Are we bound to receive them as articles of faith?
Is there sufficient reason to assert them to have been direct revelations immediately vouchsafed to the sacred writers?
I cannot satisfy my judgment that there is;--first, because I find no account of any such events having been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and because I do find these events asserted, and (for aught I have been able to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles, and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these anticipations had become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their ancient and national religious belief.

Now I know of no revealed truth that did not originate in Revelation, and find it hard to reconcile my mind to the belief that any Christian truth, any essential article of faith, should have been first made known by the father of lies, or the guess-work of the human understanding blinded by Paganism, or at best without the knowledge of the true God.

Of course I would not apply this to any assertion of any New Testament writer, which was the final aim and primary intention of the whole passage; but only to sentences 'in ordine ad' some other doctrine or precept, 'illustrandi causa', or 'ad hominem', or 'more suasorio sive ad ornaturam, et rhetorice'.
Ib.

Part II.p.

145.
Second characteristic.