written Word as weighed against the preaching of the Gospel, the
discipline of the Churches, the continued succession of the Ministry,
and the communion of Saints, lest by comparing them I should seem to
detach them; I tremble at the processes which the Grotian divines
without scruple carry on in their treatment of the sacred writers, as
soon as any texts declaring the peculiar tenets of our Faith are
cited against them--even tenets and mysteries which the believer at
his baptism receives as the title-writ and bosom-roll of his
adoption; and which, according to my scheme, every Christian born in
Church-membership ought to bring with him to the study of the sacred
Scriptures as the master-key of interpretation. Whatever the
doctrine of infallible dictation may be in itself, in THEIR hands it
is to the last degree nugatory, and to be paralleled only by the
Romish tenet of Infallibility--in the existence of which all agree,
but where, and in whom, it exists stat adhuc sub lite. Every
sentence found in a canonical Book, rightly interpreted, contains the
dictum of an infallible Mind; but what the right interpretation is--
or whether the very words now extant are corrupt or genuine--must be
determined by the industry and understanding of fallible, and alas!
more or less prejudiced theologians.

And yet I am told that this doctrine must not be resisted or called
in question, because of its fitness to preserve unity of faith, and
for the prevention of schism and sectarian byways! Let the man who
holds this language trace the history of Protestantism, and the
growth of sectarian divisions, ending with Dr. Hawker's ultra-
Calvinistic Tracts, and Mr. Belsham's New Version of the Testament.
And then let him tell me that for the prevention of an evil which
already exists, and which the boasted preventive itself might rather
seem to have occasioned, I must submit to be silenced by the first