sacred book, scattered among all nations. 
 
 XXXVI. And as to the New Testament, what must 
 we now understand by the testimony of the Catholic 
 Church ? 
 
 We must understand by it, the universal consent of 
 the ancient and modern churches, Asiatic and Euro- 
 pean, good and bad, which call on the name of Jesus 
 Christ : that is to say, not only the faithful sects of the 
 blessed Reformation, but the Greek, the Armenian, the 
 Syi'iac, the Roman, and the Unitarian sects. j 
 
 XXXVII. Should our faith then be founded upon the 
 Catholic church? 
 
 All the churches have erred or have been liable to 
 error. Many have denied the faith, persecuted Jesus 
 Christ in his members, denied his divinit)^, annihilated 
 his cross, reestablished the worship of statues and of 
 graven images, exalted the priests, shed the blood of the 
 saints, prohibited the Scriptures to the people, destroyed 
 by fire the people of God who desired to read them in 
 their native tongue, established in the temple of God 
 him who sits there as God, overruled the Scriptures, 
 
 ' Acts XV. 21. Josephus often attests the same fact. 
 
 t We believe that we may employ the name Church after the example 
 of the Scriptures, as designating sometimes every thing gathered in the 
 Gospel nets, sometimes only thut which is pure and living. And as to the 
 name sect (aipecrtg Acts xxiv. 14 ; xxvi. 5 ; xxviii. 22,) after the example of 
 the apostle, we employ it here neither in a good nor a bad sense. 
 
324 CATECHISM. 
 
 worshipped traditions, made war on God, and cast the 
 truth to the ground. Notwithstanding- all this, the new 
 oracles of God have been entrusted to them, as those of 
 the Old Testament were to the Jews. And although 
 these oracles condemn them, although they have for 
 ages despised the Scriptures, and almost adored their 
 traditions, they have not been able not to give us un- 
 harmed and complete the book of the Scriptures of the 
 New Testament ; and we may say of them, that which 
 Josephus has said of the Jews : " after that so many 
 ages have passed away, never has any one in the 
 churches dared to add any thing to or take anything 
 from the holy Scriptures ; they have been compelled, 
 in spite of themselves, to transmit them to us in their in- 
 tegrity." What new cause have we here for admira- 
 tion and gratitude ! How v/ide has been the division 
 between the churches of the East and that of Rome, 
 between the adherents of the Pope and the Reformers ! 
 And yet among all, Greeks, Latins and Protestants, 
 there is but one sacred book of the New Testament, 
 without the difference of a single iota. 
 
 XXXVIII. Yet, has there not been, in Christianity, 
 a powerful sect, which for three hundred years, has in- 
 troduced into the canon of the Scriptures, apocryphal 
 books, disavowed of the Jews,* (as even the pope Saint 
 Gregory attests,)! and rejected by the fathers of the an- 
 cient church.J (as attests Saint Jerome?)*^ 
 
 • Josephus against App. liv. i. 8. Eusebius E. H. book iii. ch. 9, 10. 
 
 f Exposition of Job— Hist, of Counc. of Trent by Fra Paolo, torn. i. liv. 
 2, Sect. 47. 
 
 X Oiigen (Eusebius E. H. liv. iv. c. 26.) Athanasius (Paschal letter.) 
 St. Hilfiry (prologue in Psalmos. p. 9, Paris, 1693.) St. Epiphan., Larduer, 
 vol. iv., p. 312. St Gregory Naziaiizen (Carm. 33, Oj). torn. ii. p. 98.) 
 
 § Preface to book of Kings j or Prolog. Galeato. See Lardner, vol. 5, 
 |>. 16-22. 
 
CATECHISM. 325 
 
 That, it is true, was done for the Latin sect, by the 
 nfiy-three persons who composed on the 8th April, 1546, 
 he famous council of Trent, and who pretended to rep- 
 \sent THE UNIVERSAL Church OF Jesus Christ.* But 
 they have done it only for the Old Testament, which 
 was entrusted to the Jews, and not to the Christians. 
 Neither this council, nor any of the churches, even the 
 most corrupted and the most idolatrous, have ever been 
 able to add one single apochryphai book to the New 
 Testament. God has not permitted this, in spite of all 
 their evil and impious purposes. Thus it is that the 
 Jews have been able to reject the New Testament, 
 which is not committed to them ; whilst they have 
 NRVER BEEN ABLE to introduce a single human book into 
 the Old Testament, and have ever excluded from it those 
 which the fifty-three ecclesiastics of Trent have pre- 
 tended to add to it in the name of the Universal church. 
 
 XXXIX. And what has been the security, the cause 
 and the means of this fidelity of the Universal church in 
 transmitting to us the oracles of God in the New Testa- 
 ment? 
 
 We shall answer this question briefly. 
 
 Its guarantee has been the promise of God ; its cause 
 has been the Providence of God, and its means has been 
 especially the concurrence of the following circum- 
 stances : 
 
 1. The religion of the ancient christians, and their ex- 
 extraordinary respect for the sacred text ; a respect which 
 showed itself on every occasion, in their churches,! in 
 
 ' Forty-eight bishops and five cardinals, all or almost all Italians. Fra 
 Paolo, t. i. liv. 2, §57. 
 
 t Photius contr. Manich., i. t. 1 ; apud Wolf, anecd., p. 32, sq.— J. Ciam- 
 pini rom. vetera monum,, i. p. 126, sq. 
 
 28 
 
326 CATECHISM, 
 
 their councils,* in their oaths, f and even in their do- 
 mestic customs ;J 
 
 2. The labors of learned men, in different ages, for 
 the preservation of the sacred text ; 
 
 3. The abundant quotations of the Scriptures made 
 by the fathers of the church ; 
 
 4. The mutual jealousy of the sects into which the 
 Christian church has been subdivided ; 
 
 5. The versions made from the earliest ages in many 
 ancient languages ; 
 
 6. The number and the abundant dissemination of 
 the manuscripts of the New Testament; 
 
 7. The dispersion of the new people of God, to the 
 very extremities of Asia, and to the farthest limits of the 
 west. 
 
 XL. Docs it then result from these facts, that the 
 authority of the Scriptures for us. is, as Bellarmin^ has 
 declared, founded upon that of the church ? 
 
 The doctors of Rome, it is true, have gone so far as 
 to say that, without the testimony of the Church, the 
 Scriptures would have no more authority than Titus 
 Liv}^, than the Koran, or than the fables of Esop ;|| and 
 Bellarmin, having doubtless a horror of these impious 
 sentences, has wished to distinguish the authority of the 
 Scriptures in itxeJf and in reference to us (quoad se et 
 quoad nos.) In this last sense, he says, the Scriptures 
 
 * Cyrill., Alex, in Apol. atlTheodo.-;., imp. Act. Concii. e<]. Mansi. t. vi. 
 col. 579; vii. col. 6; i.\. col. 187 ; xil. col. 1009, 10r;2, al. 
 
 t Corb. byz., i. p. 422, al. 
 
 t See St. Jerome, pref. on Job. St. Chi ysost. Horn. 19, l)e Slaiuis. The 
 women, says he, were accustomed to suspend copies of the gospels oa 
 )he necks of their children. See the (iSth canon of the vi. Counc. in Trullo. 
 
 § Lib. ii. de Conciliis, c. 12. 
 
 il Hosius contrii Breiitium. lib. iii. Eckius, de auth. Ecc^esioe. Bayle 
 Tractat. i. catech. 9, 12. Andradius, lib. iii. Defens. Cone. Trident. Staple- 
 ton adv. Whilaker, lib. i. c. 17. 
 
CATECHISM. 327 
 
 have no authority but by the testimony of the Church. 
 Our answer shall be very simple. 
 
 Every manifestation having' three causes, an objec- 
 tive, a subjective, and an instrumental cause ; we may 
 say also, that the knowledge which we receive of the 
 authority of the Scriptures has first, for its objective 
 causc^ the Holy Bible itself, which proves its divinity 
 by its own beauty and by its own works ; in the second 
 place, for its subjective or efficient cavse, the Holy 
 Spirit,* which confirms and seals to our souls the testi- 
 mony of God; and thirdly, in fine, for its instrumental 
 cause, the Church, not the Roman, nor the Greek, more 
 ancient than the Roman, nor even the Syrian, more an- 
 cient than both, but the universal Church. 
 
 The pious Saint Augustine expresses this threefold 
 cause in his book against the epistle of Manicheul^ called 
 fandameiiti. Speaking of the time when he was yet 
 a Manichean, he says.J " I should not have believed 
 the Gospel, if I had not been led to it by the authority 
 of the Church ;" but he is careful to add: " Let us fol- 
 low those who invite us to believe, at once, while we 
 may not yet be in a condition to see ; so that being ren- 
 dered more capable by the very exercise of faith, w^e 
 may deserve to comprehend wjiat we now simply be- 
 lieve. Then it will no longer be man, it vvill be God 
 himself vv'ithin us, v/ho will strengthen and illuminate 
 our soul." 
 
 • Is;{. liv. 13, lix. 21. 
 
 X Evangelic iion crederem (according to the African custom, for credi- 
 dissem, as confess, lib. ii. c. 8: Si tunc aniarem,(for aniavissem) nisi nie 
 f:cclesiae coramoveret (conimovisf^et) authoritas (ch. 5.) Eos sequamur 
 .jui nos iinitatitprius credere, quum nondum valemus intueri, ut ipsA fide 
 valentiores facti, quod credimus ititelligereinereamur, non jam hominibus, 
 Fed ipso Den iiitiinserus mentem nostram firmante et illuminante (c. 14.) 
 Opera August., Parid, Mabillon, t. viii. 
 
328 CATECHISM. 
 
 Here then the church is a servant, not a mistress ; a 
 depositary, not a judge. She exercises an office, not an 
 authority ; minisle.rium, non magisterium* She gives 
 her testimony, not her sentence. She discerns the canon 
 of the Scriptures, she has not made it. She has recog- 
 nised their authenticity, she has not constituted it. And 
 as the men of Shechem believed in Jesus Christ, not 
 from the report of the sinful, but penitent woman, who 
 called them to him ; so we say to the Church ; now, we 
 believe not because of thy saying ; we have heard him 
 ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the 
 Savior of the world. We have believed then per eam^ 
 and not joropler earn ; by means of her, and not because 
 of her. We found her on her knees ; she showed us 
 her master ; we have recognised him, and we have our- 
 selves knelt with her. If I mingle in the last ranks of 
 an imperial army, and request them to point out to me 
 their prince, and conduct me to him, they will do in re- 
 spect to him, for me, Avhat the Church does for the 
 Scriptures. They will not call their regiment the ecu- 
 menical army; and above all, they will not say that 
 their emperor has authority by their testimony alone, 
 whether as it regards themselves or us ; whether it be 
 quoad se or quoad nns (as says Bellarmin.) The 
 authority of the Scriptures is in no way founded on the 
 authority of the Church ; it is the Church which is 
 founded on the authority'- of the Scriptures. 
 
 XLT. If the authenticity of the Scriptures is proved 
 in a great measure by history, how is their Theopneusty 
 then established? 
 
 By the Scriptures alone. 
 
 XLII. But is such an argument rational? Is it not 
 
 ' Turretin. Theol. elenct. vol. 1. loc. 2. ques. 6. 
 
CATECHISM. 329 
 
 begging the question, and is it not proving inspiration 
 by inspiration ? 
 
 There would be a begging of the question, if, to prove 
 that the Scriptures are inspired, we should inyoke their 
 own testinaony, as if they were inspired. But we must 
 beware of proceeding thus. We consider the Bible, 
 first, simply as a historical document, worthy of our re- 
 spect by its authenticity, and by means of which we 
 may know the doctrine of Jesus Christ, as one would 
 learn that of Socrates by the books of Plato, or that of 
 Leibnitz, by the writings of Wolff Now, this docu- 
 ment declares to us in every page, that the whole sys- 
 tem of the religion which it teaches, is founded on the 
 great fact of a miraculous intervention of God in the 
 revelation of its history, and of its doctrines. 
 
 The learned Michaelis himself, whose views of in- 
 spiration are so lax, declares that the authenticity of the 
 apostolic writings necessarily results from their inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 There is no middle ground, says he ; if their narra- 
 tive is true, they are inspired ; if they were not inspired 
 they could not be sincere : but they are sincere : there- 
 fore they are inspired. There is then, nothing in such 
 a train of reasoning that can wear the appearance of 
 ' begging the question.' 
 
 XLllI. If it is by the Bible itself that the doctrine 
 of a certain inspiration in the sacred books is established,^ 
 how can it be proved that this inspiration is universal, 
 and that it has extended even to the minutest details of 
 their instructions ? 
 
 If it is the Scriptures that teach us their own Theop- 
 neusty, it is they alone also that can teach us in what 
 this Theopneusty consisted. To admit their inspiration 
 29* 
 
330 CATECHISM. 
 
 on their own testimony alone, we must be well assured 
 that they are authentic ; but to admit their full inspira- 
 tion, something- more is needful ; for we can invoke 
 their testimony as a witness already recognised as di- 
 vine ; they are no more merely authentic books, which 
 shall say to us : I am inspired ; they are authentic and 
 inspired books, which shall say to us : I am altogether 
 inspired. The Scriptures are inspired, we affirm, be- 
 cause, being authentic and true, they declare themselves 
 inspired ; but the Scriptures are also 'plenarUy inspired^ 
 we add, because, being inspired, they say that they are 
 60 totally and without any exception. 
 
 It is then simply a doctrine that the Bible here teaches 
 us, just as it teaches us all other doctrines. And just 
 as we believe that Jesus Christ is God, and that he be- 
 came man, because the Bible tells us so ; thus also we 
 believe that the Holy Spirit is God, and that he has dic- 
 tated all the Scriptures. 
 
 XLIY. Who are the writers who have opposed the 
 doctrine of inspiration ? 
 
 Before enumerating them here, we ought to make a 
 general observation ; it is that, with the alone exception 
 of Theodore of Mopsuesta, that philosophical theolo- 
 gian, whose numerous writings, so deeply stained with 
 Pelagianism, were condemned for their Nestorianism, 
 in the fifth universal Council, (Constantinople, 553,) 
 and whose principles on the subject of Theopneusty 
 were very loose ; with the exception, we say, of Theo- 
 dore of Mopsuesta, there cannot be cited, in the long 
 course of the first eight centuries of Christianity, 
 one single writer, who was ignorant of the plenary in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures ; if he is not in the bosom of 
 the most violent heresies which have tormented the 
 
CATECHISM. 331 
 
 Chiistian Church ; I mean, among- the Gnostics, the 
 Manicheans, the Anomians, and the Mohammedans. 
 St. Jerome hhnseir, who has sometimes indulged him- 
 self, when speaking of the style of certain parts of the 
 j;aered books, in a language, the temerity of which must 
 be reproved by all pious men,* yet maintains, even for 
 such passages, the entire inspiration of all the parts of 
 the Holy Scriptures :t and he sees even there, under 
 what he ventures to call the grossness of the language, 
 and the apparent folly of the reasonings, intentions of 
 the Holy Spirit, full of skill and of depth. And if, 
 transporting ourselves from the days of St. Jerome to 
 four hundred years later, we come to the celebrated 
 Agobard, whom Dr. Du Pin pretends to make the first 
 of the Fathers of the Church that have abandoned the 
 doctrine of a verbal inspiration t it is quite unjustly, says 
 Dr. Ruddelbach, that such an accusation is brought 
 against that bishop. It is true that, in disputing against 
 the Abbey Fredegise.i^ concerning the latitude permitted 
 to the Latin translators, in regard to the words of the 
 sacred text, he maintained that the dignity of the word 
 of God consists in the power of the meaning, and not 
 in the pomp of the words ; but he took care to add, thai 
 "the authorit)' of the Apostles and Prophets remains 
 unimpaired, and that it is not permitted to any one to be- 
 lieve that they could have- placed a letter otherwise than 
 they have done ; because their authority is stronger than 
 heaven and earth." j] 
 
 ' Q,ui solcecismos in verbi.^ facit, qui non potest hj'perbaton reddere sen- 
 tentiamque coiirliidere. Wlio (St. Paul) is guilty of soleci.sms, and cannot 
 complete a sentence or finish a hyperbaton. — (Comment on Titus, lib. 1. ad 
 cap. i. 1.)— and on Epli. lib. ii. (ad rap. iii. 1.) See also his Comment, on 
 Galatians. t Proem, on Philemon ; Comment, on Galat. iib. ii. 
 
 J Du Pin of the Sorbonne, Proles, on Bible, lib. 1. v. 256. 
 
 § Agobard, adv. Fredeg., lib. c. 9—12. 
 
 { Rudelbach, Zeitschrift, 1st number, ISIO, p. 48. 
 
332 CATECHISM. 
 
 If then we would arrange, in the order of time, the 
 men who have set themselves against the entire the- 
 opneusty of our sacred books, we must place : 
 
 In the second century; the Gnostics, (Valentinius, 
 Cordon, Marcion his pupil, &.C..) they believed in two 
 equal, independent principles, contrary and co-eternal, 
 the one good and the other bad ; the one. Father of 
 Jesus Christ ; the other, author of the law ; and main- 
 taining this theory, they rejected the Pentateuch, while 
 admitting, in the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke 
 and one portion of the epistles of Paul. 
 
 In the third century ; Maneus or Manicheus, who 
 styling himself the paraclete, promised by Jesus Christ, 
 corrected the books of the Christians, and added to them 
 his own ; 
 
 In the fourth century ; the Anomians or ultra-arians 
 (for Arius himself spoke more reservedly.) who main- 
 tained, with Aetius, their head, that the Son, a created 
 intelligence, unlike the Father* inhabited a human body 
 without a human soul. They spoke of the Scriptures 
 with a degree of irreverence equivalent to the denial of 
 their entire inspiration. " When they are pushed by 
 Scripture reasons, says St. Epiphanus, they escape by 
 this language :" " It is as man that the Apostle has said 
 these things or those" — " why do you oppose to me the 
 Old Testament ?" What adds the holy bishop ? " It was 
 a necessary consequence," says he, " that those who deny 
 the glory of Christ, deny still more that of the Apostles;"! 
 
 In the fifth century; Theodore of Mopsuesta, head 
 of the school of Antioch, an able philosopher and a 
 learned theologian, but rash. Of his numerous works, 
 
 Avofioic.; tlienre their names, 
 t Epiphun., adveis. hiEr. Ixx. vi. — Aetii salutat. confuf., vi. 
 
CATECHISM. 333 
 
 there remain to us only fragments preserved by differ- 
 ent authors. His books, we have said, were condemned 
 (two hundred years after his death,) at the council of 
 Constantinople. They cited, there, for example, his 
 writings ag-ainst Appolonarius, when he said, that the 
 Book of Job is but a poem proceeding- from a pagan 
 heart : — that Solomon had without doubt received loyov 
 yv(b(TSMz but not loyov uoqUtg ; — knowledge but not wis- 
 dom ; that the Canticles are but a long and insignificant 
 epithalamium, without prophetic, historical, or scientific 
 character, and in the style of the Sympasion of Plato, 
 etc. etc.* 
 
 In the seventh century ; Mohammed (whose false re- 
 ligion is rather a heresy of Christianity, and who speaks 
 of Christ at least as honourably as do the greater part 
 of the Socinians,) Mohammed recognised and quoted 
 often as inspired, the books of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, but he pronounced them corrupt, and, like Maneus, 
 he added his own. 
 
 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; as it appears, 
 there arose and was formally stated first among the 
 Jewish talmudists, the theory of modern divines, who 
 have chosen to classify different passages of the Holy 
 Scriptures under different degrees of inspiration, and to 
 reduce thpopneusty to proportions more or less natural. 
 It was under the double influence of the Aristotelian 
 philosophy and of the theology of the Talmud, that the 
 Jews of the middle ages, in this respect very different 
 from the ancient Jews.f imagined this theory. It was 
 in the time of Solomon Jarchi, David Kimchi, of the 
 
 •Acta cmicilii Constantinop. ii. collat. iv. 65,71, apud Harduin. Acta 
 «oncilii, torn, iii, p. 87—89. 
 
 t See Josephus against Appion, lib. i. c. 7, 8 , and Philo, ed. Hseschel, p. 
 515 et p. 918. 
 
