LIBRARY I'l'.IXCETON, N. J. No. Case, . ^ X^. j/\^ BR A5 .B35 182A Hampton lectures THE BAMPTON LECTURES FOR THE YEAR MDCCCXXIV. BEING AN ATTEMPT TO TRACE THE HISTORY AND TO ASCERTAIN THE LIMITS SECONDARY AND SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. J. J. CONYBEARE, M.A. PREBENDARY OF YORK AND VICAR OF BATH EASTON J LATE STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND PROFESSOR OF ANGLO- SAXON AND OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. OXFORD, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR THE AUTHOR. SOLD BY J. PARKER, OXFORD j AND MESSRS. RIVINGTON, ST. PAULS CHURCII-YARD, LONDON. 1824. 27, Gower Street. Monday^ Jutte 7, 1824. " Dear Sir, " I enclose the proofs, with the Title, Preface, and Contents. Can you have the goodness to let me have proofs of these latter by Wednesday night's coach, as I leave town on Friday. I will tlien forward the Errata, and any supplementary Notes which may seem needful, with all speed, I remain, Dear Sir, Very truly yours, J. J. CONYBEARE." To Mr. Collingwood. THE above note fully explains the Author's intention with respect to the completion of his work. His sudden and lamented death, on Friday June the 11th, prevented its execution ; and it is judged inexpedient to delay the publication by attempting to supply these deficiencies. INTRODUCTION. xHE subject of the following Lectures was some years back strongly brought un- der the writer's notice by circumstances on which it is unnecessary to dwell. In the course of his inquiries he could not but observe, that no work had as yet appeared in our own language professedly dedicated to the history and criticism of this branch of scriptural exposition. How far he has been successful in the attempt to supply this deficiency must be left to the judg- ment of others. For himself he can say with truth, that he is conscious of many defects both in his plan and its execu- tion. In extenuation, however, of such defi- iv II^TRODUCTION. ciencies or inaccuracies as may be disco- vered by more experienced scholars, he would urge, that his materials were ar- ranged, and the greater part of his work composed, at a considerable distance from those literary resources which are to be found only in our larger public libraries. He has been careful, as far as it was in his power, to draw his own materials from, and refer the student to, original sources of information, rather than to transcribe the compilations of more modern writers. Where he is indebted to these latter only, the acknowledgment will usually be found in the notes. Should his labours tend in the smallest degree to lighten those of others, or even to call their attention to the details of a subject possessing certainly no inconsiderable interest for the theolo- gian, his object will be fully attained. At all events it is his hope and prayer, that INTRODUCTION. v the following pages may not be found to contain any thing injurious to the faith, or repugnant to the feelings of the pious and sincere believer. June 1824. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. Proverbs xxii. 20. Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge f Subject proposed. DiiFerent opinions as to the re- ality and extent of the secondary or mediate sense. Grounds for asserting its existence. Use of the Jewish commentaries in this question doubtful. Proofs of such a sense best drawn from the New Testament. Spiritual expositions of St. Paul. Popular belief of the Jews. LECTURE n. 1 Corinthians ii. 5. That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men. Allegorical interpretation of Scripture previous to the age of the New Testament. Traces in the apocry- phal writings. School of Alexandria. Detail of the system and expositions of Philo Judaeus. LECTURE m. 1 Corinthians ii. 5. That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men. Proofs of this sense from the New Testament. Traces in the earliest ages of the church. Apostolical fathers. Clemens Barnabas. Homilies of the Pseudo-Clemens. Justin Martyr. Irenaeus. TertuUian. viii CONTENTS. V LECTURE IV. 1 Corinthians ii. 5. That your faith should not stand in the ivisdom of men. Interpretations of the Alexandrian school, not re- stricted by the regula fidei. Clemens Alexandrinus. Origen. Subsequent writers. Eusebius, Cyrillus Alex- andrinus, Macarius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Athanasius, Ba- sil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom. Theodorus of Mopsuestia adverse to the allegorical method. Mode- ration of Theodoretus. Latin fathers between the age of Tertullian and Jerom. Comparison of the methods followed by the Alexandrian and Latin schools. LECTURE V. Psalm Ixxviii. 2. / icill open my mouth in a parable ; I will utter dark saij- iiigs of old. Method of Jerom. Of Augustin. His Doctrina Christiana. Liber Regularum of Tichonius. Bede. Rha- banus Maurus. His Liber Allegoriarum. Translations of the Pseudo-Dionysius. Bernard. Schoolmen. T. Aquinas. Effect of controversy with the Jews. R. Martini. Wicliff. Albigenses. Licence of allegorizing in the Romish church. LECTURE VL Zechariah xiv. 6, 7- It shalljcome to pass in that day, that t}ie light shall not be clear, nor dark : But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night : but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. More literal expositions of the later Jewish comment- CONTENTS. ix ators. Effects of the study of Hebrew. Commentaries of Nicolaus de Lyra. Gerson's testimony to the ac- curate interpretation of the Hussites. Mystics. Tau- ler. Revival of literary and historical criticism by Eras- mus. His paraphrase on the New Testament. Rules of spiritual interpretation given in his Ecclesiastes. Ench. Militis Christiani. Annotations on the New Testament. Melancthon. Luther. Calvin rejects al- most entirely the secondary sense, and employs the the- ory of accommodation. Hyperius. P. Martyr. Con- temporary practice of anabaptists and papists. English reformers. Tyndal. LECTURE Vn. Proverbs xix. 27. Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge. Method of later theologians. Philologia Sacra of Glassius. Opinion of Arminius. Of Episcopius. Of Grotius. Of Cocceius. Controversies of the Cocceian and Remonstrant schools. Innovations of Le Clerc and his followers. Depreciation and denial of the spi- ritual and typical sense. Semler and his school. Opin- ions of English divines. Excess of the puritans. Tay- lor. Locke. School of Hoadley. Sykes. School of Hutchinson. LECTURE Vin. Proverbs iv. 27. Turn not unto the right hand nor to the left. Proposed limitations. EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, CANON OF SALISBURY. " I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to ' the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University ' of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and sin- ' gular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the ' intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to ' say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of ' the University of Oxford for the time being shall take ' and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, * and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deduc- ' tions made) that he pay all the remainder to the en- ' dowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be ' established for ever in the said University, and to be ' performed in the manner following : *' I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in ' Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads ' of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoin- ' ing to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in ' the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight ' Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. x\i EXTRACT FROM CANON BAMFfONS WILL. