The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-11 00:00:00

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.

At the opening of the Arches Court yesterday morning,
before Dr. Lnshington, the case of the " Office of the Judge
Promoted by the Bishop of Salisbury v. Williams (clerk)"
was proceeded with.
Dr. Phillimore resumed his arguments in support of the
articles of indictment, contending that the doctrine of in-
spiration in the Church of England was one that excluded
altogether the view of inspiration which placed it upon
human reason, and that inspiration, when applied to the
Holy Scriptures and the prophets, meant an action of the
Holy Ghost upon the mind different and distinct not only
in degree, as his learned friend who spoke last on the other
side contended, but in kind from the ordinary use of the
word.

Mr. Stephen—l said it was of the same kind, but for dif-
ferent objects and different in degree.
Dr. Phillimore—Substantially I think that comes to the
same thing, for we say that it is an entirely different kind
of inspiration. In support of his contention on this point
the learned counsel quoted the words, " According to the
mind of the Holy Ghost expressed in the Scriptures" from
the preface to the homilies and canons, and held that to
make good their argument the counsel for Dr. Williams
would have to show that it was the mind of the Holy
Ghost, expressed in the same way, which appeared in the
works of Shakespeare and Milton. In further confirmation
that his view of inspiration was the doctrine of the church,
Dr. Phillimore read extracts from the homilies, which also
bore upon the question of the predictive element of the pro-
phecies, and especially of the 53d chapter of Isaiah, which
was denied by Dr. Williams to have any reference to the
coming of the Saviour. He had been surprised to hear
Hooker quoted to the effect that reason in men's minds was
an inspiration in the same sense as theinspiration of the Holy
Scriptures, and that reason must be applied to the understand-
ing of the Scriptures, for the whole tenor of the Ecclesiastical
Polity went to show that the insufficiency of the light of
nature for the understanding of God's truth was fully and
perfectly supplied by the Scriptures, and one passage in that
book contained these words, which he thought singularly
applicable to this case, " The mixture of those things in
speech which by nature are divided is the mother of all
error." But he had in the same way been pressed into the
service to support the opinion of Dr. Rowland Williams
upon the subject of prophecy, but a reference to the "Ana-
logy," under the head " Credibility of Revelation liable to
Objections," would show that Butler admitted a primary
and secondary meaning to the prophecies, whereas the alle-
gation against Dr. Williams was that in no part of his
essay was there an acknowledgment of the spiritual part of
the prophecies—the view of the essayist being that the pro-
phet was the historian of contemporary events, and in no
sense a foreteller. Dr. Phillimore read several passages
from Butler's " Analogy," all of which he considered mili-
tated entirely against the notion that there was no authority
in Butler for the opinions of Dr. Williams. Butler distinctly
admitted that the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures was
different not only in degree but in kind from reason, and that
to deny the inspiration of the particular Book of Daniel
referred to in the essay would be to deny the authority of
the Saviour, and to put in jeopardy the whole system of
Christianity. The learned counsel thought it also material
to give a summary from Leland of the writings of English
deists of the last century—Collins, Wolsten, Tindal, Chubb,
and others—whose method was shown to be neither more
nor less than a close anticipation of Baron Bunsen and his
reviewers. Coming, then, to the authorities cited on the
other side, he denied that any of them could really be re-
garded as favourable to Dr. Williams ; and he must say that
he had heard with the utmost surprise the great name of
Bishop Pearson included amongst the number. It was clear
from the whole context that Dr. Williams had used the
word " Messianic " as equivalent to "predictive of our
Lord ;" and it was therefore quite astounding to be told
that Bishop Pearson only allowed one text in the Prophets
to be "Messianic." In point of fact the bishop's work abso-

lutely abounded in passages which assumed texts in the Old
Testament to be predictions of our Lord ; but it appeared
that he had chanced, in commenting on the word "Christ"
in the Creed to say that the word " Messiah"—its Hebrew
equivalent—was only once directly and solely applicable to
our Lord, namely, that where it spoke of Messiah as being
" cut off." Unless Dr. Williams was prepared to say that
he admitted the Hebrew prophets to be full of passages pre-
dictive of our Lord, it was a mere quibble to speak of Bishop
Pearson as on his side. Then his learned friend had quoted
Bishop Lowth ; but the result of that learned and distin-
guished man's criticisms bad been greatly to strengthen the
predictive element of the sacred writers. For example, in-
stead of our translation of Isaiah liii. 9, " And he made his
grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death," he read,
" And his grave was appointed with the wicked, but with
the rich was his tomb ;" which exactly corresponded with
the evangelical narrative of the death and burial of our
blessed Lord. There was obviously all the difference in
the world between a criticism like Bishop Lowth's, the
object of which was to restore and bring out the full mean-
ing of the sacred text, and a destructive criticism like Baron
Bunsen's and Dr. Williams's, which put an end to pro-
phecy altogether. It was really too absurd to quote the one
as any authority for the other, or to say the labours of
Bishop Lowth proved the Church of England Chad left
the inspiration of Holy Scriptures an open question.
So likewise Bishop Marsh had been quoted for the other
side; but in reality there was no stronger possible opponent
of the school of interpretation.patroniscd by Dr. Williams.
The bishop had, in fact, stated in express terms that " the
prophecies relating to the Messiah were of such importance
that they affected the very truth of our religion." He did

not care what Bishop Marsh might have said in any par.

titular passage, for every one must be construed with re-
ference to the context—to the entire scope, that was, and
design of the author: And this answer applied to all the
other authorities which had been quoted, even to Baxter
himself, who in 1665 shad actually published a confession
of his faith in which he said, "I do believe the holy
canonical Scriptures, and all things therein contained, to
be infallibly true, as being the Word of God." After that
Baxter, he supposed, would have been very much aston-
ished if he had been told he would come to be cited in an
ecclesiastical court as an authority for the non-inspiration
of the canonical books. Yesterday he (the learned
civilian) had exposed the unfairness with which Dr.
Williams had dealt with Bishop Chandler; now he had a
similar complaint to make of his treatment of Paley. On
page 66 he remarked, " Bishop Chandler is said to have
thought twelve passages in the Old Testament directly
Messianic; others restricted this character to five. Paley
ventures to quote only one." Yesterday he showed that
Bishop Chandler had selected twelve passages merely be-.
cause an examination of the whole number would have occu-
pied him too long, and now be had to state what it was that
Paley really had said. Hie words were, " There are other
proofs in the Old Testament. which deserve great regard,
hut I will content myself with stating the above [namely,
Isaiah:liii.], because I think it is the clearest and strongest
of them all." As for Baron Bunsen's notion that there
were two or three Istuahs and Jeremiahs, it was very
characteristic of the man. Some day somebody might say
there were two or three Baron Bunsens—one a very sen-
sible person, who used the prayers which it was said he
used, and another, who wrote all kinds of extravagant
follies about the Old Testament, (A laugh.) The learned
counsel then went through the other passages which had
been extracted from Dr. Williams's review for censure, and
contended that the court ws bound to accept the allega-
tions containing them. lie was still speaking when
The court adjourned.

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