The reply to this was to the effect, that the observation was partly just; but though the strongest evidence were produced of the Scriptures being the revealed will of God, they (his Lordship and others present) would still remain unbelievers, unless they knew and comprehended the doctrines contained in the Scriptures.  This was not conclusive, and Lord Byron replied, that they wished him to prove that the Scriptures were the Word of God, which the doctor, with more than apostolic simplicity, said that such was his object, but he should like to know what they deemed the clearest course to follow with that object in view.  After some farther conversation—“No other plan was proposed by them,” says the doctor; and he adds, “they had violated their engagement to hear me for twelve hours, for which I had stipulated.”  This may, perhaps, satisfy the reader as to the quality of the doctor’s understanding; but as the subject, in its bearing, touches Lord Byron’s character, I shall proceed a little farther into the marrow of the matter.

The inculcation being finished for that evening, Lord Byron said, that when he was young his mother brought him up strictly; and that he had access to a great many theological works, and remembered that he was particularly pleased with Barrow’s writings, and that he also went regularly to church.  He declared that he was not an infidel, who denied the Scriptures and wished to remain in unbelief; on the contrary, he was desirous to believe, as he experienced no happiness in having his religious opinions so unsteady and unfixed.  But he could not, he added, understand the Scriptures.  “Those people who conscientiously believe, I always have respected, and was always disposed to trust in them more than in others.”  A desultory conversation then ensued, respecting the language and translations of the Scriptures; in the course of which his Lordship remarked, that Scott, in his Commentary on the Bible, did not say that it was the devil who tempted Eve, nor does the Bible say a word about the devil.  It is only said that the serpent spoke, and that it was the subtlest of all the beasts of the field.—Will it be said that truth and reason were served by Dr Kennedy’s6 answer?  “As beasts have not the faculty of speech, the just inference is, that the beast was only an instrument made use of by some invisible and superior being.  The Scriptures accordingly tell us, that the devil is the father of lies—the lie made by the serpent to Eve being the first we have on record; they call him also a murderer from the beginning, as he was the cause of the sentence of death which was pronounced against Adam and all his posterity; and still farther, to remove all doubt, and to identify him as the agent who used the serpent as an instrument, he is called the serpent—the devil.”