I followed the commentaries of Origen, of'--five or
six different persons, who turned out mostly to be heretics before
Jerome had quite done with them, in coming years, 'And to confess the
honest truth to you,' continues Jerome, 'I read all that, and after
having crammed my head with a great many things, I sent for my
amanuensis, and dictated to him, now my own thoughts, now those of
others, without much recollecting the order, nor sometimes the words,
nor even the sense'! In another place, (in the book itself further
on[38]) he says, 'I do not myself write; I have an amanuensis, and I
dictate to him what comes into my mouth. If I wish to reflect a little,
or to say the thing better, or a better thing, he knits his brows, and
the whole look of him tells me sufficiently that he cannot endure to
wait.' Here is a sacred old gentleman whom it is not safe to depend upon
for interpreting the Scriptures,--thinks her Majesty, but does not say
so,--leaving Father Vota to his reflections." Alas, no, Queen Sophie,
neither old St. Jerome's, nor any other human lips nor mind, may be
depended upon in that function; but only the Eternal Sophia, the Power
of God and the Wisdom of God: yet this you may see of your old
interpreter, that he is wholly open, innocent, and true, and that,
through such a person, whether forgetful of his author, or hurried by
his scribe, it is more than probable you may hear what Heaven knows to
be best for you; and extremely improbable you should take the least
harm,--while by a careful and cunning master in the literary art,
reticent of his doubts, and dexterous in his sayings, any number of
prejudices or errors might be proposed to you acceptably, or even
fastened in you fatally, though all the while you were not the least
required to confide in his inspiration.

[Footnote 38: 'Commentary on the Galatians,' Chap. iii.]

48. For indeed, the only confidence, and the only safety which in such
matters we can either hold or hope, are in our own desire to be rightly
guided, and willingness to follow in simplicity the guidance granted.
But all our conceptions and reasonings on the subject of inspiration
have been disordered by our habit, first of distinguishing falsely--or
at least needlessly--between inspiration of words and of acts; and
secondly by our attribution of inspired strength or wisdom to some
persons or some writers only, instead of to the whole body of believers,
in so far as they are partakers of th