478 Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 



" goodly cedars/' are literally cedars of God ; and in Acts 

 vii. 20, where " exceeding fair" is in like manner in the 

 Hebrew-idiomatic Greek of the original, fair to God. It 

 is not also difficult to trace in the English version of the 

 account of the creation of the world, a tinge of the Greek 

 philosophy received at the time when the translation was 

 made. Thus the word rendered "firmament," literally sig- 

 nifying something expanded or spread out, is made to have 

 too great affinity to that sphere of crystal in which the hea- 

 venly bodies were then said to be stuck and carried round ; 

 and perhaps in such a matter relating solely to what was 

 physical, while the account of the origin and fall of man is 

 the dictate of inspiration, even Moses may have been left 

 by the Holy Spirit, at liberty to use the ideas of the Egyp- 

 tian philosophy, in which he, and doubtless others of the 

 Jews were well versed, and which is generally understood 

 to have been nearly identical with the Grecian of after- 

 ages.* Under all these circumstances it is evident, that 

 though the general scope and meaning of such a series of 

 books as composes the Bible cannot possibly be mistak- 

 en, it is very possible that an argument founded upon 

 the connection, construction, or interpretation of words in 

 a few detached sentences, may be valueless, simply be- 

 cause the premises on which the basis rests, and the 

 whole of the reasoning is reared, have no existence in 



* Traces of the Grecian, once Egyptian philosophy, may be found 

 in many other places of Scripture. Such are the expressions of " the 

 windows of heaven," i. e. of the crystalline sphere, " being opened," 

 that the waters above the firmament might descend in rain ; of " the 

 pillars of heaven," and of " the earth being founded on the seas and 

 established on the floods." To shew that this permission of the Holy 

 Spirit to the sacred writers, to use the philosophical ideas in vogue at 

 their day, just as in other places they speak according to appearances, 

 not according to realities, is not so very unlikely, it may be mentioned 

 that St. Paul even quotes a verse of a Greek heathen poet, which thus 

 becomes a text of holy writ. 



