Orthodox Christians at the present day may be divided into two broad classes, one of which professes to base the Church upon the Bible, and the other the Bible upon the Church. The one party assert that the Bible is fully and absolutely inspired, that it contains God's revelation to man, and that it is the only and sufficient ground for all religious belief; and they maintain that its authenticity is proved by the most ample and irrefragable external as well as internal evidence. What then must be the feeling of any ordinary mind on hearing, on the other hand, that men of undoubted piety and learning, as well as unquestioned orthodoxy, within the Church of England, admit that the Bible is totally without literary or historical evidence, and cannot for a moment be upheld upon any such grounds as the revealed word of God; that none of the great doctrines of ecclesiastical Christianity can be deduced from the Bible alone;(1) and that, "if it be impossible to accept the literary method of dealing with Holy Scripture, the usual mode of arguing the truth of Revelation, _ab extra_, merely from what are called 'Evidences'--whether of Miracles done or Prophecies uttered thousands of years ago,--must also be insufficient."?(2) It cannot be much comfort to be assured by them that, notwithstanding this absence of external and internal evidence, this Revelation stands upon the sure basis of the inspiration of a Church, which has so little ground in history for any claim to infallibility. The unsupported testimony of a Church which in every age has vehemently maintained errors and denounced truths which are now universally recognized is no {xcvi} sufficient guarantee of Divine Revelation. Obviously, there is no ground for accepting from a fallible Church and fallacious tradition doctrines which, avowedly, are beyond the criterion of reason, and therefore require miraculous evidence.