The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 2/Chapter 8

by Theodore Parker

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NATURAL-RELIGIOUS VIEW, OR SPIRITUALISM.

This theory teaches that there is a natural supply for spiritual as well as for corporeal wants; that there is a connection between God and the Soul, as between light and the eye, sound and the ear, food and the palate, truth and the intellect, beauty and the imagination; that as we follow an instinctive tendency, obey the body's law, get a natural supply for its wants, attain health and strength, the body’s welfare; as we keep the law of the mind, and get a supply for its wants, attain wisdom and skill, the mind's welfare,—so if, following another instinctive tendency, we keep the law of the moral and religious faculties, we get a supply for their wants, moral and religious truth, obtain peace of conscience and rest for the soul the highest moral and religious welfare. It teaches that the world is not nearer to our bodies than God to the soul; “for in him we live and move, and have our being.” As we have bodily senses to lay hold on Matter and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain, naturally, all needed material things; so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on God, and supply spiritual wants; through them, we obtain all needed spiritual things. As we observe the conditions of the Body, we have Nature on our side; as we observe the Law of the Soul, we have God on our side. He imparts truth to all men who observe these conditions; we have direct access to Him, through Reason, Conscience, and the Religious Faculty, just as we have direct access to Nature, through the eye, the ear, or the hand. Through these channels, and by means of a law, certain, regular, and universal as gravitation, God inspires men, makes revelation of truth, for is not truth as much a phenomenon of God, as motion of Matter? Therefore if God be omnipresent and omniactive, this inspiration is no miracle, but a regular mode of God's action on conscious Spirit, as gravitation on unconscious Matter. It is not a rare condescension of God, but a universal uplifting of Man. To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not sent away, outside of himself to ancient documents, for the only rule of faith and practice; the Word is very nigh him, even in his heart, and by this Word he is to try all documents whatever. Inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, or Mahometans, but is coëxtensive with the race. As God fills all Space, so all Spirit; as he influences and constrains unconscious and necessitated Matter, so he inspires and helps free and conscious Man.

This theory does not make God limited, partial, or capricious. It exalts Man. While it honours the excellence of a religious genius, of a Moses or a Jesus, it does not pronounce their character monstrous, as the supernatural, nor fanatical, as the rationalistic theory; but natural, human, and beautiful, revealing the possibility of mankind. Prayer, whether voluntative or spontaneous, a word or a feeling, felt in gratitude or penitence, or joy, or resignation,—is not a soliloquy of the man, not a physiological function, nor an address to a deceased man; but a sally into the infinite spiritual world, whence we bring back light and truth. There are windows towards God, as towards the World. There is no intercessor, angel, mediator between Man and God; for Man can speak and God hear, each for himself. He requires no advocate to plead for men, who need not pray by attorney. Each man stands close to the omnipresent God; may feel his beautiful presence, and have familiar access to the All-Father; get truth at first hand from its Author. Wisdom, Righteousness, and Love, are the Spirit of God in the Soul of Man; wherever these are, and just in proportion to their power, there is inspiration from God. Thus God is not the author of confusion, but Concord; Faith, and Knowledge, and Revelation, and Reason tell the same tale, and so legitimate and confirm one another.^[1]

God's action on Matter and on Man is perhaps the same thing to Him, though it appear differently modified to us. But it is plain from the nature of things, that there can be but one kind of Inspiration, as of Truth, Faith, or Love: it is the direct and intuitive perception of some truth, either of thought or of sentiment. There can be but one mode of Inspiration: it is the action of the Highest within the soul, the divine presence imparting light; this presence as Truth, Justice, Holiness, Love, infusing itself into the soul, giving it new life; the breathing in of the Deity; the in-come of God to the Soul, in the form of Truth through the Reason, of Right through the Conscience, of Love and Faith through the Affections and Religious Element. Is Inspiration confined to theological matters alone? Most surely not. Is Newton less inspired than Simon Peter?^[2]

