good to employ? But if it have not been proved, what becomes of the
argument which derives its whole force and legitimacy from the
assumption?

In fact, it is clear that the harmonists and their admirers held and
understood the doctrine literally. And must not that divine likewise
have so understood it, who, in answer to a question concerning the
transcendant blessedness of Jael, and the righteousness of the act,
in which she inhospitably, treacherously, perfidiously murdered
sleep, the confiding sleep, closed the controversy by observing that
he wanted no better morality than that of the Bible, and no other
proof of an action's being praiseworthy than that the Bible had
declared it worthy to be praised?--an observation, as applied in this
instance, so slanderous to the morality and moral spirit of the Bible
as to be inexplicable, except as a consequence of the doctrine in
dispute. But let a man be once fully persuaded that there is no
difference between the two positions: "The Bible contains the
religion revealed by God," and "Whatever is contained in the Bible is
religion, and was revealed by God," and that whatever can be said of
the Bible, collectively taken, may and must be said of each and every
sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself, and I no longer
wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the inconsistency of
those who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a
contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the
Copernican system as incompatible therewith; or who exclaim
"Wonderful!" when they hear that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old
woman to the gallows in honour of the Witch of Endor. In the latter
instance it might, I admit, have been an erroneous (though even at
this day the all but universally received) interpretation of the
word, which we have rendered by WITCH; but I challenge these divines