I


interpreted  humanly,  and  questions  of  history,  critic-
ism, and  science,  must  not  be  confounded  with
Christian   faith.      So  he  affirmed  (1840)  that  the

'■^  announcement  (in  Isaiah  vii.  14)  of  the  birth  of  a

child  who  should  be  called  Immanuel,  had  a  manifest

;  historical  meaning  as  applied  to  the  prophet's  wife

(Letter  ccxxii).  To  another  correspondent  he  wrote
from  Fox  How  in  the  same  month  (Letter  cxix.) : —

'I  have  long  thought  that  the  greater  part  of  the  book  of
Daniel  is  most  certainly  a  very  late  work  of  the  time  of  the  Mac-
cabees ;  and  the  pretended  prophecy  about  the  Kings  of  Greece
and  Persia,  and  of  the  North  and  South,  is  mere  history,  like  the
poetical  prophecies  in  Virgil  and  elsewhere.'

The  principles  of  historical  criticism  were  thus
fully  enunciated.  Was  there  any  one  ready  to  apply
them  ?  How  far  did  the  law  of  the  Church  permit
them  to  be  carried  ?


i.
.1


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*  ■


III.
