John the Evangelist, voices are heard from Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine; from Antioch and from other parts of Syria; from the Eastern and the Western extremities of North Africa; from many regions of Asia Minor; from Constantinople and from Greece; from Rome, from Milan, and from other parts of Italy; from Cyprus and from Gaul;--all singing in unison; all singing the same heavenly song!... In what way but one is so extraordinary a phenomenon to be accounted for? Are we to believe that there was a general conspiracy of the East and the West, the North and the South, to interpret Holy Scripture in a certain way; and that way, the wrong way? Enough has been said, it is thought, to shew that many of Mr. Jowett's remarks about the value of Patristic evidence are either futile or incorrect; or that they betray an entire misapprehension of the whole question, not to say a thorough want of appreciation of the claims of Antiquity. We do not yield to the 'Essayist and Reviewer' in veneration for the Inspired page; and trust that enough has been said to shew it. Our eye, when we read Scripture, (like his,) "is fixed on the form of One like the Son of Man; or of the Prophet who was girded with a garment of camel's hair; or of the Apostle who had a thorn in the flesh." (p. 338.) We are only unlike Mr. Jowett we fear in _this_,--that _we_ believe _ex animo_ that the first-named was the Eternal SON, "equal to the FATHER," and "of one substance with the FATHER[200]:" and further that St. Paul's fourteen Epistles are all _inspired writings_, in an entirely different sense from the Dialogues of Plato or the Tragedies of Sophocles. It follows, that however riveted our mental gaze may be on the awful forms which come before us in Holy Scripture,--as often as we con _the inspired record of the actions and of the sayings of those men_, we are constrained many a time to look upward, and to exclaim with the Psalmist, "Thy thoughts are very deep[201]!" And often if asked, "Understandest thou what thou readest?"--we must still answer with the Ethiopian, "How can I, except some man should guide me[202]?" (iv.) To assume however that our defective knowledge "cannot be supplied by the _conjectures_ of Fathers or Divines," (p. 338,) is in some sort to beg the question at issue. To say of the student of Scripture that "the history of Christendom, and all the afterthoughts of Theology, _are nothing to him_:" (p. 338:) that "he has to imagine himself a disciple of CHRIST or Paul, and _to disengage himself from all that follows_:" (_Ibid._:) is not the language of modesty, but of inordinate conceit. In Mr. Jowett it is in fact something infinitely worse; for he shews that his object thereby is to "obtain an unembarrassed opportunity of applying all the resources of a so-called criticism to discredit and destroy the written record itself[203]."