334 CATECHISM. 
 
 Averroes, of Aben-Ezra, Joseph Albo, and above all, 
 o{ Moses MaimonideSj that Spanish Jew who was called 
 the eagle among the learned. Maimonides borrowing 
 the vague terms of peripateticism, taught that prophecy- 
 is not the exclusive product of the action of the Holy- 
 Spirit ; but that in the same manner when the intcUec- 
 tus agerts (the intellectual influence in man) associates 
 itself more intimately with the reason, it gives birth to 
 the secta sapienlum speculaiorum ; the class of wise 
 speculators ; and that when this agent operates on the 
 imagination, there arises from it the sectn folilicorum^ 
 legislalorum, divinalorum, and pr<xstigiatorum ; the 
 class of politicians, legislators, divines and fortune-tel- 
 lers ; so likewise when this supeiior principle exerts 
 its influence in a more perfect manner, and at once on 
 these two faculties of the soul, it produces the secla pro- 
 phetarum ; the class of prophets. Almost all the mo- 
 dern learned Jews have adopted the ideas of Maimoni- 
 des; and this appears likewise to have been the modern 
 theory of M. Schleiermacher on inspiration. It is by 
 starting from these principles that the learned have ad- 
 mitted several degrees of inspiration in the prophets. 
 Maimonides sometimes numbered eight, sometimes 
 eleven. Joseph Albo reduced them to four, and Abar- 
 banel to three. They applied these distinctions of the 
 different degrees of inspiration to the division of the Old 
 Testament into Law, Prophets and Hagiographies 
 (Q^!2Til5 D''i^'^^D n"lTin ) The Kelhubim, according 
 to him, had not received the Spirit of prophecy (nJ^^TlHi 
 np) but only the Holy Spirit, (tinpH PinO which in 
 his estimation was but a faculty of man, by which he 
 uttered words of wisdom and holiness.* 
 
 * Moses Maiirionides, more nebuchim, part ii. ch. 37 and 45. Rudelbach 
 ^ut supra.) p. 53. 
 
CATECHISM. 335 
 
 The modern German School of the adversaries of 
 inspiration appears then to be but a reproduction of the 
 theory of the rabbins of the thirteenth century, or is 
 merely borrowed from the Tahimdist doctors of our 
 day. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, Socinus,* and Castelliof 
 maintained that the sacred writers failed sometimes in 
 memory, and were liable to error on subjects of small 
 impoitance. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, three ranks of ad versa- 
 ries according to the celebrated Turretin J fought 
 against inspiration. There were beside the unbelievers 
 properly called [athens et gentiles ;) 1. the fanatics 
 (enlhuslasia.) who accused the Scriptures of imperfec- 
 tion, to exalt their own revelation ; 2. the followers of 
 the Pope, [pnn(ific.n) who feared not. said he, to betray 
 the ciuse of Christi.mity, by alleging the corruption of 
 the original text, [fontntm.) in order to raise their Vul- 
 gate translation ; 3. rationalists of different classes, 
 {lihei'litii) who while remaining in the church, ceased 
 not to shake th*^ authority of the Scriptures, by object- 
 ing to difficult passages and apparent contradictions, 
 
 In the last half of the eighteenth century, this third 
 class of opponents increased greatly in Germany. Sem- 
 ler gave the iir.<it impulse to what he termed the liberal 
 interpretation of the Scriptures ; he put aside all inspi- 
 ration, denied all prophecy, and regarded ever}^ mira- 
 cle as allegory or pxaogeration § At a later period, 
 Ammon established positive rules for this impious man- 
 
 * Dp Author, Script. t Iii Dialogis. 
 
 t Then], eleiictic. Idc 2, qnaesf. 5. 
 
 § Prefurp (if ihe Compendium de SchuUens, en the Proverbs, by Vogel. 
 Halle, 1769, p. 5. 
 
336 CATECHISM. 
 
 ner of explaining miraculous facts.* A legion of wri- 
 ters equally rash, Paulus, Gabler. Schuster, Restig^and 
 many others have made an abundant practical applica- 
 tien of these principles in their writings. Eichhoin, 
 more recently, has reduced the rationalist doctrine of 
 prophecy to a system. f De Wette. in his 'prelivdnary 
 manual appears to have seen no real prediction in the 
 prophets, and to discover no other difference between 
 those of Israel and those of the pagan nations, than the 
 spirit of morality and sincerity which characterisrs the 
 monotheism, and which purified (he says) the Hebrew 
 prophecies, while it was wanting in the seers among 
 the Pagans. J Hug, in his introduction to the wri- 
 tings of the New Testament.^ says nothing about in- 
 spiration. Michaelis admits it for one part of the 
 Scriptures, and rejects it for the other. So did Le 
 Clerc, in the last century. I| Rosenmuller is still more 
 unequal. 
 
 In these latter years, however, among the Germans, 
 the more respectful theologians have admitted different 
 degrees of inspiration in the different parts of the Scrip- 
 tures, distinguishing at the same time, the passages 
 which, they say, do not relate to salvation ; and pre- 
 tending to see in them, as formerly did Socinus and 
 Castellio, faults of memory, and errors, on subjects, say 
 they, of trivial importance. 
 
 Among the English, we have also recently seen men, 
 otherwise respectable, permit themselves to rank under 
 
 *De interpret, iiarrationum mirab, N. T. (preface to his Ernesti.) 
 
 t Eii.'eilung in das .Mie Testament ; 4ilie(lit. Ga*liiig. 1824. torn. iv. p. 45. 
 
 I Zweyie verbessete Auflage. Berlin, 1822, p. 279, Lelnbuch. Animer- 
 kunjren. § Linleilnng, eic., 2il edit. 18-'l. 
 
 II t?eiitinients of some Dutch Tlieolugian.s, Letter xi, xii. La Chambr. 
 Truite de la rweligion, torn. iv. jt. 159 and following. 
 
CATECHISM. 337 
 
 different classes of inspiration, the different sentences of 
 the word of God. 
 
 XLV. Can we cite many illustrious ^vriters in the 
 church, who have maintained the plenary inspiration 
 of the Scriptures ? 
 
 it is the uniform doctrine of the entire chukch up to 
 the days of the reformation. " Scarcely," says Rudel- 
 bach, " is there a single point in respect to which there 
 has prevailed, in the first eight centuries of the Church, 
 a greater and more cordial unanimity."* 
 
 We recommend to the reader desirous of seeing these 
 historical testimonies, the dissertation recently published, 
 upon this subject by the learned writer of Glauchau 
 that we have just named. The author, first passing in 
 review the first eight hundred years of the Christian 
 era, establishes, by very num.erous citations from the 
 Greek and Latin fathers, the following principles : 
 
 1. The ancient Church teaches with a unanimous 
 voice, that all the canonical writings of the Old and the 
 New Testament are given by the Holy Spirit of God ; 
 and that it is upon this foundation alone, and independ- 
 ently of the fragmentary understanding of them which 
 human imperfection can acquire, that the Church founded 
 her faith in the perfection of the Scriptures. 
 
 2. The ancient Church, in consequence of this first 
 principle, maintains as firmly the infallibility of the 
 Scriptures, as their sufficiency {avnxQy.nav) and as their 
 ■plenitude. She does not only attribute to their sacred 
 authors the axiojpisty., a credibility fully merited, but also 
 
 • Kauniistirgenil ein Punct, woriiber in Alterthiime einegroessern und 
 freiidieere Einstirnmigkeit herrsclite. (Zeitschrift von Rndell.ach und 
 Guerike. 1S40. 1st, vol. p. 1 to 47 : Die Lelire von der Inspirntion der heili- 
 gen Schriff, mit Beriicksichtigung der neiisten Untersuchungen dariiber, 
 von Sclileiermaclier, Twetsen und Steudel.) 
 
 29 
 
338 CATECHISM. 
 
 the aulopisly. that is to say, a right to be believed inde- 
 pendently of their circumstances, or of their personal 
 qualities, and on account of the infallibility and heavenly 
 authority which has caused them to speak. 
 
 3. The ancient Church considering all Scripture as 
 the word of God addressed to man and dictated by the 
 Holy Spirit, has always maintained, that in it is found 
 JNOTHiNG ERRO]NEOus, nothing usclcss, nothing superflu- 
 ous ; and that in this divine work as in that of creation, 
 we may always recognise in the midst of the richest 
 abundance, the greatest and wisest economy. Each 
 word then has its end, its design, its sphere of action,* 
 It is in establishing and defending with power, both 
 these features of the Scriptures, that the ancient Church 
 has made known the high and the deep idea that she 
 had of their theopneusty. 
 
 4. The ancient Church has always maintained that 
 the doctrine of the Holy Scripture is every where the 
 SAME, and that the Spirit of the Lord proclaims one and 
 the same testimony throughout. She has powerfully 
 opposed this science falsely so called, (1 Tim. vi. 20.) 
 which already in the first ages, presented itself in tht. 
 doctrine of the Gnostics, and which, pretending to attrib- 
 ute imperfection to the Old Testament, imagined contra- 
 dictions between one apostle and another. 
 
 5. The ancient Church believed that inspiration 
 should, above all, be considered a passive state ; and 
 still, as a state in which the human faculties, far from 
 BEING stifled or laid aside by the action of the Holy 
 Spirit, were raised by its power, and filled with its light. 
 
 ■* Nihil ofiosum, nee sine signo, neqiie sine argumento, apud eum.—Ire- 
 no-AiS ; iriiv prifxa . . . ipYaZ,6:icDov ro havT.:v ipyov. — On'^en.— Nothing of 
 his is useless or insignificant or illogical. — Irenaeu's ; Every word . . , ac« 
 complishing its own work.— Origan. 
 
CATECPIISM. 339 
 
 She has often compared the souls of the apostles and 
 prophets " to a stringed instrument, that the Holy Spirit 
 should touch, and draw thence the divine harmony of 
 life." (Athenagoras.)* '• Their task was simply to pre- 
 sent themselves to the powerful action of the Holy 
 Spirit, so that his divine plectrum descending from hea- 
 ven upon the human viol, caused it to reveal to us the 
 knowledge of the mysteries of heaven" (Justin Martyr.)! 
 But in their sight, this viol, passive as it was in respect 
 to the action of God, was still a heart of man, a soul of 
 man, an intellect of man, renewed by the Holy Spirit, 
 and filled with divine life. 
 
 6. The ancient Church, while maintaining this con- 
 tinuous action of the Holy Spirit, in the composition of 
 the Scriptures, powerfully repulsed the false notions that 
 certain among the learned, chiefly among the Montan- 
 ists, sought to propagate, concerning the active influ- 
 ence of the Spirit of God and the passive state of the 
 spirit of man in the theopneusty ; as if the prophet ceas- 
 ing to be master of his senses, Irad been in the condition 
 which the pagans attribute to their sybils : mania or 
 ecslacy, (//«» /« or exoiaaat.) While the Cataphrygians 
 maintained that an inspired man loses his senses under 
 the overwhelming influence of divine powers :t the an- 
 cient Church believed, on the contrary, that the prophet 
 does not speak in a state of ecstacy ;^ and that by this 
 test we may distinguish true from false prophets. This 
 was the doctrine of Origen against Celsus (lib. vii. c. 4 ;) 
 also of Miltiades, TertuUian, Epiphanus, Chrysostom, 
 Basil and Jerome against the Montanists || 
 
 ' Legatio pro Ohristianis, c. 9. i Ad Graecos coliortfitio, c. 8, 
 
 t Tertulliaii, adv. Marcion, lib. iv. ch. 22. Excidit seni^u, obunibratus 
 
 scilicet virliite divina. § Nou loquitur in eKcrami. 
 
 I Hieronyni. Proem, in Nahum. Praefat. in Habacuc, in Esaiam. Epiphan, 
 
 adv. liajrejfes, lib. 2. Haeres, 4S, c. 3. 
 
340 CATECHISM. 
 
 7. The ancient Church, seeking, by othep. defini- 
 tions which we shall not point out here, to render the 
 idea of theopneustj'' clearer, and relieve it of the difficul- 
 ties by which it was sometimes obscured, showed again 
 by this means how dear this doctrine was to her. 
 
 8. The ancient Church believed that, in order to 
 merit the name of the action of God, inspiration ought 
 to extend to the words, as well as the things. 
 
 9. The ancient Church, — by its constant mode of 
 QUOTING the Scriptures, to establish and defend its doc- 
 trines ; — by its manner also of expounding them and ot 
 COMMENTING on them : — and finally, by the use of them 
 which she recommends to all Christians without excep- 
 tion, as a privilege and a duty; the ancient Church by 
 these three habits of her life, shows (still more strongly, 
 if possible, than by direct declarations.) how profoundly 
 she Avas attached to a verbal inspiration. 
 
 And it is not only by her exposition of the w^ord, that 
 the ancient church shows us to what point the entire in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures was for her an indisputable 
 axiom ; she shall show it to yon still more strongly, if 
 you Avill follow her in her attempts to reconcile the 
 APPARENT contradictions in the gospel narratives. 
 Whenever she attempts an explanation, she does not in- 
 sist on it; but she hastens to conclude that, whatever the 
 value of her explanation, a reconciliation of these pas- 
 sages exists necessarily, and that the difficulty is only 
 apparent; because its origin is in our ignorance, and 
 not in the Scriptures. " Whether it be so, or not (says 
 she with Julius Africanus.) is of no moment, the gospel 
 remains entirely true!""* That is always her conclu- 
 
 ' T(5 jiivroi 'Eua>>£Xcoi/ Trdj/rojj d'SriQzvTi. In his letter to Aristiiles; up- 
 on the harmony of the gospels relating the two genealogies of Christ. 
 (Euseb. E. H. lib. i. c. 7.) 
 
CATECHISM. 341 
 
 sion upon the perfect solubility of all the difficulties 
 which may be found in the word of God. 
 
 10. 7'he anci»^nt Church was strongly attachpd to 
 the doctiine of the personality of the Holy Spirit, and 
 of his sovereign action in the composition of all the 
 Scripturi s ; yet she never found any difficulty in admit- 
 ting at the same time the greatest variety and the great- 
 est Ubeity in the phenomena, the occasions, the persons, 
 the characters, and all the exterior circumstances, in the 
 concurrence of which, this work of God \\as accom- 
 plished. At the same time that she recognised with St. 
 Paul that, in all the operations of this Spirit, '-it is one 
 and the self same Spirit who divideth to every man 
 severally as he will ;"* she equally admitted that, in the 
 work of theopneusty, the divine efficiency is exercised 
 in the midst of great liberty in rfspect to the human 
 manifestations. And let it be well observed that, in the 
 anci< nt Church, you never see one clsss of writers adopt- 
 ing one of these views (that of the divine casuality and 
 sovereignty.) and another class attaching themselves ex- 
 clusively to the other (that of human personality and of 
 the diversity of the occasions, of the affections, of the 
 lights, of the style and other circumstances of the writer.) 
 '- If it were thus," says Rudelb.ich, " one might justly 
 accuse us of having ourselves forced the solution of the 
 problern, instead of exposing with fidelity the views of 
 the ancient Church." But no ; on the contrary, you 
 will often see one and the same author exhibit both these 
 points of view at once and without scruple ; the action 
 of God and the personality of man. This we see, for 
 example, in Jerome ; who, in speaking of the peculiari- 
 ties of the sacred writers, is always fixed in the notion 
 
 • 1 Cor. xi. 11. 
 
 29* 
 
342 CATECHISM. 
 
 of a word poured by God into their minds. This we 
 see again in Irenseus, who, while insisting- more than 
 any other upon the action of God in the inspiration of 
 the Scriptures, is the first of the fathers of the Church 
 who relates to us in their details, the different personal 
 circumstances of the evangelists. You will find the 
 same in Augustine ; you will find it even in that father 
 of ecclesiastical history, Eusebius of Caesarea, who gives 
 so many details upon the few authors of the gospels ; and 
 who at the same time avows, on the plenary inspiration 
 of the canonical Scriptures, the most rigorous principles. 
 
 11. The ancient Church shows us still more com- 
 pletely by two other signs, her idea of inspiration ; on 
 the one side, by the care she has taken to establish the 
 RELATIONS of the doctriue of the theopneusty with the 
 doctrine of the gifts of grace ; on the other, by the care 
 she has taken to preseint the proofs of inspiration. 
 
 12. Finally, if the ancient Church presents this spon- 
 taneous (ungesuchte) and universal harmony in the doc- 
 trine of inspiration, it cannot be believed, as some ima- 
 gine, that this great phenomenon belongs to some par- 
 ticular system of theology, or can be explained by such 
 a system. Nor must this admirable harmony be re- 
 garded as the germ of a more complete theory which 
 was afterwards to establish itself in the church. No, 
 the very oppositions which from time to time, were 
 made by the heretics of the first centuries, and the 
 NATURE OF THE ANSWERS which weic made by the an- 
 cient Church, on the contrary, show us clearly that this 
 doctrine was profoundly rooted in the conscience of the 
 church. All the time that the fathers, in defending any 
 truth by passages of the Bible, were forcing their ad- 
 versaries to defend themselves only by denying the 
 
CATECHISM. 343 
 
 plenary inspiration of these divine testimonies, the 
 Church has regarded the question as settled. The ad- 
 versary assumed the place of a judge ; there was no- 
 thing more to say to him, he denied the Scriptures to be 
 the word of God ! what could be done, but show him 
 the deformity of his own argument, and to say to him : 
 see where you are ! as one shows to a man who has 
 disfigured himself, his image in a glass. This is what 
 the fathers have done. 
 
 Such are the facts ; such is the voice of the Church. 
 
 We had at first collected, with the intention of giving it 
 here, a long series of passages, taken first from Ireneus,* 
 from Tertul!ian,t from Cyprian, J from Origen,^ from 
 ChrysostomJI from Justin Martyr,^ from Epiphanius,** 
 from Augustine,tt from Athanasius.Jt fi'om Hilary,§§ 
 from Basil the great. |1|| froni Gregory the great,^*ir 
 from Gregory of Myssa,*** from Theodoret.fft from 
 
 * Advers. haereses, lib. ii. c. 47. — Lib. iii. c. 11.— Lib. iv. c. 34. 
 
 t De anima, c 2S. — Advers. Marcion.. lib. iv. c. 22. De Praescrip. adv. 
 hceret., c. 25. — Advers. Hermos., c. 22. 
 
 t De opere et eleemos., p. 197—201. — Adv. Quirin., Adv. Judseos. praefat. 
 
 § Ilomil. .\.\xix. in Jerem (already quuted al)ove, rh. vi. sect. 1.)— Homil. 
 ii. in eumd. (cap. xi.\. and L.) — Iloniil. xxv. in Mail). — Ejusd. Pliiloc-ilia, lib. 
 iv.— Commeniar. in Matlhaum., p. 227 — 128. (edit. Huet.) — Humil. xxvii. on 
 Numb.— In Levit.. hoin. v. 
 
 1 Homil. xlix. on John.— Homil. xl. on John v. — Homil. ix. on 2 Tim. iv. 
 — Serm. 53, de util. Ject. script.- 3 de Lazaro. 
 
 •a Apol, I. c. 33 and 35, 50, 51.— Dialog, coiitr. Tryph., c. 7.-Ad Graecos 
 cohort., c. 8. 
 
 " StJjTO/iOf \d-y6i -rspi ni^ccjs — De Doct Christi, lib. ii. c. 9. De Pastor., 
 cap. 2.— Epist. xlii. 
 
 tf Epist. xcvii. (ad Hieron.)— De unitate Ecclesiae, c. iii. t. ix. p. 341 
 (Paris, 1694.) 
 