Now if the above views be true, there seems no ground for supposing, without historical proof, there are different kinds or modes of inspiration in different persons, nations, or ages, in Minos or Moses, in Gentiles or Jews, in the first century or the last. If God be infinitely perfect, He does not change; then his modes of action are perfect and unchangeable. The laws of Mind, like those of Matter, remain immutable and not transcended. As God has left no age nor man destitute, by nature, of Reason, Conscience, Affection, Soul, so he leaves none destitute of inspiration. It is, therefore, the light of all our being; the background of all human faculties; the sole means by which we gain a knowledge of what is not seen and felt; the logical condition of all sensual knowledge; our highway to the world of Spirit. Man cannot, more than Matter, exist without God. Inspiration then, like vision, must be everywhere the same thing in kind; however it differs in degree, from race to race, from man to man. The degree of inspiration must depend on two things: first, on the natural ability, the particular intellectual, moral, and religious endowment, or genius, wherewith each man is furnished by God; and next, on the use each man makes of this endowment. In one word, it depends on the man's Quantity of Being, and his Quantity of Obedience. Now as men differ widely in their natural endowments, and much more widely in the use and development thereof, there must of course be various degrees of inspiration, from the lowest sinner up to the highest saint. All men are not by birth capable of the same degree of inspiration; and by culture, and acquired character, they are still less capable of it. A man of noble intellect, of deep, rich, benevolent affections, is by his endowments capable of more than one less gifted. He that perfectly keeps the soul's law, thus fulfilling the conditions of inspiration, has more than he who keeps it imperfectly; the former must receive all his soul can contain at that stage of his growth. Thus it depends on a man's own will, in great measure, to what extent he will be inspired. The man of humble gifts at first, by faithful obedience may attain a greater degree than one of larger outfit, who neglects his talent. The Apostles of the New Testament, and the true Saints of all countries, are proofs of this. Inspiration, then, is the consequence of a faithful use of our faculties. Each man is its subject; God its source; Truth its only test. But as truth appears in various modes to us, higher and lower, and may be superficially divided, according to our faculties, into truths of the Senses, of the Understanding, of Reason, of Conscience, of the Affections, and the Soul, so the perception of truth in the highest mode, that of Reason, Morals, Philanthropy, Religion, is the highest inspiration. He, then, that has the most of Wisdom, Goodness, Religion, the most of Truth, in the highest modes, is the most inspired.

Now universal infallible inspiration can of course only be the attendant and result of a perfect fulfilment of all the laws of mind, of the moral, affectional, and religious nature; and as each man's faculties are limited, it is not possible to men. A foolish man, as such, cannot be inspired to reveal Wisdom; nor a wicked man to reveal Virtue; nor an impious man to reveal Religion. Unto him that hath, more is given. The poet reveals Poetry; the artist Art; the philosopher Science; the saint Religion. The greater, purer, loftier, more complete the character, so is the inspiration; for he that is true to Conscience, faithful to Reason, obedient to Religion, has not only the strength of his own Virtue, Wisdom, and Piety, but the whole strength of Omnipotence on his side; for Goodness, Truth, and Love, as we conceive them, are not one thing in Man, and another in God, but the same thing in each. Thus Man partakes the Divine Nature, as the Platonists, Christians, and Mystics call it. By these means the Soul of All flows into the man; what is private, personal, peculiar, ebbs off before that mighty influx from on high. What is universal, absolute, true, speaks out of his lips, in rude, homely utterance, it may be, or in words that burn and sparkle like the lightning's fiery flash.

This inspiration reveals itself in various forms, modified by the country, character, education, peculiarity of him who receives it, just as water takes the form and the colour of the cup into which it flows, and must needs mingle with the impurities it chances to meet. Thus Minos and Moses were inspired to make laws; David to pour out his soul in pious strains, deep and sweet as an angel's psaltery; Pindar to celebrate virtuous deeds in high heroic song; John the Baptist to denounce sin; Gerson, and Luther, and Böhme, and Fenelon, and Fox, to do each his peculiar work, and stir the world's heart, deep, very deep. Plato and Newton, Milton and Isaiah, Leibnitz and Paul, Mozart, Raphael, Phidias, Praxiteles, Orpheus, receive into their various forms, the one spirit from God most high. It appears in action not less than speech. The Spirit inspires Dorcas to make coats and garments for the poor, no less than Paul to preach the Gospel. As that bold man himself has said, “there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit; diversities of operations, but the same God who worketh all in all.”^[3] In one man it may appear in the iron hardness of reasoning, which breaks through sophistry, and prejudice, the rubbish and diluvial drift of time. In another it is subdued and softened by the flame of affection; the hard iron of the man is melted and becomes a stream of persuasion, sparkling as it runs.

