] But they are full of
errors, which we must leave for the supremacy of pure Reason to
dissipate forever.[45]

We cannot forbear to give Wegscheider's testimony on the scanty measure
of Scriptural credibility and authority in his own words. "But whatever
narrations," he says, "especially accommodated to a certain age and
relating miracles and mysteries, are united with the history and
subject-matter of revelation of this kind, these ought to be referred to
the natural sources and true nature of human knowledge. By how much the
more clearly the author of the Christian religion, not without the help
of Deity, exhibited to men the ideas of reason imbued with true
religion, so as to represent, as it were, a reflection of the divine
reason, or the divine spirit, by so much the more diligently ought man
to strive to approach as nearly as possible to form that archetype in
the mind, and to study to imitate it in life and manners to the utmost
of his ability. Behold here the intimate and eternal union and agreement
of Christianity with Rationalism.... The various modes of supernatural
revelation mentioned in many places of the sacred books, are to be
referred altogether to the notions and mythical narrations of every
civilized people; and this following the suggestion of the Holy
Scripture itself, and therefore to be attributed, as any events in the
nature of things, to the laws of nature known to us. As to theophanies,
the sight of the infinite Deity is expressly denied: John i. 18--1 John
iv. 12--1 Tim. vi. 16. Angelophanies, which the Jews of a later date
substituted for the appearances of God himself, like the narrations of
the appearances of demons found amongst many nations, are plainly
destitute of certain historic proofs; and the names, species, and
commissions attributed to angels in the sacred books, plainly betray
their Jewish origin. The business transacted by angels on earth is
little worthy of such ministers.... The persuasion concerning the truth
of that supernatural revelation, which rests on the testimony of the
sacred volume of the Old and New Testaments, like every opinion of the
kind, labors under what is commonly called a _petitio principii_."

The Bible is, in fact, of no more authority and entitled to no further
credence than any other book. It is not worth more, as an historical
record, than an old chronicle of Indian, Greek, or Roman legends.[46]
The evangelists did not get their accounts of the doings