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    exaltation of their own reason above the authority of Scri p ture . It was from perceiving , in the Scripture itself , that the orthodox doctrine was inconsistent with its general tenor , and that the phraseology which is supposed to teach it , compared with other scriptural phrases , bore no such meaning , that they were induced to renounce the opinions which they had once held . Every candid man , whether orthodox or heterodox , will confess , that there are difficulties in the language of Scripture , embrace what interpretation you

    wiJl ; and some will take one side and some the other , as the natural disposition or habit of each mind inclines ; but it is an intolerable assumption on the part of the advocates of orthodoxy , that whoever differs from them does so from an indisposition to believe what is clearly taught in Scripture . The first impulse which was given in Germany towards a better interpretation of the New Testament , was by the translation of the works of Benson , Peirce , Hallett , Sykes , and others ; men so far from deciding what was or was not

    fit to be revealed by God or believed by man , that they are remarkable for carefully illustrating Scripture by Scripture , and deducing its meaning from this comparison ; and had Semler and others only confined themselves to the path thus pointed out , they never would have been led to that wild extreme of-scepticism which some of them have reached . A man may borrow from Hume , or any other philosopher , the principle , that no miraculous event is credible , and then , like Ammon or Wagscheider , deny the miraculous part of the gospel altogether , or , like Paulus , resolve it into natural occurrences ;

    in the first case he abandons biblical criticism altogether ; in the other , as the event has shewn , he will bring much more ridicule on himself than injury on the cause of Revelation by the forced interpretations and arbitrary suppo ^ sitions which he will be compelled to make . The name of rational ^ when applied to the principles by which the evidence of revelation is investigated and the interpretation by which its doctrines are discovered , and not to a

    system preconceived and forced upon the language of Scripture , imports nothing blameable ; and the use of it as a term of reproach indicates a secret consciousness that the system we hold cannot stand this test Mr , Rose does not indeed , in words , deny the right of every man to apply his reason to his religious belief ; on the contrary , he professes to invite such an application ( p . 6 v ); but if any one makes the experiment and differs ever so little from him in the result , then he turns round on him and charges him with an undue confidence in his reason . *

    The extravagances of theological speculation which have been exhibited in Germany , let them be rated as high as Mr . Rose pleases , are no more than the natural consequence of the ardour with which the study has been pursued there . What branch of knowledge , which admitted at all of hypothesis , has ever made a rapid progress , and engaged a number of powerful minds in its pursuit , without producing many crude speculations , which excited the ridicule or perhaps the horror of those who did not reflect that " opinion is but knowledge in the making" ? Who would hesitate between absolute

    Among the opinions which tend to undermine the authority of Scripture , Mr . R . mentions , p . 128 , that of the existence of errors of astronomy , instancing the miracle of Joshua x . 12 , 13 . Now , if he really believes that the sun stood still at Joshua ' s command , he must suppose that it was previously in motion . Would he then have the Copernican system taught at Cambridge , as by the Jesuits , only as an hypothesis ? Or does he take the passage in some other than a literal sense , and thus exercise that privilege himself which he so vehemently inveighs against others for using ? After all , how can the interests of Revelation require that we should maintain the inspiration of the unknown author of the poetical book of Jasher ?

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    50 Review . *^ Rose's Discourses on the State of Religion in Germany .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1827, page 50, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1792/page/50/