k to English) were fallible; and the editors, who from
the scores of manuscripts, by their personal comparison and decisions
between the conflicting readings, patched together our present text,
were most fallible. And when thus a Bible reader has got his text
before him, how can he understand it, except by using his own reason
and judgment? Instruments, again, most fallible.

How is it possible, then, to get Bible-truth independently of the
reason or in entire exemption from error? The only way would be to
say, that not only was the Bible verbally inspired, but all its
authors, copyists, editors, and pious readers were also infallibly
inspired. As in the old Hindoo account of how the world was supported,
the earth was said to be held up on pillars, and the pillars on an
elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and when the defender of the
faith was asked what, then, did the tortoise rest on, he sought to
save himself in his quandary, by roundly asserting that "it was
tortoise all the way down";--so the defender of the infallibility of
the Scripture has to take refuge in "inspiration all the way down."
But if this be so, ought not the modern scripture editors and
revisers, translators and Biblical professors also to be inspired, as
much as those of King James' day or the printers at the Bible house?
And thus we reach, as the _reductio ad absurdum_ of this argument,
this result: that Tischendorff, and Koenen, and the Hebrew professors,
among whom Doctor Briggs is a foremost authority, while accused of
heresy are really themselves the very channels of infallible
inspiration.

The sincere investigators into the character of the Bible and the
nature of Christ are charged with exalting human reason above the word
of God. But as soon as the subject is investigated and a Professor
Swing or a Mr. MacQueary corroborates his interpretation by the
Scripture itself, or Doctor Briggs shows his views to be sustained by
history, by philosophy, by a profounder study of both nature and the
Bible, then the ground is shifted, and it is maintained that it is not
a question whether the views are true, but whether they conform to the
creed; that the Catechism is not to be judged by the Bible or the
facts in the case, but Bible and facts are to be interpreted by the
words of the Confession; and if they do not agree with this, then
heresy and infidelity are made manifest. The question is not whether
the water of truth be found, but whether i