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    natural man with the faculty of acquiring it ; while Assyria represents the reasoning powers . * To prove all this , Mr . Noble informs us , would require a separate consideration of all the passages in which these three countries are mentioned . ; and he invites his readers , for their own satisfaction , to enter into this examination . We are very doubtful whether many of them will admit that such a probable case has been made out as will justify him in making so large a demand upon their time and patience .

    The following remarks on the important and knotty question , how it happens that there are just four Evangelists , may be taken as no bad specimen of the strange vagaries into which a man may be seduced when he gives the reins to his fancy , under the influence of this analogical system . But we must here allow the author to present his ideas in his own words ; no others can do them justice . " Perhaps , also , in agreement with that unvarying constancy with which all

    the divine operations follow fixed laws , there may be some divine law which rendered it necessary that the Gospels should neither be fewer nor more than four : indeed , if inspiration be allowed to them , such must be the fact ; since it were a contradiction in terms to affirm , that Divine Inspiration produced the exact number of four Gospels by chance . It is somewhat remarkable , that we read respecting the ' river which went out of Eden to water the garden / that " ' from thence it was parted , and became into four heads : ' * and it seems possible that the coincidence was not unintentional , which was noticed

    b y an ancient father , that * there were / bwr Evangelists , four rivers of Paradise , four corners and four rings to the ark of the covenant ; 'f not that the first of these circumstances was the cause of the others , nor even that the others were provided to form types of the first , but that they all ovyed their origin to the same general principle;—that the same law regulating the descent of divine things into nature , governed the one circumstance as the others . Now , what could the rivers of Paradise represent , but the streams of

    truth and wisdom which nourished the mind of man in his paradisiacal state ? And why were there four of them , but because that number expresses fulness and abundance ? for it is a number which is used in reference to the four quarters of the world , —the east , west , north , and south , —in connexion with which it is frequently mentioned in the Scriptures ; J and while each of these , singly , refers to some specific quality , the four together manifestly stand for the whole . So , if the four rivers of Paradise , together , were representative of the truth and wisdom , in all their fulness ana abundance , which , in the

    primeval ages , animated and endowed the human mind , each of them must have been the symbol of some general class of these graces . What this is , is discoverable from the import , in the language of analogy , of the four quarters , from which the number four draws its signification of fulness . The east , being considered as the seat of the sun , represents much the same as the sun does , —a state of love , and of the illumination immediately proceeding from love in its highest intensity ; and the west is the same general state in a

    lower degree : so the south is expressive of a state of intelligence , with its attendant charity , in the highest brightness ; and the north of the same as verging towards obscurity . Thus the east and west , and the south and north , are to each other , respectively , as the internal and external of one general principle . If the cardinal points did not bear , in the language of analogy which is that of the Word of God , some such meaning , would they be so frequently noticed in that word ; and this even in its prophecies and visions ?§

    * Gen . ii . 10 . f Jerome , apud Lardner , Vol . XII . p . 82 , " X st As when John ' saw four angels standing on the four comers of the earth , holding the four winds of the earth , * Rev . vii , 1 . " § " Sec Ezekiel ' s vision of the New Temple , in ' the last nine chapters of ^ book , and John ' s of the New Jerusalem , Rev . xxi . For the general frequency with which the quartern are mentioned , see a Concordance /*

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    Review . —Noble on the Inspiration of the Scriptures . 529

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  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 529, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/57/