 U Contra Gentes, 1. 1, p. 1 — De Incarnat. Christi (Paris, 1627.) 
 
 §§ Ad Constant. Aug.. p. 244.— De Trinit., lib vjii. (Paris 1652.) 
 
 ai Comment, on Isa 1. 1, p. 379(ed. Bei^ed.)— Horn, .x.xix. advers. calumni- 
 antes S. Trinit.— In Ethicis regul xvi, Ixxx, cap. 22. 
 
 nil Moralia in .lob, praefat., c. i. 
 
 *" Dialo?. de anima ef re.siirr., tom. I. edit, graecolat., p. 639.— De cog- 
 nit. Dei cit. ab Euihymio in Panoplia. Tit. viii. 
 
 tft Dial. I, ilr/)£7rr— Dial. H, Acrvyx^r-ln Ex. Qu. xxvi.— In Gen. Qu. xlv. 
 
344 CATECHISftf. 
 
 Cyril of Alexandria,* from the most esteemed Fathers 
 of the succeeding ages; and finally from the holiest 
 writers of the reformation f But we have at once 
 perceived that all these names, if we gave m.erely names, 
 would present themselves merely as a vain appeal to 
 human authority ; and that if we gave them with their 
 quotations, they would too much extend this chapter. 
 
 Eagerly then, we hasten to quote the greatest of 
 teachers, our master Jesus Christ, and to make him 
 heard when he speaks of the Scri])tures, and above all. 
 heard when he quotes them. Among the most ardent 
 defenders of their verbal inspiration, we know no man 
 v/ho has ever expressed himself with more respect fox 
 the totally divine authority and permanence of their 
 least expressions, than the man Jesus. And we do not 
 fear to say that, if any modern writer should quote the 
 Bible for the statement of some doctrine in the manner 
 of Jesus Christ, he must immediately be ranked among 
 the highest partisans of the doctrine we defend. 
 
 * Lib. vii. cont. Jul. Glaphyrortim in Oen., lili. ii. 
 
 t See Lardner, vol. II. p. 172, 438, 495.— IJaldaiie, Insp. of II. Scrip., p. 
 167 to 1/0. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SCRIPTURAL PROOF OF THE THEOPNEUSTY. 
 
 Let us then open the Bible. What does it say of its 
 own inspiration ? 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 All Scripture is llieopneustlc. 
 
 We shall begin by quoting- again this passage so 
 often repeated (2 Tim. iii. 16:) all hnly Scrijjture is 
 Tkeojmeustic, that is to say, all is given by the Spirit or 
 by the breath of God. 
 
 Vve have showed that this sentence admits neither of 
 exception nor of restriction. 
 
 It admits not of exception ; it is the whole Scrip- 
 ture, all that is writlen^ [naaa yQ"^q>ri) that is to say, the 
 thoughts that have already put on the clothing of lan- 
 guage. It admits of no restriction ; all Scripture is so 
 far a work of God, that it is represented to us as given 
 by the breath of God, in the same manner as the Avord 
 of a man is given by the breath of his mouth. The 
 prophet is the mouth of the Most High. The import 
 of this declaration of St. Paul remains the same in both 
 constructions of his language ; whether we place, as 
 our version does, the affirmation of the phrase upon the 
 word OirOTrevGJo; {^dh'iiiely inspired.) the verb is. being 
 und^^rstood [oJl Scrijjture is given by inspiration of 
 God. and is profitable, &,c. ;) or make dedntevaiog only 
 a determinative adjective, and confine the verb of affirma- 
 
346 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 tion to the following words, [all Scripture given by in- 
 spiroJioii ofGod^ is 'profitable^ &C.) This last construc- 
 tion would give even more force than the former, to the 
 Apostle's declaration. For then, his proposition, neces- 
 sarily referring to the Holy letters, [lu i'euu y^,uuu(xTa) 
 of Avhich he had just spoken, would suppose as an ad- 
 mitted and incontestible principle, that to call them Holy 
 letters, is to indicate thereby, that they are writings in- 
 spired by God.* 
 
 It will be well however to draw this same truth from 
 some other declarations of our sacred books. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 All the ivords of the Prophets are given by God. 
 
 St. Peter, in his second Epistle, at the close of the 
 first chapter, speak thus; "knowing this first, that no 
 prophecy of the Scriptures is of any private interpreta- 
 tion. For the prophecy came not in old time by the 
 will of man : but holy men of God spake as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Remark, on this passage: 
 
 1. That it here refers to written revelations, nQOifrjiela 
 YQacfv^g ; 
 
 2. That nerer {n6 nute) did any one of these writings 
 come by the impulse or the government of the uvJl of 
 man ; 
 
 3. That those holy men were impelled and borne by 
 the Floly Spirit, w^en th^^y wrote and spoke ; 
 
 4. Finally, that these writings are called, prophecy. 
 Before advancing fnther, it will be well to dttermine 
 
 with precision, the Scripture meaning of these words ; 
 
 • Refer to the 5tli Cliiipter of this work, § 1, Quest. XXVII. 
 
THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS IN SPIRED. 347 
 
 'pro'phecy, to projphesy^ frophet^ {^"Zu) because this know- 
 ledge is indispensable to our investigation, and also 
 throws great light over the whole question. 
 
 Varied and inaccurate meanings have been generally 
 attached to the Bible term prophet, but an attentive ex- 
 amination of the passages in which it is used, will soon 
 convince us that, in the Scriptures, it always designates — 
 a man whose lips utter the word of God. 
 
 Among the Greeks, those who were first called by 
 this name, were the interpreters and organs of the pro- 
 phecies spoken in the temples (t'l'f/^rTJ; s^de^v /uuv- 
 lelu))'.) This use of the term is eloquently expressed by 
 a passage from Plato, in his Timseus.* The most cele- 
 brated prophets of pagan antiquity were those of Del- 
 phos. They conducted the pythoness to the tripod, and 
 were themselves commissioned to interpret and digest 
 the oracles of their god. And it was afterward only by 
 an extension of this first meaning, that the name of pro- 
 phet vras given by the Greeks to the poets, who, begin- 
 ning their songs by the invocation of Apollo and the 
 muses, were supposed to utter the language of the gods, 
 and to speak under their inspiration. 
 
 A prophet, in the Bible, is then, a man in whose 
 mouth God puts the word he would cause to be spoken 
 to man ; and it was also in allusion to the plenitude of 
 this sense, that God said to Moses ; '• I have made thee 
 a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy 
 prophet ;" as he had before said,t " He shall be to 
 thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead 
 of God." 
 
 Listen to the prophets in the Scriptures, as they testify 
 of the Spirit which caused them to speak, and of the 
 
 * T. ix. Ed. Bipont., p. 392. t Exod. vii. 1 ; chap. iv. verse 16. 
 
348 SCRirTURAL PROOF. 
 
 divine authority of their language. You will ever hear 
 from them the same definition of their office and of their 
 inspiration. They speak ; it is true, their voice is heard 
 their frame is agitated, their very soul is often moved 
 but their words proceed not from themselves alone 
 they are at the same time, the words of the Most High. 
 " The mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken ; the 
 Most High hath spoken," say they unceasingly.* '• I 
 will open my mouth in the midst of them," says the 
 Lord to his servant Ezekiel. " The spirit of the Lord 
 spake by me, and his word was in my tongue," said the 
 royal psalmist, " Hear the word of the Lord."t It is 
 thus that the prophets announce their messages^ " The 
 word of the Lord was then upon me,", say they often. 
 '• The word of God came unto Shemaiah ;" " The word 
 of God came to Matthew. The word came unto John 
 in the wilderness.^ The word that came to Jeremiah 
 from the Lord ; the word that was given to Jeremiah j 
 the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Mala- 
 chi :|| the word of the Lord that came unto Hosea ;^ in 
 the second year of Darius the king, came the word of 
 the Lord by Haggai the prophet ," this word descended 
 on the men of God when it would, and often in the most 
 unlocked for manner. Thus God, when he sent Moses, 
 said to him ; •' I will bo thy mouth ;"** and when he 
 made Balaam speak, he " put his word," it is written, 
 " in the mouth of Balaam." tf ; Thus the apostles, raak- 
 
 ' ?il;c. iv. 4. — Jer. ix. 12: xiii. 15; xxx. 4; 1. i. ; li. r2.— Isa. viii. 11.- 
 Amos, iii. 1.— Deut. xviii. 21, 2:i. 
 
 t 2 Sam. xxiii. 1,2. J U;i. xxviii. 14 ; Jer. ix. 20. 
 
 § 1 King. xii. '2:i ; 1 Chr. xvji. 3; Luke, iii. 2. 
 
 S Jer. xi. 1 ; xviii. 1 ; xxi. I ; xxv. 1 ; xxvi. 1 ; xwii. 1 ; xxx. 1 ; and fre- 
 naently elsewhere.— See. Isa. i. 2; .Icr. i. 1, 2, 9, 14 ; Ezek. iii. 4, 10, 11 ; 
 Hos. i. 1, 2 ; Mularhi, i. 9 ; &c. li Hos. i. 1.2. 
 
 ** Exod. iv. 12, 15. tt tvf./SuXcv {oi Ixx.) Num. xxiii. 5. 
 
THE PROPHETIC BOOKS INSPIRED. 349 
 
 mg". in their prayer, a qnotalion from David, express 
 themselves in these words ; it is thou Lord, who hast 
 SPOKKN b}? the MOUTH of D.ivid thy servant.* And St. 
 Peter addr<-ssing the multitude of disciples: '• men and 
 brethren, it must needs be that this Scripture should be 
 fulfilled, which the holy spirit hath before spoken, by 
 THE mouth of David, concerning Judas. "f Thus, the 
 same apostle, di clared to the people of Jerusalem, ia 
 Solomon's porch ; " But those things which God before 
 
 HAD SHOWED BY THE MOUTH OF ALE IHS PROPHETS, &:-C.:|: 
 
 To the Apostles, then, David in all his songs, and all 
 the prophets in their writings, whatever may have been 
 the pious emotions of their souls, were but the mouth of 
 the Holy Spirit. It was David, who spoke ; they were 
 the prophets who announced, but it was God also who 
 spoke by the mouth of David, his servant ; it was God 
 WHO had announced by the mouth of all his prophets. 
 And let this expression so often repeated in the Gospels, 
 and so conclusive, be carefully examined in the Greek: 
 " in order that that might be fulfilled which was spoken 
 OF the Lord, by the prophet [vno lod xu()(ou J [A rov 
 TT^oqcTJTou,) saying,"^ . . . It is in a sense altogether an- 
 alogous, that the Holy Scriptures give the name o( pro- 
 phets to the lying imposters among the Gentiles, in the 
 temples of the false gods ; whether they were vulgar 
 cheats, falsely pretending to divine visions; or were 
 really the mouth of an occult power, of a wicked angel, 
 and of a spirit of Python I| 
 
 And it is still in the same sense, that St. Paul in quot- 
 ing a verse from Epimenides, poet, priest, and divine, 
 
 • Acts, iv. 25. t Acts, i. 16. J Acts, iii. 18. 
 
 § Mat. i. 22; ii. 5, 15, 23 ; xiii. 35; xxi. 4. 
 
 I! Acts, .\vi. 16. See 1 Sam. xxviii. 7. 1 Chron. x. 13. Levit. xix. 26, 31 ; 
 ix. 26, 27. Isa. viii. 19. 
 
 30 
 
350 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 among the Cretans, called him one of their prophets ; 
 because all the Greeks consulted hirn as an oracle: and 
 Nicias went, on the part of the Athenians, to take him 
 from Crete, to purify their city ; and Aristotle, Strabo,* 
 Suidasf and Diogenes Laertius,J tell us that he pre- 
 tended to announce the future, and to discover unknown 
 things. 
 
 From all these quotations, it remains thus established, 
 that in the language of the Scriptures, the prophecies are 
 " words of God, put into the mouth of men." It is thus 
 then, by an evident abuse, that, in the vulgar language, 
 some pretend to understand by this word, only a miracu- 
 lous prediction. The prophets could reveal the past as 
 well as the future: they denounced the judgments -of 
 God ; they interpreted his word ; they sang his praises ; 
 they consoled his people; they exhoited souls to holi- 
 ness ; they rendered testimony to Jesus Christ. And as 
 no prophecy came by the will of man ;^ a prophet as we 
 have already given to understand, was a prophet only 
 by intervals, arid as the spirit made him speak.^ 
 
 A man prophesied sometimes without anticipating it, 
 sometimes again, without knowing it, and sometimes 
 even without willing it. 
 
 I have said, without anticipating it ; and often even 
 fit the very moment when he might be least expecting 
 it. Such was the old prophet of Bethel. 1^ I have said ; 
 without knowing it ; such was Caiaphas.** I have 
 finally said ; without willing it. Such was Balaam, 
 when wishing three times to curse Israel, he was thrice 
 ->5jimable to utter any thing but blessings.ft 
 
 * Geogr. lib. x. t Tn voce, {Eni^tv.) X Vita Epimen. 
 
 § 2 Peter, i. 21. II Acts, ii. 4. II 1 Kings, xiii. 20. 
 
 *' John, xi. 51 tl Numbers, xxiii. 24. 
 
THE FROPHETICAL BOOKS INSPIRED. 351 
 
 We will give other examples of it, to complete the 
 demonstration of what a prophecy is in general, and 
 thus to arrive at a more full comprehension of the ex- 
 tent of the action of God in that which St. Peter calls 
 written 'prophecy* 
 
 We read in Numbers, xi. 25 to 29 ; that as soon as 
 the Lord had caused the Spirit to rest on the seventy 
 elders, " they prophesied ;" but, it is added, " they did 
 not continue." The Spirit came upon them in an un- 
 expected moment; and after he had thus - spoken by 
 them, and his word had been upon their tongue,"! 
 they preserved no longer any thing of this miraculous 
 gift, and were prophets only a day. 
 
 We read, in the 1st book of Samuel, (chap, x.) with 
 what unexpected power, the Spirit of the Lord seized the 
 young King Saul, at the moment when, seeking his 
 father's asses, he met a company of prophets, who were 
 coming down from the holy place : " What has hap- 
 pened to the son of Kish ?" they asked one another, 
 '• Is Saul also among the prophets ?" 
 
 We read in the nineteenth chapter, something still 
 more striking — Saul sends n^en to Rama to seize Da- 
 vid ; but immediately when they have met Samuel and 
 the assembly of the prophets over whom he presided, 
 the Spirit of the Lord comes upon these men of war; 
 and "they also become prophets." Saul sends others ;: 
 and " they also prophesy." Finally, Saul himself goes, ■ 
 '•and he also piophesies, all that day and night, before 
 Samuel." The Spirit of God, it is said, came upon him." 
 But it is particularly, by an attentive study of the twelfth 
 and fourteenth chapters of the first Epistle to the Corin- 
 thians, that we arrive at the exact knowledge of what 
 
 • TTpocpriTUiv ypaipni. f 2 Sam. xxiij. 1, 2. 
 
352 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 was the divine, and what the hunnan action in the pro- 
 phecy. 
 
 The apostle there lays down rules to the Corinthian 
 Church, for the right employment of this miraculous 
 gift. His counsel will shed great light on this impor- 
 tant subject. The following facts will at once be recog- 
 nised in this passage ; 
 
 1. The Holy Spirit, at that time, conferred a great 
 variety of gifts upon believers, for the general good ;* to 
 one, that of miracles ; to another, that of hea .ing ; to an- 
 other, the discerning of spirits; to another, the use of 
 foreign languages, which the speaker himself did not 
 understand, while uttering them ; to another, the power 
 of interpreting them ; and to another, that of prophesy- 
 ing. that is, of speaking in his own language, words 
 dictated by God ; 
 
 2. One and the same Spirit distributed the divers mi- 
 raculous powers at his own pleasure;! 
 
 3. These gifts were a just subject of zeal and chris- 
 tian ambition. J: But the gift which they were to regard 
 as most desirable, was that of prophesying- ; for they 
 might speak an unknown tongue, without edifying any 
 one; and this miracle was rather useful to unbelievers 
 than to believers ; whilst the gift of prophesying edified, 
 exhorted and consoled.^ 
 
 4. 'J'his prophecy, that is to say, these words that de- 
 scended miraculously upon the lips which the Holy 
 Spirit had chosen for such an office, put on very differ- 
 ent forms. Sometimes an instruction ; sometimes a re- 
 velation ; sometimes too it was. a miraculous interpreta- 
 
 * 1 Cor. xii. 7, 13. t Versell. See al.so Eph. iv. 7 ; Act xix. 1—6. 
 
 t ^tiXovrc, 1 Cor. xiv. 1, 39 § 1 Cor. xiv. 1—3. 
 
THE PROPHETIC BOOKS INSPIRED. 353 
 
 lion of that which others had miraculously spoken in 
 foreign tongues.* 
 
 5. There was evidently in these prophecies, a work 
 of man and a work of God. They were the words of 
 the Holy Spirit ; but they were also the words of the 
 prophet. It was God who spake ; but in men, by men, 
 and for men ; and you would there have found the sound 
 of their voice ; perhaps too the habitual turn of their 
 style ; perhaps too, aUusIons to their personal experi- 
 ence, to their present position, to their individuality. 
 
 6. These miraculous facts were continued in the 
 primitive church during the long career of the apostles. 
 Saint Paul, w^ho wrote the letter to the Corinthians, 
 twenty years after the death of Jesus Christ, speaks to 
 them of these gifts as of a common and habitual order 
 of things, which had existed then for some time among 
 them, and was still to continue. 
 
 7. The prophets, although they w-ere the mouth of 
 God, to announce his words, were yet not absolutely 
 passive, while they were prophesying. 
 
 " The spirits of the prophets, says St. Paul, are sub- 
 ject to the prophets :"t that is to say; that the men of 
 God, while the prophetical w^ord was upon their lips, 
 could yet prevent the utterance of it, by the repressive 
 action of their own will ; almost as a man suspends, 
 when he chooses, the otherwise almost involuntary 
 course of his respiration. Thus, for example, if some 
 ■revelation came down upon one who was sitting in the 
 assembly, "the first who was speaking, must cease, and 
 be re-seated to give place to him " 
 
 Let us now apply these principles and these facts to 
 the prophecy of Scripture {xriTZQOipTji&td youqp^;,) and to 
 
 • Verses 26,31, and ISam. x. 6 ; xviii. 10. 1 1 Cor. xiv. 32. 
 
 30* 
 
354 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 the passage of St. Peter, for the exposition of which, we 
 have brought them forward. 
 
 " No prophecy of the Scripture, he says, is of any 
 private interpretation ; for the prophecy came not in old 
 time, by the will of man ;* but holy men of God spake 
 as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 See then the full and entire inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures clearly established by the apostle ; see the Scrip- 
 tures compared to those prophecies which we have just 
 been defining. They "came not by the will of man,'' 
 they were entirely dictated by the Holy Spirit ; they 
 give the very words of God ; they are entirely (j'ldeog 
 and Otonvevaxoi) given by the breath of God. Who 
 would then dare, after such declarations, to maintain, 
 that the expressions in the Scriptures are not inspired? 
 They are wr,itten rROPHECiES i^naaa nQO(f7]X8la y^tagpijc.) 
 One only difficulty can then be presented to our con- 
 clusion. The testimony and the reasoning upon which it 
 rests, are so conclusive, that there is no escape but by 
 this objection ; " we agree," it may be said, " that the 
 written 'prophecy {nqocf^rixtLa nQaoprig^ has without con- 
 tradiction, been composed by that power of the Holy 
 "which operated in the prophets ; but the rest of the book, 
 as also the Epistles, the Gospels and Acts, the Pro- 
 verbs, the book of Kings, and so many others purely 
 historical, have no claim to be placed in the same 
 rank." 
 
