The plain truth is, (and it is really better to speak plainly,)--the plain truth is, that the offensive Sermons one sometimes hears from the University pulpit,--the offensive Essays and Reviews which have lately occasioned so much public scandal,--are the work of men who discuss that which they do not understand; profess that which they were never, at any time of their life, taught. Their method of handling a text is altogether unique and extraordinary. Their remarks concerning Divine things are even puerile. Their very citations of Scripture are incorrect. Their cool affectation of superiority of knowledge, their claim to intellectual power, would be laughable, were the subject less solemn and important. Speculations so feeble that they sound like the cries of an infant in the dark, are insinuated to be the sublime views of a bold and original thinker, who _"has by a Divine help been enabled to plant his foot somewhere beyond the waves of Time!"_--Doubts so badly expressed that they read like the confused utterance of one in his sleep, claim to be regarded as the legacy of one who is about to _"depart hence before the natural term, worn out with intellectual toil[14]!"_ ... In a word,--Men who have never been taught and trained, but have grown up in a miserable self-evolved system of their own,--(with a little of Hegel, and a little of Schleiermacher, and a little of Strauss,)--cannot _but_ trouble the peace of the Church. They deny her authority. (They are not aware of her claims.) They cavil at her Creeds. (They are not acquainted with their history.) They doubt the authenticity of the very Bible. (They know wondrous little about it.)--How did the Bible attain its actual shape? They cannot tell. How has it been guarded? They are careless to inquire. How does it come to us as 'the Bible,'--_the_ Book of all books? It is best not to discuss a question which must infallibly bring forward _the Church_ as "a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ[15]." Men are even impatient to publish their private prejudice that it is to be interpreted like any other book; that it is inspired in no other sense than Sophocles and Plato. "The principle of private judgment," (it is said,) "puts Conscience between us and the Bible, making Conscience _the supreme interpreter[16]_." "Hence," it is said, "we use the Bible,--some consciously, some unconsciously,--not to override, but to evoke the voice of Conscience." (p. 44.) "The Book of this Law," (as Hooker phrases it,) is dethroned; and Man usurps the vacant seat, and becomes a Law unto himself! GOD Himself is dethroned, in effect; and Man becomes his own god.