In fact the appeal to them proved too much. For Jude quotes the book of Enoch as an inspired prophecy, and yet, since Archbishop Laurence has translated it from the Ethiopian, we know that book to be a fable undeserving of regard, and undoubtedly not written by "Enoch, the seventh from Adam." Besides, it does not appear that any peculiar divine revelation taught them that the Old Testament is perfect truth. In point of fact, they only reproduce the ideas on that subject current in their age. So far as Paul deviates from the common Jewish view, it is in the direction of disparaging the Law as essentially imperfect. May it not seem that his remaining attachment to it was still exaggerated by old sentiment and patriotism? I farther found that not only do the Evangelists give us no hint that they thought themselves divinely inspired, or that they had any other than human sources of knowledge, but Luke most explicitly shows the contrary. He opens by stating to Theophilus, that since many persons have committed to writing the things handed down from eye-witnesses, it seemed good to him also to do the same, since he had "accurately attended to every thing from its sources ([Greek: anothen])." He could not possibly have written thus, if he had been conscious of superhuman aids. How absurd then of us, to pretend that we know more than Luke knew of his own inspiration! In truth, the arguments of theologians to prove the inspiration (i.e. infallibility) of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are sometimes almost ludicrous. My lamented friend, John Sterling, has thus summed up Dr. Henderson's arguments about Mark. "Mark was probably inspired, _because he was an acquaintance of Peter_; and because Dr. Henderson would be reviled by other Dissenters, if he doubted it." * * * * * About this time, the great phenomenon of these gospels,--the casting out of devils,--pressed forcibly on my attention. I now dared to look full into the facts, and saw that the disorders described were perfectly similar to epilepsy, mania, catalepsy, and other known maladies. Nay, the deaf, the dumb, the hunchbacked, are spoken of as devil-ridden. I farther knew that such diseases are still ascribed to evil genii in Mussulman countries: even a vicious horse is believed by the Arabs to be _majnun_, possessed by a Jin or Genie. Devils also are cast out in Abyssinia to this day. Having fallen in with Farmer's treatise on the Demoniacs, I carefully studied it; and found it to prove unanswerably, that a belief in demoniacal possession is a superstition not more respectable than that of witchcraft. But Farmer did not at all convince me, that the three Evangelists do not share the vulgar error. Indeed, the instant we believe that the imagined possessions were only various forms of disease, we are forced to draw conclusions of the utmost moment, most damaging to the credit of the narrators.[3]