"Certainly, you are quite right. I agree that the substantial facts are as the writers have delivered them; although they may, from their liability to error, have delivered some of the details erroneously."
"But might this liability to error have led them a little further in their discrepancies, so as to involve the fact itself in just doubt, and so of other great facts which constitute the doctrines as well as the facts of Scripture?"
"Of course, I think it might, since I suppose them unaided by any supernatural wisdom in this respect."
"The answer is honest. I thought, perhaps, you would have answered differently, in which case you would have given me the trouble of pursuing the argument one step further. It appears, then, that, though inspired to give mankind a true statement of doctrines, yet that, when these doctrines assume the form of facts (which, unhappily, they do perpetually), this hazardous liability to error as historians may counteract their inspiration, and they may give them in such a form as to throw upon them all manner of doubts and suspicions; possibly they have done so, for aught you can tell.—But, again, you also affirm that these so-called inspired men were liable to make all sorts of logical blunders, just as the uninspired."
"Certainly; and I must confess I think the logic of the Apostle Paul, in particular, often exceedingly absurd."
"Very fair and candid. For example, I dare say that you do not think much of his arguments or inferences from certain doctrines; or his proofs of those doctrines from the Old Testament or—"
"They are not, indeed, worth much in my estimation."
"Candid again; but then it is plain, first, that you will have to distinguish between the pure doctrines which Paul derived from a celestial source, and his erroneous proofs or inferences, which are delivered in precisely the same manner and with the same assumption of authority. And this, I think, would be an insuperable task; at least, it seems so, for you Rationalists decide this matter very differently. When any of you favor me with your sketches of the true heaven-descended Pauline theology, I find them widely different from each other. Your 'religious element' is of the most variable volume. Some of you include nearly the whole creed of ordinary orthodoxy; others, fifty or even eighty per cent. less, both in bulk and weight."
"Perhaps so."
"Perhaps so! But then, what becomes of your principle, that you may separate the pure 'religion element,' as conveyed to the minds of the sacred writers by direct illumination, from the errors of vicious logic which have been permitted to mingle with it? To me it appears any thing but easy to separate the functions of a revealer of truly inspired truth from the vitiating influences of a fallacious logic. The 'heavenly vision,' however 'obedient' a Paul may be to it, will be but obscurely represented, and suffer egregiously from that distorted image which the ill-constructed mirror will convey to us. —But once more, I think you do not hold Paul's rhetoric to be always of the first excellence?"