Excerpt from Letters to Marcus Dods, D.D MY dear sir, - I greatly regret that you have issued a third and unchanged edition Of your sermon on Revelation and Inspiration, and that the New Preface cannot, in any respect, be considered as having improved the situation. You begin by complaining that justice has not been done to the apologetic element in your discourse: In' the first place, I Should have expected intelligent readers to apprehend that the sermon was written as an apologetic attempt. Now, waiving all about intelli gent readers, I have a distinct recollection Of recognising the apolo getic element in your pages but my criticism Of your sermon being incidental, and by no means the main object Of my pamphlet, my aim was to produce, not an exhaustive reply, but merely stricture sufficient, in my view, to lead you to reconsider your position. Save for this, I would certainly have set myself to bar you out from finding Shelter in the fifth section Of the first chapter of the Confession - an attempt which I see you repeat in reference to Paul bringing light to your spirit. And, undoubtedly, I would have done what you now, not very wisely, I think, challenge me to do. How, then, is it possible for me, in meeting your challenge on this point, to avoid asking, What hinders you from conducting a sound and valid apolo getic in defence of Divine Revelation without injuring Inspiration? For that last is really what you have to reply to. Why have you injured the doctrine of Inspiration? Till you vanquish my arguments, I am entitled to say (and, of course, I must say it now more strongly than before), that I have proved that what you call inspiration was not something designed to secure the supreme divine authorship Of the writings concerned that, in fact, it may be defined as being just everything except what would secure that In Short, you have spirited out and rationalised away everything that the Church Catholic, and not the Westminster Divines only, have counted precious in their idea Of Inspiration, leaving in it nothing distinctive, and denying all that is supernatural.

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