 L' t us then stop here ; and before replying, let us 
 see first, how far our argument has been carried. 
 
 It should already be admitted, that at least all that 
 part of the Bible called prophecy whatever it may be, 
 
 • 2 Peter i. 21. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 355 
 
 was completely dictated by God ; so that the very words, 
 as well as the thoughts were given by him. 
 
 But then, who will allow us to establish a distinction 
 between any one book whatever, and the other books of 
 the Bible ? Is not every thing in it given by prophecy ? 
 Yes, without doubt, every thing there is equally dic- 
 tated by God ; this we are now to prove. 
 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 All ike Scriptures of the Old Testaraent are Prophetical.^^ 
 
 And first ; all the Scriptures are indiscriminately"^ 
 called THE Word of God. This title at once by itself, 
 would be sufficient to show us that, if Isaiah commenced 
 his prophecies by inviting the heavens and the earth to 
 hear, btcause the Lord hath spoken ;* the same sum- 
 mons should address us from all the books of the Bible; 
 because they are all called, " the Word of God." 
 " Hear, O heavens, and thou earth, attend ; for the 
 Lord hath spoken !" 
 
 We can no where find a single passage which per- 
 mits us to detach one of its parts from the others, as Jess 
 divine tiian they. To say, that the entire book " is the 
 word of God ;" is it not to attest that the very phrases 
 of which it is composed were dictated by him ? 
 
 Now the entire Bible is not only named the '-word 
 of God'' (o Ur^nz lov 6tov:) it is called without distinc- 
 tion, THE OPv-ACLES OF GoD [id 16) i a lOu ^6o0.)f WllO 
 
 does not know what the oracles were, in the opinions 
 of the ancients? Was there then a single word which 
 could express more absolutely a complete and verbal 
 inspiration ? And as if this term employed by St. Paul, 
 
 * Isa. i. 2. t Roman.s iii. 2. 
 
356 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 did not suffice, we again hear Stephen. " filled with the 
 Holy Ghost," call them living oracles [I6pu '^wfra ;) 
 *' Moses, says he, received the living oiacles, to give 
 them to us."* All the Scriptures, without exception, 
 are then a continued word of God j they are his mirac- 
 ulous voice; they are written prophecies, and his living 
 oracles. Which of their diflerent parts would you then 
 dare to retr( nch ? The apostles olien divided them rnto 
 two parts, when they call them " Moses and the Pro- 
 phets." Jesus Chiist divided them i/do three parlsi 
 when he said to his aposths, "All things which are 
 written concerning me in Moses, the Prophets, and the 
 Psalms, must be fulfilled." From this division, in 
 which our Lord conformed to the language of his time, 
 the Old Testament was composed of these three parts ; 
 Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms ; as the New Tes- 
 tament consists of the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles 
 and the Apocalypse. Which then of these parts of the 
 Old Testament, or which of these four parts of the 
 New, would you dare to separate from the 'prophetic 
 Scripiwres [nfjocpi^rtiag y^'^gpTj.) or from the inspired 
 word (^d'Oeol) Xuynu — '/^"y;^; dtOTivevuiou']) 
 
 Would it be Moses? But what is there more holy 
 or more divine in all the Old Testament, than the wri- 
 tings of that man of God 1 He was so great a prophet, 
 that his holy books are placed above all the rest, and 
 are called by way of distinction, thk laU'. He was 
 so fully a prophet, that another prophet, in speak- 
 ing of his books alone, said : •■' The law of the Lord is 
 perfect;;]: the words of the Lord are pure words ; they 
 are silver refined in a furnace, seven times purified."^ 
 
 • Acts vii. 38. t Luke xxiv. 44. 
 
 X Ps. xix. 7. § Ps. xii. ti. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT PEOPHETICAL. 357 
 
 He was so much a prophet, that he compares himself 
 to nothing less than the Son of God. It is this Moses, 
 who said to the children of Israel: "The Lord our 
 God will raise yo!i up a prophet like tjnto we, from 
 among your brethren ; hear him."* He was so much 
 a prophet, that he Avas accustomed to preface his orders 
 Vvdth these words : " Thus saith the Lord." He was 
 so much a prophet, that God had said to him : " Who 
 hath made man's mouth, or who maketh the dumb, . . . 
 have not I, the Lord ? Now therefore go, and I will 
 be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shall 
 say."t He was finally, so much a prophet, that it is 
 written : " And there arose not a prophet since in 
 Israel, like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to 
 face."t 
 
 What other part of the Old Testament would you ex- 
 clude from the prophetic Scriptures ? Would it be the 
 second ; that which Jesus Christ calls the Prophets, 
 and which comprehends all the Old Testament except 
 Moses and the Psalms, and sometimes includes even 
 the Psalms'? It is worthy of remark that Jesus Christ, 
 and the apostles, and all the people, habitually applied 
 the title of Prophets^ to all the authors of the Old Tes- 
 tament. Their habitual designation of the entire Scrip- 
 tures was : " Moses and the Prophets." § Jesus Christ 
 called all their books, the Prophets. They were pro- 
 phets. Joshua then was as fully a prophet of the Lord 
 as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Daniel and all the 
 others, even to Malachi. All of them wrote then the 
 prophetic writings [ngocpr^Tslav ygcKfri; ;) all of them 
 
 * Acts vii. 37. t Exod. iv. 11, 12. J Deut. xxxiv. 10. 
 
 § Luke xxiv. 25, 27, 44 ; Matt. v. 17 ; vii. 12 ; xii. 40 ; Luke xvi. 16, 29, 37 ; 
 XX. 42; Acts iii. 21. 22, &c. &c. 
 
358 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 wrote the words of which St. Peter tells us . " that 
 none of them spoke by the will of man ;" all (those 
 ^Qix y()(iupuTa^) those " Holy letters," which the apos- 
 tle declares, ''divinely inspired."* The Lord said of 
 fhem all, as of Jeremiah : " Lo, I have put my words 
 •^in thy mouth ;"t and of Ezekiel : "Son of man, go, 
 and speak my words to them, speak to them, and say to 
 them, that the Lord, the Eternal hath thus spoken !"| 
 And that all the phrases, ail the words were given them 
 by God, i^ shown clearly by a fact stated more than once, 
 and which the study of their writings places before our 
 eyes ; to wit, that they were charged with transmitting 
 to the Church, oracles whose meaning remained still 
 veiled to them. Daniel, for example, declares more 
 *han once, that he was unable to seize the prophetical 
 sense of the words that he uttered or wrote. § The 
 types, imprinted by God on all the events of the primi- 
 tive history, could not be recognised, until many ages 
 after the existence of the men charged with relating to 
 us their features ; and the Holy Spirit declares to us, 
 that the prophets, after having written their holy pages, 
 applied themselves to study them with the most respect- 
 ful attention, as they had done the other Scriptures, 
 searching what the spirit of Christ, which was in 
 them, DID SIGNIFY, when he foretold the sufferings of 
 Chcjst.'"|| Do you see those men of God, bowed over 
 their own writings? They are there meditating the 
 words of God and the thoughts of God. Are you as- 
 tonished at it, since they have just been writing for the 
 elect of the earth, and for the principalities and powers 
 of heaven,*^! the doctrines and the glories of the Son of 
 
 •2Tim. iii. 15. t Jer. i. 1,2, 9. J Ezek iii. 4, 11. 
 
 §D;m.xii. 4. 8, 9; viii. 27; x. 8,21. 
 
 II I Peter i. 10, 11, 12. i; Eph. iii. 10, 11. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 359 
 
 God ; and since these are " things into which the angels 
 desire to look ?" 
 
 So much for Moses and the Prophets ; but can we 
 say it of the Psalms ? Were they less given by the 
 spirit of prophecy, than all the rest? Are not the 
 authors of the Psalms always called prophets?* And 
 if they are sometimes, like Moses, distinguished from 
 the other prophets, is it not evidently in order to assign 
 them a more eminent place ? David was a prophet.f 
 Hear him himself tell what he is : " The Spirit of the 
 Lord has spoken by me," says he, "and his word was 
 UPON MY TONGUE."! Whatever David wrote, even his 
 least words, were written by him, " speaking by the 
 Holy Spirit," says our Lord.§ The Apostles also, in 
 quoting him, in their prayer, have taken pains to say : 
 " That must be fulfilled which was spoken by the Holy 
 Ghost through the mouth of David." || '• Who, by the 
 mouth of thy servant David, hast said."*^ What do I 
 say ? The Psalms were, to such a degree, dictated by 
 the Holy Spirit, that the Jews, and that Jesus Christ 
 himself, called them by the name of the law :** all 
 their words made laiu : their least words were of God. 
 " Is it not written in your law?" said Jesus Christ, in 
 quoting them ; and in quoting them even for one single 
 vjord^ as we shall presently be called to show. 
 
 All the Old Testament is then, in the scriptural sense 
 of that expression, a prophetic writing. [nQocpi/zeiu 
 7?«(FTjc.) It is then plenarily inspired of God ; since, 
 according to the testimony of Zacharias, " it is God 
 who hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets, 
 
 hich have been since the world began ;"tt " and since," 
 
 • Malt. xiii. 3.5 ; for Asaph, Ps. Ixxviii. t Acts ii. 30. 
 
 : 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, 2. § Mark xii. 36. 11 Acts i. 16. 
 
 t Acts iv. 25. •• .John x. 34 ; xii. 34. tt Luke. i. 70. 
 
 W 
 
360 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 accor4ing to Peter, " the prophecy came not, in old time, 
 by the will of mnn, but holy men of God spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost."* 
 
 It is true that, as yet, the preceding- arguments, and 
 the testimonies on which they are founded, directly re- 
 gard only the Old Testament ; and it may, perhaps, be 
 objected, that we have thus far proved nothing for the 
 New. We shall commence, before replying, by asking 
 if it is probable that the Lord would have given succes- 
 sive revelations to his people, and that, at the same time, 
 the most recent and the most important of these revela- 
 tions should be inferior to the first? 
 
 We will ask, if it would be rational to imagine that 
 the first Testament, which contained only " the shadow 
 of things to come," could have been dictated by God, in 
 all its contents, Avhile the second Testament, w'hich pre- 
 sents to us the great object, the substance of the shadows, 
 and which describes to us the works, the character, the 
 person, and the very words of the Son of God, should 
 be less inspired than the other. We will ask if it can 
 be believed that the Epistles and the Gospels, destined 
 to revoke many of the ordinances of Moses and the pro- 
 phets, should be less divine than Moses and the prophets ; 
 and that the Old Testament should be entirely a word 
 of God, whilst it was to be displaced, or, at least, modi- 
 fied and consummated, by a book, partly the word of 
 man, and partly the word of God 1 
 
 But there is no necessity for resorting to these power- 
 ful inductions, to establish the prophetical inspiration 
 of the Gospel, and even its superiority to Moses and the 
 prophets. 
 
 • 2 Peter i. 21. See also Matt. i. 21, 22 ; xxii. 43 ; Mark xii. 36. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 361 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 All Uie Scriptures of the Neio Testament are Prophetical. 
 
 The Scripture, in its constant language, places the 
 vvriters of the New Testament in the same rank with the 
 prophets of the Old ; and even, when it establishes any' 
 difference between them, it is always to place those that 
 came last, above the first, as far as one word of God is 
 superior (not in divinity, certainly, not in dignity, but in 
 authority,) to the word which has preceded it. 
 
 Let the following passage of the Apostle Peter be 
 particularly noticed. It is very important, as it shows 
 us that, in the life-time of the Apostles, the book of the 
 New Testament was already almost entirely formed, to 
 make one alone with that of the Old. It was twenty or 
 thirty years after the Pentecost, that St. Peter was pleased 
 ro quote " all the Epistles of Paul^ his well beloved 
 brother ;" and that he spoke of them as " sacred wri- 
 tings," which, already in his day, made part of the Holy 
 Letters [Xeq^v y Quu/ua jo)v^) and were to be classed " with 
 the rest of the Scriptures, {(hg xal xaq Aomd? y^dgoag.) 
 He assigns them the same rank ; and he declares to 
 them, that " ignorant men could not pervert them, but to 
 their own destruction." 
 
 We quote this important passage; "Even as our be- 
 loved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given 
 unto him,' hath written unto you; as also in all ms 
 EPISTLES, speaking in them of these things ; in which 
 are some things hard to be understood, which they that 
 are unlearned and unstable, wrest, as they do also the 
 other Scriptures, unto their own destruction."* 
 
 * 2 Peter iii. 15, 16. 
 
 31 
 
362 scRirxuKAL proof. 
 
 The Apostle in the second verse of the same chapter, 
 had ah-eady represented himself and his fellow-apostles 
 as occupying the same rank and invested with the same 
 authority as the sacred writers of the old Testament, 
 when he had said: " Remember the words which were 
 before spoken by the Holy Prophets, and the com- 
 mandments which you have received from us Apostles 
 of the Lord and Savior." The writings of the Apostles 
 were then, whatever those of the Old Testament were ; 
 and since the latter are a written prophecy, that is to 
 say, a word entirely God's, the former are nothing less. 
 
 But we have said, the Scripture goes farther, in the 
 rank which it assigns to the writers of the New Cove- 
 nant. 
 
 It teaches us to consider them as even superior to 
 those of the ancient, by the importance of their mission^ 
 by the glory of the projnises, which were made to them, 
 by the greatness of the gifls conferred upon them, and 
 finally by the eminence of the rank which is assigned 
 them. 
 
 I. Let us first compare their mission with that of the 
 ancient prophets ; and we shall quickly see, by that 
 alone, that their inspiration could not be inferior to that 
 of their predecessors. 
 
 When Jesus sent forth the Apostles whom he had 
 chosen, he said to them : " Go ye therefore, and teach 
 all nations to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
 manded you : and, lo, / avi with yoih alway, even unto the 
 end of the world. Amen."* " Ye shall receive power, 
 after the Holy Ghost is come upon you : and ye shall 
 be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all 
 Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the 
 
 • Matt .\xviii. 19,2a 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROrHETICAL. 363 
 
 earth."* Peace be unto you ; as my Father hath se?it 
 Tiie^ even so sevA 1 ijnu.'\ 
 
 Such was their mission. They were the immediate 
 envoyy< [uwoioloi) of the Son of God ; they went to all 
 the nations ; they had the assurance that their Master 
 would be always present with the testimony which they 
 were to render of him in the Holy Scriptures. Did 
 they then need less inspiration when going to the very 
 extremities of the earth, than the prophets needed in 
 going to Israel ; — when making disciples of all the na- 
 tions, than the prophets in instructing only the Jews? 
 Had they not to promulgate all the doctrines, all the or- 
 dinances and all the mysteries of the kingdom of God? 
 Had they not to carry the keys of the kingdom of hea- 
 ven, so that whatever they should bind or unbind on 
 earth, J should be bound or unbound in heaven 1 Had 
 not Jesus Christ conferred the Hoi}'' Spirit on them, ex- 
 pressly in order that whosesoever sins they should remit 
 or retain, should be remitted or retained 1 Had he not 
 breathed upon them, saying : " Receive ye the Holy 
 Ghost'?" Had they not revealed the unheard of charac- 
 ter of the Word made flesh, and of the Creator stooping 
 to assume the form of a creature, and even to die upon 
 a cross? Had they not to repeat his inimitable \voids? 
 Had they not to fulfil upon the earth, the miraculous,, 
 iiitransmissible functions of his representatives and of 
 his ambassadors, as though it were Christ who spoke 
 by them 1^ Were they not called to such a glory, that 
 in the last and great regeneration, " when the Son of 
 Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, they also shall 
 sit u-pon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
 
 • Acts i. 8. f John xx. 21. 
 
 X Matt, xviii. IS : xvi. 19. § 2 Cor. v. 20. 
 
364 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 Israel ?"* If then the prophetical spirit was necessary 
 to the first men of God, in order to present the Messiah 
 under shadows ; was it not much more so to them, to 
 produce him in the light of his actual life, and to set 
 him forth as crucified in the midst of us ;t so that who- 
 soever rejects them, rejects him, and whosoever receives 
 them receives him ?" J Judge then from all these fea- 
 tures of their mission, what must have been the inspira- 
 tion of the New Testament, compared with that of the 
 Old ; and say if, whilst this was entirely and totally 
 prophetic, that of the New could have been inferior to it. 
 
 II. But this is not all : let us again hear the promises 
 which have been made to them, for the accomplishment 
 of such a work. Words cannot declare it more forci- 
 bly. These promises were especially addressed to them 
 on three great occasions : first, when they were sent for 
 the first time to preach the kingdom of God ;§ in the 
 second place, when Jesus himself delivered public dis- 
 courses upon the gospel, before an immense crowd, as- 
 sembled by myriads around him ;|| in the third place, 
 when he uttered his last denunciation against Jerusalem 
 and the Jews.l" 
 
 " But when they deliver you up, take no thought how 
 or WHAT (71(7:? TJ xl) ye shall speak ; for it shall be given 
 you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is 
 KOT YE that speak, but the Spirit of your father which 
 speaketh in you." " And when they bring you unto 
 the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers, take 
 ye no thought, how or what ye shall answer, or what 
 ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you m 
 the same hour, what ye ought to say." " Take no 
 
 • Matt. xix. 28. t Cal. iii. 1. J Luke x. 16 ; Matt. x. 40. 
 
 $ Matt. X. 19,20. il Mark xiii. 11 ; Luke xxi. 14, 15. it Luke xii. 12. 
 
NEW TESTAMENET PROPHETICAL. 865 
 
 thought before-hand, what ye shall speak, neithkii do 
 YE premeditate ; but whatsoever shall be given you 
 in that hour, that speak ye ; for it is not ye that speak, 
 but the Holy Ghost." 
 
 On these different occasions, the Lord giv(S his dis- 
 ciples the assurance, that the most entire i/mplration 
 should control their language, in the most difficult aad 
 importmt moments of their ministry. When they should 
 have to speak to princes, they were to exercise no solici- 
 tude : they were 7iot even to ihink upon it ; because 
 there should be then immediately ginea them of God, 
 not onlv the things, which they should have to say, but 
 also the loords with which they should express them ; 
 not only t/ but nu:g htlr^noi'un* They were to rely 
 entirely upon him ; this should be given them by Jesus ; 
 it should be given them in the same hour , it should be 
 given them in such a way, and in such a plenitud*^, that 
 then they might be able to say, it is ivo moiik thry, but 
 the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of thktr Fathkr speaking 
 IN them ; and that then also, it was not only wisdom 
 that could not be gainsaid, which was given them ; it 
 
 was A MOUTH ! t 
 
 '• Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate be- 
 fore, what ye shall answer ; for I will give you a mouth 
 and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be 
 able to gainsay nor resist." 
 
 Then (as with the ancient prophf ts, Isaiah. .Tpremiah, 
 Ezidci'l.) it should be the Holy Spirit, who should speak 
 by them, as •• God hath spoken by the mouth of all his 
 holy prophets, since the world beo-an."^ In one sense, 
 it w£>uld indeed be they who would speak ; but it would 
 
 • Matt. X. 19. 20. t Matt. x. 29; Mark xiii. 11 ; Luke xxi. 14, 15. 
 
 X Acts iii. 21 ; Luke i. 70. 
 
 31* 
 
366 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 be the Holy Spirit,* who should teach them, in that same 
 instant, what to say ; so that, in another sense, it would 
 be the Spirit himself, speaking by their lips. 
 
 We ask if it was possible, in any language, to ex- 
 press more absolutely the most entire inspiration, and 
 to declare with more precision, that the words them- 
 selves were then guaranteed of God, and given to the 
 Apostles. 
 
