Excerpt from The Bible and Its Theology: As Popularly Taught; A Review, Comparison, and Re-Statement; With More Especial Reference to Certain Bampton Lectures and Recent Works on Atonement and Inspiration

In addition to their writings, I have thought it well to include some notice of more recent publications of special interest. This I could do, however, only in connection with a few topics of Chief importance. I allude in particular to Law Mandi, on the two great questions of the Atonement and biblical Inspiration, also to certain minor works, as Dr. Dale on the Living Christ, Bishop Moorhouse on the Teaching of Christ, the late Archbishop Magee on the Atonement, and Bishops Ellicott and Thorold on the same subject.

A few words more must bring to a close this preface, already perhaps too diffuse. I must express my regret not to have had the advantage of seeing Mr. Gore's Bampton Lectures (1891) before finishing my own volume in its new form. The latter, in plan and substance, was all but completed (though its publica tion has been much delayed) before the Lemures were out. Not, I must add, that the perusal of those elaborate and eloquently written pages could have made any great difference to my own well-considered and long-settled conviction, based as it is upon an unfettered and almost life-long study of the subject, and strengthened by every addition to modern knowledge, in the newer light thrown upon the most ancient Christian beliefs by such documents as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the Apology of Aristides, the Diatessaron of Tatian.' The structure, in short, of these latest Bampton Lectures (like that of their great predecessor's) appears to me to rest upon a huge misinterpretation of the Christian books. Manifestly, it is founded far more on Nicene speculation than upon the Spirit or the Word of Christ. But surely to appeal to Nicene or ante Nicene theology in order to interpret the original teaching of Christ and of Paul on the subjects in question, is too much like going back to the Ptolemaic system of the universe to explain the working of natural laws among the celestial bodies.

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