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term. " Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects — to confirm and estabhsh the Chris- tian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics — upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures — upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church — upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost — upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as compre- hended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after they are preached, and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, before they are printed. " Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, un- less he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cam- bridge ; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice."" tTRE I. Proveebs xxii. 20. Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knoxoledge ? It has been repeatedly and most justly noticed, both as matter of admiration and of gratitude, as at once among the strong- est evidences and the most valuable cha- racteristics of our Christian faith, that un- der the covenant and dispensation of grace, the things most essentially necessary to man's salvation are revealed in the plain- est and most unequivocal terms, are made (wheresoever the perversity of the human will does not oppose itself to the teaching of the Spirit of God) clear and intelligible to all men. We have confidence that in that gospel, the ministration of which is entrusted to our stewardship, the power and presence and holiness of God, the B 2 LECTURE I. weak and fallen nature of man, the pardon and reconciliation secured and offered in Christ to all who believe and repent, the agency and influence of the Holy Spirit, and the necessity of the Christian's living under that influence, not unto himself, but unto his Master, are broadly and visibly impressed in characters which, if they be overloo"ked or misrepresented, can serve only to testify the more strongly against the carelessness or presumption of him by whom such offence cometh. But that every part of Scripture is (even to those who bring to its study and ex- planation all the varied aids of intellect and of learning) equally devoid of obscur- ity and difficulty, no one, perhaps, has ever seriously maintained. Some persons indeed, in the heat and hurry of controversy, or under the impulse of strong, but undisci- plined religious feeling, may, at times, in- discreetly have held language which should appear to imply some notion or conviction to this effect ; but, in truth, all who pro- fess to accept and to search the Scriptures as the record and testimony of God, (with- LECTURE I. 3 out the exception even of those whom we regard, not perhaps unjustly, as leaning to the side of error and enthusiasm,) do uni- formly and systematically admit, that a par- tial, though not always an impenetrable cloud yet rests upon the sanctuary of di- vine truth, do virtually shew this to be their deliberate opinion, by constantly a- vailing themselves of such helps and in- struments for the understanding and illus- tration of Scripture as lie within their reach, and are at unison with their re- spective views of the Christian scheme. ** Among the various difficulties thus ge- nerally acknowledged to be attendant upon the closer and more detailed study of the oracles of God, few are more calculated to excite the inquiry of the serious and intel- ligent reader — few indeed have more di- vided the opinions of the ablest expositors, than those arising out of what has been ^ There is not, I believe, a single religious community of any note or magnitude in this country, that has not its acc7'editcd commentaries and elucidations of the Scrip- ture, and does not feel a pride in its association with the piety or talents which have been employed in their pro- duction. B 2 4 LECTURE I. termed by some their mystical or spiritual, by others their secondary or mediate sense ; whether we regard the question as affect- ing the whole of the inspired writings, or as restricted to those portions of them which we are accustomed more emphati- cally to designate as the Law and the Pro- phets. That this mode of interpretation is, to a certain point at least, authorized by the usage of the divinely commissioned writers of the New Testament must be al- lowed by all, excepting those who, in the pride and rashness of their hearts, have ventured, directly or indirectly, to question the inspiration of that record. The extent' to which subsequent writers of doctrinal and practical theology have considered themselves at liberty to pursue the same track, is generally known to have varied very considerably according to their age, school genius, and other local or personal circumstances. On the one hand, allegori- cal or spiritual meanings have been at- tached not only to those passages of Moses and the Prophets which our Lord and his disciples expressly refer to as ty[)ical or LECTURE I. 5 prophetical of the person and office of the Messiah, and the economy of his covenant, but to every part, whether historical or preceptive, of the Old Testament, and to much even of the New. It has been con- tended virtually, if not in so many words, that whatsoever meaning of this nature the ingenuity or piety of the expositor might affix to any given passage of Scrip- ture, was in reality the sense of that pas- sage, the express intention of him who gave it, and that in this mode of exposi- tion and application alone was to be found the spirit which giveth life, the wisdom which maketh ivise unto salvation. These opinions were at a very early period be- lieved to derive no small countenance from that passage, or rather from a very remark- able misconstruction of that passage, of the Book of Proverbs which has been chosen for our text. The word which is there rendered eoccellent things, and which might be rendered precepts, rules, or directions, is known to be derived from a root origin- ally signifying the number three ; by what process or connection of ideas, it is not re- B 3 6 LECTURE I. quisite, perhaps at this distance of time it would be impossible, to ascertain. Hence the authors of the Septuagint render it by r^ia-a-u?, and tliose of the Vulgate by tj-ipli- citei\ To this source a learned but not al- ways candid writer '' on the interpretation of Scripture would refer all those explana- tions which deviate from the primary and literal meaning of the sacred text. The position is unquestionably much too vague and unguarded ; but it is in all probability true, that they who indulged in the full la- titude of mystical and allegorical exposi- tion, did imagine themselves to derive much support from this and some similar passages. On the other hand, many divines, even among those justly entitled to our respect and gratitude, fearful perhaps of the evils which might be supposed to result, both to those within and those without, from the admission of a principle of interpretation so lax and variable, have kept, with a pru- dence bordering somewhat too much upon coldness and timidity, what they esteemed ^ Whitby, Diss, de S. S. Interpret, in loco. LECTURE I. 7 the safer path ; while of later years a school has arisen, happily not in our own Church or country, but yet a school which possibly may not be without its share of influence upon our theological students, openly and professedly discarding as irrational and un- critical all spiritual and allegorical inter- pretations whatsoever, and including in one sweeping and indiscriminate censure the human expositions of Origen and Au- gustin, of Cocceius and Vitringa, and the inspired parallelisms of the Epistle to the Hebrews. "^ ^ " De typis" (says the author of a work well calcu- lated to give a general insight into the spirit of modern German theology) " non amplius esse potest sermo. " Permittamus eos interpretibus Judaeis eoi'umque fau- " toribus, talibus enim nugis non eget religio nostra di- " vina." {J. G. C. Hoepfner Introd. in Theolog'icB Dogm. Historiam Lit. Lipsi(e, 1821.) It were easy to multiply authorities to the same purpose from the numerous fol- lowers of Semler or Rosenmuller. They have been suc- cessfully opposed by the Roman Catholic professor Jahn, (certainly one of the most learned and candid writers of his communion.) See Hermeneutica V. et N. T. Vi- ennae, 1812, pp. 43 and 91, and the preface to the Ap- pendix Hermeneutices. Morus, confessedly the ablest and most moderate of the liberal school, saw and re- gretted the extent to which his contemporaries pushed B 4 8 LECTURE I. It is needless perhaps to