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It appears, then, from what has been said, that the words "utmost pains" and "fairly disputable," are extremely vague and indefinite; and in consequence it is natural to ask how Dr. Arnold would propose to limit them? how a student is to ascertain that in Dr. Arnold's sense he has employed his "utmost pains," and that the points on which he differs from other commentators on Scripture are "fairly disputable ?" It is also obvious that, till he is furnished with a tolerably precise answer to this question, he will be as much at a loss as ever to know what doctrines and practices he is to regard as "unessential and indifferent;" and that as wide a door as ever will be open to the very evil against which Dr. Arnold would protect the Christian world, viz. difference of opinion as to what is essential and what not so. So much, however, is certain, that Dr. Arnold's standard of the "utmost pains" to be employed on the understanding of Scripture, is higher than that actually taken by Hooker, Taylor, and Wilson. What doctrines remain in dispute after such examination as theirs, he will not allow to be "fairly disputable ;" nor, when they, equally with himself, do appeal to Scripture, will he allow that they "equally can" do so. Before the existence of disputes, doubts, and opposite appeals, are to be deemed proofs that the points contended for are indifferent, Dr. Arnold will demand higher qualifications from the contending parties than are to be found in these great luminaries of our Church; and till they have

proved such qualifications, far from being "content with his own opinion in perfect tolerance" of theirs, he will think himself at liberty to brand them, should cause arise, as upholders of Priestcraft, Judaism, profaneness, and positive blasphemy.

Such are the difficulties to which Dr. Arnold is reduced in the application of his own principle. But this circumstance, though an argument against Dr. Arnold's trustworthiness as a logical reasoner, is no argument against the principle itself; and as this principle in one or other of its modifications is held very generally, and as, in the degree in which it is held, it must ever have considerable effect on theological opinion, it is worth examining the grounds on which it is usually rested. These are stated by Dr. Arnold as follows :—

"If this be not so," he says in proof of the principle in question, "and if the sense of the Scriptures as to any important point may fairly be doubted by honest and sensible men, it seems to me no better than a mockery to call them the rule of faith; and it is imputing an obscurity to God's revelation, such as attaches to the works of no philosopher and no human legislator'."

Now it will not be attempted here to dispute the correctness of this reasoning, except with such persons as conceive themselves to acquiesce in Bishop Butler's argument in the second part of his Analogy; but all such persons are seriously requested

1 Introd. to 3rd vol. Sermons, p. xxviii.

to reflect how much of that argument, particularly the parts contained in the 3rd and 6th chapters, turns on the assumption that we have no knowledge at all à priori what degree of information it were to be expected that God would give us in a revelation, or with what degree of distinctness He would communicate it, or indeed of the purpose with which any revelation would be given us at all; and therefore that it is of course frivolous to object to particular interpretations of it as implying an obscurity which, for aught we know, may have been intended. This assumption holds no accidental or supplementary place in Bishop Butler's system it is not one which we may set aside for further consideration, and yet acquiesce in the general tenor of his argument; but is his sole answer to a principal class of objections. Yet every one must at once perceive, that the very contradictory of this is assumed in the foregoing observation of Dr. Arnold.

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Upon supposition," says Bishop Butler, "of” God's "affording us light and instruction by revelation additional to what He has afforded us by reason and experience, we are in no sort judges by what methods and in what proportion it were to be expected that this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us." Dr. Arnold, on the contrary, takes it for granted, that it would be afforded by such methods and in such proportion, as to make it impossible that on "any important

point" "any honest and sensible man" should be left in doubt.

We

"We are wholly ignorant," Bishop Butler tells us, "how far or in what manner God would interpose miraculously to qualify them to whom He should originally make the revelation, for communicating the knowledge given by it, and to secure their doing it to the age in which they should live, and to secure its being transmitted to posterity. are equally ignorant whether the evidence of it would be certain, or highly probable, or doubtful.... Nay, we are not in any sort able to judge whether it were to have been expected that the revelation should have been committed to writing, or left to be handed down, and consequently corrupted, by verbal tradition." Dr. Arnold on the other hand expects all men to agree with him, that to suppose a divine revelation, not merely not committed to writing, but not written in the most precise and definite terms, is a self-evident absurdity.

According to Bishop Butler, " those who will thoroughly examine into revelation will find it worth remarking, that there are several ways of arguing, which, though just with regard to other writings, are not applicable to Scripture...We cannot argue, for instance, that this cannot be the sense or intent of such a passage of Scripture, for if it had, it would have been expressed more plainly...yet we may justly argue thus with respect to common books." According to Dr. Arnold, no rational man will "impute to God's revelation" "an obscuB b

VOL. I.

rity" such as does not "attach to the works" of human philosophers and legislators.

Lastly, in order to form a just estimate of the line of argument here adopted by Dr. Arnold, and by half the Protestant world before his time, it may be useful to meditate on the following sentence :

"But it may be said," proceeds Bishop Butler, "that a revelation in some of the above mentioned circumstances, one e. g. which was not committed to writing, and thus secured against danger of corruption, would not have ans wered its purpose; I ask, What purpose? It would not have answered all the purposes which it has now answered, and in the same degree; but it would have answered others, or the same in different degrees; and which of these were the purposes of God and best fell in with His general government, we could not at all have determined beforehand. Now since it has been shown that we have no principles of reason upon which to judge beforehand how it were to be expected revelation should have been left, or what was most suitable to the divine plan of government in any of the forementioned respects, it must be quite frivolous to object afterwards as to any of them, against its being left in one way rather than another for this would be to object against things upon account of their being different from expectations which have been shown to be without

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This doctrine of Bishop Butler's is here put forward principally for its intrinsic importance, as

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