ce of obliging a few who
were, or wanted to be, beneficed clergymen, and who probably were not
agreed among themselves as to what required alteration. He concluded
by showing, from the different opinions of churches on the canon of
scripture itself, that men are as little likely to be unanimous on that
point as on any other. He remarked, "The Bible is a vast collection of
different treatises: a man who holds the divine authority of one may
consider the other as merely human. What is his canon? The Jewish? St.
Jerome's? that of the thirty-nine articles? Luther's? There are some
who reject the Canticles; others six of the Epistles; the Apocalypse has
even been suspected as heretical, and was doubted of for many ages, and
by many great men. As these narrow the canon, others have enlarged it,
by admitting St. Barnabas's Epistles, the Apostolic Constitutions, to
say nothing of many other Gospels. Therefore to ascertain scripture you
must have one article more; and you must define what that scripture
is which you mean to teach. There are, I believe, very few who, when
scripture is to be ascertained, do not see the absolute necessity of
knowing what general doctrine a man draws from it, before he is sent
down authorised by the state to teach it as pure doctrine, and receive
a tenth of the produce of our lands. The scripture is not one summary of
doctrine regularly digested, in which a man cannot mistake his way; it
is a most venerable but multivarious collection of the records of divine
economy; a collection of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology,
history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation,
ethics, carried through different books by different authors at
different ages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort
out what is intended for example, what only as narrative, what to be
understood literally, what figuratively--where one precept is to be
controlled and modified by another--what is used directly and what only
as an argument _ad hominem_--what is temporary and what of perpetual
obligation--what appropriated to our state, and to one set of men, and
what the general duty of all Christians. If we do not get some security
for this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for, all the dangerous
fanaticism which can be produced to corrupt our people and to derange
the public worship of the country." Lord North said that he hoped to
have seen nothing in the petition to prevent him