were the main text books of divinity in the university, and they used to the full the liberty of interpretation which Locke had so strenuously justified. Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), the 'Principal Librarian of the University of Cambridge,' who had rebuked Waterland for his method of controversy with Tindal, and then in turn asserted against his antagonist that' should we allow Christianity to be a meer Imposture,' an attempt to overturn it must be criminal and immoral,'-protested against the theory that the Biblical writers were but 'mere organs or pipes through which God thought fit to convey the knowledge of certain extraordinary facts and divine truths to the world.' So far from being of service to Christianity, he argued, this doctrine 'always has been, and ever will be, a clog and incumbrance to it, with all rational and thinking men; 13 and he laid down the same method for theological study as for the field of nature-it is experience alone, and the observation of facts, which can illustrate the truth of principles.' The controversial boldness of Middleton doubtless hindered his preferment: but his assault on the historical character of the narrative of the Fall involved him in no ecclesiastical penalties. Another Cambridge divine, Edmund Law (1703-87), anticipated the well-known maxim of an Oxford essayist a century later about interpreting the New Testament like any other book. In 1745 he pub

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1 Works, vol. ii. 1752, p. 168.

'On the Variations found in the Four Evangelists,' ibid. p. 51.

'On the Dispute between the Apostles Peter and Paul,' ibid. p. 19. Ibid. p. 74.

lished Considerations on the State of the World with regard to the Theory of Religion, which ran through many editions, and did not prevent him from becoming Master of Peterhouse in 1756, and afterwards Bishop of Carlisle (1768). Like the discourse of another Oxford essayist, it was founded on the idea of a divine education of the human race in religion as in other departments of knowledge. The arguments were not always philologically sound, as when he suggested that the Brahmans of India were really Abrahamans or sons of Abraham.' But the conclusion was just; the Scriptures must be examined with the same freedom that we do, and find we must do, every other book which we desire to understand';2 and with this conclusion' the notion of an absolute immediate inspiration of each part and period' fell away. To the patronage of Bishop Law, Paley (1743-1805) owed his promotion to the Archdeaconry of Carlisle; and his treatment of the New Testament in his Evidences of Christianity (1794) was conceived in the spirit of his episcopal supporter. The comparison (Part III. chap. i.) of discrepancies in the statements about the crucifixion with the diversities between the narratives of Clarendon and Burnet about the condemnation and execution of the Marquis of Argyll in the reign of Charles II., at once took the gospels out of the sphere of divine 'dictation.' If Matthew applied ancient

1 6th edition, 1774, p. 71.

1 Ibid. p. 264. He protests against 'insisting on such universal absolute infallibility as never can be made out to those who are not already persuaded of it.'

prophecies to situations which did not fit their original meaning, why 'such accommodations of passages of old authors, from books especially which are in every one's hands, are common with writers of all countries.' Neither critical mistakes, even if they were clearly made out, nor a wrong estimate of the approach of the day of judgment, nor a mistaken explanation of the phenomena of disease, need shake the credibility of the Evangelists' testimony to the acts and words of their Master; and if St. Paul reasoned like a rabbi, it is lawful to distinguish between doctrines and proofs; 'the doctrine itself must be received, but it is not necessary in order to defend Christianity to defend the propriety of every comparison or the validity of every argument which the apostle has brought into the discussion.' Two years after the publication of Paley's evidences, Bishop Watson issued An Apology for the Bible, in a series of Letters addressed to Thomas Paine, 1796. The episcopal decorum is grievously shocked by the rough brutality of Paine's arguments, and it cannot be said that he always succeeds in parrying them.' But he is not anxious to enforce the highest

1 Neither writer apparently was acquainted with the history (for instance) of the critical study of the Pentateuch. But Paine could make discoveries for Xhimself, and he hit on the mention of Dan in Gen. xiv. 14 as an indication of a date later than the migration and settlement described in Judges xviii. The argument was already of respectable antiquity, though to him it was new. His antagonist, after making the natural suggestion that the name might be ascribed to the later hand of an editor, ventured on a fresh refutation as follows, 9th ed., 1806, p. 206: 'I desire further to have it proved that the Dan mentioned in Genesis was the name of a town and not of a river. It is merely said that Abraham pursued them, the enemies of Lot, to Dan. Now a river was full as likely as a town to stop a pursuit. Lot, we know, was

view of Biblical infallibility. 'Give but the authors of the Bible that credit,' he pleads (p. 229), 'which you give to other historians; believe them to deliver the word of God when they tell you that they do so; believe, when they relate other things as of themselves, and not the Lord, that they wrote to the best of their knowledge and capacity; and you will be in your belief something very different from a deist; you may not be allowed to aspire to the character of an orthodox believer, but you will not be an unbeliever in the divine authority of the Bible; though you should admit human mistakes and human opinions to exist in some parts of it.'1. It is to be regretted that the author felt compelled to justify the massacre of the Canaanites by the example of nature which occasionally engulfs a city in an earthquake.

Meanwhile other influences were slowly at work. The Greek text of the New Testament had long been the subject of devoted study by John Mill (1645-1707), who became Principal of St. Edmund Hall in 1685. With great labour he examined many valuable MSS. in this country, and procured important collations from the Continent. But in preparing

settled in the plain of Jordan; and Jordan, we know, was composed of the united streams of two rivers, called Jor and Dan'! The older commentators traced Dan to a fountain called Phiala, among the roots of Lebanon; Jor was supposed to join it at Caesarea Philippi. See Smith's Dict. of the Bible, vol. i. (1863), p. 1129.

1 Compare the course recommended to a sincere enquirer' (p. 261): 'he would consider that the Bible being, as to many of its parts, an old book, and written by various authors, and at different and distant periods, there might probably, occur some difficulties and apparent contradictions in the historical part of it; he would endeavour to remove these difficulties, to reconcile these apparent contradictions, by the rules of such sound criticism as he would use in examining the contents of any other book,' etc.

a new edition, he did not attempt to construct a fresh text. He was content to reproduce the text of Stephens from the edition of 1550 without change, adding the enormous mass of various readings (it is said that they exceeded 30,000) at the bottom of each page, for the reader to deal with them as he could. His death a fortnight after the appearance of his great work relieved him from the acrimony of critics who feared lest the authority of the sacred text should be endangered; but his cause was splendidly defended by Bentley, in whose person Cambridge scholarship prepared to pursue the task a stage further. As early as 1716 Bentley designed to produce an edition of the text, with the help of the oldest Greek and Latin MSS., ' exactly as it was in the best examples at the time of the Council of Nice, so that there shall not be twenty words nor even particles difference; and this shall carry its own demonstration in every verse.' But the plan never got further than the publication of systematic proposals and a specimen in 1720;2 more than a hundred years were to pass before the time was ripe for such an enterprise.

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The turn of the Old Testament came next, in the middle of the century, when the year 1753 witnessed the publication of two important works by Oxford scholars, Kennicott's First Dissertation on the State of the Hebrew Text, and Lowth's Lectures on Hebrew Poetry. Kennicott (1718-83) was a

1 Letter to Archbishop Wake, Works, ed. Dyce, 1838, vol. iii., p. 477. * Works, vol. iii., p. 487. De Sacra Poësi Hebræorum Prælectiones.