judgment on the
fact, sought to separate the two, and explained away the supernatural
element, such as miracles, as being orientalisms in the narrative, adapted
to an infant age, which an enlightened age must translate into the
language of ordinary events.

Eichhorn at Goettingen(723) applied this view to the Old Testament. Deeming
miracles impossible, he did not regard them as fraud, but admitted on the
contrary that the agents or narrators honestly believed them. The
supernatural was not imparted to deceive, but was the result of oriental
modes of speech, such as hyperbole, parable, or ellipsis, in which the
steps by which the process was performed were omitted. The smoke of Sinai
was considered a thunderstorm; the shining of Moses's face a natural
phenomenon.

The principles which Eichhorn applied to the Old Testament, Paulus of Jena
extended to the New.(724) The miraculous cures were explained by an
ellipsis in the omission of the natural remedies; the casting out of
devils as the power of a wise man over the insane; the transfiguration as
the confused recollection of sleeping men, who saw Jesus with two unknown
friends, in the beautiful light of the morning among the mountains: nay,
trespassing on still more holy ground, he dared impiously to explain away
the resurrection of our blessed Lord by the hypothesis that his death was
only apparent. These are a specimen of the mode of exegesis adopted in
this school, which is usually specifically called Rationalism. In this
mode Jesus appeared to be merely a wise and virtuous man; and his miracles
were merely acts of skill or accident. Paulus presented this as the
original Christianity. The theory did not last long, save in the mind of
its author, who lived until a recent period, to see the entire change of
critical belief. Attributing the supernatural to ignorance, it did not
even propose, like the later schools, to explain the marvellousness of the
phenomena, objectively by so plausible a theory as legends, nor
subjectively by myths:(725) it was too clumsy, not to say irreverent, an
explanation of the facts to satisfy a people of deep and poetical soul
like the Germans.

While this is a specimen of the critical side of rationalism, its dogmatic
side varied from natural ethics to a kind of Socinianism. But in all
alike, as its name would imply, it not only asserted that there is only
one universal revelation, which takes place through observation of nature
and man's r