say, that the scepticism to which I allude forms a pro- minent feature of that system of biblical criticism, which has very widely, it might be said, almost universally, obtained in the protestant churches of continental Europe. It has had for its public advocates men unquestionably of extensive erudition, and much ingenuity in the minuter details of literature ; but little distinguished by any of the higher powers of intellect, and yet less by the reasonable and pious submis- sion of that intellect to the revealed word- and will of its great author. these speculations : " Qui admittunt Christi et Aposto- " lorum auctoritatem, hi debent Prophetarum hbris fi- " dem ad historiam, ad doctrinam, et ad vaticinia con- " cedere, iisque ad docendam, discendam, exercendamque " relligionem opportune et cum delectu uti, 2 Tim. iii. " 15, 16. et praistant hunc usum siquis iis opportune et " cum dilectu uti didicerit. IndigncR sunt Christianis " voces, qiioi passim sparguntii?; contemtrices librorum «< V. Tr {Mori Epitome Theol. Christ. Ed. 4ta. Lipsice, 1799. p- 24.) The work of Hoepfner referred to above will abundantly shew the remonstrance to have been in- effectual. The genera] disposition of this class of divines is well exposed in C. S. Weiss' Disput. de Homine sub- niittente, &c. consilio Dei de uno Christo ac Domino Jesu. Lipsia', 1796. LECTURE I. 9 By all those, who are happily free from the influence of such untenable and un- christian theories, it will probably be ad- mitted without scruple, that any endea- vour to investigate the history and to as- certain the proper limits of this species of interpretation, cannot, if modestly and so- berly conducted, be without its share of interest to the theological student, both from its importance to the right under- standing and exposition, and in some de- gree even to the practical and spiritual uses of holy Scripture, as well as from the conflicting opinions which have long pre- vailed on the subject. Neither am I aware that any work expressly dedicated to such investigation has as yet been attempted in our own language or country. This con- gregation indeed cannot be ignorant that the subject has been incidentally touched upon by some, whose labours, had they been more extended, would in all proba- bility have rendered the present undertak- ing needless and presumptuous, and he who now addresses you could of a truth be well contented to aspire to no higher praise 10 LECTURE I. than that of having patiently and carefully filled up the outline which has been thus traced by the hands of earlier and more accomplished masters. If in the execution of this task he be enabled in the smallest measure to guard those who are entering on the study of theology, on the one hand, from the fanciful and enthusiastic misap- plication of scriptural language and ima- gery, and, on the other, from the yet more dangerous and culpable misapplication of learning and of talent which w^ould deprive the word of light and life of its spiritual, nay, of its very prophetic and authoritative character ; he may be regarded, he trusts, as having aimed at a strict compliance with the intentions expressed by the pious founder of these Lectures. Fully aware that much of imperfection and even of error must be discoverable in the treatment of a subject confessedly of such extent and intricacy, he can only hope that neither their amount or charac- ter will be found such, as may, in any point of material importance, tend to mislead the student, or to injure the cause of that LECTURE I. 11 truth which it is the object of all our mi- nistrations to recommend, and to preserve inviolate. It will readily too be anticipated, that in this inquiry much that is offered must of necessity be rather of an historical than of an argumentative or practical na- ture ; even here, however, inferences and applications must continually suggest them- selves which may not be without their im- mediate use in the formation and direction of our own principles and judgment. It is both useful and gratifying to find, that those opinions which we believe to be grounded on the firm warranty of Scripture and of reason, have received the support of the wise and pious in former ages. The errors too of past times bear in many cases no small analogy to these of our own ; and, yet more, the causes which are the most fertile in the production of all error, are perhaps always, with some slight modifica- tions of external circumstance, essentially the same. Wherever therefore the history of human opinions presents opportunities of such deduction and illustration, he who wishes to render that history useful and 12 LECTURE I. instructive, will naturally avail himself of them as frequently and fully as it may be done, without incurring the charge of hav- ing perverted the facts, or overstated their resemblance. May He, by whose inspiration all Scrip- ture was given, enable us, of his great goodness, to derive from these and every like inquiry the materials of Christian edification and improvement. Before we proceed to the historical part of this investigation, (which, for many ob- vious reasons, has the first claim upon, and will occupy the larger share of our atten- tion,) I would premise, that, by the term mys- tical or spirit?ial, I would understand eve7y species of inte^'pretation which attaches to the ivords of Scripjture any sense tvhatsoever beyond that which is strictly literal and historical. Thus it will include much that is prophetical and all that is typical. Those parts indeed of the prophecies, which di- rectly announce the coming, and describe the person and office, of our blessed Lord in terms fairly applicable to no other per- son or condition of things, will alone be LECTURE I. 13 excluded from our consideration. For the present, no advantage, that I am aware of, will be gained, by pausing to examine the critical truth or value, either of that three- fold division of the mystical sense of Scrip- ture, which for many ages obtained in the Church, and to which the divines of the Romish communion still seem to adhere ; '^ or those enumerations of its alledged va- rieties, and of their distribution ^ through- out the revealed word, for which we are indebted to the systematic and pious la- bours of more recent theologians. However we may scruple (as many in the fair and legitimate exercise of private judgment doubtless will scruple) to follow ^ " Sensus mysticus" (I quote one of the latest Roman Catholic authorities to which I have access) " in tTopolo- *' gicum seu moraleryi, in allegoricum et in anagogtcum " dividitur." Seb. Scliaaf. Prcell. de Locis Theol. Per- missu super. Francof. ad Moen. 1774. v. i. p. 392. The more inquisitive reader may consult the Ribliotheca san- cta of Sixtus Senensis, L. 3. sub initio. See also the extract from Bellarmine, De Verbo Dei, given by Marc- kius, Comment, in De Moor, vol. i. p. 394. c " Sedes dassiccB in quibus sensus mysticus velut in- " quilinus et domesticus esse solet." Ramhach de Sensu Mi/stico, p. 12. 