Gospel, but so to commit the same to their successors that they too might be able to teach others P. Like their Lord and Master, they were examples as well as teachers-examples to future teachers and guides of the Church-and the wisdom of God may be reasonably supposed to have directed them to do, as their Lord had done, many things that were needful, not so much for themselves, as for a pattern to us.

§. 5. Modifications arising from the character of the Mosaic institution.

ENOUGH, perhaps, has now been stated to enable us to conclude, that the test of infallible authority in Scripture, (viz. its reference to God or his appointments,) is applicable to all the various kinds of composition of which the Bible is made up-to its history, and to its doctrinal instruction, as well as to that portion which I have not thought it necessary particularly to notice its unfulfilled prophecy. It is plain, too, that this test is applicable, whether the author is P 2 Tim. ii. 2.

merely asserting, or obtains his conclusion by a process of reasoning; whether he is expounding events, or fixing the application of any prophecy.

Of this general statement there is, however, one obvious modification. It arises from the fulfilment of some portions of the Mosaic law, and the abrogation of others—the fulfilment of those directions which had a prophetic meaning, the annulment of those which related to the Jews as a civil society, and which were inspired indeed, and of infallible authority to them, but have lost that authority now by the Law becoming merged in the Gospel. So obvious an exception might seem hardly to require a specific notice, were it not notorious how often it has been denied or overlooked. The scruples of numbers in the Church for many centuries respecting the obligation to observe portions of the ceremonial law are well known; nor have the civil ordinances of the Israelites been exempt from being confounded, by a like misplaced respect, with the eternal and universal laws of the God of Israel. The command to provide for the Levites, by setting apart a tithe of the produce of the country, has scarcely yet ceased to be insisted on by some, as applicable

to the mode of maintaining the ministers of religion in all ages. It may be said, however, that this ordinance partook more of a religious than of a civil character. The influence of the law against usury, therefore, is an illustration more to the purpose; and it is one which I mention more especially, because it gives me occasion to notice two remarkable instances, in which, as in the declaration of the French editors of the Principia, an attempt to extend the authority of religion to matters out of its province, has subjected it to a contemptuous compliment, really more injurious to it than open insult and blasphemy. In a statute passed during the reign of James the First, for regulating the rate of interest-in other words, for legalizing that, which was illegal according to the Law of Moses-it was thought necessary to introduce a clause, disavowing any intention of sanctioning usury in opposition to the word of God. The other instance, to which I allude, is one of more modern date. Mr. Neckar, in his Eloge on Colbert, makes the following amende to the authority of Scripture, for having denied the justice and expediency of usury laws; " Ce que je

dis de l'interêt est sons un point de vue politique, et n'a point de rapport avec les respectables maximes de la religion sur ce point."

§. 6. Cautions respecting the application of the
foregoing views.

Ir is further important to bear in mind, that the principle, which excludes any portion of Scripture from the claim to infallibility, is not that the subject is profane history, or natural philosophy-the actions and motives of man, or the laws and phænomena of the universe-but that the assertion respecting these points involves no religious view. It does not, accordingly, authorize us to attribute to natural causes any apparently natural event or phænomenon, which an inspired author has represented as miraculous, on the ground that the subject lies out of the sphere of his inspiration. The very circumstance of an inspired author attributing any result to miraculous interference, constitutes the subject forthwith religious, and obliges us to recognise such a spiritual superintendence as must have given infallibility to his assertions. The sacred writer

may, without any disparagement to his inspired character, be supposed to have mistaken one natural cause for another; but to imagine him capable of representing a natural cause in the light of a miracle, or a miracle in the light of a natural cause, confounds and overthrows the view of inspiration as an infallible guide; and is inconsistent with such a superintending divine agency as has been asserted for all Scripture. Suppose, for example, the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites could be fully explained by some theory of the ebbing and flowing of its tides; this ought not, in the slightest degree, to affect our belief that the Israelites passed, and the Egyptians were drowned, by a miracle: because in the Scripture narrative the scene is described as miraculous'. Suppose it ascertained that the desert, through which the Israelites wandered, yields naturally a substance, which can almost be identified with the manna on which they subsisted; the assertion of Scripture, that it was through God's extraordinary interference that they were supplied with it, obliges us to attribute the

Exodus xiv. 21-31.