Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
teenth century. So essential was it found in maintaining the
dominant theology that, despite the fact that Sir Isaac Newton,
Richard Porson, the nineteenth-century revisers, and
ill other eminent authorities have rejected it, the Anglican
Church still retains it in its Lectionary, and the Scotch
Church continues to use it in the Westminster Catechism, as
I main support of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Nor were other new truths presented by Erasmus bet-
ter received. His statement that " some of the epistles as-
cribed to St. Paul are certainly not his," which is to-day
universally acknowledged as a truism, also aroused a storm.
For generations, then, his work seemed vain.
On the coming in of the Reformation the great structurie
Df belief in the literal and historical correctness of every
statement in the Scriptures, in the profound allegorical
neanings of the simplest texts, and even in the divine origin
Df the vowel punctuation, towered more loftily and grew
nore rapidly than ever before. The Reformers, having cast
off the authority of the Pope and of the universal Church, fell
Dack all the more upon the infallibility of the sacred books.
The attitude of Luther toward this great subject was char-
icteristic. |/ As a rule, he adhered tenaciously to the literal
nterpretation of the Scriptures ;
305
his argument against Coper-
'licus is a fair example of his reasoning in this respect ; but,
.vith the strong good sense which characterized him, he from
:ime to time broke away from the received belief. Thus, he
ook the liberty of understanding certain passages in the
31d Testament in a different sense from that given them by
he New Testament, and declared St. Paul's allegorical use
\)i the story of Sarah and Hagar " too unsound to stand the
est." He also emphatically denied that the Epistle to the
iHLebrews was written by St. Paul, and he did this in the
internal evidence. His
p.xercise of a critical judgment upon
itterance as to the Epistle of St. James became famous. He
mnounced to the Church :
"
I dp not esteem this an aposolic
; epistle I_will not havejt in my Bible among the canoncal
books," and he summed up his opinion in his well-known
illusion to it as " an epistle of straw."
Emboldened by him, the gentle spirit of Melanchthon,
yhile usually taking the Bible very literally, at times re-
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