14 LECTURE I. even the more learned and eminent of these to the full extent of their respective theories ; yet, that such a secondary and spiritual meaning was, from the earliest period, partially at least, involved in the traditional and w^ritten monuments of the Je^^ish faith, cannot, we hold, be fairly and successfully denied; cannot even be doubted by any one who, with a belief in their in- spiration, and an unprejudiced and impar- tial frame of mind, applies himself to the study of the books of Moses. Nor can this position be reasonably objected to a prioin as appearing unnatural or improbable ; for in the earlier and simpler stages of society and of language, such a mode of giving form and utterance to the conceptions of mind, so far from seeming rare and unintel- ligible, is known to have been usually more prevalent and popular. The original sig- nification of those metaphors, which make up so large a part of all language both spoken and written, must then have been fresher in the memory of man ; they were daily, if we may so express ourselves, in the process of being increased in their LECTURE I. 15 number, and extended and modified in their import, as the occurrence of new ideas or new associations demanded. The mind habituated to this process would catch and retain, with quite sufficient rapidity and distinctness, the truths and instruc- tions conveyed through the medium of those images and allegories, which in fact do so largely and constantly present them- selves in the literature, both sacred and se- cular, of the ruder ages. It may be added, that the wisdom and theology of the E- gyptians, to whose customs the Israelites had been so long inured, appear, from the remotest antiquity to which we can trace them, to have been involved in figurative and mystical representations. The whole hieroglyphical system must have been lit- tle else than a tissue of metaphor and alle- gory addressed to the eye instead of the ear. These considerations might well lead us to suspect, that even they whom we re- gard as having needlessly and fancifully assumed or exaggerated the mystical sense of many parts of the Mosaic record, are at least not more imphilosophical than they 16 LECTURE I. who utterly proscribe every interpretation of the kind, however sanctioned by the au- thority of the New Testament, or counte- nanced by fair and reasonable analogies. And indeed the notion that the Israelites saw nothing spiritual in the words and works of the Law, that they understood in the lowest and most barely literal sense all that was written for their instruction and prescribed for their observance, must sub- ject those who would maintain it to a yet further charge of paradox and inconsist- ency. It is confessed on all hands that the writings of Moses distinctly set forth the unity, omnipotence, and other leading at- tributes of the Deity, as the fundamental and distinguishing tenets of the religion given to the Israelites. But, to a people thus enlightened, the same record in its very commencement describes the Almighty as resolving to make man in his oimi image. Now can we readily believe either them or their teacher to have conceived that the great I AM bore the aspect and character of the human species, or to have under- stood by such an expression any thing re- LECTURE I. ir ferring to the physical and external consti- tution of man. Again, the Mosaic law con- fessedly forbids (and that under the sever- est penalties) every species of idolatrous worship ; but we find the very Lawgiver expressly commanding his followers to look, for the removal of the fiery venom which infected their host, to an image, which, if they did not see and acknowledge in it the type of some higher and more spiritual de- liverer, must have been to them an idol not less absurd than those of their Egyp- tian taskmasters, if indeed it were not the very semblance of one of the many crea- tures worshipped by that extraordinary people ; an idol which in aftertimes be- came, we are told, of a truth a snare and cause of offence, and was in consequence destroyed by the piety of the faithful He- zekiah. ^ Nor is more direct authority wanting to this purpose : the rite by which the He- brew was initiated into the privileges and blessings of the covenant was expressly de- clared by him through whom it was en- f 2 Kings viii. 4. 18 LECTURE I. joined to have a spiritual meaning^; the golden frontlet worn by the high priest, and the bells and pomegranates which formed a conspicuous part of the sacerdotal vestments, were worn, we are told, the one that he might bear the iniquity of the holy thitigs of the people ; the other, that when he went into and came forth from the holy place, he should not die '\ Now that such a virtue resided in the plate of gold, in- scribed even as it was with Holiness unto the Lord, or in the mere semblance of the fruit and sound of the metal, could not surely have been for a moment credited by those who had been so clearly taught that Jehovah dwelt not in images of silver or of gold, nor in any work of man's hands. To a people too, thus instructed, the whole system of expiatory sacrifice must have appeared intelligible and reasonable only upon the supposition of its being fi- gurative or allegorical. Admitting readily, that even the most pious and spiritually minded among them might be far from understanding the precise nature and full s Deut. X. 16. XXX. 6. ^ Exodus xxiii. 35, 38. LECTURE I. 19 value of that great sacrifice which we (nei- ther unscripturally, we trust, nor irration- ally) believe to have been thus shadowed out, we would yet contend that they must have regarded that which of a truth purged their iniquities, the iniquities even of their holt/ things, as somewhat far higher and more available than the blood of bulls and goats, a7id the sprinkled ashes of the heifer. The truth and reasonableness of this view of the Mosaic records has been ac- knowledged, until within the last half cen- tury, by the whole, or nearly the whole of the Christian church. It is yet possible that they who are inclined to disregard and undervalue the authority of most sys- tematic theologians, however respectable, may attach somewhat more of critical weight to the avowed opinion of one, whose erudition and acuteness were united in no common degree with a boldness of specula- tion somewhat congenial to their own. " Quod Moses (says the learned Spencer) " Messiam et summa ejus beneficia virtu- " tesque tanquam ultimum verborum su- " orum scopum sibi praefixum habuerit, ea c 2 20 LECTURE I. " ratione (by his own theory, that is, as to the Urim and Thummim) " luce quae om- " nem dubitationis umbram pellet ostendi " potest." In the same paragraph he ac- knowledges unhesitatingly the distinction between the " Scriptura exterior cujus sen- " sus minime difficilis se cuivis offert," and the " Scriptura interior legis 7nirabilia con- " tinens, quae ut planius et apertius intue- " atur psalmista oculos retectos expetit '." Few will be disposed to question the fact, that a similar use of figurative expres- sion and action pervades nearly the whole of the prophetic writings. Doubts may in- deed in some cases be raised as to the pre- cise objects shadowed out under such mys- tical imagery ; but all must be convinced that the marriage of HoseaJ, the walking naked and barefoot of Isaiah ^ the linen girdle \ the potter's vessel "", the good and evil figs ", and the bond and yoke of Jere- miah'', and the splendid and lengthened visions of Ezekiel and of Daniel, were all i De Urim et Thummim, p. 320. ed. 1670. J Ch. i. k Ch. XX. 1 Ch. xiii. ^ ch. xix. " Ch. xxiv. " Ch. xxvii. xxviii. LECTURE I. 21 in their several kinds symbolical and typi- cal, and that the frequency of these repre- sentations shews them to have been ad- dressed to a people habituated to and ca- pable of readily apprehending such vehi- cles of instruction and warning. It will be sufficient for our present pur- pose to have touched thus briefly upon matters which cannot be otherwise than familiar to every instructed Christian. They might safely indeed have been left to sug- gest themselves to the recollection of my> hearers P, but that the passing them entirely unnoticed might be construed into some- what like the tacit acquiescence in the opi- nions of those who contend for the literal, and the literal sense alone ; whereas they do present in truth the most direct and in- telligible answer to the assumptions and cavils of these self-named rationalists. Nor have we less substantial grounds for believing that in later ages the spiritual interpretation of the Law and the Prophets P See Jahn's Hermeneutica, p. 43. and the highly- useful and comprehensive work of Mr. Home, Introduc- tion, &c. vol. i. p. 203. C 3 22 LECTURE I. had the countenance and support, if not of the Jewish church as a collective and au- thoritative body, yet of many in that church, of all those assuredly who in faith and truth looked for the consolation of Is- rael. It is a remark sufficiently trite, but not the less true, that a good cause is fre- quently rather injured than served by the exertions, however well intentioned, of those over credulous and sanguine advocates, who, by attempting to prove more than is fairly deducible from the circumstances of the case, weaken and dilute, instead of aug- menting, the force of those arguments which rest on less infirm and questionable grounds. Students who are habituated