 It is very true that, in these promises, reference is not 
 directly made to the aid which the apostles were to re- 
 ceive as writers, but rather to that which they were to 
 expect, when they should have to appear before priests, 
 before governors, and before kings. But is it not suf- 
 ficiently evident that, if the most entire inspiration was 
 insured them, for temporary occasions,! to stop the 
 mouths of some wicked men, to avert the dangers of the 
 day, and to secure interests of the smallest importance ; 
 yet if it was promised them, that then the very words 
 of their reply should be given them, by a calm, power- 
 ful, but inexplicable operation of the Holy Spirit ; is it 
 not abundantly evident, that the same aid could not be 
 refused to these same men, when they should iiave, like 
 the ancient prophets, to continue the book of the oiacles 
 of God, to transmfi to all ages the laws of the kingdom 
 of henven ; to describe the glories of Jesus Christ, and 
 the scpnes of eternity? Could any one imagine that 
 the very men who. before Ananias, or Fcstus, or Nero, 
 were so much '-the mouth of the Holy Spirit," that 
 then " it was no more they that spnke, but the Spirit ;'* 
 should become, when writing -the eternal gospel," ordi 
 nary beings, merely enlightened, stripped of their former 
 inspiration, speaking no more by th(^. Holy Spirit, and 
 
 • Luke xii. 12. t 2 Pet. i. 21 ; 1 Cor. ii. 13 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 367 
 
 employing thenceforward, only the words dictated by 
 h'iinan wisdom?* It is inadmissible. 
 
 ILL See them commencing their apostolic ministry 
 on the day of Pentecost; see what gifts ihey receive. 
 Tongues of fire descend on their head^ ; they are filled 
 with th« Holy Spirit ; they come down from their up- 
 per chamber, and all the people hear them proclaim, in 
 fifteen different languages, the wonderful works of God ; 
 AS THE SriraT gives them utterancej they speak the 
 WORD OF G«iD.{ Surely, then, the icords of these un- 
 known tongues must have been given them, as well as 
 ike things, the express'on as well as the thought, the 
 7ro)5 as well as theti'.^ Can we then suppose that the 
 Spirit would have taken the pains to dictate thus to 
 them all they should say, in preaching at the corners 
 of the streets, in words which pnssed with their breath, 
 and which reached, at most, only some thousands of 
 men, whilst these very men, when they afterwards 
 came lo write, for all the ages of the Church, the -'liv- 
 ing oracles of God," should see themselves deprived of 
 their former aid ? Can we suppose, that after having 
 been greater than the ancient prophets, in order to 
 ])reach in the public place ; they were less than these 
 prophets, and became ordinary men, when they took up 
 the pen to complete the book of the prophecies, to write 
 their Gospels, their Epistles, and the book of their Rev- 
 elations % The inconsistency and inadmissibleness of 
 such a supposition is manifest. 
 
 4. But we have something to say here, still more 
 simple and more peremptory : we mean to speak of the 
 rank assigned them ; and we shall be able to confine 
 
 * OsAfj/iari avdpcjnov, Kai iv SiSaxro'ii di/Opcjirivrj^ (jotpias Xoyois- 2 Pet. 
 i. 21 ; 1 Cor. ii. 13. t Acts ii. 4. 
 
 } 'EXdXovv Tov X6yoi) TOO Oc'jv. ActiS iv. 31. § Matt .\.. 19 ; Lukexii. Ii 
 
368 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 ourselves to this single fact, after having spoken of the 
 prophets of the Old Testament. It is, that the Apostles 
 were all prophets, and more than prophets. Their 
 writings are then, written prophecies [noo(piirelai 
 YQucpui^) as much as, and more than those of the Old 
 Testament; and we are thus led to conclude yet once 
 more, that, ail Scripture, in the New Testament, as in 
 the Old, is inspired of God, even in its least parts. 
 
 I have said that the Apostles were all prophets. 
 They declare so, frequently. But, not to multiply quo- 
 tations needlessly, we content ourselves here with an 
 appeal to the two following passages of St. Paul. 
 
 The first is addressed to the Ephesians (iii, 4, 5,:) 
 ^' In the few words which I wrote afore, ye may un- 
 derstand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which 
 in other ages was not made known unto the sons of 
 men, as it is now revealed unto his holy Apostles and 
 Prophets by his Spirit." 
 
 It is then clearly manifest here : the apnstle and pro- 
 phet Paul, the apostles and prophets Matthew, John^ 
 Jude, Peter, James, have received, by the Spirit, the 
 revelation of the mystery of Christ, and they have writ- 
 ten of it AS Prophets. 
 
 fit is still of the same mystery and of the writings of 
 the same prophets, that the same Apostle is speakings 
 in the second of the passages I have referred to ; I 
 mean, in the last chapter of his Epistle to the Romans.* 
 
 " Now to Him that is of power to establish you ac- 
 cording to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ 
 (according to the revelation of the mystery, which was 
 kept secret since the world began, but is now made 
 manifest, and by the Scriptures of the PROi'iiETS or 
 
 • Rom. XYJ. 25-27. 
 
KEW TESTAMFNT rROPHETICAC 369 
 
 proplietic writings ,) (diu ts yoncfiibv 7iQo<p-qrt)tc!n'^) ac- 
 cording- to the commandmf'nt of the everlasting God, 
 made knovvn to all nations for the obedience of faith; 
 to God the only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ, 
 for ever, Amen." 
 
 Behold then again, the authors of the New Testa- 
 ment named Prophets ; behold their writings called 
 rRoFHETic "WRITINGS ('/^w^at 7rQ0(fTjTixul.^ which is the 
 synonymo of Peter's Prophecy (^nQo<fj]iein ygcKfri;.) 
 And since we have already recog-nised that no prophecy 
 ever came from the personal and private will of him 
 that attested it ; but that it was, as moved by the Holy 
 Ghost, that holy men of God spoke ; the prophets 
 of the New Testament have then spoken, as those of the 
 Old, and according to the commandment of the Eternal 
 God. They were all prophets.* 
 
 But even that is not enough^ for, we have said they 
 were more than prophets. This is a remark of the 
 learned Michaelis.f In spite of his loose principles on 
 the inspiration of a part of the New Testament, this ob- 
 servation has not escaped him. It is clear, according 
 to him, from the context, that, in the sentence of Jesus 
 Christ upon John the Baptist.^ the words great and 
 least of the 11th verse, apply only to the name of pro- 
 phet, which precedes them in the 9th verse ; so that 
 Jesus Christ there declares that if John the Baptist is 
 the greatest of the prophets — if he is even 7n.ore than a 
 prophet — the least of the prophets of the New Testa- 
 ment is still greater than John the Baptist, that is to say^ 
 greater than the greatest of the prophets of the Old 
 Testament.^ 
 
 ' See asjiiii Luke xi. 49 ; Eph. ii. 20 • iii. 5 ; iv. 11 ; Gal. 1. 12 ; 1 Pet. i. 12; 
 i Cor. xi. '23 ; 1 Tlie-ss. ii. 15. tlBtrod., t. I. p. lib. Freiirh edit 
 
 J Mutt. xi. 9—11. § Ibid, and Luke -vii. 28—30. 
 
370 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 Moreover, this superiority of the Apostles and Pro- 
 phets of the New Testament, is more than once attested 
 to us in the apostolical writings. Wherever the various 
 offices established in the churches are spoken of, the 
 Apostles are placed before the Prophets. Thus, for 
 example, in a very remarkable passage of his 1st Epis- 
 tle to the Corinthians, where he aims to show the gra- 
 dation of excellence and dignity of the various miracu- 
 lous powers bestowed by God on the primitive Church, 
 the Apostle Paul thus expresses himself: " God hath 
 set some in the church, first, apostles ; secondarily ^ 
 PROPHETS • thirdly^ teachers ; after that, miracles • 
 then gifts of healing, helps, government, diversities of 
 tongues."* 
 
 In the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians, at 
 the 11th verse, he again places the apostles above the 
 prophets. 
 
 In the 2d chapter, 2 Cor., 20th verse, he calls them 
 Apostles and Prophets. And in the 14th chapter of 
 ist Corinthians, he places himself above the prophets 
 whom God had just raised up in that church. He de- 
 sices that each of them, if he has truly obtained the 
 Holy Spirit, should employ the gifis he has received^ 
 to recognise in Paul's words, God's commandments , 
 and he is so impressed vv^ith the assurance that what he 
 writes is dictated by the inspiration of God, that after 
 having given orders to the churches, and having closed 
 them with words which nothing but the highest inspir- 
 ation can authorize, Thus I ordain in, all the Churches; 
 he does more ; he goes on to rank himself above the 
 prophets ; or rather, he himself as a prophet, summons 
 the spirit of prophecy in them, to recognise the words 
 
 * 1 Cor. xii. 28. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 371 
 
 of Paul as the words of the Lord ; and he closes with 
 these remarkable words: " VV^hat ! came the word of 
 God out FROM YOU ? or came it unto you only ? If any 
 man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual,* let 
 him acknowledge that the things that I write unto 
 YOU, are the commandments of the Lord." 
 
 The Apostles' writings are then, (as those of the an- 
 cient prophets,) " commandments of the Eternal CTod ;" 
 they are " written prophecies, {^nqoqrji&lu yocq^ri^y^ as 
 much as the Psalms, Moses, and Ike PmphetsA and all 
 their authors might then say with Paul : Christ speak- 
 ETH BY me,J my word is the word of God, and my dis- 
 courses are taught me by the Holy Spirit ^ just as David, 
 before them, had said: " 'J'he Spirit of the Loid hath 
 spoken by me, and his word was upon my tongue." || 
 
 Hear them too, when they themselves tell us what 
 they are. Would it be possible to declare more charly 
 than they have done, that the words as wf 11 as the siibj-ct 
 were given them by God ? " As to us," they say, ■' we 
 have the m.iad of Christ,^ '^ fov this cause also thank 
 we God without ceasing, because, when ye rfceived 
 THE v/ORD OF GOD which yc heard of us, ye received it 
 not as the word of men, but (as it is in truth) thk \vnni> 
 OF God."** " He, therefore, that despisf th, de.^piseth 
 NOT MAN, but God, who also hath given unto us his Holy 
 
 Spirit."tt 
 
 Such finally, then, is the word of the New Testament. 
 It is like that of the Old, a word of prophets, and of 
 greater prophets even than those who preceded them ; 
 so that, for example, as Michaelis has very well re- 
 
 * Tlvtviiarticog. 1 Cor. xiv. 37. — Pee too w. 45, find .lude 19. 
 
 t Luke xxiv. 44. l 2 Cor xiii. 3 ; 1 Thess. ii. 13. § 1 Cor. fi. 13. 
 
 I 2 Sam. xxiii. 2. H 1 Cor. ii. 16. *' 1 Thess. ii. 13. tl 1 Tiiess. iv.a 
 
372 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 marked,* an Epistle, which commences with the words: 
 " Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ,"! thereby attests 
 to us more strongly, its Divine authority and prophetic 
 inspiration, than did even the writings of the most illus- 
 trious prophets of the Old Testament, when they opened 
 their messages with these words : " Thus saith the 
 Loid ;| the vision of Isaiah ; the word that Isaiah saw ;^ 
 the word of Jeremiah, to whom came the word of the 
 Lord ;|| hear the word of the Lord ;" — or other anal- 
 ogous expressions. And if there is, in the New Testa- 
 ment, a book in which similar inscriptions are not found, 
 its theopneusty is no more thereby compromised than 
 that of such or such a book of the Old Testament (the 
 second or ninety-fifth Psalm, for example,) which, al- 
 though the name of the prophet who wrote them is not 
 inscribed, are none the less quoted as divine, by Jesus 
 Christ and his apostles. 1^ 
 
 It may have been sometimes objected, that Luke and 
 Mark were not, properly speaking, apostles, and that 
 consequently, they had not received the same inspiration 
 as the other sacred writers of the New Testament. 
 They were not apostles, it is true ; but they certainly 
 were prophets ; and they were even greater than the 
 greatest under the Old Testament.** 
 
 Without here insisting on the ancient traditionsft 
 which say of both, that they were of the number of the 
 seventy disciples whom Jesus first sent out to preach 
 through Juden, or at least of the hundred and twenty on 
 
 • Introd. torn. 1, p. 118, 119, &c. French Edit, 
 t Rom. i. 1 ; Gal. i. 1 ; 1 Cor. i. 1, &c. ; 1 Pet. i. I ; 2 Pet. i. 1. 
 i Issii. hi. 1. ; xl. I, et iraasun. § Isai. i. 1 ; ii- l,e/ alibi. H Jer. i. 1,2. 
 IF Actsiv. 25: xiii. 33; Ileb. i. 5; iii. 7, 17; v. 5: jv. 3,7. 
 *• Luke vii. 28. 30. 
 
 tt Eiiiphaii., IIa?res., 51 nnd others.— Orig., De recta in Deuni fide.— 
 Doroih. in synopsi.— Procop. Diacon., apud BoUand., 25 April. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT mOPHETICAL. 373 
 
 whom descended flames of the Holy Spirit, on the day 
 of Pentecost, do we not know that the apostles had re- 
 ceived the power of conferring-, by the laying on of 
 hands, miraculous gifts on all who had believed, and 
 that they used this power in all the count lies uud in all 
 the cities whither they went? And since Luke and 
 Mark were the companions in labor, that Paul and 
 Peter chose from among so many other prophets, is it 
 not sufSciently manifest that these two apostles must 
 have called down upon such associates, the gifts Avhich 
 they elsewhere bestowed upon so many other believers? 
 Do we not see Peter and John first going down to 
 Samaria, in order to confer these gifts on the believers 
 of that city; then afterwards Peter corning to pour them 
 out at Ccesarea, upon all the pagans who had heard the 
 word, in the house of Cornelius the captain 1* Do we 
 not see St. Paul bestowing them abundantly upon the 
 faithful of Corinth, upon those of Ephesus, and upon 
 those of Rome ?t Do we not see him, before employ- 
 ing his dear son Timothy as a fellow laborer, bringing 
 down upon him spiritual powers.;]: And is it not suf- 
 ficiently evident that Peter must have done as much for 
 his dear son Maik,^ as Paul for his companion Luke?|| 
 Silas, ^vhom Paul had taken to accompany him, (as he 
 took Luke also, and John, surnamed Mark.) was a pro- 
 phet in Jerusalem.^ The prophets abounded in all 
 these primitive churches. Many, we see, Avent down 
 from Jerusalem to Antioch ;** there were a great num- 
 ber of them at Corinth ;tt Judas and Silas were such 
 
 * Acts viii. 15, 17 ; x. 45. 
 
 t Acf:5 xix. 6, 7; 1 Cor. xii. 23; xiv. ; Rom. i. 11 ; xv. 19, 20. 
 { 1 Tim. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. i. 6. § ] Pet. v. 13. 
 
 I Acts xiii. 1 ; xvi. 10; xxvii. 1; Rom. xvi. 21 ; Col. iv. 14; 2 Tim. iv. 11; 
 Phil. 24 ; 2 Cnr. viii. 18. H Aits xv. 32. 
 
 ••Acts xi. 27. tt 1 Cor. xiv. 31, 39. 
 
 32 
 
374 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 in Jerusalem ; Agabus was such in Judea ; four vir- 
 gins, still young, daughters of Philip the evangelist, 
 were such in Csesarea ;* and we see in the Church of 
 Antioch, many believers who Avere prophets and teach- 
 ers jt among others, Barnabas (the first companion of 
 Paul,) Simeon, Manahem, Saul of Tarsus himself, and 
 finally that Lucius of Cyrene, who is supposed to be the 
 Lucius whom Paul (in his epistle to the Romans) calls 
 his kinsman,! and whom (in his epistle to the Colos- 
 sians) he names huke the phi/siciati .*§ in a word, that 
 St. Luke, whom the ancient Fathers have indifferently 
 named Lucas, Lucius, and Lucanus. 
 
 It becomes then sufficiently evident, from the facts, 
 that St. Luke and St. Mark were at least in the rank of 
 those prophets whom the Lord had raised up in such 
 great numbers in all the churches of the Jews and Gen- 
 tiles ; and that from among all the others, they were 
 chosen by the Holy Spirit, to write, with the apostles, 
 three of the sacred books of the New Testament. 
 
 But still further (and let it be well remarked,) this 
 prophetic authority of St. Mark and of St. Luke is very 
 far from resting on mere suppositions. It is founded 
 upon the very testimony of the apostles of Jesus Christ. 
 It must not be forgotten, that it was under the protracted 
 government of those men of God, that the divine canon 
 of the Scriptures of the New Testament was collected 
 and transmitted to all the Churches. By a remarkable 
 effect of the Providence of God, the life of the greater 
 part of the apostles was extended to a great number of 
 years. St. Peter and St. Paul edified the Church of 
 God for more than thirty-four years after the resurrec* 
 
 * Acta xi. 28; xxi. 9, 10. t Acts xiii. 1, 2. 
 
 J Rom. xvi. 21. S Col. iv. 14. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 375 
 
 tion of their Master. St. John continued his mini.stry, 
 in the province of Asia, in the heart of the Roman Em- 
 pire, for even more than thirty years yet after their death. 
 The book of Acts, which was written by St. Luke after 
 his Gospel,* had been already long circulated among 
 the churches, (I mean at least ten years) before the mar- 
 tyrdom of St. Paul. 
 
 Now St. Paul, long even before going to Rome, had 
 already made the gospel to abound from Jerusalem to 
 Illyrium ;t the apostles Avere in continual correspon- 
 dence with the christians of every country ; they were 
 every day overwhelmed b}'^ the care of all the churches | 
 St. Peter, in his second letter, written to the univer- 
 sal Church of God, spoke to them already of all the 
 EPISTLES of St. Paul, as incorporated with the Old 
 Testament. And for more than half a century, all the 
 christian churches were formed and guided under the 
 superintendence of those men of God. 
 
 It is then, with the assent and under the prophetic 
 government of those apostles commissioned to bind and 
 to unbind, and to be, after Christ, the twelve founda- 
 tions of the universal Church, that the canon of the 
 Scriptures was formed ; and that the new people of 
 God received its " living oracles," to transmit them tous.^ 
 And it is thus that the gospel of Luke, that of Mark, 
 and the book of the Acts, have been received by com- 
 mon const nt. under the same titles, and with the same 
 submission as the apostolic books of Matthew, of Paul, 
 of Peter and of John. These bocks have then for us 
 the s:mie authority as all the others ; and we are called to 
 receive them equally, " not as the word of men, but, as 
 
 * Acts i. 1. t Rom. xv. 19. 
 
 J 2 Cor. xi. 28. § Acts vii. 38; Rom. iii. 2. 
 
376 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 they are in truth, the word of God, which effectually 
 works in all those that believe."* 
 
 We trust that these reflectfons will suffice to show 
 how unfounded is the distinction, wiiich Michaelisf 
 and other German writers have pretended to establish, 
 in regard to inspiration, between these two Evangelists 
 and the other writers of the New Testament. It even 
 appears to us, that it is for the very purpose of prevent- 
 ing any such supposition, that Luke has taken pains to 
 place at the head of his Gospel, the four verses vrhich 
 constitute its preface. In fact, you there see him placing 
 the certainty and divinity of his history in strong con- 
 trast with the uncertainty and human character of the 
 narrations which a great 7iumher of 'persons (nolkoL) 
 had undertaken to. compose [ins'/BlQrjaaf OLiuia^uadai^) 
 upon the evangelical facts, facts (adds he) rendered 
 perfectly certain among us, that is to say, among the 
 Apostles and Prophets of the New Testament ( imp n^n- 
 h]go(f)oorjfitt'b)v ev riulv TXQay^iaxMv :) the original word 
 signifying the greatest degree of certainty ; as may be 
 seen. I It seemed good also^ adds St. Luke, having 
 had perfect understanding of all things^ from the very 
 first, (from on high) to write unto thee in order. ^ 
 
 St. Luke had obtained this knowledge from above; 
 that is, by " the wisdom which cometh from on high 
 and which had been given to him." It is very true 
 that this last expression in this passage, is ordinarily 
 understood to mean from the begiyming. and as if, in- 
 
 * 1 Thes. ii 13. T Introd. tome i p. 112 to 129, ed. Eng. 
 
