and appropriate. And shall we then accept the decision of the New
Testament writers as final, concerning the value and credibility of
the Old Testament, when it is so manifest that they most imperfectly
understood that book?

In fact the appeal to them proved too much. For Jude quotes the book
of Enoch as an inspired prophecy, and yet, since Archbishop Laurence
has translated it from the Ethiopian, we know that book to be a fable
undeserving of regard, and undoubtedly not written by "Enoch, the
seventh from Adam." Besides, it does not appear that any peculiar
divine revelation taught them that the Old Testament is perfect
truth. In point of fact, they only reproduce the ideas on that subject
current in their age. So far as Paul deviates from the common Jewish
view, it is in the direction of disparaging the Law as essentially
imperfect. May it not seem that his remaining attachment to it was
still exaggerated by old sentiment and patriotism?

I farther found that not only do the Evangelists give us no hint that
they thought themselves divinely inspired, or that they had any other
than human sources of knowledge, but Luke most explicitly shows the
contrary. He opens by stating to Theophilus, that since many persons
have committed to writing the things handed down from eye-witnesses,
it seemed good to him also to do the same, since he had "accurately
attended to every thing from its sources ([Greek: anothen])." He could
not possibly have written thus, if he had been conscious of superhuman
aids. How absurd then of us, to pretend that we know more than Luke
knew of his own inspiration!

In truth, the arguments of theologians to prove the inspiration
(i.e. infallibility) of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are sometimes almost