ed," says he, "the twenty-two sacred books of the Old Testament," he adds, that "they wrote after the pneusty (or inspiration) which comes from God.* And the Jewish Philosopher, Philo,† himself contemporary with Josephus, in the account of his Embassy to the Emperor Caligula, using likewise a term very similar to St. Paul's, calls the Scriptures theochristic oracles; that is, oracles given under the anointing of God." Theopneusty is not a system, but a fact. As all the other events of the history of Redemption, this fact, attested by the Holy Scriptures, is one of the doctrines of our faith.

At the same time, it should be distinctly observed that this miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit had not for its object the sacred writers, who were only his instruments, and who were soon to pass away; but its object was the sacred books themselves, which were destined to reveal to the Church from age to age, the counsels of God, and which shall never pass away.

The influence which was exercised upon these men, and which they themselves were conscious of in very different degrees, has never been defined to us. Nothing authorizes us to explain it. The Scriptures themselves have never presented to us its mode nor its measure as an object of study. They speak of it always incidentally; they never connect our piety with it. That alone which they propose as the object of our faith is the inspiration of their word; is the divinity of their books; between these they make no difference. Their word, say they, is theopneustic; their books are of God, whether they recount the mysteries of a past anterior to the creation, or those of a future posterior to the return of the Son of Man; the eternal counsels of the most High, the secrets of the human heart, or the deep things of God; whether they give utterance to their own emotions or record their own recol* Κατά τὴν ἐπιπνοιαν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ. †P. 1022. edit. Frankf.

† Θέοχρηστα λόγια.

lections, relate cotemporaneous events, copy genealogies or make extracts from inspired documents; their writings are inspired; their statements are directed by heaven; it is always God who speaks, who relates, ordains or reveals by their mouth, and who, to accomplish it, employs their personality in different degrees. For "the Spirit of the Lord was upon them, and his word upon their tongue." And if it is always the word of man, because it is always men who utter it, it is likewise always the word of God, for it is always God that superintends, guides and employs them. They give their narrations, their doctrines, or their precepts, "not with the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but with the words which the Holy Spirit teacheth." And it is thus that God has constituted himself not only the voucher of all these facts, the author of all these orders, and the revealer of all these truths, but that also he has caused them to be given to the Church in the precise order, measure and terms which he has judged most conducive to his heavenly design.

If then we are asked how this theopneustic work was accomplished in the men of God? we should reply, that we do not know, and that we are not to know, and that it is in the same ignorance, and in a perfectly similar faith, that we receive the doctrine of the regeneration or sanctification of a soul by the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Spirit illumines this soul, purifies it, quickens it, consoles it, softens it; we recognize all these effects; we know and we adore their cause; but we consent to a perpetual ignorance of the means. Thus let it be then with Theop

neusty.

And if we were still asked to say at least, what these men of God experienced in their organs, in their will, or in their understanding, whilst they were inscribing the sacred pages, we should reply, that the powers of inspiration were not felt in the same degree by each of them, and that their

experiences were not uniform; but we should add that the knowledge of this is almost indifferent to the interests of our faith, for that is concerned with the book and not with the men. (It is the book that is inspired, and totally so. This assurance is sufficient for us,

Three classes of men, in these latter days, without disavowing the divinity of Christianity, and without pretending to decline the authority of the Scriptures, have considered themselves justifiable in rejecting this doctrine.

The one class has been totally ignorant, even of the existence of this action of the Holy Spirit; others have denied its universality; others again its plenitude.

The first, as Schleiermacher,* Dewette,† and many other German theologians, reject all miraculous inspiration, and attribute to the sacred writers only what Cicero attributes to the poets; afflatum spiritus divini, "a divine action of nature, an interior power like the other vital forces of nature."

Others, like Michaelis,‡ and as formerly, Theodore of Mopsuesta, while fully admitting the existence of an inspiration, is unwilling to acknowledge it, for more than a part of the holy books; for the first of the fourth evangelist for example, for a part of the epistles, for a part of Moses, a part of Isaiah, a part of Daniel. These portions of the Scriptures, say they, are from God, the others from men.

The third class, as Mr. Twesten in Germany, and as many theologians in England § extend, it is true, the notion of a theopneusty to all parts of the Bible, but not to all equally, (nicht gleichmässig.)—Inspiration, according to them, is indeed universal, but unequal; often imperfect; accompanied by innocent errors ; and extended, according * Schleiermacher der christliche glaube, Band 1, S. 115. †Dewette; Lehrbuch Anmerk. Twesten: Voslesungen über die Dogmatik, tome 1, p. 424, &c. Michaelis, Introd, to N. T. § Drs. Pye Smith, Dick, Wilson.

to the nature of the passages, to very different degrees, of which they constitute themselvesmore or less the judges.

Many of them, especially in England, have divided inspiration into four kinds-inspiration of superintendence, by which the sacred authors have been constantly preserved from grave errors, in every thing which relates to faith and spiritual life; inspiration of elevation, by which the Divine Spirit, in raising the thoughts of the men of God to the purest regions of truth, has indirectly impressed the same characters of holiness and grandeur on their words; inspiration of direction, under the more powerful action of which, the sacred authors were guided by God both as to the selection and rejection of topics and thoughts; finally, inspiration of suggestion. Here, they say, all the thoughts and even the words, were given by God through a still more direct and energetic operation of his Spirit.

"Theopneusty," says Mr. Twesten, "doubtless extends even to the words, but only when the choice or employment of them is connected with the interior religious life; for," he adds, 66 we must make distinctions in this respect, between the Old and New Testaments, between the law and the gospel, between history and prophecy, between narratives and doctrines, between the apostles and their apostolic aids."

All these distinctions, we consider fanciful; the Bible does not authorize them; the Church of the first eight centuries of the Christian era knew nothing of them; and we must regard them as erroneous and injurious.

Our object, in this book, is to prove, in opposition to these three systems, the existence, universality and fulness of inspiration.

Our first inquiry is, whether the Scriptures were divinely and miraculously inspired. We affirm it. Then we inquire, whether the parts of the Scriptures which are inspired, are so, equally and entirely; or, in other words;

whether God has provided, in a definite though mysterious manner, that the very words of the holy book should always be what they ought to be, and should be free from error. This we affirm. Finally, we inquire whether the whole Bible, or only a part, is thus inspired. We affirm this kind and degree of inspiration of all the Scriptures; the historical books as well as the prophecies, the Epistles as well as the Psalms, the gospels of Mark and Luke as well as those of John and Matthew; the history of Paul's shipwreck in the Adriatic Sea, as well as that of the shipwreck of the Ancient world; the scenes of Mamre under Abraham's tent, as those of the days of Christ in the eternal tents; the prophetic prayers where the Messiah, a thousand years before his advent, exclaimed in the Psalms; "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? They pierced my hands and feet; they cast lots for my garment ;" as well as the narrative of the same events by St. John, St. Mark, St. Luke, or St. Matthew.

In other words, we aim to establish by the word of God -that the Scriptures are from God-that all the Scriptures are from God-and that every part of the Scriptures is from God.

At the same time, we would be understood in making this assertion. In maintaining that all the Bible is from God, we are far from thinking that this excludes man. We shall illustrate this point more clearly hereafter, but we deem it necessary to allude to it in this connection. Every word of the Bible is as really from man, as it is from God. In a certain sense, the Epistle to the Romans is entirely a letter of Paul; and in a still higher sense, the Epistle to the Romans is entirely a letter from God. Pascal might have dictated one of his Provincial letters to a mechanic of Clermont, and another to the Abbess of Port Royal. Would the first have been any less Pascalian than the other? Surely not. The great Newton, when