How do these facts relate to Mrs. White’s claims about the source of her writings? Mrs. White has said, for instance: CBPH 55.4
Although I am as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in writing my views as I am in receiving them, yet the words I employ in describing what I have seen are my own, unless they be those spoken to me by an angel, which I always enclose in marks of quotation.—The Review and Herald, October 8, 1867, 30:260. CBPH 55.5
What was Mrs. White’s point? Her point was that she had to find her own words to express the thoughts the Holy Spirit impressed upon her mind. The Holy Spirit only rarely dictated the very words she should use. In a few cases, the process of finding the best language to express what the Spirit had revealed involved using the phraseology of other writers. Thus, for example, when writing on historical topics the words of historians were sometimes used when their statements afforded “a ready and forcible presentation of the subject” (The Great Controversy, 12). CBPH 55.6