This peculiarity is not to be found in other moral teachers, who are compelled to employ every arti fice to seduce men into their conclusions. But Christ " taught with authority," inasmuch as he laid down the rule, without stating the reasons on which it was founded, which no other teacher had ventured to dispense with; and which even he would not have neglected had he not possessed other means of securing attention; and had he not seen that the reasonableness of his precepts would ultimately sustain them.
The want, then, of the usual processes of reason ing in bringing out moral deductions, is a proof that our Lord had other means of giving them ef ficacy; whilst the excellence of the maxims, which must be obvious when they are subjected to candid examination, shows how little despotism there is in divine enactments, and that they are addressed to our reason,our conscience, and our best interests.
In this article we have endeavoured to give a comprehensive view of the foundation on which true theology rests; and we have gone so far be yond the outworks, as to adduce many of the pecu liar doctrines and precepts contained in the Scrip tures, as illustrative of the divine origin of the re cord in which they are contained, and proclaiming, at the same time, their own high authority and the reverence which is due to them. We had intended
to give a view of polemical Theology, and a cata logue of the books most, useful for the Theological student; but the limits prescribed to this article prevent us from entering on the wide and thorny field of polemical Divinity; and it would have been necessary to append so many qualifications to every book that we recommended, that this undertaking would itself have formed a volume. We, therefore, only recommend, as of unquestionable utility, the earnest study of the sacred Scriptures, in the ori ginal languages; and perhaps the best commenta ries on them will be found in the various transla tions which different Christian churches and com munities have given of the original Scriptures.