Now it is manifest that the mode of exposition must be conformed to the style of the document; and this conformity demands that the inductive method, invariably, should be used for gleaning the sense of Scripture. While employing all the well-known means proper for ascertaining the grammatical sense of ancient writers, each single passage of the Inspired Volume, like a single phenomenon of nature, is to be interrogated for its evidence, without any solicitude for the fate of a preconceived theory, and without asking—How is this evidence to be reconciled with that derived from other quarters?—for it is remembered that the revelation we are studying is a partial discovery of facts, which could not be more than imperfectly made known. Whoever has not yet fully satisfied himself that the Scriptures, throughout, were "given by inspiration of God," should lose no time in determining that doubt: but if it be determined, then it is a flagrant inconsistency not to confide in the principle that the Bible is everywhere truly consistent with itself, whether or not we have the means of tracing its agreements. And while this principle is adhered to, no sentiment or fact plainly contained in the words, need be refused or contorted on account of its apparent incongruity with "systematic divinity." In this manner only is it possible that the whole amount of religious knowledge intended to be imparted by the Scriptures can be gathered from them. It must be granted as not only probable, but certain, that whatever relates to infinity, to the Divine nature, to the ultimate purposes of the Divine government, to the unseen worlds, and to the future state, and even to the mechanism of motives, must offer itself to the human understanding in a form beset with difficulties. That this must actually be the case might be demonstrated with mathematical certainty. If therefore we resolve to receive from the Inspired Writers nothing but what we can reconcile, first to certain abstruse notions, and then to a particular interpretation of other passages, the consequence is inevitable—that we obtain a theology, needlessly limited, if not erroneous.