We do not usually question
the credit of a writer, by reason of an opinion he may have delivered
upon subjects unconnected with his evidence: and even upon subjects
connected with his account, or mixed with it in the same discourse or
writing, we naturally separate facts from opinions, testimony from
observation, narrative from argument.
To apply this equitable consideration to the Christian records, much
controversy and much objection has been raised concerning the quotations
of the Old Testament found in the New; some of which quotations, it is
said, are applied in a sense and to events apparently different from
that which they bear, and from those to which they belong in the
original. It is probable, to my apprehension, that many of those
quotations were intended by the writers of the New Testament as nothing
more than accommodations. They quoted passages of their Scripture which
suited, and fell in with, the occasion before them, without always
undertaking to assert that the occasion was in the view of the author of
the words. Such accommodations of passages from old authors, from books
especially which are in every one's hands, are common with writers of
all countries; but in none, perhaps, were more to be expected than in
the writings of the Jews, whose literature was almost entirely confined
to their Scriptures.
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