to the more accurate and severe deductions of sound criticism will readily perceive, that this has been peculiarly the case in that province of theological inquiry which re- lates to the faith of the Jewish church. Works of the most dubious origin and au- thority, some the production of a period long subsequent to the dispersion of Israel ; others, in the very opinion of those who adduce them, composed or interpolated by LECTURE I. 23 Christian converts; others capable of an in- terpretation far more consonant to the sys- tems of human philosophy than of evan- gelical truths have been urged as afFord- 1 The Targums wliich contain any admixture of mys- tical interpretation are not earlier than the latter part of the third century; the Gemara appears not to have been collected before the end of the fifth. The Midras- chic books are of a very uncertain, and probably in many cases of very late period. The book Sohar (the chief of these) bears every appearance of having been (as even Schoetgen admits) written or interpolated by a Christian. The book Rabboth is not earlier than the third century : (see J. F. Mori Hermeneutica N. T. Sect. de Usu Scriptorum Judaicorum, who has some useful remarks on the application of Rabbinical literature to the criticism of the New Testament:) conf. Leusden, Phil. Hebraeo-mixtus, Dissert. XII. et Jahn, Appendix Her- meneutices, p. 3. Accounts of the Jewish commentators, and characters of their several works, may be found in the Bibliotheca Hebraica of Wolfius, the Horae Talmu- dicae of Schoetgen, v. 2. and the Historia Philosophiae Hebraicae of Buddeus. The defect alluded to attaches, it is to be feared, to much of the pious labours of our own Allix, and to the otherwise admirable treatise De Messia, which forms the 2d vol. of the Hor. Hebr. and TalmudicEe of Schoetgen. Though we can scarcely as- sent to all that the latter claims for the " usus operis,"" (Praefat. §. 21.) we readily admit, with him, that in the argument against the Jews both works are of the highest value. See also the well grounded remarks on the Cabbalistic Sephiroth in Laurence's Preface to the Book of Enoch, p. xlv. note. 24 LECTURE I. ing a fair and genuine representation of the accredited opinions of the ancient sy- nagogue ; and in the fabric thus arbitrarily and uncritically raised, its advocates here believed themselves to find a confirmation and illustration of those revealed myste- ries, which of a truth are far better sub- stantiated by a simple appeal to the obvi- ous and unperverted sense of the scrip- tures of the nevs^ covenant ^ In examining those Scriptures we find not only that our Lord and his followers themselves affix a secondary and more exalted sense to many passages of the Old Testament, but that they argue as though such a principle of interpretation were acknowledged as legiti- mate, were at best esteemed nothing un- ^ Certainly not less objectionable on critical, and far more so on religious grounds, is the disposition shewn by later and more philosophical writers to represent tliese as sources from which the inspired Avriters borrowed. See Ammon, Opusc. Theol. p. 57. Some acute remarks on the critical value of the Talmudic and Midraschic remains are to be found in De Wette, Comment, de morte J. C. expiatoria. Berolini, 1813. pp. 35. et seq. They form however the only useful part of that laboured and fanciful production. The author, who appears to ])e Professor pnhlicus ordinariiis of theology in the uni- versity of Berlin, does not yield even to Bolingbroke or >^oltaire in the liberality of his creed. LECTURE I. 25 usual or unreasonable, by those whom they addressed. The prevalent belief indeed, that the Messiah should come, and that that Messiah was foreshewn by Moses and the prophets, of course involved (was, we may rather say, equivalent to, or identical with) the recognition of the general prin- ciple : the extent to which that principle was applied, and the degree of spiritual feeling and intelligence manifested in its application, must have varied with the re- ligious state of those who acquiesced in it. These could not have been the same in the men whom our Lord accuses of hav- ing closed the door of knowledge, and hid- den the key from his people, and in those who are commended as being Israelites without guile ; in those who thought of the Saviour as one that should rival and destroy the earthly dominion of Caesar, and those who looked to him as the Christ who knew and should teach them all things'. s I would not urge, that even the more pious Israehtes understood, any more than the apostles themselves, the full nature and spmtuality of our Lord's kingdom. It is meant only to contend, what cannot I think be fairly questioned, that their piety would naturally lead to a 26 LECTURE I. We have the evidence too of a writer con- temporary, if not anterior to those of the New Testament, as to the attachment en- tertained for such mystical and spiritual in- terpretation of Scripture, by some, who, not- withstanding partial imperfections of theory and practice, ranked probably among the most instructed and pious of the Jewish communion. We learn that the details of that exposition, (admitting that is, as we fairly may, that the cpva-if ccTroycsKpv/^jitsvyj of their eulogist includes more than we are accustomed to understand by the term natural philosophy :) we learn that the de- tails of that exposition formed the chief objects of study and meditation to those remarkable classes of ascetics who are known to us, though but imperfectly, under the names of Essenians and Therapeutge *. To these it may be necessary to refer here- after ; and for the present I would confine myself rather to the support which this more spiritual view of the prophetic writings than the frivolous disputations and ceremonial formalities of the Pharisee, or the philosophic unbelief of the Sadducec. * See the accounts given by Philo and Joseph us. LECTURE I. 27 practice undoubtedly received from those whom we believe to have spoken and writ- ten under the immediate and extraordi- nary influence of the Spirit which leadeth into all truth. It is almost needless to ad- vert to the bare fact of its prevalence in all the apostolical remains, and in those most especially of St. Paul. The methods chiefly resorted to for the purpose of evading this authority (for there has existed in more than one quarter the desire and the at- tempt at such evasion) have been either the questioning and invalidating the belief which the church has in all ages held as to the inspiration of the writers, on the more subtle but scarcely less mischievous prac- tice of extending to all such passages the principle, as it is usually termed, of accom- modation''. The former of these opinions we are not at present called upon to exa- mine : as to the latter, although even the most cautious and unquestionably pious expositors of Scripture have admitted that " See Rosenmiiller, Schol. in Ep. ad Hebraeos, p. 134. and the quotation there adduced from Le Clerc. Semler, Apparat. ad V. T. p. 358 : ad N. T. p. 190. 