Dr. Wilson, Mr. Knight's chief opponent, seems to have noticed
in the Presbytery our remarks of last week, and to have said that he (Dr. Wilson) was "very much blamed for assailing Mr. Knight," but that he was quite content to follow the example of "the apostle of love," who exhorts all Christians not to show even the rites of hospitality to any one who does not confess that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Our "blame" of Dr. Wilson is the creature of Dr. Wilson's own imagination, unless all argument against Dr. Wilson be blame. There was not a single epithet, as far as we know, applied to him by us, though to his views, no doubt, implicitly at least, some epithets were. But how artificial seems the notion which belief in the plenary inspira- tion of the Bible has caused, when we find sensible men maintaining that " the apostle of love," who certainly was in his early days by no means free from passionate vindic- tiveness, and who was rebuked by our Lord for wishing to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village, could never have erred in the same direction in his later writings ! At all events, if Dr. Wilson does always act and is prepared always to act upon this injunction of the apostle's, we congratulate him upon being unique even among Scotch Calvinists. We never met a Scotchman yet who limited his hospitality exclusively to orthodox visitors, and we confess to having doubts of such a Sptchman's existence. The modern world is not one in which it is possible to live at all on such terms, and we suspect Dr. Wilson of inaccuracy in sup- posing that even he is guided by a principle so unmanageable, to say nothing of its uncharity.
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