(iv) "Each writer, each successive age, has characteristics of its own, as strongly marked, or more strongly, than those which are found in the authors or periods of classical Literature. These differences are not to be lost in _the idea of a Spirit from whom they proceed, or by which they were overruled_. And therefore, illustration of one part of Scripture by another should be confined to writings of the same age and the same authors, except where the writings of different ages or persons offer obvious similarities. It may be said, further, that illustration should be chiefly derived, not only from the same author, _but from the same writing, or from one of the same period of his life_. For example, the comparison of St. John and the 'synoptic' Gospels, or of the Gospel of St. John with the Revelation of St. John, will tend _rather to confuse than to elucidate the meaning of either_." (pp. 382-3.)--But really, in reply, it ought to suffice to point out that the result of the Church's experience for 1800 years has been the very opposite of the Professor's. "_The idea of a SPIRIT from whom they proceeded_," is, to the thoughtful part of mankind, _the only intelligible clue_ to the several books of Holy Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation! Hence "the marginal references to the English Bible," (to which Mr. Jowett devotes a depreciatory half page,) so far from being the dangerous or useless apparatus which he represents, we hold to be an instrument of paramount importance for eliciting the true meaning of Holy Writ.--In a word, he is reasoning about the Bible on _the assumption_ that the Bible is _like any other book_. (v) "To attribute to St. Paul or the Twelve the abstract notion of Christian Truth which afterwards sprang up in the Catholic Church ... is the same error as to attribute to Homer the ideas of Thales or Heraclitus, or to Thales the more developed principles of Aristotle and Plato." (p. 354.)--_Not if St. Paul and the Twelve were inspired._ (vi) He bids us remark, with tedious emphasis, that although the same philological and historical difficulties which occur in Holy Scripture are found in profane writings, yet "the meaning of classical authors is known with comparative certainty; and the interpretation of them seems to rest on a scientific basis.... _Even the Vedas and the Zendavesta_, though beset by obscurities of language probably greater than are found in any portion of the Bible, are interpreted, at least by European scholars, according to fixed rules, and beginning to be clearly understood." (p. 335.) But at the end of several weak sentences, through which the preceding fallacy is elongated into distressing tenuity, _who_ does not exclaim,--The supposed "scientific" basis on which the interpretation of books in general rests, is simply this; (=1=) that being _merely human_, and (=2=) _not professing_ to have any other than their obvious literal meaning,--they are all interpreted in the obvious ordinary way!