Inspiration does not destroy the man's freedom; that is left fetterless by obedience. It does not reduce all to one uniform standard, but Habakkuk speaks in his own way, and Hugh de St Victor in his. The man can obey or not obey; can quench the spirit, or feed it as he will. Thus Jonah flees from his duty; Calchas will not tell the truth till out of danger; Peter dissembles and lies. Each of these men had schemes of his own, which he would carry out, God willing or not willing. But when the sincere man receives the truth of God into his soul, knowing it is God's truth, then it takes such a hold of him as nothing else can do. It makes the weak strong; the timid brave; men of slow tongue become full of power and persuasion. There is a new soul in the man, which takes him as it were by the hair of his head, and sets him down where the idea he wishes for demands. It takes the man away from the hall of comfort, the society of his friends; makes him austere and lonely; cruel to himself, if need be; sleepless in his vigilance, unfaltering in his toil; never resting from his work. It takes the rose out of the cheek; turns the man in on himself, and gives him more of truth. Then, in a poetic fancy, the man sees visions; has wondrous revelations; every mountain thunders; God burns in every bush; flames out in the crimson cloud; speaks in the wind; descends with every dove; is All in All. The Soul, deep-wrought in its intense struggle, give outness to its thought, and on the trees and stars, the fields, the floods, the corn ripe for the sickle, on Men and Women it sees its burden writ. The Spirit within constrains the man. It is like wine that hath no vent. He is full of the God. While he muses the fire burns; his bosom will scarce hold his heart. He must speak or he dies, though the earth quake at his word.^[4] Timid flesh may resist, and Moses say, I am of slow speech. What avails that? The Soul says, Go, and I will be with thy mouth, to quicken thy tardy tongue. Shrinking Jeremiah, effeminate and timid, recoils before the fearful work—“The flesh will quiver when the pincers tear.” He says, I cannot speak. I am a child. But the great Soul of All flows into him and says, Say noť “I am a child!” for I am with thee. Gird up thy loins like a man, and speak all that I command thee. Be not afraid at men's faces, for I will make thee a defenced city, a column of steel, and walls of brass. Speak, then, against the whole land of sinners; against the kings thereof, the princes thereof, its people, and its priests. They may fight against thee, but they shall not prevail; for I am with thee. Devils tempt the man, with the terror of defeat and want, with the hopes of selfish ambition. It avails nothing. A “Get-thee-behind-me, Satan," brings angels to help. Then are the man's lips touched with a live coal from the altar of Truth, brought by a Seraph's hand. He is baptized with the Spirit of fire. His countenance is like lightning. The truth thunders from his tongue—his words eloquent as Persuasion; no terror is terrible; no fear formidable. The peaceful is satisfied to be a man of strife and contention, his hand against every man, to root up and pluck down and destroy, to build with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. He came to bring peace, but he must set a fire, and his soul is straitened till his work be done. Elisha must leave his oxen in the furrow; Amos desert his summer fruit and his friend; and Böhme, and Bunyan, and Fox, and a thousand others, stout-hearted and God-inspired, must go forth of their errand, into the faithless world, to accept the prophet's mission, be stoned, hated, scourged, slain. Resistance is nothing to these men. Over them steel loses its power, and public opprobrium its shame; deadly things do not harm them; they count loss gain—shame glory—death triumph. These are the men who move the world. They have an eye to see its follies, a heart to weep and bleed for its sin. Filled with a Soul wide as yesterday, to-day, and for ever, they pray great prayers for sinful Man. The wild wail of a brother's heart runs through the saddening music of their speech. The destiny of these men is forecast in their birth. They are doomed to fall on evil times and evil tongues, come when they will come. The Priest and the Levite war with the Prophet and do him to death. They brand his name with infamy; cast his unburied bones into the Gehenna of popular shame; John the Baptist must leave his head in a charger; Socrates die the death; Jesus be nailed to his cross; and Justin, John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, and millions of hearts stout as these and as full of God, must mix their last prayers, their admonition, and farewell blessing, with the crackling snap of faggots, the hiss of quivering flesh, the impotent tears of wife and child, and the mad roar of the exulting crowd. Every path where mortal feet now tread secure, has been beaten out of the hard flint by prophets and holy men, who went before us, with bare and bleeding feet, to smooth the way for our reluctant tread. It is the blood of prophets that softens the Alpine rock. Their bones are scattered in all the high places of mankind. But God lays his burdens on no vulgar men. He never leaves their souls a prey. He paints Elysium on their dungeon wall. In the populous chamber of their heart, the light of Faith shines bright and never dies. For such as are on the side of God there is no cause to fear.