 J Rom. iv. 21 ; xiv. 5 ; 2 1 im. iv. 5, 17. 
 
 § n.i/J«>f'jXou0)7f'5r(.— Thus Demosthenes, de Corona,!. 53: ITaja^foAovfliy. 
 KOii rus irpjiyjutaiv dr:^ tlpx^li- — Theophrast., Char. Proem., 4; "Zov 6i irap- 
 aKoXov^TianX Koi ii&naai, ti upOio; Xiyu). — Joseplius, in the tinsr lines of his 
 book against Appion, opposes lliis same word, tov 7TapaKo\ovQr\K6Ta (dili- 
 genter assecntum,) to T(7t KvvdavopcvM {seUcitaiUi ab aliis.) 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 377 
 
 Stead of the word ^boidfv [from on high,) we had the 
 same word «n' uQ/ri; (^from ike beginning.) which is in 
 the spcond verse. But it has appeared to us that the 
 opinion of Erasmus, of Gomar, of Henry, or Lightfoot, 
 and of other comnipntntors, should be preferred as more 
 natural, and that we must here take the word ('notd-v in 
 the same sense in which St. John and St. James have 
 employed it, where they have said : " Every good gift 
 Cometh from above ;* thou shouldst have no power 
 over me, except it were given thee from on high :t ex- 
 cept a man be bo;n again {from on high,) he cannot 
 see the kingdom of God ;J the wisdom which cometh 
 frojri. above is first pure."^ 
 
 The prophet f^uke had then obtained from on high, 
 an exact knowledge of all things which Jesus began 
 both to do and to teach, until the day he was taken up. 
 
 At the same time, whatever rendering of these words 
 is preferred, it is by other arguments that we have 
 shewed how Luke and Mark were prophets ; and how 
 their writings, transmitted to the church by the anthor- 
 ity of the Aposlhs, are themselves incorporated with 
 those of the Apostles, as well as with all the other pro- 
 phetic books of the eternal word of God. 
 
 Observe then precisely how far our argument has 
 conducted us, and what the very authority of the Holy 
 Scriptures has led us to recognise. It is fi.st ; that the 
 Theopneusty of the words of the prophets was entire; 
 that the Holy Spirit spake by them, and that the word 
 of the Lord was upon their tongue. It is again 
 — that all that has been written in the Bible, having 
 been written by prophecy, all the sacred books are 
 
 * James i. 17. t John xix. 11. 
 
 J John iii. 3. § James iii. 15—17. 
 
 32* 
 
378 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 Holy Letters {Jeqn youuuaTu) written prophecies [ngo- 
 q)TjT£ia j'^wgr^c,) and Scriptures divinely inspired [yqa- 
 (ptti dtonvsvaiui.) Every thing in it then is of God. 
 
 In the meantime, let it be remembered (we wish to 
 repeat it once more here, although we have already 
 had more than one occasion to say it,) that it is not 
 necessary to suppose, among the prophets of the Old or 
 of the New Testament, a state of excitement and of en- 
 thusiasm which carried them out of themselves: we 
 must, on the contrary, guard against such a thought. 
 The ancient church attached so great importance to 
 this principle, that, under the reign of the Emperor 
 Commodus, according to Eusebius, Miltiades, the illus- 
 trious author of a christian Apology, '• composed a book 
 expressly to establish" against Montanus and the false 
 prophets of Phrygia, " that the true prophets ought to 
 be masters of themselves, and ought not to speak in 
 ecstacyy* The power of God was exercised upon 
 them, without taking them entirely out of their ordinary 
 state. " The spirits of the prophets," says St. Paul, 
 " are subject to the prophets. "f Their intellectual 
 faculties were then directed, and not suspended. They 
 knew, they felt, they willed, thej'- remembered, they 
 comprehended, they approved. They could say: "it 
 hath seemed to me good to write ;" and as the apostles, 
 " it hath seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit to 
 write."! ^"^ ^^"^ '^^ words were given to them as 
 well as the thoughts ; for, after all, words are but se- 
 
 * Hist. Eccl.,lib. iv. chap. 17. — 'Ev w aKoSciKwa-iireplrotiiriSeu IT/oo^^t^v 
 iv £»c<rTuo-£i AaXtri/.— See too Niceph., lib. iv. c. 24 —See the same princi- 
 ples inTerluUian (ag.tinst Marcion, lih. iv. chap. 22;) in Epiphanius (Adv. 
 haereses, lib. li. ha;res., 48, c. 3 ;) in .lerome (Proemium in Nahum ;) ia 
 Basil the Great (Commentary on Isa. proem.. 5.) 
 
 I 1 Cor. xiv. 32. + Luke i. 3 ; Acts xv. 28. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PROPHETICAL. 379 
 
 cond thoughts, which relate to the language, and which 
 make from it st^lect expressions.* It is no easier and 
 no more difficult to explain the gift of the one than that 
 of the others. 
 
 Yet there is something in reference to the Theop- 
 neusty, in the Holy Scriptures, which to us is still more 
 impressive, if it be possible, than all the deciaraiioiis of 
 the apostles and of Jesus Christ himself; it is ihvlc ex- 
 amples. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 The Examples of ike Apostles and of their Masters attest that, for 
 them, all the words of the Holy Books are given by God. 
 
 Let it first be remembered what use the apostles them- 
 selves make of the word of God, and in what terms ihey 
 quote it. See how then, they not only content them- 
 selves with saying : " God says ;] the Holy Spirit has 
 said ;% God says by such a piophet;''^ but see also 
 when they quote it, how they esteem its least parts ; 
 with what respect they speak of it ; with what attention 
 
 * We have translated o?ir author here literally, because he has not ex- 
 pressed himself clearly ; and it is the only sentence of his honk which has 
 appeared to us obscure. If we may intrude our own explaiiniion, we 
 would state that we think his views might be thus expressed; -'The 
 words were given as well as the ihouglits; for. after all, the words, 
 that is the enunciation of the thonghis, is also the product of a second 
 effort of the mind after it has conceived the thought ; an eff.u-t which re- 
 lates to the language, and which consists in choosing from it appropriate 
 expres.<ions." A friend has furnished us this illustration of the author's 
 idea. Imagine these holy men commanded toc<uiteuiplatea l)uiltlin'.', and 
 to make an exact representation (>f it to men ; and at the same time, jilatea 
 engraved with a perfect image of it were given them ; their sole duty be- 
 ing to paint them. That is plenary inspiration. The huilJing of ihe house 
 was the first effort of the architect, and the n-prtiseii^a im. of it was the 
 second effort of the same mind. None l»ut Ood could construct the build- 
 ing ; none but he could copy it infallibly. And he has done it — 7V«n». 
 
 tEph. iv. 8; Heb. i. 8. 
 
 t Acts xxviii. 25 ; Heb. iii. 7 ; x. 15, and elsewhere. § Rom. ix. 25. 
 
380 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 they consider each of its words ; with what religious 
 assurance they often insist on one single word, to deduce 
 from it the most serious consequences and the most fun- 
 dam rntal doctrines. 
 
 Ft)r ourselves, we must avow, nothing impresses us 
 so strongly as this consideration: nothing has produced 
 in oin- soul so intimate and so powerful a confidence in 
 the entire theopneusty of the Scriptures. 
 
 The preceding reasonings and the testimonies appear 
 to us sufficient to carry conviction to all attentive minds ; 
 but we fe.el that, if we had a personal necr'ssity of con- 
 firming our fdith upon this tiuih. we should not go so 
 far to seek our reasons ; it would be S'jffici^ nt for us to 
 inquire, how the apostles of God esteemed the Huly 
 Scriptures. Was it, in their oj)inion, inspired ; was its 
 language inspired ? What, for examph*, did Saint Paul 
 think of it? For we have no pretensions to he more 
 enlii-htened theoloaians tlian those twelve men. We 
 abide by the dogmatics of St. Peter, and the exegesis of 
 St. Paul; and of all the systems on tlie inspirntion of 
 the Scriptures, it is theirs which we are determined to 
 prefer. 
 
 Hear the apostle Paul, when he quotes them, and when 
 he comments on them. He tlien discusses tin ir smallest 
 expressions. Often, in order to draw fiom them the 
 most important conclusions, he malces use of arguments 
 which would be treated as puerihi or Jihsurd, if we liad 
 employed them before the doctors of the Socini ai school. 
 Such a respect for the wonis of the te.\t. if we should be 
 guilty of it, would send us biick to the XVIth century, 
 to its rude orthodoxy, to its superanmiated theology. 
 Remark with what reverence the apostle pauses at the 
 least expression j with what confident expectation of 
 
EXAMFLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 381 
 
 the Church's submission, he there points out the em- 
 ployment of such a word in preference to any other ; 
 with what investigation an J cordiality he presses out 
 each word of it between his hands, even to the last drop. 
 
 Out of the muhitude of examples which we might 
 produce, let us for brevity's sake, confine ourselvts to 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
 See in chapter ii. v. 8. how. after having quoted these 
 words: " Thou hast put all things under his fett," the 
 sacred author reasons from the authority of the word all. 
 
 See, in the 11th verse, how, in quoting the xxii. 
 Psalm, he reasons from this word, my brethren^ to de- 
 rive from it the human nature which the Son of God 
 was to assume. 
 
 See, in chapter xii. 27, how, in quoting the prophet 
 Haggai, he reasons from the employment of this word; 
 once. " Yet once." 
 
 See, in verses 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, with what expansion 
 he reasons from these words, '• my son^' from i\\i' 3d 
 chap, of Proverbs : '■ My son, despise not the chastening 
 of the Lord." 
 
 See, in chap. x. how, in citing the xl. Psalm, he rea- 
 sons from the words, " Lo ! I come," opposed lo the 
 words, " Thou wouldest not." 
 
 See, in chap. viii. v. 8 to 13, how, in quoting Jeremiah 
 xxxi. 31, he argues from the word new. 
 
 See, in chapter iii. v. 7 to 19, and iv. 1 to 11. 'vith 
 what earnestness, in quoting the xcvth Psalm, h<' a, i^ues 
 from the word " to-day,'^ fiom the words " I h ire siiorn" 
 and especially from the woids •• viy rest" i\\u:<[ri\\: l by 
 this other word of (jtentsis : '-And God res/c.' the 
 seventh day." 
 
 See, in v. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, how he reason.-s from 
 
382 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 these words " servant''^ and " house^^ borrowed from 
 Numbers : " My servant Moses, who is faithful in all 
 my house." 
 
 See, above all, in chapters vi. and vii. the use Avhich 
 he niaices successively of all the words of the cxth 
 Psalm; observe how he takes up each expression, one 
 after ih(" other, to deduce from it the highest doctrines: 
 "The Lord hath sworn;" --he hath sworn by him- 
 self;" "thou art a priest;" "thou art a priest forever;" 
 "thou art a priest after the order of Melchizedec ;" 
 " of Mtlchizedec king of Zedec ;" " and of Mt Ichizedec 
 king of S:iletii." The exposition of the doctrines con- 
 tained in each one of these words, fills three chapters, 
 the 5th, 6th, and 7th. 
 
 But I stop here. Is it possible not to conclude from 
 such examples, that, for the holy apostle Paul, the Scrip- 
 tures were inspired of God, even to the least important 
 expressions? L^t each of us then rank himself in the 
 school of this man, " to whom was given the under- 
 standino- of the mystery of Christ by the Spirit of God, 
 as to a holy apostle and prophet.* We must, of neces- 
 sity, either hold him for an enthusiast, and reject in his 
 person the testimony of the holy Bible ; or receive, with 
 him, the precious and fruitful doctiine of the plenary in- 
 spiration of the Scriptures. 
 
 O; ye, who shall read these lines, in what school 
 will ye then sit down? in that of the apostles, or in that 
 of the doctors of our age? " If any mm shall take away 
 from the woids of this book (1 testify, says St. John,) 
 God siiall take away his part out of ihe book of life, and 
 out of the holy city, and from the things which are 
 
 * Eph. iii. 4, 5. 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 383 
 
 written in this book." " And, if (says St. Paul) any 
 man preach any other Gospel, let him be accursed."* 
 
 But again, let us leave the apostles, (prophets as they 
 were, sent of God to establish his kingdom, pillars of 
 the Church, mouths of the Holy Spirit, ambassadors of 
 Jesus Christ ;) let us leave them, for the moment, as if 
 they were still too much enveloped in their Jewish tradi- 
 tions, and in their rustic prejudices; let us go to the 
 Master. Let us ask him how he esteemed the Scrip- 
 tures. This is the great question. The testimonies 
 which we have just cited, are peremptory, without 
 doubt ; and the doctrine of a full and entire Theopneusty 
 is as clearly taught in the Scriptures, as perhaps the 
 resurrection of the dead ; that alone is enough for us ; 
 but, notwithstanding, we will still avow it, here is an 
 argument which renders all others superfluous to us: — 
 How did Jesus Christ quote the Bible? what did he 
 think of the letter of the Scriptures? what use did he 
 make of it, he who is its object and inspirer, its begin- 
 ning and its end, its first and its last — he, whose Holy 
 Spirit, says St. Peter, animated all the prophets of the 
 Old Testament! — he, who was in heaven in the bosom 
 of the Father, at the same time that he was seen here 
 below, conversing among us, and preaching the Gospel 
 to the poor? 1 am asked, what do you think of the 
 Holy Scriptures? I reply, what did my Master think 
 of them? how did he quote them? v^^hat use did he 
 make of them ? what were their least parts to hiin '} 
 
 Oh! tell them thyself, Eternal Wisdom, uncreated 
 Word, Judge of judges ! and whilst we are going to re- 
 peat to them here the declarations of thy mouth, show 
 them that majesty in which the Scriptures appeared to 
 
 • Rev. xxii. 18; Gal. i. 8, 10. 1 1 Pet. ii. U. 
 
384 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 thee, that perfection ^Yhich thou didst recognise in them, 
 that permanence, above all, which thou hast assigned to 
 their least iota, and which shall make them survive 
 even the universe, after the heavens and the earth shall 
 have passed away ! 
 
 We do not hesitate to say it : when we hear the Son 
 of God quote the Scriptures, every thing- is said for us 
 upon their theopneusty ; we have no need of any other 
 testimony. All the declarations of the Bible are equally 
 divine, without doubt ; but this example of the Savior 
 of the world has told us all in a moment. This proof 
 requires no protracted nor profound research : the hand 
 of a little child seizes it as powerfully as that of a man 
 of learning. If any doubt should then assail your soul, 
 let it turn to the Lord of lords ; let it see him kneeling 
 before the Scriptures! 
 
 Follow Jesus, in the days of his flesh. With what 
 grave and tender respect he constantly holds in his hands 
 the " volume of the book," to quote all its parts, and to 
 point out its least verses. 
 
 See how a word, a single word, whether of a song, 
 or of a historical book, has for him the authority of a 
 law. Observe with what confident submission he re- 
 ceives all the Scriplures^ without even disputing their 
 sacred canon ; because he knows that " salvation is of 
 the Jews," and that, under the infallible providence of 
 God, " the oracles of God were committed to thf-m." 
 What do I say ; that he receives them ? from his cradle 
 to his tomb, and from his resurrection from the tomb 
 to his disappearance in the clouds, what does he carry 
 every where with him ; in the desert, in the temple, in 
 the synagogue? What does he still quote, in his re- 
 surrection-body, at the moment whtn already the hca- 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 385 
 
 vens are about to exclaim ; '• Lift up your heads, ye 
 everlasting- gates, and let the King of glory enter ?" It 
 is the Bible ; it is ever the Bible ; it is Moses, the 
 Psalms, and the Prophets : he quotes them, he explains 
 them ; but how ? it is verse by verse ; it is word after 
 word ! 
 
 In what a frightful and painful contrast, after such a 
 spectacle, do those mi?guided men present themselves to 
 us, who, in our day, dare to judge, to contradict, and to 
 try to mutilate the Scriptures ! 
 
 We tremble, when we have followed with our eyes 
 the Son of Man, commanding the elements, stilling the 
 tempest, and bursting the sepulchre, whilst filled with 
 so profound a respect for the sacred volume, he declared 
 that he was to return one day to judge, from this book, 
 the living and the dead; we tremble, and our heart 
 bleeds, when afterwards crossing the threshold of a ra- 
 tionalist academy, we there see, seated in his professoral 
 chair, a poor mortal, a learned, miserable sinner, a res- 
 ponsible soul, handling, without reverence, the word of 
 his God ; when we follow him accomplishing this 
 wretched task before young men eager for instruction, 
 as future guides of an entire people, capable of so much 
 good, if you lead them to the high places of faith, and 
 of so much evil, if you train them to the contempt of 
 those Scriptures which they are one day to preach? 
 With what peremptory decision they exhibit the phan- 
 tasmagoria of their hypotheses ; they retrench, they 
 add, they commend, they condemn ; they pity the sim- 
 plicity, w^iich, reading the Bible as Jesus Christ reads 
 it, attaches itself, like him, to all the words, and can 
 find no error in the word of God ; they decide what in- 
 terpolations or what retrenchments, (which Jesus Christ 
 
386 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 never suspected,) the holy Scriptures must have under- 
 gone ; they purify the chapters which they have not 
 understood; they point out mistakes in them, reasonings 
 badly conducted or badly concluded, prejudices, impru- 
 dences, vulgar errors ! 
 
 God forgive me for being obliged to write the words 
 of this frightful dilemma ; (but the alternative is inevi- 
 table !) Either Jesus Christ exaggerated and reasoned 
 badly, when he thus quoted the Scriptures, or these im- 
 prudent and unhappy men, ignoranlly blaspheme their 
 majesty. It pains us to write these lines. God is our 
 witness that we would willingly have withheld them, 
 and then have blotted them out ; but, w^e hesitate not to 
 say with a profound feeling, it is in obedience, it is in 
 charity, that they have been written. Alas ! in a few 
 years these professors and their pupils will be sleeping 
 in the same tomb ; they must wither like the grass ; 
 but then not a tittle of ihis divine book shall have 
 passed away ; and as surely as the Bible is truth, and 
 as it has changed the face of the world, so surely shall 
 we see the Son of Man returning upon the clouds of 
 Heaven, and "judging by this eternal word, the secret 
 thoughts of men."* 
 
 " All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as 
 the flower of grass : the grass withereth, and the flower 
 thereof fadeth away ; but the word of God abideth for 
 ever ; and this is the word which is preached unto us ;" 
 it is this word which shall judge us. Now then, we 
 are about to finish our proof in reviewing, under this 
 aspect, the ministry of Jesus Christ. Let us follow him 
 from the age of twelve years to his descent into the 
 tomb, or rather to his disappearance in the clouds ; and, 
 
 • Rom. ii. 16; John xii. 43; Matt. x.w. 31. 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 387 
 
 in all the course of this incomparable career, let us see 
 what the Scriptures were for Hitn, who, " upholdelh all 
 things by the word of his power." 
 
 See him first, at the age of twelve years. He has 
 grown, as a human child, in wisdom and in stature ; he 
 is in the midst of the doctors, in the temple of Jerusa- 
 lem ; he ravishes, by his answers those who hear him; 
 for "he knew, said one, the Scriptures without having 
 studied them."* 
 
 See him, when he has commenced his ministry ; be- 
 hold him filled with the Holy Ghost ; he is led to the 
 desert, there to sustain, like the first Adam in Eden, a 
 mysterious combat with the powers of darkness. The 
 impure spirit dares attempt to oveithrow him ; but how 
 shall the Son of God repel him ; he who has come to 
 destroy the works of Satan ? Only by the Bible. His 
 sole weapon, in those encounters, the sword of the Spi- 
 rit, in his divine hands, shall be the Bible. He shall 
 quote, three times, the book of Deuteronomy f At 
 each new temptation, he, the Word made fl* sh, shall 
 defend himself by a sentence of the orach s of God, 
 and even by a sentence whose entire force lies in the 
 employment of a single word, or of two words, (aoTw 
 /u6>(i>) bread alone ; — then of these woids: Tlmv, s/iali 
 not (emjd the Lord (o"x tx7Tf/^uaf<g 7vi'^/oi) — then 
 fin:illv, of these two words : [Otui^ nuozxvrr^oe'g) ihou 
 shall worship God. 
 
