doctrine which the generality of our popular divines receive as
orthodox, and this the sense which they attach to the words.

For on what other ground can I account for the whimsical
subintelligiturs of our numerous harmonists--for the curiously
inferred facts, the inventive circumstantial detail, the complemental
and supplemental history which, in the utter silence of all
historians and absence of all historical documents, they bring to
light by mere force of logic? And all to do away some half score
apparent discrepancies in the chronicles and memoirs of the Old and
New Testaments--discrepancies so analogous to what is found in all
other narratives of the same story by several narrators--so analogous
to what is found in all other known and trusted histories by
contemporary historians, when they are collated with each other (nay,
not seldom when either historian is compared with himself), as to
form in the eyes of all competent judges a characteristic mark of the
genuineness, independency, and (if I may apply the word to a book),
the veraciousness of each several document; a mark, the absence of
which would warrant a suspicion of collusion, invention, or at best
of servile transcription; discrepancies so trifling in circumstance
and import, that, although in some instances it is highly probable,
and in all instances, perhaps, possible that they are only apparent
and reconcilable, no wise man would care a staw whether they were
real or apparent, reconciled or left in harmless and friendly
variance. What, I ask, could have induced learned and intelligent
divines to adopt or sanction subterfuges, which neutralising the
ordinary criteria of full or defective evidence in historical
documents, would, taken as a general rule, render all collation and
cross-examination of written records ineffective, and obliterate the
main character by which authentic histories are distinguished from