The influence of God in Nature, in its mechanical, vital, or instinctive action, is beautiful. The shapely trees; the leaves that clothe them in loveliness; the corn and the cattle; the dew and the flowers; the bird, the insect, moss and stone, fire and water, and earth and air; the clear blue sky that folds the world in its soft embrace; the light which rides on swift pinions, enchanting all it touches, reposing harmless on an infant's eyelid, after its long passage from the other side of the universe,—all these are noble and beautiful; they admonish while they delight us, these silent counsellors and sovereign aids. But the inspiration of God in man, when faithfully obeyed, is nobler and far more beautiful. It is not the passive elegance of unconscious things which we see resulting from Man's voluntary obedience. That might well charm us in Nature; in Man we look for more. Here the beauty is intellectual, the beauty of Thought, which comprehends the world and understands its laws; it is moral, the beauty of Virtue, which overcomes the world and lives by its own laws; it is religious and affectional, the beauty of Holiness and Love, which rises above the world and lives by the law of the Spirit of Life. A single good man, at one with God, makes the morning and evening sun seem little and very low. It is a higher mode of the divine Power that appears in him, self-conscious and self-restrained.

Now this it seems is the only kind of inspiration which is possible. It is coextensive with the faithful use of Man's natural powers. Men may call it miraculous, but nothing is more natural; or they may say, it is entirely human, for it is the result of Man's use of his faculties; but what is more divine than Wisdom, Justice, Benevolence, Piety? Are not these the points in which Man and God conjoin? If He is present and active in spirit—such must be the perfect result of the action. No doubt there is a mystery in it, as in sensation, in all the functions of Man. But what then? As a good man has said, “God worketh with us both to will and to do.” Mind, Conscience, the affections, and the Soul mediate between us and God, as the senses between us and matter. Is one more surprising than the other? Is the one to be condemned as spiritual mysticism or Pantheism? Then so is the other as material mysticism or Pantheism. Alas, we know but in part; our knowledge is circumscribed by our ignorance.

Now it is the belief of all primitive nations that God inspires the wise, the good, the holy.^[5] Yes, that he works with Man in every noble work. No doubt their poor conceptions of God degraded the doctrine and ascribed to the Deity what came from their disobedience of his law.

The wisest and holiest men have spoken in the name of God. Minos, Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, Zaleucus, Numa, Mahomet, profess to have received their doctrine straightway from Him. The sacred persons of all nations, from the Druid to the Pope, refer back to his direct inspiration. From this source the Sibylline oracles, the responses at Delphi, the sacred books of all nations, the Vedas and the Bible, alike claim to proceed. Pagans tell us no man was ever great without a divine afflatus falling upon him.^[6] Much falsity was mingled with the true doctrine, for that was imperfectly understood, and violence, and folly, and lies were thus ascribed to God. Still the popular belief shows that the human mind turns naturally in this direction. Each prophet, false or true, in Palestine, Nubia, India, Greece, spoke in the name of God. In this name the apostles of Christ and of Mahomet, the Catholic and the Protestant, went to their work.^[7] A good man feels that Justice, Goodness, Truth, are immutable, not dependent on himself; that certain convictions come by a law over which he has no control. There they stand, he cannot alter though he may refuse to obey them. Some have considered themselves bare tools in the hand of God; they did and said they knew not what, thus charging their follies and sins on God most high. Others, going to a greater degree of insanity, have confounded God with themselves, declaring that they were God. But even if likeness were perfect, it is not identity. Yet a ray from the primal light falls on Man. No doubt there have been men of a high degree of inspiration, in all countries; the founders of the various religions of the world. But they have been limited in their gifts, and their use of them. The doctrine they taught had somewhat national, temporal, even personal, in it, and so was not the Absolute Religion. No man is so great as human Nature, nor can one finite being feed for ever all his brethren. So their doctrines were limited in extent and duration.

