if all tests of opinion in a church were heartily and truly done away, then the principles of spiritual affinity and repulsion would act quite undisturbed. Surely therefore this was the only right method?--Nevertheless, I saw the necessity of _one_ test, "Jesus is the Son of God," and felt unpleasantly that one article tends infallibly to draw another after it. But I had too much, just then to think of in other quarters, to care much about Church Systems. [Footnote 1: See Gen. xxxiii. 19, and xlix. 29-32, xxiii.] [Footnote 2: Some say, that Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, named in the Chronicles, is meant; that he is _confounded_ with the prophet, the son of Berechiah, and was _supposed_ to be the last of the martyrs, because the Chronicles are placed last in the Hebrew Bible. This is a plausible view; but it saves the Scripture only by imputing error to Jesus.] [Footnote 3: My Eclectic Reviewer says (p. 276): "Thus because the evangelists held an erroneous _medical_ theory, Mr. Newman suffered a breach to be made in the credit of the Bible." No; but as the next sentence states, "because they are convicted of _misstating facts_," under the influence of this erroneous medical theory. Even this reviewer--candid for an orthodox critic, and not over-orthodox either--cannot help garbling me.] [Footnote 4: I have explained this in my "Hebrew Monarchy."] [Footnote 5: This poet celebrated also the deeds of David (2 Sam. i. 18) according to our translation: if so, he was many centuries later than Joshua; however, the sense of the Hebrew is little obscure.] [Footnote 6: I have fully discussed this in my "Hebrew Monarchy."] [Footnote 7: The English reader may consult Theodore Parker's translation of De Wette's Introduction to the Canon of Scripture. I have also amply exhibited the vanity of the _Chronicles_ in my "Hebrew Monarchy." De Wette has a separate treatise on the Chronicles,] [Footnote 8: If the date of the Apocalypse is twenty years earlier than that of the fourth Gospel, I now feel no such difficulty in their being the composition of the same writer.] CHAPTER V. FAITH AT SECOND HAND FOUND TO BE VAIN.