use were the arguments of Hopkins, Bishop of Vermont, a man
whose noble character and beautiful culture gave him very wide influence
in all branches of the American Protestant Church. While avowing his
personal dislike to slavery, he demonstrated that the Bible sanctioned
it. Other theologians, Catholic and Protestant, took the same ground;
and then came that tremendous rejoinder which echoed from heart to heart
throughout the Northern States: "The Bible sanctions slavery? So much
the worse for the Bible." Then was fulfilled that old saying of Bishop
Ulrich of Augsburg: "Press not the breasts of Holy Writ too hard, lest
they yield blood rather than milk."(493)

(493) There is a curious reference to Bishop Hopkins's ideas on slavery
in Archbishop Tait's Life and Letters. For a succinct statement of the
biblical proslavery argument referred to, see Rhodes, as above, vol. i,
pp. 370 et seq.

Yet throughout Christendom a change in the mode of interpreting
Scripture, though absolutely necessary if its proper authority was to
be maintained, still seemed almost hopeless. Even after the foremost
scholars had taken ground in favour of it, and the most conservative
of those whose opinions were entitled to weight had made concessions
showing the old ground to be untenable, there was fanatical opposition
to any change. The Syllabus of Errors put forth by Pius IX in 1864, as
well as certain other documents issued from the Vatican, had increased
the difficulties of this needed transition; and, while the more
able-minded Roman Catholic scholars skilfully explained away the
obstacles thus created, others published works insisting upon the most
extreme views as to the verbal inspiration of the sacred books. In
the Church of England various influential men took the same view. Dr.
Baylee, Principal of St. Aidan's College, declared that in Scripture
"every scientific statement is infallibly accurate; all its histories
and narrations of every kind are without any inaccuracy. Its words
and phrases have a grammatical and philological accuracy, such as is
possessed by no human composition." In 1861 Dean Burgon preached in
Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, as follows: "No, sirs, the Bible is the
very utterance of the Eternal: as much God's own word as if high heaven
were open and we heard God speaking to us with human voice. Every
book is inspired alike, and is inspired entirely. Inspiration is not a
difference of degree, but of kind.