The apostles were not omniscient: granted: but it cannot hence be inferred that they did not know the message given them by God.

Their knowledge however perfect, must yet in a human mind have coexisted with ignorance; and nothing (argued I) but a perpetual miracle could prevent ignorance from now and then exhibiting itself in some error.

But hence to infer that they are not inspired, and are not messengers from God, is quite gratuitous.

Who indeed imagines that John or Paul understood astronomy so well as Sir William Herschel?
Those who believe that the apostles might err in human science, need not the less revere their moral and spiritual wisdom.
At the same time it became a matter of duty to me, if possible, to discriminate the authoritative from the unauthoritative in the Scripture, or at any rate avoid to accept and propagate as true that which is false, even if it be false only as science and not as religion.

I unawares,--more perhaps from old habit than from distinct conviction,--started from the assumption that my fixed point of knowledge was to be found in the sensible or scientific, not in the moral.