28 LECTURE I. some few passages of the Old Testament quoted or referred to in the New, must, in the present state of our knowledge, be re- garded as so applied or accommodated to the description and illustration of subjects foreign to their original scope and inten- tion "" ; yet it is surely unreasonable and uncritical to argue from these few to the whole, or even the larger portion of those sayings, which we are assured that holy men of old uttered, as the Spirit directed and enabled them. Were these appeals to Moses and the Prophets made but rarely and indirectly and obscurely, did they occupy no more ample or prominent stations in the volume of the new covenant than the supposed allusions to the books of Unoch^ and of the burial of Moses", then indeed the Christian might be warranted in suspend- X See Marckius, Comment, in De ISIoor, vol. i. p. 405. The lists however of passages said to be accommodated (e. g. that given in the valuable Introduction of Mr. T. H. Hornc) might easily be much reduced, unless indeed we understand the word accommodation in a much wider sense than is desirable or critical. y Jude 14. ^ Jude 9- LECTURE I. 29 ing at least his judgment as to their theo- logical character and value. But frequent- ly, directly, and confidently as they are ad- duced for the evident purposes of argu- ment and of proof, nothing, one would think, short of actual and total scepticism could venture to insinuate, that they who so adduced them did not believe their pro- phetical and spiritual tenor, did in effect deliberately ground their own claims to acceptance upon a testimony, which de- rived its sole validity (if validity it could be termed) from the ignorance and credu- lity of those to whom they addressed themselves. We should, I trust, be in every case backward to suspect, that writers professing themselves (under any form or establish- ment) members of the Church of Christ, did in reality conceal beneath that profes- sion a total rejection and disbelief of all Christian truth, of all that offers itself as matter of supernatural and heavenly re- velation. While therefore we would pro- test most strongly, in the name both of re- ligion and of reason, against the specula- 30 LECTURE I. tions which would thus reduce our Lord and his disciples to the rank of pretenders, arguing not for truth, but for victory, or at best of ignorant and mistaken guides, shar- ing largely in the imputed folly and fana- ticism of their countrymen ; while we con- tend, that a disbelief in the spiritual and prophetic character of the Old Testament is upon no tenable grounds of argument or analogy to be reconciled with a belief in the divine origin and authority of the New; we would yet hope, that the framers and supporters of these strange hypotheses are rather the inconsistent and inconsequential advocates, than the concealed enemies of that Gospel, the ministration of which they continue to exercise. We may grant some- what to the influence of outward circum- stances, somewhat more perhaps to the al- leged, and, we hope, sincere desire of con- ciliating the open adversaries of our faith ; a conciliation however seldom effected, and certainly not worth the purchasing, by the sacrifice of nearly all that distinguishes the Gospel from the mere philosophical creed of the deist ; but where we are told, in a LECTURE I. 31 voice purporting to be that of all the rea- sonable divines of protestant Europe, that every type, every prophecy, every adumbra- tion of the Messiah's work and kingdom, to which we have been accustomed to look for the confirming our faith, and the invi- gorating our devotion, is to be at once and entirely discarded, as matter of nothing better than idle and Jewish superstition. Where we see this rejection of all spiritual interpretation coupled with an undisguised anxiety to divest even the historical re- cords of Scripture of every thing exceeding human powers and attainments, we are as- suredly tempted for the moment to inquire. Can these men be Christians * ? When we consider the extent to which these vain ^ " Quae" (all spiritual and mystical interpretation) " cum per se improbabilis et prorsus arbitraria sit merito " repudianda est." Bauer in Glass. Phil. Sacr. vol. iv. p. 29. The commentaries of the younger Rosenmiiller on the Psalms and on Isaiah will abundantly supply the illustration of this modest and philosophical canon. See especially the note *** Sch. in Ps. xvi. which leaves us the choice of regarding our blessed Lord and his apo- stles either as uninspired and ignorant of the meaning of their own Scriptures, or as wilfully imposing on the peo- ple an interpretation which they knew to be false. 32 LECTURE I. imaginations have infected many of our sister churches, we cannot but pray that we may ourselves be preserved from the contagion, and that He who of old planted the goodly vine of his truth, and made it to prosper among those who united in be- lief and profession with the venerable fa- thers of our own Zion, may yet raise and send forth into his vineyard labourers more earnestly devoted, and more spiritually qua- lified for its cultivation and protection. In this reference to the mysteries of the elder covenant, none, we know, among the inspired teachers of the new, is more fre- quent or more powerful than the great apostle of the Gentiles. This character- istic (for peculiarity we cannot call it) of his style, it has been, with that class of theo- logians to whom we have been obliged so painfully to advert, customary to attribute chiefly to his previous education in the school of the Pharisees ^ This assertion ^ V. Baueri Glass. Phil. Sacr. vol. iv. p. 29 ; who, at p. 35. argues from the example of St. Paul, that the .Pharisees were addicted to allegory. This would by less philosophical persons be esteemed reasoning in a circle. LECTURE I. 33 (connected, 1 fear, in some instances with the wish to deny or depreciate the inspira- tion of the New Testament) has in all been made hastily, and, I cannot but think, er- roneously. From the documents yet existing as to the opinions and practices of that sect, from the known minuteness of their formal and literal observances, and from the ge- neral tenor of the reproaches which our Lord himself directs against them, we should rather, I conceive, be led to doubt as to the spirituality of their scriptural ex- positions ^ They did indeed, probably in agreement with the whole body of their countrymen, expect a Messiah who should come as their temporal deliverer and sove- '^ Such was decidedly the opinion of the learned Schoet- gen. V. Messiam. (Praef. sectt. 9- et seq. and lib. i. pp. 34, 36.) J. G. Carpzov, who has diligently collected all that can throw light on the history and practices of this sect, (Annott. in Godwini Mosen et Aaronem, pp. 173. et seq.) has nothing which should lead us to regard them as the patrons of spiritual interpretation. J. B. Carp- zov indeed is disposed to regard the well known allego- rist Philo as having belonged to the school of the Pha- risees; (Exercitt. in Ep. ad Hebraeos, pp. 253, &c.) but his arguments are very \msatisfactory. D 34 LECTURE I. reign ; but as to the real character of the Redeemer and his kingdom, we see no reason to doubt that they were of those who, when the hiw was read, could not pe- netrate its typical obscurity, by reason of the veil which was upon their hearts^. Or if we admit even that the Pharisees did occasionally teach and practise some alle- gorical methods of interpretation, it is suffi- ciently evident that these bore not in their essential features any resemblance to those of the apostle. It was assuredly not in the schools of the Pharisees that he learned to accept him whom they rejected; to believe on a Messiah lohose kingdom was ?iot of this world ; to know nothing but Christ Je- sus and him crucified. Yet it is these very materials of his newly adopted faith, these things which were yet as a stumblingblock to the rulers of Israel, that he affirms to be contained in the mystical anticipations of the Lawgiver, the Psalmist, and the Pro- phets. It might be urged too, that the more rf 2 Cor. iii. 15. LECTURE I. 35 ancient of the Hebrew paraphrases and commentaries upon the Law (to which we must, I think, look for the closest illustra- tion of the tenets of the Scribes and Phari- sees, contemporary with the apostle) bear in truth no very prominent marks of a fondness for allegorical or spiritual inter- pretation. Such is not the character of the elder Targum ; and in those portions even of the Mischna which relate to the worship of the temple % to the sacrifices, and to the day of eocpiatioii \ we may search in vain for any thing more exalted than the frivolous and minute details of ceremonial observances. They form indeed (as does the whole work which contains them) an admirable comment upon the divine accu- sation, that the ecclesiastical rulers of the Jewish people laid upon them burdens hard to be home ; but they speak not, they sa- vour not, of the office or spirit of him who vindicated his followers from this bondage into the Jiberty of the sons of God. If then the apostle learned the habit of in- e Tamid. ^ Toma. D 2 36 LECTURE I. listing upon the higher and spiritual sense of the things which were the shadow of better things to come, in any school save that of the Master who so miraculously called, and, as we