guidance of the Divine Spirit. As to all such passages, therefore,
there can be no dispute; and all others in which the words are by the
sacred historian declared to have been the Word of the Lord
supernaturally communicated, I receive as such with a degree of
confidence proportioned to the confidence required of me by the
writer himself, and to the claims he himself makes on my belief.

Let us, therefore, remove all such passages, and take each book by
itself; and I repeat that I believe the writer in whatever he himself
relates of his own authority, and of its origin. But I cannot find
any such claim, as the doctrine in question supposes, made by these
writers, explicitly or by implication. On the contrary, they refer
to other documents, and in all points express themselves as sober-
minded and veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known
to do. But perhaps they bear testimony, the successor to his
predecessor? Or some one of the number has left it on record, that
by special inspiration HE was commanded to declare the plenary
inspiration of all the rest? The passages which can without violence
be appealed to as substantiating the latter position are so few, and
these so incidental--the conclusion drawn from them involving
likewise so obviously a petitio principii, namely, the supernatural
dictation, word by word, of the book in which the question is found
(for, until this is established, the utmost that such a text can
prove is the current belief of the writer's age and country
concerning the character of the books then called the Scriptures)--
that it cannot but seem strange, and assuredly is against all analogy
of Gospel revelation, that such a doctrine--which, if true, must be
an article of faith, and a most important, yea, essential article of
faith--should be left thus faintly, thus obscurely, and, if I may so
say, OBITANEOUSLY, declared and enjoined. The time of the formation