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246 hate in a literal, but a figurative sense of loving them less than himself and his cause. So we interpret the precept which commands us to cut off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye. We do not cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes, not because we are not literally commanded to do so, but reason teaches us that he did not mean literally to be so taken. So whatever Christ might have left written, there would have remained the same difficulty of interpretation. We should still be obliged to rest on probability, just as we do now. We cannot be infallibly certain that we take a sentence of Scripture in the true sense, without possessing inspiration ourselves. We cannot know that we are inspired, without the power of miracles, or unless some miracle were wrought for our sakes, for otherwise we could not have distinguished those thoughts which were miraculously suggested from those which occurred in the ordinary operations of our minds.

"Then, even had the Saviour left the Gospel written with his own hand, we would still have been compelled to rely on human testimony that the same identical words were preserved. The thing, then, is evidently better as it is. We would have been compelled at last to rely on human testimony as to what Christ did and taught and suffered. What more competent witnesses could we possibly have than those who were with him on terms of the greatest familiarity during his whole ministry? In what better form could we have this testimony than in the Gospel according to Matthew, written by one of