But what is the meaning of this complaint when applied to Isaiah's well known prophecy concerning Cyrus? In the words of the excellent critic last quoted,--"We know not that we could point to such an instance as this in the writings of any other author of credit. Of course, Mr. Jowett knows as well as we do the distinction between History and Prophecy; and that the mention in any document of the name of one who was unborn at the time fixed as the date of the writing, would be at once a complete _disproof_ of its accuracy as a history of the past, and a _proof_ of its accuracy as a prediction of the future. Of course he also remembers that the point he has _to prove_ is that this passage is History and not Prediction; and his mode of proving is this; _he assumes that it is a history of the past_,--advancing as a charge against the believers of Revelation, that they do not, (as they would in any other History,) reject the genuineness of the passage because it embalms a future name in a past history!... This audacious, (for we cannot use a weaker word,) _assumption_ of what he has _to prove_, pervades his Essay[226]." And thus, into whatever department of speculation we follow this writer, the tortuous path is still found to conduct us back to the same underlying fallacious _assumption_,--viz. that _the Bible is like any other Book_; in other words, is _not inspired_. (=3=) Persons in Mr. Jowett's position, "find themselves met by a _sort of presupposition that 'GOD speaks not as Man speaks_.'"--(p. 343.) "A sort of presupposition," indeed!... Does the Reverend gentleman really expect that we will stoop so low as argue _this_ point also with him? It shall suffice to have branded him with his own words. "The suspicion of Deism, or perhaps of Atheism, awaits inquiry. By such fears, a good man (!) refuses to be influenced: a philosophical mind (!) is apt to cast them aside with too much bitterness. It is better to close the book, than to read it under conditions of thought which are imposed from without." (p. 343.) Well surely, the proximity to Balliol College of the scene of Cranmer and Ridley's martyrdom, must have turned the brain of the Regius Professor of Greek!--Let him be well assured however that not rational "Inquiry," but irrational _assumption_; not the modest cogitations of "a philosophical mind," but the _arrogant dreams of a weak and confused intellect_, are what have excited such general indignation of late, among "good men," from one end of the Kingdom to the other. Nor could anything probably of equal pretensions be readily appealed to, which is nevertheless more truly unphilosophical, fallacious, and foolish, than the Essay now under consideration.