vocation. A commentator on Holy Scripture should be a man of profound theological learning, and of great intellectual power. Scott, a most amiable and pious clergyman, was neither a well-read man, nor were his abilities at all above par. His voluminous Commentary is accordingly, though overflowing with pious sentiment, of small theological value.
Protestant clergy commenting on Scripture, amidst the bustle of their ministerial avocations and their connubial distractions, without referring to the great works of early and Mediæval theologians, whose whole lives were spent in prayer and Scriptural studies, stand the chance of blundering as grossly as would a farm labourer if he undertook to excogitate, for himself, a system of astronomy, without reference to any treatises on the science already existing, or qualifying himself for the study, by a mastery of the rule of three, but regarded with unmitigated contempt all the discoveries made by those who have spent their lives in the exclusive study of the stars, and rejected as useless all the appliances of art invented to facilitate this investigation.
