About this time I also had begun to get more or less aid from four or five living German divines; but none produced any strong impression on me but De Wette.

The two grand lessons which I learned from him, were, the greater recency of Deuteronomy, and the very untrustworthy character of the book of Chronicles; with which discovery, the true origin of the Pentateuch becomes still clearer.[7] After this, I heard of Hengstenberg as the most learned writer on the opposite side, and furnished myself with his work in defence of the antiquity of the Pentateuch: but it only showed me how hopeless a cause he had undertaken.
* * * * * In this period I came to a totally new view of many parts of the Bible; and not to be tedious, it will suffice here to sum up the results.
The first books which I looked at as doubtful, were the Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

From the Greek style I felt assured that the former was not by John,[8] nor the latter by Paul.

In Michaelis I first learnt the interesting fact of Luther having vehemently repudiated the Apocalypse, so that he not only declared its spuriousness in the Preface of his Bible, but solemnly charged his successors not to print his translation of the Apocalypse without annexing this avowal:--a charge which they presently disobeyed.

Such is the habitual unfairness of ecclesiastical corporations.