Now this inspiration is limited to no sect, age, or nation. It is wide as the world, and common as God. It is not given to a few men, in the infancy of mankind, to monopolize inspiration and bar God out of the soul. You and I are not born in the dotage and decay of the world. The stars are beautiful as in their prime; “the most ancient Heavens are fresh and strong;” the bird merry as ever at its clear heart. God is still everywhere in nature, at the line, the pole, in a mountain or a moss. Wherever a heart beats with love, where Faith and Reason utter their oracles, there also is God, as formerly in the heart of seers and prophets. Neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem, nor the soil that Jesus blessed, so holy as the good man's heart; nothing so full of God. This inspiration is not given to the learned alone, not to the great and wise, but to every faithful child of God. The world is close to the body; God closer to the soul, not only without but within, for the all-pervading current flows into each. The clear sky bends over each man, little or great; let him uncover his head, there is nothing between him and infinite space. So the ocean of God encircles all men; uncover the soul of its sensuality, selfishness, sin, there is nothing between it and God, who flows into the man, as light into the air. Certain as the open eye drinks in the light, do the pure in heart see God, and he that lives truly feels him as a presence not to be put by.^[8]

But this is a doctrine of experience as much as of abstract reasoning. Every man who has ever prayed—prayed with the mind, prayed with the heart greatly and strong, knows the truth of this doctrine, welcomed by pious souls. There are hours, and they come to all men, when the hand of destiny seems heavy upon us; when the thought of time misspent; the pang of affection misplaced or ill-requited; the experience of man's worse nature and the sense of our own degradation, come over us. In the outward and inward trials, we know not which way to turn. The heart faints and is ready to perish. Then in the deep silence of the soul, when the man turns inward to God, light, comfort, peace dawn on him. His troubles—they are but a dew-drop on his sandal. His enmities or jealousies, hopes, fears, honours, disgraces, all the undeserved mishaps of life, are lost to the view; diminished, and then hid in the mists of the valley he has left behind and below him. Resolution comes over him with its vigorous wing; Truth is clear as noon; the soul in faith rushes to its God. The mystery is at an end.

It is no vulgar superstition to say men are inspired in such times. They are the seed-time of life. Then we live whole years through in a few moments, and afterwards, as we journey on in life, cold, and dusty, and travel-worn, and faint, we look to that moment as a point of light; the remembrance of it comes over us like the music of our home heard in a distant land. Like Elisha in the fable, we go long years in the strength thereof. It travels with us, a great wakening light; a pillar of fire in the darkness, to guide us through the lonely pilgrimage of life. These hours of Inspiration, like the flower of the aloe-tree, may be rare, but are yet the celestial blossoming of Man; the result of the past, the prophecy of the future. They are not numerous to any man. Happy is he that has ten such in a year, yes, in a lifetime.

Now to many men, who have but once felt this—when Heaven lay about them, in their infancy, before the world was too much with them, and they laid waste their powers, getting and spending,—when they look back upon it, across the dreary gulf, where Honour, Virtue, Religion have made shipwreck and perished with their youth, it seems visionary, a shadow, dream-like, unreal. They count it a phantom of their inexperience; the vision of a child's fancy, raw and unused to the world. Now they are wiser. They cease to believe in inspiration. They can only credit the saying of the priests, that long ago there were inspired men; but none now; that you and I must bow our faces to the dust, groping like the Blind-worm and the Beetle; not turn our eyes to the broad, free Heaven; that we cannot walk by the great central and celestial light which God made to guide ail who come into the world, but only by the farthing-candle of tradition, poor and flickering light which we get of the priest, which casts strange and fearful shadows around us as we walk, that “leads to bewilder and dazzles to blind.” Alas for us if this be all!

But can it be so? Has Infinity laid aside its Omnipresence, retreating to some little comer of space? No. The grass grows as green; the birds chirp as gaily; the sun shines as warm; the moon and the stars walk in their pure beauty, sublime as before; morning and evening have lost none of their loveliness; not a jewel has fallen from the diadem of night. God is still there; ever present in Matter, else it were not; else the serpent of Fate would coil him about the All of things; would crush it in his remorseless grasp, and the hour of ruin strike creation's knell.

