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Untitled Article
There is in this work a considerable display of imagination and eloquence , and occasionally a good deal of acuteness ; and yet it abounds throughout with extraordinary specimens of weak and inconclusive reasoning . In fact , the whole argument , as far as the doctrine of the book is founded upon argument at all , seems to proceed on one continued assumption of the main point in debate . The author begins with assuming that we are entitled to
expect that a book professing to communicate a divine revelation , should bear in every page and every sentence the marks of its divine original . He then represents the unbeliever as founding an argument on the alleged discrepancy between this anticipation and what we actually meet with in the Bible . And the argument would be a good one if the premises were admitted ; but they are assumed without any good ground , without necessity , and without evidence . They imply a species of concession to the unbeliever which involves the Christian advocate in insurmountable difficulties ,
and utterly destroys the argument for the reality of those historical facts on which the truth of our religion depends . This argument is founded on the same general principles which regulate all human testimony , applied to those records in which we persuade ourselves that we have these facts attested by human witnesses . It is conceded that the truth of revelation requires us to maintain the existence in the sacred writings of such a species of inspiration as implies a complete accordance of statement in every the minutest
particular . As this is glaringly inconsistent with acknowledged facts , so long as we adhere to the literal interpretation , we are called upon to resort to a spiritual or mystical sense , which is in fact a mere hypothesis , utterly devoid of any direct authority from Scripture itself , and unsupported by any kind of evidence except the solution which it affords , or is supposed to afford , of this imaginary difficulty . It is scarcely necessary to observe , that the sceptic would call for some independent proof of this hypothesis , and finding none , would reject it at once , and with it those Scriptures to whose authority its reception was alleged to be essential .
In order to establish the system of spiritual interpretation , which is to remove all the difficulties in the way of the doctrine of plenary inspiration , we are told , ( p . 135 , ) that the universe is , as the author expresses it , an outbirth from the Deity , and consequently every thing which it contains , especially the spiritual part of the creation , must bear a relation to him . Now , there are two leading attributes in the Divine Nature , Infinite Love and
Infinite Wisdom , and hence we are to look for a Constant reference to these two attributes in his word , his works , and his providence . Thus , in the first chapter of Genesis , God is recorded to have said , " Let us make man in our image and after our likeness . " Thia double form of expression points to two different things in whkh man is said to resemble his Maker , and accordingly he is formed with two distinct faculties , understanding and will , ( such are our author's metaphysics , ) corresponding to and designed for the reception of these two leading attributes . ( P . 138 . )
Throughout the whole of the creation , similar duplicities , corresponding to these same two leading attributes , are , it is said , to be met with . Thus what the will and understanding are to the mind , the heart and lungs , we are told , are to the body . Again , the body iteelf is made up of two principal constituent materials , flasfo and blood . The same analogy may be traced throughout all nature . " The terraqueous globe consists , iti like manner , of two getieral parts , earth and water ; indeed it would be difficult to find any thing through the whole circuit of creation which w not « omposed of two principal' constituent parts / ' ( P . 14 & . ) Thm tendency to a
Untitled Article
526 Review . —Noble on the Inspiration of the Scriptures .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 526, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/54/
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