On Reading the Bible by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Are we forbidden on the ground that our Bible is directly inspired? Well, inspiration, as Sir William Davenant observed and rather wittily proved, in his Preface to Gondibert, "is a dangerous term. " It is dangerous mainly because it is a relative term, a term of degrees. You may say definitely of some things that the writer was inspired, as you may certify a certain man to be mad -- that is, so thoroughly and convincingly mad that you can order him under restraint. But quite a number of us are (as they say in my part of the world) "not exactly," and one or two of us here and there at moments may have a touch even of inspiration. So of the Bible itself: I suppose that few nowadays would contend it to be all inspired equally. "No" you may say, "not all equally: but all of it directly, as no other book is."

To that I might answer, "How do you know that direct inspiration ceased with the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and closed the book? It may be: but how do you know, and what authority have you to say that Wordsworth's ‘Tintern Abbey,' for example, or Browning's great Invocation of Love was not directly inspired? Certainly the men who wrote them were rapt above themselves: and, if not directly, why indirectly, and how?"