But the wise reserve of these great theologians has not been imitated by all. A learned German professor, who is likewise a highly esteemed author, has not hesitated to apply the distinction of these three kinds of inspiration to the existing books: “The kind of inspiration,” he says, “that produced such and such a book, or such and such a passage, it is almost impossible to determine in particular. We can only say that the parts where we read, _Thus saith the Lord_, or a similar formula, probably belong to the first kind of inspiration; the historical narrations that came under the writer’s observation belong to the third (subsequent inspiration); the poetical books seem to come under the second (concomitant inspiration).”[66] These systems, it is manifest, weaken one’s idea of the inspiration of the sacred volume as always understood by the church. We want an inspiration by virtue of which the book is really the work of God, and not of man—the truths it contains of divine, and not of human, origin: man is the instrument, he who dictates is the Holy Ghost: man lends his hand and pen, the Spirit of truth puts them in action. But in the systems referred to, it is not really God who speaks: it is man. Supernatural testimony gives indeed a divine authority to a book, but it could not make God the author of what was really composed by man. And though these writings should contain the exact truths of revelation, they would be as much the result of human wisdom as sermons, catechisms, ascetic books, and even the creeds and decrees of councils which clearly state the doctrines of the church. It was the duty of the council to put an end to interpretations which, depriving the sacred books of the prestige of divine origin, diminished their authority among the faithful. It has therefore defined what every Catholic must believe concerning the degree of inspiration accorded to the sacred writers. This definition is first stated in a negative form: “The church holds them (the Holy Scriptures) as sacred and canonical, not for the reason that they have been compiled by mere human industry, and afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error.” To this definition in a negative form succeeds a positive one, in which the council declares the essential condition of a book’s being placed in the canon of Scripture—“because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author”: _propterea quod Spiritu Sancto inspirante conscripti, Deum habent auctorem_.