from his learning and candour. About this time I also had begun to
get more or less aid from four or five living German divines; but
none produced any strong impression on me but De Wette. The two
grand lessons which I learned from him, were, the greater recency
of Deuteronomy, and the very untrustworthy character of the book of
Chronicles; with which discovery, the true origin of the Pentateuch
becomes still clearer.[7] After this, I heard of Hengstenberg as the
most learned writer on the opposite side, and furnished myself with
his work in defence of the antiquity of the Pentateuch: but it only
showed me how hopeless a cause he had undertaken.

* * * * *

In this period I came to a totally new view of many parts of the
Bible; and not to be tedious, it will suffice here to sum up the
results.

The first books which I looked at as doubtful, were the Apocalypse and
the Epistle to the Hebrews. From the Greek style I felt assured that
the former was not by John,[8] nor the latter by Paul. In Michaelis
I first learnt the interesting fact of Luther having vehemently
repudiated the Apocalypse, so that he not only declared its
spuriousness in the Preface of his Bible, but solemnly charged his
successors not to print his translation of the Apocalypse without
annexing this avowal:--a charge which they presently disobeyed. Such
is the habitual unfairness of ecclesiastical corporations. I was
afterwards confirmed by Neander in the belief that the Apocalypse is
a false prophecy. The only chapter of it which is interpreted,--the
17th,--appears to be a political speculation suggested by the civil
war of Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian; and erroneously opines that