allow his prejudices or his
pleasure to tempt him to some colouring or distortion of it. Hence the
portions of sacred history which have been the constant subjects of
fond popular contemplation have, in the lapse of ages, been encumbered
with fictitious detail; and their various historians seem to have
considered the exercise of their imagination innocent, and even
meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception
or the sincerity of belief in their readers. A due consideration of
that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a
statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and
circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with
some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the
cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who
thought the acceptance of their general statements of Christian
doctrine cheaply won by the help of some simple (and generally absurd)
inventions of detail respecting the life of the Virgin or the
Apostles.

[Footnote 7: Notes to Rogers' _Italy_.]

Indeed, I can hardly imagine the Bible to be ever read with true
interest, unless, in our reading, we feel some longing for further
knowledge of the minute incidents of the life of Christ,--for some
records of those things, which "if they had been written every one,"
the world could not have contained the books that should be written:
and they who have once felt this thirst for further truth, may surely
both conceive and pardon the earnest questioning of simple disciples
(who knew not, as we do, how much had been indeed revealed), and
measure with some justice the strength of the temptation which
betrayed these teachers into adding to the word of Revelation.
Together with this specious and subtle influence, we must allow for
the instinct of imagination exerting itself in the acknowledged
embellishment of beloved truths. If we reflect how much, even in this
age of accurate knowledge, the visions of Milton have become confused
in the minds of many persons with scriptural facts, we shall rather be
surprised, that in an age of legends so little should be added to the
Bible, than that occasionally we should be informed of important
circumstances in sacred history with the collateral warning, "This
Moses spake not of."[8]

[Footnote 8: These words are gravely added to some singular
particulars respecting the life of Adam, related in a MS. of the
sixteenth cent