 What an example for us ! All his answer, all his 
 deft nee, is this : '•• It is written ;" " get thee behind me, 
 Salan, for it is written ; ' — and as soon as this terrible 
 and mysterious combat is closed, angels draw nigh to 
 serve him. 
 
 • John vii. 13, 1-5. t Deut. viii. 3; vi. 13 ; x. 20; Matt. iv. 1-lL 
 
388 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 But, observe, again, that such is for the Son of Man, 
 the au.hority of each word of the Scriptures, that the 
 foul spirit hiinself, that being so mighty in wickedness, 
 who knows what all the words of the Bible are in his 
 eyes, does not innagine a surer means of conquering his 
 will, than citing to him (but at the same time distort- 
 ing it) a verse of the xci. Psalm ; and immediately 
 Jesus Christ, to confound him, is content to reply again : 
 " It is written." 
 
 See how his sacerdotal ministry commenced ; by the 
 employment of the Scriptures. And see how his pro- 
 phetic ministry is opened, immediately afterwards ; by 
 the en)ployment of the Scriptures. 
 
 Let us again follow him, as engaged in his work, he 
 goes from place to place, to do good ; always enlisting 
 in his poverty his creating power, for imparting comfort 
 to others, never to himself He speaks, and it is done ; 
 he casts out devils ; he calms the tempests ; he awakens 
 the dead. But, in the midst of all these grandeurs, see 
 how he estimates the Scriptures. The word is ever 
 with him. He bears it with respect, not in his hands, 
 (he knows it thoroughly.) but in his memory and in his 
 incomparable heart. Behold him, when he speaks of 
 it. When he unrols the sacred volume, it is as if he 
 were opening the window of heaven, to make us hear 
 the voice of Jehovah. With what reverence, with what 
 submission he expounds them, he comments on them, he 
 quotes them word after word! Behold his entire em- 
 ployment ; to heal, and to preach the Scriptures ; as 
 afterward, to die, and to accomplish the Scriptures ! 
 
 Behold him come, '• as he was wont," into a syna- 
 gogue, on a Sabbath day ; '• for he taught in their con- 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 389 
 
 gregations," it is said* He enters that of Nazareth. 
 What will he do there ; he, " the Eternal Wisdom, pos- 
 sessed by Jehovah in the beginning of his way, before 
 his works of old, brought forth before the mountains 
 were settled, before the hills ?t He shall rise to take 
 the Bible ; he shall open at Isaiah ; he shall there read 
 a few sentences ; then, having closed the book, he shall 
 sit dovm ; and, as all eyes are fixed on him, he shall 
 say : " This day, is this Scripture fulfilled in your 
 hearing."! 
 
 See him, journeying through Galilee. What does 
 he there ? He is still holding in his hands, the volume 
 of the book ; and he is explaining it line after line, word 
 after word ; he holds up its most important expressions 
 for our respect, as he would the law of "the Ten Com- 
 mandments, pronounced on Sinai." 
 
 See him again in Jerusalem, before the poor of Beth- 
 esda ; what is he urging on the people ? " Search the 
 Scriptures !"^ 
 
 See him in the holy place, in the midst of which he 
 had dared to exclaim, " There is one here greater than 
 the holy place." |i Follow him before the Sadducees 
 and Pharisees, whilst he alternately reproves them both 
 in these words ; '• It is written ;" as he had done to 
 Satan. 
 
 Hear him replying to the Sadducees who denied the 
 resurrection of the body. How does he refute them ? 
 By A SINGLE WORD ffom a riiSTORiOAr. passage of the 
 Bible ; by a single verb in the present tense, instead of 
 the same verb in the past tense. " Ye err," said he to 
 ihem, '-NOT KNOWING THE SCRIPTURES. Havc ye not 
 
 • Luke iv. 15, 16. t Prov. viii. 22, 25. 
 
 X Luke iv. 21 $ John v. 36. II Matt. ii. 6. 
 
 33* 
 
390 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 read what God has declared to you, saying : I am the 
 God of Abraham?" Thus he proved to them the doc- 
 trine of the resurrection. God, upon Mount Sinai, four 
 hundred years after the death of Abraham, said to Moses ; 
 not, '• [ was," but " I am the God of Abraham ; I am so 
 now, )2m;::^ '^nb^S; ^DTDJ^ which the Holy Spirit 
 renders : "Ejio flui 6 &ed; ylSqaau. There is then a 
 resurrection ; for God is not the God of some handful 
 of dust, the God of the dead, the God of non-entity: 
 he is the God of the living. '• These men are then 
 living with God."* 
 
 See him afterwards before the Pharisees. It is still 
 Dy the letter of the word that he confounds them. 
 
 Some of them had already followed him to the bor- 
 ders of Judea, beyond Jordan, and had come to question 
 him on the subject of marriage and divorce. What 
 might Jesus Christ have done ? He could surely have 
 replied from his own authority, and have given his own 
 laws. Is he not the King of kings and Lord of lords ? 
 But no ; it is to the Bible he again appeals, to found 
 here a doctrine ; it is to the simple words, taken from 
 an entirely historical passage of Genesis : " Have ye 
 NOT RKAD, that He who made them from the beginning, 
 made them male and female ; so that they are no more 
 twain, but one flesh ? V/hat then God hath joined to- 
 gether, let not man put asunder."! 
 
 But hear, above all, whfn in the temple, he would 
 prove to other Pharisees, b}' the Scriptures, the divinity 
 of the expected Messiah. He again insisted here, to de- 
 monstrate it, upon the use of a singlk word, which he 
 was about to take from the book of the Psalms. " If 
 the Messiah," said he to them, " is the Son of David, 
 
 ' Matt, xxii 31, 32. t Gen. i. 27: ii. 24 ; Mutt. xi.\. 4, 5, 6, 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 391 
 
 how did David, by the Spirit, call him Lord? when 
 he says, (in Ps. ex. ;) the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit 
 thou at my rioht hand ? If then David calls him Lord, 
 how is he his Son ?"* 
 
 Wiiy was there not some one of the Pharisees sug- 
 gesting the ready reply which modern times have fur- 
 nished : '• What ! do you prele7id to insist on a single 
 word, and more, upon a term borrowed from a poetry 
 eminently lyrical, in ichich the royal Psalmist may^ 
 without injury, have cm'ployed a too vii:id conslrv ction^ 
 exaggerated expressions, and words which he doubtless 
 had not then logically weighed in his mind, before cast- 
 ing them into his verse ? Would you follow the at once 
 fanatical and servile method of a minute interpretation 
 of each expression? Would you adore even to the let- 
 ter of the Scriptures ? Would you construct an entire 
 doctrine upon a word .'*" 
 
 Yes, I will, replies Jesus Christ ; yes, I will support 
 myself upon a word; because this word is of God, and 
 because with one word he created the light. To cut all 
 your objections short, I declare to you, that "it is by 
 THE Spirit," that David wrote all the words of his 
 Songs ; and I ask you how, " if the Messiah is his Son, 
 David, BY THE Spirit, can call him his Lord, when he 
 says : the Lord said to my Lord ?" 
 
 Students of the word of God, and you especially who 
 are to be its ministers, and who, in order to prepare your- 
 selves for preaching it, wish first to have received it into 
 a good and honest heart, see what each saying, each 
 word of the book of God was for our Master. Go, 
 then, and do likewise ! 
 
 But still farther. Hear him again, even on his cross. 
 
 • Matt. xxii. 43. 
 
392 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 He was there pouring out his soul an offering for sin ; 
 all his bones were out of joint ; he poured himself out 
 like water ; *his heart was melted like wax within him ; 
 his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth ;* he was 
 about rendering up his spirit to his Father. But what 
 did he first ? He would gather all his remaining 
 strength, to repeat a psalm which the Church of Israel 
 had sung for a thousand years in her religious festivals, 
 and which spoke successively all his griefs and all his 
 prayers : " Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthaiii /'' (M}'' God, 
 my God, why hast thou forsaken me?) He did yet 
 more : hear him. There remained yet in the Scrip- 
 tures one unfulfilled word ; they must yet give him 
 vinegar upon that cross ; the Holy Spirit had declared 
 it a thousand years before, in the Ixixth Psalm. '■' After 
 this, knowing that all things were now accomplished, 
 that the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, I thirst. 
 And when Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, It 
 is finished ! and he bowed his head and gave up the 
 ghost." t 
 
 Did David know whilst he was composing this 69tli 
 Psalm upon Shoshannim, and the 22d upon Ajeleth, 
 the prophetical sense of each one of these words; of 
 these hands and feet pierced, of this gal) poured out, of 
 this vinegar, of these garments divided, of this robe 
 taken by lot, of this mocking multitude, wagging the 
 head and shooting out the lip 1 To us it matters little 
 whether he understood it or not ; the Floly Spirit at 
 least understood it ; and David was speaking by the 
 Spirit, Jesus tells us. The heavens and the earth 
 must pass ; but there is not in this book a jot or tittle 
 that can remain unaccomplished. J 
 
 • Psalm y.xii. 16—18. t John xix. 28—30. t John x. 35. 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE AFOSTLES. 393 
 
 Yet there is something still more striking, if it be 
 possible. Jesus Christ rises from the tomb ; he has 
 vanquished death ; he is about to return to the Father, 
 to resume that glory which he had with the Father, be- 
 fore the world was. Follow him then in these rapid 
 moments which he yet bestows on the earth. What 
 words are to fall from his reanimated lips? They are 
 words from the Holy Scriptures. Still he quotes them ; 
 he explains them ; he preaches them still. See him 
 first upon the road to Emmaus, journeying with Cleopas 
 and his friend ; afterwards in the upper chamber ; and 
 still later upon the borders of the lake. What does he ? 
 he expounds the sacred books, he begins at Moses, and 
 continues through all the prophets and the Psalms ; 
 he shows them what has been said concerning himself, 
 in all the Scriptures; he opens their understandings, 
 that they may comprehend ; he makes their hearts burn 
 while he opens the Scriptures.* 
 
 But we have not finished. All these quotations show 
 us what the Holy Bible was to Him in whom are 
 hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. f and 
 by whom all things consist.;]: But let us hear again, 
 upon the letter of the Scriptures, t^'o declarations and 
 one final example of our Lord. 
 
 " It is easier, says he, for heaven and earth to pass 
 away, than for one tittle [icFoaUx) of the law to fail;"*^. 
 and, by the law, Jesus Christ understood the body of 
 the Scriptures, and, even more particularly the book of 
 the Psalms. i[ 
 
 What v,-ord could we imagine, which should express 
 with more precision and more force, the principle that 
 
 • Luke xxiv. 27—44. t Col. ii. 3. i Col i. 17. 
 
 § Luke xvi. 17. II John x. 34 ; xii. 34. 
 
394 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 we defend, I mean, the authority, the entire theopneusty, 
 and the permanence, of all the parts and of the very 
 letter of the Scriptures? Students of the word of God, 
 behold the theology of your Master. Be then theolo- 
 jTians after his pattern ; have the same Bible with the 
 Son of God ! 
 
 But let us hear yet another declaration. Our Lord 
 made it in his Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 " Until heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or 
 tittle shall pass frojn the Law* All the words of the 
 Scriptures^ even to the smallest letter and the smallest 
 part of a letter, are then, equivalent to the words of 
 Jesus Christ ; for he has also said; The heavens and 
 the earth shall one day pass away, but my words shall 
 not pass.f 
 
 Men who combat these doctrines, demand of us if we 
 dare pretend that the Holy Scriptures are a law of God, 
 even in its words, as a hyssop or an oak is a work of 
 God, even to its leaves. We rep]}'-, with all the Fa- 
 thers of the Church ; Yes ; or rather, Jesus Christ, 
 our Savior and our Master, lifts his hands towards hea- 
 ven, and replies : Yes, even in its " words ; even to 
 (/u)T« fi', 7] a\u y.sga[a) a single iota, or a single fragment 
 of a letter!" 
 
 But, after these two declarations, let us finally con- 
 sider a last example of our Lord, which we have not 
 yet adduced. 
 
 It is still Jesus Christ who is going to quote the 
 Scriptures; but in chiiming, for their least word, such 
 on authority, that we are obliged to rank him in the 
 number of the most ardent partisans of the verbal inspi- 
 ration, ami that u-e think, that in searching through the 
 
 • Malt. V. 18. t Luke x.xi. 33. 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 395 
 
 writings of our most rigidly orthodox divines, there can- 
 not be found the example of respect for the letter of the 
 Scriptures and for the plentitude of their theopneusty 
 carried farther. 
 
 It was on a day in winter, as Jesus was walking in 
 the temple under the colonnade of the eastern portico; 
 the Jews surrounded him ; and he then said to them ;* 
 " I give eternal life to my sheep ; they shall never per- 
 ish : no one shall pluck them out of my hand ; I and 
 the Father are one." They were astonished at such 
 language ; but he became still more staitling, until 
 finally the Jews, crying out against the blasphemy, 
 brought stones to kill him, and said to him : " we stone 
 thee, because being man, thou makest thyself God."t 
 
 We would now call particular attention to the differ- 
 ent features of the answer of Jesus Christ. He is 
 about to quote one word taken from a hymn, and he is 
 about to found all his doctrine on this single word; for 
 "he made himself equal with God," says John in ano- 
 ther place (v. 18 ) In order to sustain the sublimest 
 and most mysterious of his doctrines, to legitimate his most 
 unheard-of pretension, he supports himself on a word 
 of the Psalm Ixxxii. But, remark it well ; before pro- 
 nouncing this word, he is careful to interrupt himself; 
 he pauses in a solemn parenthesis, and exclaims with 
 authority: '•' and the Scripture cannot he hrokcii^ (x«* 
 Civ di)i'uTu( Xudritixl tj youcprj \) 
 
 Has this been sufficiently regarded ? Not only is 
 the Lord's argument here entirely founded upon the 
 use made of a single word by the Psalmist ; and not 
 only is he going to erect on this single term, the most 
 astounding of his doctrines; but also, in quoting thus 
 
 • John X. 27. t Johu x. 27, et. seq. 
 
396 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 the book of Psalms, to make us better comprehend, that 
 in his view, the book is entirely a writing of the Holy 
 Spirit, in which each word must serve to us as a law, 
 Jesus calls it by the name of law, and he says to the 
 Jews : " Is it not written in your law, I have said ye 
 are gods ?" These words are placed in the middle of a 
 song ; they might seem to have escaped from the unre- 
 flecting fervor of the prophet Asaph, or from the ardent 
 strain of his poetry. And if the plenary inspiration of 
 all that is icritten were not admitted, we should be 
 tempted to tax them with indiscretion, since the impru- 
 dent use which the Psalmist made of them, might have 
 led the people to practises, condemned in other parts of 
 the word of God. and to idolatrous thoughts. Why 
 then, yet once more, was there not found there, in Solo- 
 mon's porch, some rationalist scribe of the Jewish uni- 
 versities, to say to him: "Lord, you cannot justify 
 yourself by this expression. The use which Asaph 
 made of it, may have been neither deliberate nor proper. 
 Although inspired in the thoughts of his piety, he cer- 
 tainly did not \veigh his smallest word, with a minute 
 forethought of the use which might be made of them a 
 thousand j^ears afterwards. It would then be imprudent 
 to pretend to insist on them." But now, observe how 
 our Lord anticipates the profane temerity of such an 
 evasion. Behold him ; he recollects himself with so- 
 lemnity : he had ju.st pronounced, concerning himself, 
 words which would be blasphemous in the mouth of an 
 archangel : '• I and the Father are one ;" but he inter- 
 rupts himself, and as soon as he has said : '• Is it not 
 written in your law, I have said, ye are gods;" he 
 pauses, and fixing his eyes authoritatively upon the 
 doctors who surround him, he exclaims; "And the 
 
EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES. 397 
 
 ScRirpjRE CANNOT BE BROKEN." As if he had said : 
 '' Beware ! there is not in the sacred books, a single 
 word which can be reproved, nor one single word 
 which can be neglected. That which I quote to you 
 from *he Ixxxii Psalm, is traced by the hand which 
 made the heavens. If then he would give the name of 
 gods to men, inasmuch as they are christs, (anointed) 
 and types of the true Christ, of the anointed, and in 
 taking care at the same time immediately to suggest, 
 " that they died as men ;" how much more appropriate 
 is this name to me •' the Father of eternity,* the Im- 
 nanuel, the man-God, the Messiah, who do the works 
 
 f my Father, and whom the Father hath marked with 
 
 is seal !" 
 We will then ask here of every serious reader, (and 
 our argument, it should be well observed, is entirely in- 
 iependent of the orthodox or of the Socinian meaning 
 vhich may be given to these words of Jesus Christ ;) 
 .^e will ask ; is it possible to admit that the being who 
 makes such a use of the Scriptures, does not believe 
 
 IN their PLENARY, VERBAL INSPIRATION ? And if he 
 
 had believed that the words of the Bible had been 
 ieft to the free choice and to the pious fantasies of the 
 sacred writers, would he ever have broached the idea 
 of founding such arguments upon the employment of 
 Buch a word ? The Lord Jesus, our Savior and our 
 Judge, believed then in the most complete inspiration of 
 the Scriptures ; and, for him, the first rule of all herme- 
 neutics, and the beginning of all exegesis, was this sim- 
 ple maxim, applied to the least expressions of the writ* 
 en word : " and the Scripture cannot be broken." 
 Let the Prince of life, the light of the world, then 
 
 • Isa. ix. 6; vii. 14; John vi. 27. 
 
 34 
 
398 SCRIPTURAL PROOF. 
 
 rank us all in his school ! What he has believed, 1 
 us receive. What he has respected, let us respec 
 This book, to all the words of which he has submitte 
 his heart as a Savior, and all the thoughts of his h- - 
 humanity, let us press it to our diseased hearts, and 
 mit to it all the thoughts of our fallen humanity. 
 us seek God there in the least passages ; let us pluL 
 into it every day all the roots of our being, as the tr? 
 planted near the running waters, which gives its fru 
 in its season, and whose leaf never fades. Let us bf 
 in a word, as the righteous man of the Psalms, " vh. 
 takes his delight in the law of the Lord, so that n 
 meditates therein day and night." Then the Holy 
 Spirit, who wrote it, word after word, in his eternal 
 book, will write it also, with his almighty fingers, upon 
 the table of our hearts ; and will there make us com- 
 prehend with efficacy these words of God our Savior : 
 " Be thou healed, and be thou saved ; go, son, thy sins 
 are forgiven thee ; thy faith hath saved thee ; go ir 
 peace All things are possible to him that believeth.' 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 But we must conclude. 
 ,; From all that we have read, it results that there are iu 
 ^ {\^ world only two schools, or but two religions : that 
 ;_, irkich places the Bible above every thing ; and that 
 . which places something above the Bible. The first was 
 I evidently that of Jesus Christ ; the second is that of the 
 , rationalists of all denominations and of all ages. 
 
 The motto of the first is this ; all the written word is 
 inspired of God, even to a single iota or tittle ; the Scrip- 
 I tures cannot be broken. 
 
 The device of the second is this : there are human 
 judges of the word of God. 
 
 Instead of placing the Bible above every thing, it is 
 on the contrary, either science or reason, or human tra- 
 dition, or some new inspiration, that it places above the 
 Bible. Thence, all the rationalists ; and thence all their 
 false religions. 
 
 They correct the word of God, or they complete it ; 
 they contradict it, or they interdict it ; they teach their 
 pupils to read it with irreverence, or they prohibit the 
 reading of it. 
 
