and their adherents to establish the compatibility of a belief in the
modern astronomy and natural philosophy with their and Wesley's
doctrine respecting the inspired Scriptures, without reducing the
doctrine itself to a plaything of wax; or rather to a half-inflated
bladder, which, when the contents are rarefied in the heat of
rhetorical generalities, swells out round, and without a crease or
wrinkle; but bring it into the cool temperature of particulars, and
you may press, and as it were except, what part you like--so it be
but one part at a time--between your thumb and finger.

Now, I pray you, which is the more honest, nay, which the more
reverential proceeding--to play at fast and loose in this way, or to
say at once, "See here, in these several writings one and the same
Holy Spirit, now sanctifying a chosen vessel, and fitting it for the
reception of heavenly truths proceeding immediately from the mouth of
God, and elsewhere working in frail and fallible men like ourselves,
and like ourselves instructed by God's word and laws?" The first
Christian martyr had the form and features of an ordinary man, nor
are we taught to believe that these features were miraculously
transfigured into superhuman symmetry; but HE BEING FILLED WITH THE
HOLY GHOST, THEY THAT LOOKED STEADFASTLY on HIM, SAW HIS FACE AS IT
HAD BEEN THE FACE OF AN ANGEL. Even so has it ever been, and so it
ever will be with all who with humble hearts and a rightly disposed
spirit scan the sacred volume. And they who read it with AN EVIL
HEART OF UNBELIEF and an alien spirit, what boots for them the
assertion that every sentence was miraculously communicated to the
nominal author by God himself? Will it not rather present additional
temptations to the unhappy scoffers, and furnish them with a pretext
of self-justification?