C. Is there no difference between taking a little wine for medicine, as St. Paul
advises Timothy to do, and being a drunkard? We Christians, even though many of us are
total abstainers, are nowhere forbidden ever to taste wine, as you Muhammadans are. Yet 1
Cor. vi. 10 shows how great a crime we are bound to consider drunkenness to be, while the
maximum punishment prescribed by Muslim law for that offence is scourging. Hence you
evidently consider it a less crime than we do, while you condemn as wrong what is not in
itself a sin1.
58. M. In 2 Cor. xi. 17 Paul expressly disclaims inspiration for himself, and
yet you include his epistles in the New Testament as part of the Word of God.
C. In and for that special passage he disclaims the highest kind of
inspiration, but that does not amount to a denial of his writing even that passage under
Divine guidance, to which his being called to the Apostolate (1 Cor. i. 1; ix. 1; 2 Cor. i.
I, &c.) gave him a claim. The difficulty in your mind arises from your confounding your
idea of inspiration with ours. (Vide Chapter IV, initio.)
59. M. In Matt. v. 17 Christ declares that He did not come to destroy the Law
and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. In contrast to this, in Heb. vii. 18, it is written,
"There is a disannulling of a foregoing commandment because of its weakness and
unprofitableness."