CREDIBILITY.
CHAPTER XII.
TEXTUAL CORRUPTIONS.
“The Bible does not contain the shadow of a shade of error from Genesis to Revelation”—Cheever.
“Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High.”—Bunyan.
Such are the dogmatic assertions of Bibliolaters. So much confidence do they pretend to repose in the doctrine of the Bible’s inerrancy that they propose the most crucial tests for its submission.
The Rev. Jeremiah Jones, one of the highest orthodox authorities on the canon, lays down this rule in determining the right of a book to a place in the canon:
“That book is apocryphal which contains contradictions; or which contains histories, or proposes doctrines contrary to those which are known to be true; or which contains ludicrous trifling, fabulous, or silly relations; or which contains anachronisms; or wherein the style is clearly different from the known style of the author whose name it bears” (New Methods, Vol. I., p. 70).
The Rev. T. Hartwell Horne, a standard authority in the orthodox church, submits this test in determining the divinity of the Bible as a whole: