Fellowes looked very grave, but said nothing.

"But yet," continued Harrington, very seriously, "I know not whether
I ought not, upon your principles, to consider this book-revelation
with which you have been favored, about the impossibility of such
a thing, as itself a divine revelation; in which case I am afraid
we shall be constrained to admit, in form, that contradiction which
we have been so anxious to avoid, by making 'possible with man what
is impossible with God.'"

"I know not what you mean," said Fellowes, rather offended.

"Why," said Harrington, quite unmoved, "I have heard you say you do
not deny, in some sense, inspiration, but only that inspiration is
preternatural; that every 'holy thought,' every 'lofty and sublime
conception,' all 'truth and excellence,' in any man, come from the
'Father of lights,' and are to be ascribed to him; that, as Mr. Parker
and Mr. Foxton affirm on this point, the inspiration of Paul or Milton,
or even of Christ and of Benjamin Franklin, is of the same nature,
and in an intelligible sense from the same source,--differing only
in degree. Can you deem less, then, of that great conception by which
Mr. Newman has released you, and possibly many more, from that
bondage to a 'book-revelation' in which you were brought up, and
in which, by your own confession, you might have been still enthralled?
Can you think less of this than that it is an 'inspired' voice which
has proclaimed 'liberty to the captive,' and made known to you
'spiritual freedom'? If any thing be divine about Mr. Newman's
system, surely it must be this. Ought you not to thank God that he
has been thus pleased to 'open your eyes,' and to turn you from
'darkness to light,'--to raise up in these last days such an apostle