Can it be then, as so many tell us, that God, transcending Time and Space, immanent in Matter, has forsaken Man; retreated from the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies, to the court of the Gentiles; that now he will stretch forth no aid, but leave his tottering child to wander on, amid the palpable obscure, eyeless and fatherless, without a path, with no guide but his feeble brother's words and works; groping after God if haply he may find him; and learning, at last, that he is but a God afar off, to be approached only by mediators and attorneys, not face to face as before? Can it be that Thought shall fly through the Heaven, his pinion glittering in the ray of every star, burnished by a million suns, and then come drooping back, with ruffled plume and flagging wing, and eye which once looked undazzled on the sun, now spiritless and cold—come back to tell us God is no Father; that he veils his face and will not look upon his child; his erring child! No more can this be true. Conscience is still God-with-us; a Prayer is deep as ever of old; Reason as true; Religion as blest. Faith still remains the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Love is yet mighty to cast out fear. The Soul still searches the deeps of God; the pure in heart see him. The substance of the Infinite is not yet exhausted, nor the well of Life drunk dry. The Father is near us as ever, else Reason were a traitor. Morality a hollow form, Religion a mockery, and Love a hideous lie. Now, as in the days of Adam, Moses, Jesus, he that is faithful to Reason, Conscience, Heart and Soul, will, through them, receive inspiration to guide him through all his pilgrimage.

1. See Jonathan Edwards’ view of Inspiration, in his sermon on A divine Light imparted to the Soul, &c. Works, ed. Lond. 1840. Vol. II. p. 12, et seq., and Vol. I. p. cclxix. No. [20].
2. So long as inspiration is regarded as purely miraculous, good sense will lessen instances of it, as far as possible; for most thinking men feel more or less repugnance at believing in any violation, on God's part, of regular laws. As spiritual things are commonly less attended to than material, the belief in miraculous inspiration remains longer in religious than secular affairs. A man would be looked on as mad, who should claim miraculous inspiration for Newton, as they have been who denied it in the case of Moses. But no candid man will doubt that, humanly speaking, it was a more difficult thing to write the Principia than the Decalogue. Man must have a nature most sadly anomalous, if, unassisted, he is able to accomplish all the triumphs of modern science, and yet cannot discover the plainest and most important principles of Religion and Morality without a miraculous revelation; and still more so, if being able to discover, by God's natural aid, these chief and most important principles, he needs a miraculous inspiration to disclose minor details. Science is by no means indispensable, as Religion and Morals. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, if it is a real advantage, follows unavoidably from the Idea of God. The Best Being, he must will the best of good things; the Wisest, he must devise plans for that effect; the most Powerful, he must bring it about. None can deny this. Does one ask another “proof of the fact?” Is he so very full of faith who cannot trust God, except he have His bond in black and white, given under oath and attested by witnesses!
3. 1 Cor. xii. 8, et seq.
4. See Lucan IX. 564, et seq.
5. On this doctrine see Sonntag, Doctrina Inspirationis, &c., 1803, § 1, et seq., and the authors he cites. De Wette, Dogmatik, § 85–96, and § 143—148, gives the Old Testament doctrine of Inspiration. See also Hase, Hutterus redivivus, § 41, Dogmatik, § 8; Bretschneider, Dogmatik, Vol. I. § 14, et seq.; and Baumgarten-Crusius, Dogmengeschichte, Vol. II. p. 775, et seq. Much useful matter has been collected by these writers, and by Münscher, Bauer, Von-Cölln, and Strauss, but a special history of the doctrine is still a desideratum.
6. See the opinions of the ancients in the classic passages, Cicero de Nat. Deorum, II. 66; Orat. pro Arch. c. 8; Xenophon Memorah. I. 1; Seneca, Ep. XLI. See many passages collected in Sonntag. See also Barclay's Apology for the Quakers, Prop. I.-III. XI.; Sewell's History of the Quakers, B. IX.-XII., and p. 693; and George Fox's Journal, passim.
7. The history of the formation of the ecclesiastical doctrine of inspiration, which is the Supernatural View, is curious. It did not assume its most exclusive shape in the early teachers. In John of Damascus it appears in its vigour. In Abelard and Peter Lombard, it is more mild and liberal. Since the Reformation, it has been violently attacked. Luther himself is fluctuating in his opinions. As men's eyes opened they would separate falsehood from truth. The writings of the English deists had a great influence in this matter. See Walch’s Religions-Streitigkeiten, Vol. V. ch. vii. Strauss also. Vol. I. § 14, et seq., gives a brief and compendious account of attacks on this doctrine.
8. Such as like to settle questions by authority, will see that this is the doctrine of the more spiritual writers of the Old and New Testaments, especially of John and Paul. It seems to me this was the doctrine of Jesus himself.