revelation, or inward light, to depreciate the Scriptures, we have an exemplification, which, to my mind, is very shocking, in the manner in which Barclay speaks of the use made by the Apostle Paul of the Old Testament writings, in his communings with the Jews. He is answering the objection to his doctrine, (the doctrine that the Scriptures are not the primary rule and test of truth) drawn from what is said of the Bereans, that, when Paul preached to them, "they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily whether these things were so." His third reply to the objection is" If this commen"dation of the Jewish Bereans might infer that the "Scriptures were the only and principal rule to try "the Apostle's doctrine by, what should become of "the Gentiles?"-who were not previously, like the Jews, believers in the divine authority of the Old Testament Scriptures; so that an appeal to these Scriptures could not be supposed to have any weight with them. Now, although the Apostle does not omit this description of evidence even with Gentiles, -for it is to Gentiles he says-" I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures ;"-yet I readily grant, he does in general reason differently with Jews and with Gentiles-with the former, "out of the

Scriptures ;"-with the latter, on principles taught by the light of natural reason and conscience. But what shall we say of the following comparison? "Now certainly the principal and only rule is not "different; one to the Jews, and another to the "Gentiles; but is universal, reaching both; though

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secondary and subordinate rules may be various, "and diversely suited, according as the people they 66 are used to are stated and circumstantiated: even so we see that the Apostle to the Athenians used a testimony of one of their own poets, which he "judged would have credit with them; and no doubt "such testimonies, whose authors they esteemed, had "more weight with them than all the, sayings of "Moses and the prophets, whom they neither knew,

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nor would have cared for. Now, because the "Apostle used the testimony of a poet to the Athe"nians, will it therefore follow he made that the "principal or only rule to try his doctrine by? So "neither will it follow, that though he made use of "the Scripture to the Jews, as being a principle al

ready believed by them, to try his doctrine, that "from thence the Scriptures may be accounted the

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principal or only rule." *-Is it come to this!that Paul's reasoning with the Jews from the Old Testament Scriptures, no more implies his acknow

Ibid. page 90.

ledging these writings as the rule or test by which he consented his doctrine should be tried,-than his quoting with approbation a saying of the Athenian Menander implies his acknowledging as such a rule or test the testimony of that heathen poet! Assuredly, when Paul "reasoned with the Jews out of the Scriptures" in proof of his two leading positions,"that the Christ was to suffer and to rise from the dead, and that Jesus whom he preached to them was the Christ," he proceeded upon the assumption, that if his doctrine did not agree with the typical and prophetic intimations of these Scriptures, it had no title to be received as true, and his unbelieving countrymen were justified in rejecting it. Surely this was admitting the Old Testament Scriptures to be a legitimate test of his doctrine. Who questions that? you may say that which we insist on is, their not being the only or the primary test. I answer, if by a test is to be understood merely an evidence of truth, then certainly they were not the only test. There were other proofs of the divinity of Paul's doctrine; and to them, perhaps, as being more direct and immediate, the epithet of "primary" might even more appropriately be applied. I allude to the miracles, by which the divinity of his commission, and the truth of his message, were alike attested. But if by a test is meant a legitimate or authorized standard of comparison, by their conformity or discon

formity to which other things are to be tried; then I must insist upon it, that in this sense, the Old Testament Scriptures were both the primary and the only test. What other was there? The light within, says Barclay, the universal light,—the same to both Jews and Gentiles. But if the inward light was the primary test, how came it that, with the Jews, Paul made his appeal, always to the secondary, and never to the primary? And with regard to the Gentiles, what is this inward light? Is it simply reason, or is it the direct illumination of the Spirit,-immediate revelation? If it be reason, we may well ask, has God indeed constituted the reason of fallen man the standard, the primary standard, of his own truth! Has not the reason of fallen man, in its application to the things of God, proved itself, in all ages and in all places, to be foolishness? Is not the light that is in him darkness? And are we to regard as the divinely sanctioned standard of religious truth, a principle, of which the results, in universal experience, have been little else than multiform and miserable error ! That the principles of divine revelation are in perfect harmony with sound reason, I more than grant. We can appeal in their behalf to the judgments of men, and say, "Why even of yourselves judge ye not that which is right?" But this is a very different thing from setting up human reason, perverted as it is by depravity, as the standard of the

truth of God.-If, again, the inward light is divine illumination, we 'have to observe, first, that the assumption of it involves a begging of the question. The existence of such illumination independently of the written word,-the existence, that is, of immediate revelation in others than those by whom that word was recorded,-is the very point in dispute. No one, surely, will be so pitifully weak as to adduce Paul's reference to the saying of the poet, Menander, as a proof of it!-We have to observe, secondly, that to make this description of inward light the standard of divine communications, is to make it the standard of itself. You lay claim to immediate revelation, as the privilege of all who live under the new covenant economy. What, then, is the difference between immediate revelation and inward light? If we are to try the former by the latter, what is this but trying it by itself, and making the Spirit's illumination in one the test of the Spirit's illumination in another; which amounts to the same thing as having no test at all? Every man's own light is his own standard; and is the standard of the light in others; and is the standard of the light even in the Holy Scriptures, inasmuch as the Spirit himself is above the external word, and his direct communications are more to be looked to than those which have come to us through the medium of others. And is this to do honour to the Scriptures?