ade their efforts to keep people from doubt and unbelief
unavailing. They, in truth, made unbelief or infidelity to consist in
something in which it did not consist, and made people think they were
infidels when they were no such thing. If they had given up all that was
erroneous with regard to the Bible, and undertaken the defence of
nothing but what was true, they might both have convinced the honest
skeptic, and strengthened the faith of Christians. But they undertook to
defend the false, and to assail the true, and the consequence was, they
were beaten, and the cause which they sought to serve was injured.

John Wesley says, that the way to drive the doctrine of Christian
perfection, or 'true holiness,' out of the world, is to place it too
high,--to make it consist in something that is beyond man's power. And
the way to drive the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the
Scriptures out of the world, is to give the doctrine a form which the
Scriptures themselves do not give it,--to change it from a truth into an
error,--to teach that divine inspiration produces effects which it does
not produce,--that it imparts qualities which it does not impart, and
which the Scriptures themselves do not exhibit.

And this is what many defenders of the Bible do. And this is one great
cause both of the increase of infidelity, and of the confidence of its
disciples.

It is impossible to prove the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the
Bible, as that doctrine is defined by many religious writers. It is not
true. And those who attempt to prove that the Bible is such a book, as
these false theological theories of divine inspiration would require it
to be, must always be beaten, in a fair fight, with an able and
well-informed infidel opponent. The man who contends that the Bible is
all that certain old theories of inspiration require it to be, fights
against plain facts, and even his friends will often see and feel that
he has not succeeded. He may say a many fine things, a many good things,
a many great things, a many glorious things about the Bible, and they
may all be true: and he may say a many bad things, a many horrible
things against infidelity, and they too may be true. And his friends may
see and feel that, on the whole, he is substantially right, and that the
infidel is essentially wrong. They may see and feel that on the
Christian side is all that is good, and true, and holy; and that on the
infidel side is a world of dar