"In the same way, he who would understand the nature of Prophecy in the Old Testament, should have the courage to examine how far its details were minutely fulfilled. _The absence of such a fulfilment_ may further lead him to discover that he took the letter for the spirit in expecting it." (p. 347.) But really this is again simply to beg the whole question. Unbecoming in any writer, how absurd also is such a sentence from the pen of one who, (as we have lately seen,) no sooner descends to particulars than he makes himself ridiculous by betraying his own excessive ignorance.... "The letter for the spirit," also! which is one of the 'cant' expressions of Mr. Jowett and his accomplices in 'free handling,'--based evidently on a misconception of the meaning of 2 Cor. iii. 6. The contrast recurs at pp. 36, 357, 375, 425, &c., &c. (=2=) Still bent on shewing that Inspiration does not secure Scripture from blots and blemishes, Mr. Jowett proceeds as follows. (I must present him to the reader, for a short space, _in extenso_; since by no other expedient can the complicated fallacies of his very intricate and perverse method be exposed.) "Inspiration is a fact which we infer from the study of Scripture,--not of one portion only, but of the whole." (p. 347.) (Now even _this_ is not a correct way of stating the case. Still, because the words _may_ bear an honourable sense, we pass on.)--"Obviously then, it embraces writings of very different kinds,--the book of Esther, for example, or the Song of Solomon, as well as the Gospel of St. John." (That _the volume_ of Inspiration is of this complex character, and that _it_ embraces writings so diverse, is beyond dispute.)--"It is reconcileable with the mixed good and evil of the characters of the Old Testament, which nevertheless does not exclude them from the favour of GOD." (_Why_ the Inspiration of a writer should not be 'reconcileable' with _any_ amount of wickedness in the persons about whom he writes,--I am quite at a loss to perceive. Neither do I see why "the mixed good and evil" of certain "characters of the Old Testament," (or of the New either,) should "exclude them from the favour of GOD." What else becomes of your hope, and mine, of Eternal Life?)--"Inspiration is also reconcileable," (he proceeds,)--"with the attribution to the Divine Being of _actions at variance with that higher revelation which He has given of Himself in the Gospel_." (Is this meant as an insult to "the Divine Being?" or simply as a slur on Revelation? Either way, we reject the charge with indignation[229].)--"It is not inconsistent with imperfect or opposite aspects of the Truth, as in the Book of Job or Ecclesiastes:" (Nothing which comes from GOD should be called "imperfect:" but why _different_ aspects of the Truth should not be brought out, by different writers, as by St. Paul and by James,--it is hard to see.)--"With variations of fact in the Gospels, or the Books of Kings and Chronicles:" (We do not admit