a perfectly all-sufficing book is seen in
scientific compilations by a conjunction of highly accomplished editors.
A new edition of Quain's Anatomy, revised and brought up to date by the
best anatomists, would, for the moment, probably be fully adequate to
the wants of the student, and dispense with all other references
whatsoever. Not that even then, it would be desirable to abstain from
ever opening a different compendium; although undoubtedly there would be
the very minimum of necessity for doing so. Nevertheless, literature
presents few analogous instances. One of the great works of an original
genius, like Aristotle, might, by profuse annotation, be made nearly
sufficing; but this is another way of reading by quotation a plurality
of writers; and it would be better still to peruse some of these in
full, there being no need for studying them with the degree of intensity
bestowed on a main work.

[LOCKE'S TREATMENT OF THE BIBLE.]

The example, by pre-eminence, of one self-sufficing work is the Bible.
Being the sole and ultimate authority of Christian doctrine, it holds a
position entirely apart; and, among Protestants at least, there is a
becoming jealousy of allowing any extraneous writing to overbear its
contents. Yet we are not to infer, as many have done practically, that
no other work needs to be read in company with it. Granting that its
genuine doctrines have been overlaid by subsequent accretions, the way
to get clear of these is not to neglect the entire body of fathers,
commentators, and theologians, and to give the whole attention to the
scriptural text. Locke himself set an example of this attempt. He
proposed, in his "Reasonableness of Christianity," to ascertain the
exact meaning of the New Testament, by casting aside all the glosses of
commentators and divines, and applying his own unassisted judgment to
spell out its teachings. He did not disdain to use the lights of
extraneous history, and the traditions of the heathen world; he only
refused to be bound by any of the artificial creeds and systems devised
in later ages to embody the doctrines supposed to be found in the Bible.
The fallacy of his position obviously was, that he could not strip
himself of his education and acquired notions, the result of the
teaching of the orthodox church. He seemed unconscious of the necessity
of trying to make allowance for his unavoidable prepossessions. In
consequence, he simply fell into an old groove of receive