ny, therefore, the inspiration of
this profound writer, of which there is no proof, and we have his
own authority against the conclusiveness of his own arguments; since
he confesses that by their cogency alone they are insufficient to
produce conviction in opposition to our just and natural conceptions
of the righteous character of God.

Let us not, therefore, crouch with timid servility to great names.
The opinions of men of erudition, and genius, and holy zeal for
religion, are to be examined with modest deference, but not to be
received with implicit credulity. In the most enlightened and holy
men, who, since the decease of the apostles, have served God and his
Christ; in the fathers of the ancient Church; in those who headed
the Protestant Reformation, and lived as saints, or died as martyrs;
in Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, we discover humiliating proofs of
imperfection and fallibility. And, while the fundamental truths of
Christianity have been preserved in the Catholic Church, those
truths have been mingled or associated with errors so injurious and
degrading, that no blind faith is to be rested on any _human
authority_. Let us uphold the majesty of divine revelation, and
vindicate our right and our duty to interpret the sacred page--not
by the traditions of fallible men, not by the metaphysics of the
schools, not by the "special influences" which an enthusiastic mind
may construe into divine teaching, and which may be pleaded, with
equal truth or falsehood, for every form of error; but by a sober
reference to those moral perfections of the Deity, and to those
essential attributes of human nature, the knowledge of which lies at
the foundation of all sound religious belief. These are to be
learned from the Scriptures, and are the key to their right
interpretation.

Edwards, incomparably the most able advocate of Calvinism, since the
days of the reformer himself, is not a solitary example of the way
in which a zealous pleader may, unwarily, betray and weaken his own
cause.

Mr. Scott, in his "force of truth," gives an account of his own
conversion to Calvinism not very dissimilar to that of Edwards, and
not in any degree more honourable to the cause he proposes to
defend. The argument of that work may be summed up in few words. Mr.
Scott entertained a great dislike of Calvinistic doctrines. He
rejected the evidence by which they were supported, as being
insufficient to establish a creed which appeared to him