me, approached me often with an earnest desire and hope to find some spiritual good in me, but withdrew disappointed, finding me either cold and defensive, or (perhaps they thought) warm and disputatious.  Thus, as long as artificial tests of spirituality are allowed to exist, their erroneousness is not easily exposed by the mere wear and tear of life.  When the collision of opinion is very strong, two good men may meet, and only be confirmed in their prejudices against one another:  for in order that one may elicit the spiritual sympathies of the other, a certain liberality is prerequisite.  Without this, each prepares to shield himself from attack, or even holds out weapons of offence.  Thus “articles of Communion” are essentially articles of Disunion.—­On the other hand, if all tests of opinion in a church were heartily and truly done away, then the principles of spiritual affinity and repulsion would act quite undisturbed.  Surely therefore this was the only right method?—­Nevertheless, I saw the necessity of one test, “Jesus is the Son of God,” and felt unpleasantly that one article tends infallibly to draw another after it.  But I had too much, just then to think of in other quarters, to care much about Church Systems.

[Footnote 1:  See Gen. xxxiii. 19, and xlix. 29-32, xxiii.]

[Footnote 2:  Some say, that Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, named in the Chronicles, is meant; that he is confounded with the prophet, the son of Berechiah, and was supposed to be the last of the martyrs, because the Chronicles are placed last in the Hebrew Bible.  This is a plausible view; but it saves the Scripture only by imputing error to Jesus.]

[Footnote 3:  My Eclectic Reviewer says (p. 276):  “Thus because the evangelists held an erroneous medical theory, Mr. Newman suffered a breach to be made in the credit of the Bible.”  No; but as the next sentence states, “because they are convicted of misstating facts,” under the influence of this erroneous medical theory.  Even this reviewer—­candid for an orthodox critic, and not over-orthodox either—­cannot help garbling me.]

[Footnote 4:  I have explained this in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”]

[Footnote 5:  This poet celebrated also the deeds of David (2 Sam. i. 18) according to our translation:  if so, he was many centuries later than Joshua; however, the sense of the Hebrew is little obscure.]

[Footnote 6:  I have fully discussed this in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”]

[Footnote 7:  The English reader may consult Theodore Parker’s translation of De Wette’s Introduction to the Canon of Scripture.  I have also amply exhibited the vanity of the Chronicles in my “Hebrew Monarchy.”  De Wette has a separate treatise on the Chronicles,]

[Footnote 8:  If the date of the Apocalypse is twenty years earlier than that of the fourth Gospel, I now feel no such difficulty in their being the composition of the same writer.]