BISHOP CUMBERLAND.
BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH IN 1691.
71.
Bishop Cumberland founds the law of God, as revealed in the Scriptures, upon the general law of nature. He does not attempt to found the laws of nature upon the Bible. “We believe,” he says, “in the truth of Scripture, because it promotes and illustrates the fundamental laws of nature in the government of the world.”
Then does the Bishop mean here that the Bible is not the WORD nor the WILL of God, but the exposition of the WORD and the record of the WILL, so far as either could be rendered communicable to human comprehension through the medium of human language and intelligence?
There is a striking passage in Bunsen’s Hippolytus, which may be considered with reference to this opinion of the Bishop.
He (Bunsen) says, that “what relates the history of ‘the word of God’ in his humanity, and in this world, and what records its teachings, and warnings, and promises (that is, the Bible?) was mistaken for ‘the word of God’ itself, in its proper sense.”
Does he mean that we deem erroneously the collection of writings we call the Bible to be “the word of God;” whereas, in fact, it is “the history, the record of the word of God?” that is, of all that God has spoken to man—in various revelations—through human life—by human deeds?—because this is surely a most important and momentous distinction.