a lation, if any be extant in the world Divine revelation, which is, in other words, a discovery of some part of God's own knowledge made by God himself, notwithstanding that fallible men have been made the instruments of the communication must be perfectly free from all mixture of human ignorance and error, in the particular subject in which the discovery is made. The discovery may, and unless the powers of the human mind were infinite it cannot but be limited and partial; but as far as it extends, it must be accurate; for a false proposition, or a mistake, is certainly the very reverse of a discovery. In whatever relates therefore to religion, either in theory or practice, the knowledge of the sacred writers was infallible, as far as it extended; or their inspiration had been a mere pretence: And in the whole extent of that subject, faith must be renounced, or reason must submit implicitly to their oracular decisions. But in other subjects, not immediately connected with theology or morals, it is by no means certain that their minds were equally enlightened, or that they were even preserved from gross errors: It is certain, on the contrary, that the prophets and apostles might be sufficiently qualified for the task assigned them, to be teachers of that wisdom which "maketh wise unto salvation," although in the structure and mechanism of the material world they were less informed than Copernicus or Newton, and were less knowing than Harvey in the animal economy. Want of information and error of opinion in the profane sciences may, for any thing that appears to the contrary, be perfectly consistent with the plenary inspiration of a religious teacher; since it is not all knowledge, but religious knowledge only, that such a teacher is sent to propagate and improve. In subjects unconnected therefore with religion, no implicit regard is due to the opinion which an inspired writer may seem to have entertained, in preference to the clear evidence of experiment and observation, or to the necessary deduction of scientific reasoning from first principles intuitively perceived: Nor, on the other hand, is the authority of the inspired teacher lessened, in his proper province, by any symptoms that may appear in his writings of error or imperfect information upon other subjects. If it could be clearly proved (which, I take it, hath never yet been done,) against any one of the inspired writers, that he entertained opinions in any physical subject which the accurate researches of later times have refuted,—that the earth, for instance, is at rest in the centre of the planetary system; that fire is carried by a principle of positive levity towards the outside of the universe, -or that he had used expressions in which such notions were implied, I should think myself neither obliged, in deference to his acknowledged superiority in another subject, to embrace his erroneous physics, nor at liberty, on account of his want of information on these subjects, to reject or call in question any part of his religious doctrine. But though I admit the possibility of an inspired teacher's error of opinion in subjects which he is not sent to teach, (because inspiration is not omniscience, and some things there must be which it will leave untaught,)—though I stand in this point my own and every man's liberty; and for - protest against any obligation on the believer's conscience, to assent to a philosophical opinion incidentally expressed by Moses, by David, or by St. Paul, upon the authority of their infallibility in divine knowledge, though I think it highly for the honour and the interest of religion that this liberty of philosophizing, except upon religious subjects, should be openly asserted and most pertinaciously maintained, yet I confess it appears to me no very probable supposition, (and it is, as I conceive, a mere supposition, not yet confirmed by any one clear instance,) that an inspired writer should be permitted in his religious discourses to affirm a false proposition in any subject, or in any history to misrepresent a fact; so that I would not easily, nor indeed without the conviction of the most cogent proof, embrace any notion in philosophy, or attend to any historical relation, which should be evidently and in itself repugnant to an explicit assertion of any of the sacred writers. Their language too, notwithstanding the accommodation of it that might be expected, for the sake of the vulgar, to the notions of the vulgar, in points in which it - is of little importance that their erroneous notions should be immediately corrected, is, I believe, far more accurate ― more philosophically accurate, in its allusions, than is generally imagined. And this is a matter which, if sacred criticism comes to be more generally cultivated, will, I doubt not, be better understood: Meanwhile, any disagreement that hath been thought to subsist between the physics or the records of the Holy Scriptures and the late discoveries of experiment and observation, I take in truth to be nothing more than a disagreement between false conclusions drawn on both sides from true premises. It may have been the fault of divines to be too hasty to draw conclusions of their own from the doctrines of holy writ, which they presently confound with the divine doctrine itself, as if they made a part of it; and it hath been the fault of natural philosophers to be no less hasty to build conjectures upon facts discovered, which they presently confound with the discoveries themselves,-although they are not confirmed by any experiments yet made, and are what a fuller interpretation |