contend, qualified him also for the understanding and ministra- tion of his gospel, that praise, we are hard- ly, on any fair ground of criticism, justified in claiming for the school of the Pharisees. They might indeed, as has been admitted, have looked for a conquering Messiah, and believed him to be foretold by the Pro-~ phets ; they might not, at least, have op- posed themselves to the popular belief and hope on that subject ; but the more exten- sive application of mystical exposition, un- der the form which it then wore, appears, so far as we have the means of judging, to have been the distinguishing character of another school, originating with, and per- haps confined to, the Jews of the disper- sion. To this school our attention will be confined in the next lecture. In tracing thus far the history of spiri- tual interpretation, we have seen that its practice is neither unscriptural nor unrea- LECTURE I. 37 sonable. It cannot indeed be rejected, or reduced to the mere notion of accommoda- tion, without questioning the inspiration, without rejecting the doctrinal and spiri- tual authority of the gospel ; and it cannot be overlooked, without cutting off one of the living sources of Christian edification which the word of God offers to our use. But let it be at the same time remem- bered, that the great and essential tenets of our faith do not rest upon, are not de- duced from any portions of Scripture, to which even the adversary can except as being of ambiguous or uncertain import. They have their sure foundations in the simple narratives ; in the repeated and une- quivocal declarations of the New Covenant ; in that history and those sayings of our blessed Lord and his immediate delegates, which, while they are amply sufficient of themselves to lead us into all truth, yet enable us by their reflected light to under- stand and to apply, neither erroneously, we trust, nor unprofitably, the darker oracles which preceded them. 1X3 LECTURE II. 1 Corinthians h. 5. That yourjhith should not stand in the wisdom of men. Having in the last Lecture surveyed the grounds for affixing a secondary and spiri- tual sense to many passages of the sacred writings which may be deduced from the internal character and evidence of those writings themselves, we may now proceed to trace the history of this method of in- terpretation, as it has been practised in va- rious ages and with various degrees of suc- cess and plausibility. The ground which I attempt to traverse is of considerable ex- tent, and occasionally not without its diffi- culty and obscurity. This will in part, I trust, plead my excuse, where the survey may appear to those better instructed than myself defective or erroneous. The me- thod of treating the subject must of neces- D 4 40 LECTURE II. sity be rather historical than argumenta- tive ; but it shall (as I have already stated) be my object to draw from the narrative, wheresoever the opportunity fairly offers itself, such inferences as may be practically useful to the theological student. It has already been incidentally remark- ed, that, long before the advent and preach- ing of our Lord, a part at least of the Jewish communion believed much of their Scriptures to contain, under the veil of the bare letter, a secondary and higher sense. In the present Lecture, I propose, so far as its limits will allow, to take a brief view of such documents, anterior to the age of the New Testament, as afford any illustration of this practice. It will be readily seen that these are chiefly, if not entirely, the product of one school ; and that, a school rather of philosophy than of divinity, or sa- cred literature. Here then we are concerned only with the speculations of human inge- nuity, borrowing its principle, indeed, of interpretation from the authority of revela- tion itself; but in its extension and appli- cation of that principle, though occasion- LECTURE II. 41 ally presenting much that is pious and beautiful, yet too often devious, uncertain, and unsatisfactory. The earliest instances of this practice are to be found (assuming, that is, the cor- rectness of the dates usually assigned for the composition of those works) in the apo- cryphal books of Wisdom and Ecclesias- ticus. These indeed might be regarded as furnishing a collateral evidence to the points contended for in the last Lecture, if we were authorized in considering them as representing the belief and traditions of the whole Jewish church during the period which elapsed between the termination and the fulfilment of the prophetic oracles. If, however, we acquiesce in the more pro- bable opinion, that they originated with those Hellenizing Jews who mixed with the faith derived from a higher and purer source much of the learning and specula- tion of the Alexandrian schools ; we can of course view them as expressing the tenets of that class only of scriptural expositors. In both these works, but more especially perhaps in the book of Wisdom, traces of 42 LECTURE II. mystical interpretation are occasionally dis- coverable, though these are scarcely of that which can in strictness be termed a spiri- tual character. They are altogether in the tone of that Hellenistic philosophy, if we may so term it, which distinguishes the whole of the works in question, and of which it will soon be necessary to speak somewhat more at large. The most sin- gular example, perhaps, of this mode of exposition to be found in either of the books is the assertion, that the sacerdotal vestments of Aaron were symbolical of the material, or perhaps of the archetypal, universe * ; a notion held also by Josephus and others in later times. Both works present too distinct traces of the opinion that the Almighty executed his counsels in the government of the spiritual and phy- sical creation through the intervention of his Word or Koyog, and that this first be- gotten emanation of the Father was the Jehovah who appeared to and protected Israel. In one passage of the book of Wis- dom, there is (if I be not mistaken) some- =1 Wisdom of Solomon, xviii. 24. LECTURE II. 43 what which implies that its author re- garded the history of the fall of our first parents as allegorical ^ ; and the same ten- dency to mystical exposition shews itself- more than once in the highly amplified and ornamented detail which the same writer presents of the plagues inflicted on the monarch and people of Egypt ". Of an era not perhaps very remote from that of these extraordinary works, is a remarkable, though suspicious document, preserved by Eusebius, and attributed, on the authority of the Pseudo-Aristaeas, to Eleazar the high priest. In this an allegorical explanation is authoritatively given to the different species of animals permitted or forbidden by the Mosaic law to be used for the food of man **. The chief ground for proposing this explanation appears to have been a dread lest the Scripture should be sup- posed to have prescribed any thing as of ^ Ch. i. 14, 15, 16. See this notion admirably refuted by bishop Horsley, Biblical Crit. vol. i. p. 10. ^ Ch. xvii. xviii. xix. Compare the general tone of these with that of the seventy-eighth Psalm. ^ Eusebii Praef. Evang. lib. viii. cap, 9- 44 LECTURE II. divine ordinance, without reason or truth, (eiycri vi fA,v(ioo^ug \) a pretext, which (with, per- haps, a yet greater latitude of application) is common to all the earlier advocates of allegorical exposition. It would assuredly have been well, if the ingenuity misplaced in developing these supposed mysteries had been exercised in the soberer task of inquiring, whether the precepts and inci- dents so readily accounted trivial and un- important did not of a truth, from the place and connection which they held in the great and harmonious system of divine economy unfolded in the Scriptures, derive a value and a consequence, to which, when considered abstractedly, and without refe- rence to that system, they seemed to prefer at the best a disputable claim. Whatever degree of credit we attach to the writings which pass under the name of Aristaeas, the extracts preserved by Eusebius prove at least, that the habit of mystical exposi- tion had already obtained among the Alex- andrian Jews in the age of their author. The like inference may be drawn also from the extracts given by the same historian LECTURE II. 45 from the treatise, whether genuine or sup- posititious, attributed to Aristobulus, a Jew- ish philosopher of the peripatetic school, said to have flourished under the Ptole- mies ^ These earlier vestiges, however, of that spirit of refinement which sought for moral and philosophical truth under the narra- tive and even the preceptive parts of Scrip- ture, though by no means without their value as historical documents, are yet, in point of interest as well as magnitude, far exceeded by the voluminous and compre- hensive labours of the Alexandrian Philo. It is scarcely needful to state, that these consist of expository treatises upon various prominent subjects of the Mosaic history and institutions, and that nearly in the whole of these he follows to its widest ex- tent the system of allegorical interpreta- tion embraced by those whose remains we have just noticed. That his system is es- sentially the same with theirs, both as to the light in which he viewed the sacred writings, and the philosophy which he ap- ^ Eusebii Praef. Evang. lib. vii. cap. 14. 