Sunday, December 31, 2023

Parson's Text Book (RLDS) on Degrees of Inspiration

  

DEGREES OF INSPIRATION.

 

Doctor Buck says, that inspiration is “the conveying of certain extraordinary and supernatural notions or motives into the soul, or it denotes any supernatural influence of God upon the mind of a rational creature, whereby he is formed to any degree of intellectual improvement, to which he would not or would not, in fact have attained in his present circumstances in a natural way. And thus the prophets are said to have spoken by divine inspiration.

 

“1. And inspiration of superintendency, in which God does so influence and direct the mind of any person, as to keep him more secure from error in some various and complex discourse, than he would have been merely by the use of his natural faculties.

 

“2. Plenary superintendency inspiration, which exclude any mixture of error at all from the performance so superintended.

 

“3. Inspiration of elevation, where the faculties act in a regular, and, as it seems, a common manner, yet are raised to an extraordinary degree, so that composure shall, upon the whole, have more of the true sublime, or pathetic, than natural genius could not have given.

 

4. Inspiration of suggestion, where the use of the faculties is superseded, and God does, as it were, speak directly to the mind, making such discoveries to it as it could not otherwise have obtained, and dictating the very words in which such discoveries are to be communicated, if they are designed as a message to others.”—Page 196. (A. H. Parsons, Parson’s Text Book [Lamoni, Iowa: Herald Publishing House, 1902], 214)