in the New Testament. We must compare what is decidedly the part of God, with what appears to be the part of man. The facts on the one hand, were established in the last lecture. The books are given by divine inspiration, as we have abundantly proved. They are the words of the Holy Ghost; they are the infallible standard of truth; no intermixture whatever of human frailty or mistake is to be found in the communication they make to us of Christianity. These are the facts on one side of the case-few, prominent, decisive. This is the part of God.

In order to collect the phenomena on the other side, let us open the New Testament again. We see, on the very face of the whole, that the writers speak naturally, use the style, language, manner of address familiar to them. There are peculiar casts of talents, expression, modes of reasoning in each author. The language is that of the country and age where they lived. They employ all their faculties, they search, examine, weigh, reason, as holy and sincere men, in such a cause, might be supposed to do. They use all their natural and acquired knowledge; their memory furnishes them with facts, or the documents and authentic records of the time are consulted by them for information. They plead with those to whom they are sent, they address the heart,

they expostulate, they warn, they invite. The mind of man is working every where. In the historical books, the evangelists follow their own trains of recollection. They relate incidents as they struck them, or were reported to them. In the devotional and epistolary books, again, natural talent, appropriate feelings and judgment, the peculiarities of the individual are manifest. Once more, St. Luke preserves his characteristic manner in the gospel and the Acts; St. Paul is always the same; St. John may be known in his several productions. Lastly, the prophetical parts are more elevated; and yet breathe the spirit, and retain the peculiar phraseology of the writers. These are the phenomena on the other side; these are the part of man. The facts are numerous, and might be multiplied with every fresh perusal of the sacred books.

The two classes constitute the opposite, and apparently contradictory facts of the case. The books are divine, and yet they are human. They are infallible, and yet indited by mortals like ourselves. They are the word of God, and yet the word of man.

2. By tracing, however, the inward structure of the books further, we perceive that the plan and method of the divine inspiration reconciles all these appearances, and subserves

the most important practical purposes. We find that it unites the two classes of phenomena, the plenary influences of the Almighty Spirit, and the free and natural exertion of the characteristic faculties of the writers. Instead of addressing us immediately, God is pleased to use men as his instruments. Instead of speaking to us severally by an independent revelation, he has consigned his will to us at once in the holy scriptures. Instead of making known that will in the language of angels, or by the skill of poets and philosophers, he has been pleased to choose the unlettered apostles and evangelists. And, instead of using these as mere organic instruments of his power, he has thought right to leave them to the operations of their own minds, and the dictates of their own knowledge, habits, and feelings, as to the manner of communicating his will. This plan reconciles every thing. The divine Spirit guarded the sacred penmen when they would otherwise have gone astray, superintended and watched over every step of their progress, suggested by direct discoveries what lay beyond the reach of their means of knowledge, and directed them to every topic, which to his infinite wisdom appeared necessary upon the whole, for the instruction of the church, and the conversion of mankind. Thus, on the one hand, the inspira

tion did not supersede, but support, elevate, and direct them in the use of their natural faculties, of their stores of knowledge, of their experience and observation, and their efforts of recollection and reasoning. The human agency, on the other hand, did not weaken or defeat the supernatural communications; but conveyed them to men, moulded by the conceptions, and expressed in the words of common life. The facts of the case by no means imply that man mingled his frailties and errors with the revealed truths of Christianity; but, simply, that God was pleased to use man as his instrument. The human agency was subordinate to the divine. The Almighty Spirit moved and gently led on; the holy penmen followed the guidance. God inspired; man indited and wrote. The wisdom of the Creator sustained the weakness of the creature. The books therefore are both human and divine, without commixture or inconsistency-divine, as to the matter; human, as to the manner-divine, as to the supernatural tendency and direction; human, as to the means employed-divine, as to the revelation; human, as to the instruments-the word of God as to the doctrine; the word of man as to the channel of conveyance.

The masterly language of Warburton may, with one exception, be adopted, as well express

ing the method of the divine conduct.

pens

I say

with one exception, for he strangely admits that some errors may have been allowed to fall from the of the sacred writers; probably referring to matters not connected with the revelation. But the admission is quite inconsistent with the express language of the sacred books on the subject.

The Holy Spirit," says he, "so directed the pens of these writers, that no considerable error should fall from them, by enlightening them with his immediate influence in such matters as were necessary for the instruction of the church; and which either through ignorance or prejudice they would otherwise have represented imperfectly, partially, or falsely; and by preserving them by the more ordinary means of providence from any mistake of consequence, concerning those things whereof they had acquired a competent knowledge by the common way of information. In a word, by watching over them incessantly; but with so suspended a hand as permitted the use, and left them to the guidance of their own faculties, while they kept clear of error; and then only interposing, when, without this assistance, they would have been in danger of falling."

On the whole, all is clear, if we keep to the

1 Warburton's Doctrine of Grace, 1. 1, c. vii.