Mark's Gospel is spurious; and, as regards the whole
encyclical, the distinguished Jesuit dwelt significantly on the
power of the papacy at any time to define out of existence any
previous decisions which may be found inconvenient. More than that,
Father Clarke himself, while standing as the champion of the most
thorough orthodoxy, acknowledged that, in the Old Testament,
"numbers must be expected to be used Orientally," and that "all
these seventies and forties, as, for example, when Absalom is said
to have rebelled against David for forty years, can not possibly be
meant numerically"; and, what must have given a fearful shock to
some Protestant believers in plenary inspiration, he, while
advocating it as a dutiful Son of the Church, wove over it an
exquisite web with the declaration that "there is a human element
in the Bible pre-calculated for by the Divine."[[365]]
Considering the difficulties in the case, the world has reason to
be grateful to Pope Leo and Father Clarke for these utterances,
which perhaps, after all, may prove a better bridge between the old
and the new than could have been framed by engineers more learned
but less astute.
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