Nor is this denied by any instructed divine of any church. In insisting “upon the duty of professed Christians to abstain from all compliance with the idolatrous practices of the heathens around them,” says Dr. Tattershall, “St. Paul, even though an inspired Apostle, does not proceed upon the mere dictum of authority, but appeals to the _reason_ of those to whom he writes; and calls upon them to reflect upon the inconsistency of such conduct, with the nature of their Christian profession. In fact, he produces _arguments_, and desires them to weigh the reasons which he assigns, and see whether they do not fully sustain the conclusion which he draws from them. ‘I speak,’ says he, ‘as to _wise_ men, JUDGE YE what I say.’”[89] If then the Apostle wrote his letters under inspiration, have we not here direct authority to sit in judgment on the productions of inspiration, or _the contents of the word of God_; not merely to learn what is said, but to consider its inherent reasonableness and truth? No one, indeed, can state more forcibly than Dr. Tattershall himself the principle, of which this conclusion is only a particular case. “When I reason with an opponent,” says he, “I do _not_ invade his acknowledged right of private judgment, nor do I require of him to surrender that judgment to me. I am, in fact, doing the precise _contrary_ of this. I am, _by the very act of reasoning_, both _acknowledging_ his right of judgment, and making an _appeal_ to it.”[90] To acknowledge the right of judgment, is to forego the claim of infallibility, and to concede the privilege of dissent; and thus frankly does St. Paul deal with me. Vainly do his modern expounders attempt to make him the instrument of their own assumptions. To appeal to my reason, and then, if I cannot see the force of the proof, to hold me up as a blasphemer and a rebel against the word of God, is an inconsistency, of which only the degenerate followers of the great Apostle could be guilty. His writings disown, in every page, the injurious claims which would confer on them an artificial authority, to the ruin of their true power and beauty. In order to show the absolute divine truth of all that may be written by an inspired man, it is not enough to establish the _presence_ of inspiration, you must prove also the _absence_ of everything else. And this can never be done with any writings made up, like the Apostle’s, of a scarce-broken tissue of argument and illustration. It is clear that he was not forbidden to reason and expound, to speculate and refute, to seek access, by every method of persuasion, to the minds he was sent to evangelize; to appeal, at one time to his interpretation of prophecy, at another to the visible glories of creation, and again to the analogies of history. Where could have been his zeal, his freshness, his versatility of address, his self-abandonment, his various success, if his natural faculties had not