vidence he not only discarded the text
of the Three Witnesses, but he decided that the Pentateuch must have
been made up from several books; that Genesis was not written until
the reign of Saul; that the books of Kings and Chronicles were probably
collected by Ezra; and, in a curious anticipation of modern criticism,
that the book of Psalms and the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel were
each written by various authors at various dates. But the old belief in
prophecy as prediction was too strong for him, and we find him applying
his great powers to the relation of the details given by the prophets
and in the Apocalypse to the history of mankind since unrolled,
and tracing from every statement in prophetic literature its exact
fulfilment even in the most minute particulars.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the structure of scriptural
interpretation had become enormous. It seemed destined to hide forever
the real character of our sacred literature and to obscure the great
light which Christianity had brought into the world. The Church, Eastern
and Western, Catholic and Protestant, was content to sit in its shadow,
and the great divines of all branches of the Church reared every sort
of fantastic buttress to strengthen or adorn it. It seemed to be founded
for eternity; and yet, at this very time when it appeared the strongest,
a current of thought was rapidly dissolving away its foundations, and
preparing that wreck and ruin of the whole fabric which is now, at the
close of the nineteenth century, going on so rapidly.

The account of the movement thus begun is next to be given.(471)

(471) For Newton's boldness in textual criticism, compared with his
credulity as to the literal fulfilment of prophecy, see his Observations
upon the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, in his
works, edited by Horsley, London, 1785, vol. v, pp. 297-491.

II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.

At the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural interpretation
were certain ideas regarding the first five books of the Old Testament.
It was taken for granted that they had been dictated by the Almighty
to Moses about fifteen hundred years before our era; that some parts of
them, indeed, had been written by the corporeal finger of Jehovah, and
that all parts gave not merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology.
It was also held, virtually by the universal Church, that while
every narrative or s