The exegetical method which formed the first was that which is now usually called the old or common-sense rationalism.(721) This form of rationalism differed from the English deism and French naturalism, in not regarding the Bible as fabulous in character, and the device of priestcraft;(722) but only denied the supernatural. By them the apostles had been regarded as impostors; and scripture was not only not received as divine, but not even respected as an ordinary historical record; whereas rationalism was intended as a defence against this view. It denied only the revealed character of scripture, and treated it as an ordinary history; and, distinguishing broadly between the fact related and the judgment on the fact, sought to separate the two, and explained away the supernatural element, such as miracles, as being orientalisms in the narrative, adapted to an infant age, which an enlightened age must translate into the language of ordinary events. Eichhorn at Göttingen(723) applied this view to the Old Testament. Deeming miracles impossible, he did not regard them as fraud, but admitted on the contrary that the agents or narrators honestly believed them. The supernatural was not imparted to deceive, but was the result of oriental modes of speech, such as hyperbole, parable, or ellipsis, in which the steps by which the process was performed were omitted. The smoke of Sinai was considered a thunderstorm; the shining of Moses’s face a natural phenomenon. The principles which Eichhorn applied to the Old Testament, Paulus of Jena extended to the New.(724) The miraculous cures were explained by an ellipsis in the omission of the natural remedies; the casting out of devils as the power of a wise man over the insane; the transfiguration as the confused recollection of sleeping men, who saw Jesus with two unknown friends, in the beautiful light of the morning among the mountains: nay, trespassing on still more holy ground, he dared impiously to explain away the resurrection of our blessed Lord by the hypothesis that his death was only apparent. These are a specimen of the mode of exegesis adopted in this school, which is usually specifically called Rationalism. In this mode Jesus appeared to be merely a wise and virtuous man; and his miracles were merely acts of skill or accident. Paulus presented this as the original Christianity. The theory did not last long, save in the mind of its author, who lived until a recent period, to see the entire change of critical belief. Attributing the supernatural to ignorance, it did not even propose, like the later schools, to explain the marvellousness of the phenomena, objectively by so plausible a theory as legends, nor subjectively by myths:(725) it was too clumsy, not to say irreverent, an explanation of the facts to satisfy a people of deep and poetical soul like the Germans.