It would indeed be a great advantage to the cause of Truth, and a great help to individual minds, as well as wonderfully promote the arriving at a sound conclusion in this perilous department of speculative Divinity,--if, instead of putting up with a vague theory, (like the present,) regardless of its logical bearings and necessary issues;--men would compel themselves to apply their view to the actual phenomena of Holy Scripture: to carry it out to its legitimate consequences, and steadily to contemplate the result. I venture to predict that the theory which we are now considering, when submitted to such a test, would be found not only inconvenient, but absolutely untenable. The inconsistency and absurdity which results from it, can, I think, easily be made to appear. For if any one who is disposed to regard it with favour,--instead of idly, (as is the way with nine-tenths of mankind,) repeating the formula in terms more or less vague and indefinite; and straightway wincing, falling back on generalities, and in a word shirking the point, the instant it is proposed to bring the question to a definite issue;--if a favourer of the present theory I say, instead of so acting, would take up a copy of the New Testament, and proceed, with a pen in his hand, to _apply_ the theory, by running his pen through the places, (and they _must_ be capable of individual specification!), which he suspects of being external to the influence of Inspiration;--or, if you please, which he thinks have been penned without that Divine help which makes what is written infallible;--I venture to predict that such an one will speedily admit that his erasures are either so very few, or so very many, as to be fatal to the theory of which they are the expression.