Adam Clarke.
He was no less severe against Philology than against Geology. In
1804, as President of the Manchester Philological Society, he
delivered an address in which he declared that, while men of all
sects were eligible to membership, "he who rejects the
establishment of what we believe to be a divine revelation, he
who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful
disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting,
and endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and
rational subordination, can have no seat among the members of
this institution." The first sentence in this declaration gives
food for reflection, for it is the same confusion of two ideas
which has been at the root of so much interference of theology
with science for the last two thousand years. Adam Clarke speaks
of those "who reject the establishment of what, _we believe_, to
be a divine revelation." Thus comes in that customary begging of
the question--the substitution, as the real significance of
Scripture, of "_what we believe_" for what _is_.
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