Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit | Page 8

Christian admit
as coercive in the final decision, but the declarations of the Book
itself--though I should not, without struggles, and a trembling
reluctance, gainsay even a universal tradition?
I return to the Book. With a full persuasion of soul respecting all the
articles of the Christian Faith, as contained in the first four classes, I
receive willingly also the truth of the history, namely, that the Word of
the Lord did come to Samuel, to Isaiah, to others; and that the words
which gave utterance to the same are faithfully recorded. But though
the origin of the words, even as of the miraculous acts, be supernatural,
yet the former once uttered, the latter once having taken their place
among the phenomena of the senses, the faithful recording of the same
does not of itself imply, or seem to require, any supernatural working,
other than as all truth and goodness are such. In the books of Moses,
and once or twice in the prophecy of Jeremiah, I find it indeed asserted
that not only the words were given, but the recording of the same
enjoined by the special command of God, and doubtless executed under
the special guidance of the Divine Spirit. As to all such passages,
therefore, there can be no dispute; and all others in which the words
are by the sacred historian declared to have been the Word of the Lord
supernaturally communicated, I receive as such with a degree of
confidence proportioned to the confidence required of me by the writer
himself, and to the claims he himself makes on my belief.
Let us, therefore, remove all such passages, and take each book by
itself; and I repeat that I believe the writer in whatever he himself
relates of his own authority, and of its origin. But I cannot find any

such claim, as the doctrine in question supposes, made by these writers,
explicitly or by implication. On the contrary, they refer to other
documents, and in all points express themselves as sober- minded and
veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known to do. But
perhaps they bear testimony, the successor to his predecessor? Or
some one of the number has left it on record, that by special inspiration
HE was commanded to declare the plenary inspiration of all the rest?
The passages which can without violence be appealed to as
substantiating the latter position are so few, and these so
incidental--the conclusion drawn from them involving likewise so
obviously a petitio principii, namely, the supernatural dictation, word
by word, of the book in which the question is found (for, until this is
established, the utmost that such a text can prove is the current belief of
the writer's age and country concerning the character of the books then
called the Scriptures)-- that it cannot but seem strange, and assuredly
is against all analogy of Gospel revelation, that such a doctrine--which,
if true, must be an article of faith, and a most important, yea, essential
article of faith--should be left thus faintly, thus obscurely, and, if I may
so say, OBITANEOUSLY, declared and enjoined. The time of the
formation and closing of the Canon unknown;--the selectors and
compilers unknown, or recorded by known fabulists;--and (more
perplexing still) the belief of the Jewish Church--the belief, I mean,
common to the Jews of Palestine and their more cultivated brethren in
Alexandria (no reprehension of which is to be found in the New
Testament)-- concerning the nature and import of the [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced] attributed to the precious remains of their
Temple Library;--these circumstances are such, especially the last, as
in effect to evacuate the tenet, of which I am speaking, of the only
meaning in which it practically means anything at all tangible,
steadfast, or obligatory. In infallibility there are no degrees. The power
of the High and Holy One is one and the same, whether the sphere
which it fills be larger or smaller;--the area traversed by a comet, or
the oracle of the house, the holy place beneath the wings of the
cherubim;--the Pentateuch of the Legislator, who drew near to the
thick darkness where God was, and who spake in the cloud whence the
thunderings and lightnings came, and whom God answered by a voice;
or but a letter of thirteen verses from the affectionate ELDER TO THE

ELECT LADY AND HER CHILDREN, WHOM HE LOVED IN THE
TRUTH. But at no period was this the judgment of the Jewish Church
respecting all the canonical books. To Moses alone--to Moses in the
recording no less than in the receiving of the Law--and to all and every
part of the five books called the Books of Moses, the Jewish doctors of
the generation before, and coeval with, the apostles, assigned that
unmodified and absolute theopneusty