 The rationalists, for instance, who now profess Judaism, 
 place above the Bible, if not their own reason, at least 
 that of the lid. Illd. IVth. Vlh. and Vlth. centuries; 
 that is the human traditions of their Targums. the Mishna 
 and the Gemara of thcii- two enormous Talmnds. That 
 
400 CONCLUSION. 
 
 is their Alcoran ; they liave stifled the law and the pro- 
 phets beneath its enormous weight. 
 
 The rationalists who profess the religion of Rom»* 
 will in their turn, place above the Bible, not their owr 
 reason, but, first ; the reason of the Yllth, Vlllth 
 IXth, Xth, Xlth, Xllth and Xlllth centuries, which 
 they call tradition ; (that is, the reason of Dyonisius the 
 Less, of Hincmar, of Radbert, of Lanfranck, of Damas- 
 cenus, of Anastasius the Librarian, of Burkardt, of Ives 
 of Chartres, of Gratian, of Isidorus the Merchant ;) and 
 then ; that of a priest, ordinarily Italian, whom they call 
 Pope^ and whom they declare infallible Ijl the definition 
 of matters of faith* Does the Bible require us lo 
 worship the virgin, to serve the angels, to purchase par- 
 dons, to worship images, to confess to priests, to refrain 
 from marriage, to refuse meats, to pray in unknown 
 tongues, to forbid the Scriptures to the people ;t to have 
 a sovereign Pontiff? And when they speak of a future 
 Rome, J is it otherwise (all the first Fathers of the Church 
 are agreed on this point,)^ than in designating it as the 
 
 * It is the doctrine of the Ultramontanes, maintained both by popes, 
 (Pascal, Pius, Leo. Pelagius, Boniface, Gregory.) and by councils. Bellar- 
 min, Duval and Arsdekin assure us that it is the sentiment of all theolo- 
 gians of any distinction. Hsc doctrina communis est inter onines notsi 
 theologos. (Arsdekin, Theol., vol. I, p. 118. Antwerp, 1G82 ) 
 
 t Prohibemus etiam, ne libros Veteris Testamenti aut Novi In ci permit- 
 tantur habere ; nisi forte psalterium, vel breviarium pro divinis offlciis. aui 
 horas beatae Mariae, aliquis ex devotione habere velit. Sed ne pr8emiss^ 
 libros habeant in vulgar! translates, arctissime inhibemus. (The XlVtft 
 canon of the Council of Toulouse, under pope Gregory IX. in 1229. On 
 cilia Labbaei. t. ii., part 1. Paris, 1671.) 
 
 X 2 Thess. ii. 1 to 12; Rev. xiii. 1 to 8; xviii. 1 to 24. 
 
 § St. Jerome, Exhortation to Marcella, to uiduce her to emigrate from 
 Rome to Bethlehem : " Read John's Revelation, and observe what is «aid 
 
 of the woman in scarlet, ^c the seven hills, ant'-- ) coming 
 
 out from Babylon, &c." Tertulllan ; " Sic et Babylon apud Johai.' S nos- 
 trum romanse urbis figura est, &c." (Adv. Judceos. Parisiis. ^<.<.^ — St. 
 Cbrysostom (//««. 4; in'Zepis. ad. Tkessal., c. 2;) "Thai whi' i n.nder- 
 
CONCLUSION. 401 
 
 seat of the Man of Sin, as the centre of an immense apos- 
 tacy ; as a Babylon, drunk with the blood of the saints 
 and of the witnesses of Jesus Christ, who has made all 
 the nations drink of the wine of the fury of her fornica- 
 tion ; as the mother of the fornicators and of the abomi- 
 nations of the earth ? , 
 
 The rationalists w-ho profess an impure protestantism, 
 and who reject the doctrines of the Reformation, will 
 place above the Bible, if not the reason of Socinus and 
 of Priestly, of Eichhorn and of Paulus, of Strauss and 
 of Hegel, at least their own. There is a mixture of 
 error, they will say, in the word of God. They try it, 
 they correct it ; and with the Bible in their hands, they 
 will tell you : No divinity in Christ, no resurrection of 
 the body, no Holy Spirit, no devil, no demons, no hell, 
 no expiation in the death of Jesus Christ, no native cor- 
 ruption in man, no eternity of punishment, no miracu- 
 lous facts, (what do I say 1) no reality in Jesus Christ ! 
 
 The rationalists finally, v^'ho profess mysticism (the 
 Illuminati, the Quakers, the Paracelcists, the Bourig- 
 nonists, the Labadists, the Boehmists,) will put above the 
 sacred text of the Scriptures, their hallucinations, their 
 internal word, their revelations, and the Christ within. 
 They will speak with disdain of the letter, of the literal 
 sense of the evangelical facts, of the man Jesus, or of 
 the external Christ (as they style him,) of the cross of 
 Golgotha, of preaching, of worship, of the sacraments. 
 They are above these carnal aids ! Hence their aver- 
 sion to the doctrines of the judicial justice of God, of 
 the reality of sin, of the divine wrath against wicked- 
 ness, of grace, of election, of vicarious atonement, of 
 
 ed (i* . time, he says,) the manifestation of the Man of Sin, was the Ro- 
 m8i. ^pire." 7'ovr* eariv j^ apxriVoiiJialKii. "Orap ipdrj cs(^ fteoov rdrt 
 IKtlVOS 'iki- 
 
 34* 
 
402 CONCLUSION. 
 
 the imputed righteousness of Christ, of future punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Disciples of the Savior, hear him in his word, there 
 he will speak to you ; there is our reason, our wisdom, 
 our inspiration; there our sure tradition; there is the 
 lamp to our feet, the light of our paths. Sanctify me 
 by thy truth, O Lord; " thy word is truth !" 
 
 Let our reason then employ all her strength, in the 
 sight of God, first to recognise that the Scriptures are 
 from him, and then to study them. Let her bow more 
 intensely every day, over their divine oracles, to correct 
 herself by them, not to correct them by her ; to seek 
 there the meaning of God, not to put upon them her 
 own ; to present herself before their holy word as a 
 respectful servant, attentive, tender, docile, and not as a 
 noisy and foolish sybil. Let her daily prayer, during 
 the darkness which surrounds her, be constantly that of 
 that child of the tabernacle: " Speak, speak, Lord ; thy 
 servant heareth !" — " The law of the Lord is perfect ; 
 the words of the Lord are pure words ; it is silver puri- 
 fied in the furnace, and seven times refined."* 
 
 And on the other hand, let us seek the Holy Spirit ; 
 let us be baptized with the Spirit, " let us be anointed of 
 the Holy One;" it is the Spirit alone who will guide 
 us into all the truth of the Scriptures, who will shed 
 abroad by them the love of God in our hearts, and who 
 will witness with our spirits that we are the sons of 
 God, by applying its promises to us, and giving us from 
 them the pledge of the promised inheritance and the 
 earnest of his adoption. In vain, without this Spirit, 
 should we carry this Scripture in our hands for eighteerv 
 hundred years, as do still the Jews ; we should not there 
 
 • P8. xli. 6. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 403 
 
 comprehend the things of the Spirit of God ; '' they 
 would be to us folly ; because the natural man receiveth 
 them not, nor indeed can, for they are spiritually dis- 
 cerned." — But at the same time, in distinguishing always 
 the spirit from the letter, let us take care never to sepa- 
 rate them. Let it be always before the word, in the 
 word, and by the word, that we seek this divine Spirit. 
 It is by this word he acts ; by it he enlightens and 
 affects the heart ; by it he casts down, and by it raises 
 up. His constant work is to make our soul comprehend 
 it, to apply it to our soul, to make our soul love it. >^ 
 
 The Bible is then from God, in all its parts. 
 
 It is indeed certain that we shall still meet many pas- 
 sages there, whose use and whose beauty are concealed 
 from us ; but the light of the last day like the sudden 
 blaze of a torch beaming on the long-concealed depths 
 of a crystaline cavern, will in an instant make their 
 splendors flash out. The rising of the day of Jesus 
 Christ, inundating all things in its glory, will penetrate 
 all the Scriptures with its light ; and there revealing to 
 us on every side, diamonds never before perceived, will 
 make them blaze resplendent with a thousand fires. 
 Then the beauty, the wisdom, the proportion, and the 
 harmony of all their revelations will be manifest ; and 
 this view shall fill the chosen of God with enraptured' 
 admiration, with tenderness incessantly renewed, and 
 with a joy that cannot mislead. 
 
 The history of the past should make us already an- 
 ticipate that of the future ; and we can judge by facts 
 already accomplished, of the splendor of the light which 
 is to be poured for us upon the Scriptures, at the second 
 coming of Christ. 
 
 See already what vivid light was shed upon all parts 
 
404 CONCLUSION. 
 
 of the Old Testament at the first appearing of the &on 
 of God ; and conjecture from this single fact, what n 
 be the splendor of the two Testaments, at his sec- 
 coming. Then the plan of God will be complet 
 then our Lord and our King, more glorious than 
 sons of men, shall be revealed from heaven, riding pi 
 perously because of truth, justice and meekness ; th 
 his light shall fill the hearts of his redeemed ; and tj 
 imposing grandeur of the work of redemption will I 
 manifested in all its glory to the view of the children o^ 
 God. 
 
 See already how many chapters of the Scriptures, i) 
 the age of Jeremiah, or later, in the long reign of ih 
 Maccabees, and during the existence of the second tern 
 pie, from Malachi even to John the Baptist ; see, we 
 say, how many chapters of the Scriptures, which now 
 shine to us in heavenly splendor, must then have ap- 
 peared insignificant, and dull to the eyes of the ra- 
 tionalists of the ancient synagogue. How puerile, vul- 
 gar, unmeaning, useless must they have found many of 
 those verses and chapters, which now nourish our faith, 
 which fill us with admiration for the majestic unity of 
 the Scriptures, which cause our tears to How, and which 
 have already led so many weary and heavy-laden souls 
 rto the feet of Jesus Christ ! What did they use to say 
 of the 53d chapter of Isaiah? Without doubt, with the 
 Ethiopian servant of Queen Candace : " How shall I 
 understand, unless some one guide me ? Of whom 
 speaks the prophet ; of himself or of some other ?" 
 What could be the use of that history of Melchizedeck ? 
 Why those long details about the Tabernacle, the gar- 
 ments of Aaron, clean and unclean beasts, worship and 
 sacrifices ? What could these words mean : " thou 
 
CONCLUSION. 405 
 
 shalt not break its legs ?" What meaning could there be 
 
 '•f the xxii, Ixix, and many other Psalms : " My God, my 
 
 'Sd, why hast thou forsaken me ? they have pierced my 
 
 ?tids and my feet !" Why (they must have thought.) 
 
 /es David occupy us so long, in his songs, with the 
 
 /dinary details of his adventurous life ? When too, 
 
 Ma they divide his garments and cast lots upon his ves- 
 
 ^"f?ire ? What do these words mean : " All they shake 
 
 ■■i^eir heads at me, he trusted in the Lord, say they ; let 
 
 '&im deliver him, since he takes pleasure in him ?" 
 
 What then is that vinegar, and what means that gall : 
 
 ^' In my thirst, they gave me vinegar ; they gave me 
 
 %all for my drink ?" What mean these exaggerated 
 
 ^nd inexplicable words : '• I have not hid my face from 
 
 shame and spitting. They smote me upon the cheek ; 
 
 they have ploughed my back ?-" And what did the 
 
 prophet mean: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive?" 
 
 Who again is this " King, lowly and sitting on an ass, 
 
 and upon a colt the foal of an ass ? Zion behold thy 
 
 God ; he himself shall come and deliver you." What 
 
 then is this burial : " He made his grave with the 
 
 wicked, and with the rich in his death ?" 
 
 How strange and unworthy of the Lord must all 
 these words, and so many similar ones, have appeared 
 to the presumptuous scribes of those remote days ! 
 What human weakness, they must have said, what in- 
 dividuality, what occasionality ! (to lend these ancient 
 men the language of our times.) They doubtless 
 taught then in the academies, learned systems and long 
 discussions upon the situations and circumstances of the 
 prophets while writing such details ; and found in their 
 words nothing but the vulgar impression of the merely 
 personal circumstances which had affected them. 
 
406 CONCLUSION. 
 
 But what were you then doing, true disciples of the 
 word of life ? What w-'ere you doing, Hezekiah, Dan- 
 iel, Josiah, Nehemiah, Ezra, our brethren in the same 
 hope and in the same faith ; and you too, holy women 
 who trusted in God, and who looked for the consolation 
 of Israel ? Ah ! you bowed reverently over all these 
 depths, as do still the angels of light, and desiring to 
 fathom to the bottom ; you waited ! Yes, they waited ! 
 They knew that, in the passage most insignificant in 
 their eyes, there might be, as a Father of the Chuich 
 has said : " mountains of doctrine." Wherefore, as St, 
 Peter says, " searching what or what manner ot time 
 the Spirit of Christ, which was in the prophets did sig- 
 nify when it testified beforehand, the sufferings of Christ, 
 and the glory that should follow," they did not doubt 
 that, thereafter, when time and events should have 
 passed their hand over this sympathetic ink, there 
 would start out from them, astounding pages, all stamp- 
 ed with divinity, and all full of the gospel ! The day was 
 to come, after the first appearing of the Messiah, when 
 the least in the kingdom of God should be greater than 
 the greatest of the prophets ; and that day has come. 
 But we know too, ourselves, that the day is yet to come, 
 after his second appearing, when the least of the re- 
 'deemed shall be greater in knowledge than were the 
 Augustines, the Calvins, the Edwards, the Pascals, the 
 Leightons ; for then the ears of the children shall hear, 
 and their eyes shall see things, which even the apos- 
 tles " desired to see, and saw not ; to hear, and, heard 
 not." 
 
 What then the doctors, the prophets, and the saints 
 did with the passages to them yet obscure, and now lu- 
 minous to us, we will do to those pas&nges which are 
 
CONCLUSION. 407 
 
 obscure to us, but which shall quickly become lumi- 
 nous to the heirs of life, when all the prophecies shall 
 be accomplished, and Jesus Christ shall appear in the 
 clouds, in the last Epiphany of his glorious coming. 
 
 With what glory, as soon as they were comprehend- 
 ed, have we seen shine forth, so many passages, so 
 many psalms, so many prophecies, so many types, so 
 many descriptions, whose profound beauty had not be- 
 fore been perceived ! What evangelical truth has come 
 forth from them ! what appeals to the conscience ! 
 what an unfolding of redeeming love ! Let us then 
 wait in regard to analogous passages, even more glo- 
 rious, for that day when our Master shall again come 
 down from Heaven ; for, says St. Ireneus, " there are 
 difficulties in the Scriptures, which, by the grace of 
 God, we can now resolve, but there are others which 
 we leave to him, not only for this age, but for the next, 
 in order that God may perpetually be teaching, and 
 that perpetually, man may thus be learning of God, the 
 things which pertain to God."* 
 
 If the lights of grace have dimmed those of nature, 
 how in their turn will the lights of glory throw pale- 
 ness on those of grace ! How many stars of the first 
 magnitude, still invisible, will be enkindled at the ap- 
 proach of that great day, in the firmament of the Scrip- 
 tures'? And when, finally, it shall be fully revealed to 
 the redeemed world without a veil, Avhat harmonies, 
 what celestial tints, what new glories, what unantici- 
 pated splendors, shall be manifested to the heirs of eter- 
 nal life ! 
 
 Then, we shall see the meaning of so many prophe- 
 
 * Iieneus adv. hngreb., lib ii., c. 47. Iva b Oiog SidadKv, avQpMuoi 6i dti 
 
408 CONCLUSION. 
 
 cies, of so many facts, and of so many instructions, 
 whose divinity as yet, is revealed only by detached fea- 
 tures, but whose evangelical beauty will then shine on 
 every side. Then we shall know all the meaning of those 
 parables, already so impressive, of the Fig-tree, of the 
 Master returning from a far country, of the Bride and 
 Bridegroom, of the Net drawn on the shore of eternity, 
 of Lazarus, of the Invited, of the Talents, of the Hus- 
 bandman, of the Virgins, of the Marriage-Feast. Then 
 we shall know all the glory of words like these : " The 
 Lord said to my Lord, sit thou on my right hand, until 
 I make thy foes thy footstool ;" " Thy people. Lord, 
 shall be a willing people, in the day when thou shalt 
 gather thine army with holy pomp." "The dew of 
 thy youth shall be from the womb of the morning." 
 " He shall tread upon kings in his wrath. He shall 
 destroy the head over a great country." " He shall 
 drink of the water-brook by the way ; therefore shall 
 he lift up the head on high !" 
 
 Then too, shalt thou manifest thyself to our view in 
 all thy glory, O, Jesus Christ, Savior, consoler, friend 
 of the miserable, our Lord and our God ! thou that 
 hast tasted death, but who art He that liveth for ever 
 and ever ! Then all the science of heaven will be thy- 
 self! Thou wast always all the science of the Holy 
 Spirit, who descended from Heaven. Thou wast al- 
 ways that of the Scriptures ; for " the testimony of Je- 
 sus is the spirit of prophecy."* Thou art already all 
 the life of the saints ; " their life eternal is, to know 
 thee !" " O, thanks to God for his unspeakable gift ! 
 
 Could the celebrated traveler who first brought to 
 us from Constantinople, the only horse-chesnut which 
 
 ' Rev. xix. 10. 
 
OONCLUSKPi. 409 
 
 h«u yK seen our Western world, and who planted it, 
 it is said, in the court-yard of his house ; could he have 
 told what he held in the palm of his hand, and what 
 was to spring from it ? The infinite in the finite ! in- 
 numerable forests, in a humble fruit, and under its in- 
 significant shell ; trees by thousands, decorating with 
 their majestic foliage and their clustered blossoms our 
 gardens and our fields : covering with their thick shade 
 the squares, the terraces and the avenues of our cities ; 
 our people celebrating their national festivals beneath 
 their outspread branches ; our western kings, in our 
 capitals reviewing their armies beneath their large 
 bowers ; our children playing at their feet, and the 
 sparrow of our houses seeking his food in their branches; 
 whilst each one of these trees will itself produce, from 
 year to year, millions of fruits exactly similar to that 
 from which it sprang, and bearing likewise, each one 
 in its bosom, the dormant germ of thousands of forests, 
 to thousands of generations ! 
 
 Thus the Christian traveler arrivinof from the mili- 
 *ant church, at his celestial country, and the city of his 
 God, the liousp of his father, with one of the thousand 
 nassagf'S of the Holy Bible in his hands, knows that he 
 hears thither the infinite in the finite, a germ of God, 
 the developments and the glory of which he can already, 
 without doubt, faintly perceive, but the whole of whose 
 grandeur he cannot yet tell. It is, perhaps, the least 
 of all seeds ; but he knows that from it is to spring a 
 great tree, an eternal tree, under the branches of which 
 the heavenly inhabitants will recline. In many of 
 llit-'Se p;issages of his Savior, he has perhaps not yet 
 se^n even the germ, under their rude shell ; but he 
 knows too, that, once admitted into the JerusHlem above, 
 35 
 
410 CONCLUSION. 
 
 under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, he shall 
 see radiate, in these words of the eternal wisdom, by 
 that light of which the Lamb is the glorious torch, 
 splendors hitherto latent, and still covered by their first 
 envelope. Then, in an ineffable tenderness of gratitude 
 and bliss, he shall discover agreements, harmonies, 
 glories of which he had here below, only suspicions, or 
 at least, a respectful expectation. Prepared before the 
 foundation of the world in the eternal counsels of God, 
 and deposited as germs in his Word of Life, they shall 
 burst forth under that new heaven, and for that new 
 earth, wherein righteousness shall dwell. 
 
 All the written word is then inspired of God. " Op a 
 thou mine eyes, O Lord, that I may see wondroiS 
 things out of thy law!" 
 
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