56 The Fundamentals to have its claims duly investigated. The examination of a witness of established veracity and rectitude would not be conducted in precisely the same manner as that of a witness whose character is unknown or under suspicion. Wellhausen’s style of treating the history of Israel can have no justification unless he should first show that the claim so often advanced in “Thus saith the Lord” is entirely baseless. So far from admitting the validity of the axiom referred to, we distinctly hold that it is unscientific. A just and true criticism must have respect to everything already known and settled regard ing the productions to which it is applied, and assuredly so momentous a claim as that of divine authority demands care ful preliminary examination. But criticism, it may be urged, is the very instrumeñt by which we must test the pretensions of these writings to a special divine origin and character, and, hence, it cannot stand aside till this question has been considered. In requiring criticism to be silent till the verdict has been rendered, we are putting it under restrictions inconsistent with its func tions and prerogatives. The reply, however, is that the prin cipal external and internal evidences for the divine origin of the Scriptures can be weighed with sufficient accuracy to determine the general character and authority of these writ ings before criticism, either higher or lower, requires to apply its hand. “The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellences, and the entire per fection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evince itself to be the word of God” (Conf. of Faith 1:5). But all of these considerations can, in all that is material, be weighed and estimated before technical criticism begins its labors, as they have been estimated to the entire conviction of the divinity of Scripture on the part of thousands who had
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