he pith of his general reply is in the following, p. 152:--

"'Now (says Mr. Newman) I will not here farther insist on the
monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul's words in order to pour
contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington
can justify!' I think the _real_ monstrosity is, that men should
so coolly employ St. Paul's words,--for it is a quotation from the
treatise on the "Soul,"--to mean something totally different from
anything he intended to convey by them, and employ the dialect of the
Apostles to contradict their doctrines; that is the monstrosity ... It
is very hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this.... But had
he gone on only a few lines, the reader would have seen Harrington
saying: 'These words you have just quoted were well in St. Paul's
mouth, and had a meaning. In yours, I suspect, they would have none,
or a very different one.'"

According to this doctrine of Mr. Rogers, it would not have been
profane in an unbelieving Jew to _make game_ of Moses, David, and the
Prophets, whenever they were quoted by Paul. The Jew most profoundly
believed that Paul quoted the old Scriptures in a false, as well as in
a new meaning. One Christian divine does not feel free to ridicule
the words of Paul when quoted erroneously (as he thinks) by another
Christian divine? Why then, when quoted by me? I hold it to be a great
insolence to deny my right to quote Paul or David, as much as Plato
or Homer, and adopt their language whenever I find it to express my
sentiment. Mr. Rogers's claim to deride highly spiritual truth, barely
because I revere it, is a union of inhumanity and impiety. He has
nowhere shown that Paul meant something "totally different" from
the sense which I put on his words. I know that he cannot. I do
not pretend always to bind myself to the definite sense of my
predecessors; nor did the writers of the New Testament. They often
adopt and apply _in an avowedly new sense_ the words of the Old
Testament; so does Dr. Watts with the Hebrew Psalms. Such adaptation,
in the way of development and enlargement, when done with sincerely
pious intention, has never been reproved or forbidden by Christians,
Whether I am wise or unwise in my interpretations, the _subject_ is a
sacred one, and I treat it solemnly; and no errors in my "logic" can
justify Mr. Rogers in putting on the mask of a profane sceptic, who
scoffs (not once or twice, but through a long book) at the most
sacred a