46 LECTURE II. plied to their illustration, we have every reason to conclude. He is indeed so far from speaking of this as any discovery of his own, that he more than once alludes to its being traditional ; and in one place refers expressly to the kuvovs^ rvig ctXXriyofia.?^ as forming a standard of interpretation al- ready established and understood by his readers. The principle which induced him to adopt the allegorical method he express- ly states to be a conviction of the necessity for thus interpreting those portions of the inspired volume, which, to speculative and philosophical minds, might appear to con- tain any thing derogatory to the acknow- ledged nature and attributes of the Al- mighty. The labours of Philo may conveniently, and with sufficient accuracy for our pre- sent purpose, be considered as directed chiefly to two objects. The illustration of theological truth, strictly so called, as it relates to the person, attributes, and imme- ^ Off I 'OvEipcav. So, "Hxoucra [x-evTOi xaShspuv JSe'av. (De Josepho.) See also the traditional explanation of the characters of Abraham and Sarah, p. 213. and else- where. LECTURE II. 47 diate operations of the Almighty, and the moral and intellectual culture of the hu- man soul. Of that which at the present day would be termed spiritual exposition, his works exhibit but little ^ ; still less do they display of the desire or attempt to be generally and popularly useful. Nor in- deed was much of this latter tendency to be expected where the commentator wrote expressly for the initiated alone ^' ; and where not only the practice of the moral virtues, but an acquaintance with the whole circle of human arts and sciences, was in- sisted upon as a previous discipline, (Trpo- TTcii^evTiwi,) requisite to qualify the soul for that purely intellectual intercourse with its great source and author, which formed the beatific vision of his philosophy. The system of interpretation adopted for this purpose will be most readily explained by stating generally, that Philo regarded all the persons and things mentioned in Scrip- S This was long since noticed by St. Ambrose ; " Phi- " lo quoniam spiritalia Judaico non capiebat afFectu in- ." tra moralia se tenuit."''' De Paradiso, cap. iv. h Muo-Tai xex«9apju.£'vo< ra cira. (De Cherubim.) 48 LECTURE II. ture, whether as individuals, or in their re- lation or opposition to each other, under the characters of agent and patient, cause and effect, dominant and subordinate, good and bad, and the like, as the mystical de- signations of certain spiritual existences and metaphysical abstractions. Of these the chief are, 1. The Deity and his attri- butes. 2. The Divine Intellect or Word (Aoyof). 8. That Word either personified, or considered as having in truth a separate existence and agency. 4. The archetypal or ideal universe with all its parts, as con- tained in, and proceeding from, and set in order by, that Word. It will be readily understood, that neither our time nor our present object will admit of our pausing to enter into any discussion as to the real opinion entertained by Philo on those questions concerning the divine Aoyo?, on which so high an interest has been con- ferred by the inspired declarations of St. John. The further objects of Philo's al- legorical speculations are, 1. The human soul with all its powers and passions. 2 Pure intellect (voZf) ; and as opposed LECTURE II. 49 or subordinate to pure intellect, sense, or the perception of sensible objects, ui(7-&ri(ri^. 3. The virtuous or vicious qualities and tendencies of man. By such an adaptation of the letter to the establishment and il- lustration of abstract truth, Philo believed it to be the intention of Moses and the prophets to lead the mind from the earthly to the heavenly, from that which is seen to that which is unseen. The manner in which he essays to accomplish his purpose will be best exemplified by offering a sim- ple abstract of his commentary, (if such it may be termed,) on the more important and leading portions of the inspired text. In the very commencement of the Mo- saic history, the philosophical genius of the Alexandrian finds, as might readily be anticipated, immediate and ample scope for indulging in the highest speculations of Platonism. The account of the creation given in the first section of the book of Genesis he refers, not to the production of the visible and sensible universe, but to that of its pattern and archetype, as exist- ing in and emanating from the supreme E 50 LECTURE II. intellect ^ " the seat of the incorporeal es- " sences of the natural elements." In the man made after the image of God, he sees the divine Aoyog considered as having a separate and personal existence, or, as he interprets it, " a purely ideal and generic " exemplar of Deity, to be apprehended by " the intellect alone, incorporeal, neither " male nor female, an indestructible na- " ture '." The seventh day, on vv^hich all is said to have been completed, and its great Author to have rested from his operations, he considers as indicating nothing more than the absolute perfection of the whole ; grounding his opinion on the mystical pro- perties which the Pythagorean school is well known to have attached to certain numbers. Having proceeded thus far on the mys- tical principles of his own sect, it might be expected that Philo would acquiesce in the plain historical meaning of that which fol- lows : but here he pursues the same alle- gorical course, still enlarging the range of h Lib. i. sul) initio. * P. 23. Conf. p. 172. ed. Hoeschelii. LECTURE II. 51 his objects, and permitting a yet greater li- cence to his imagination. In the " face" of the material earth he finds the type of sense; in the "herb and plants of the " field," whatsoever is the object of sense (to ctla-QriTov,) and in the " man who was yet " wanting to till the ground," and the mist which rose up on its surface, the symbol of intellect ^. The same intellect is the mys- tical counterpart of Adam \ while sense is that of his consort Eve. The creation of the former could hardly be doubted or ex- plained away : that of the latter, in the li- teral sense of the Mosaic record, he re- jects ", {fA,v^u^sg so-Ti.) In respect to the his- tory of the fall, he holds language which renders it doubtful whether he regarded it as an historical or allegorical expression of the truth. It is not (he contends) made up of fabulous matter, (ou TrKcLa-^cua, fj^uScov,) but of types calling for an allegorical in- terpretation. Paradise therefore he affirms ^ Lib. i. p. 34. ' Elsewhere (Q. R. D. H. p. 381.) he considers Adam as yrjVvoj vovg. "^ 'A^A. Nojaou, Ub. iii. This is noticed by Photius. E 2 521 LECTURE II. to have been, not a garden of earthly and material sweets, but a spiritual region, filled and adorned with produce of a purely in- tellectual nature. The tree of life sha- dows out the perfection of all holiness and virtue, and him in whom that perfection is eternally inherent, the Word of God". The tree of knowledge (as its name imports) is that power of the mind which decides upon the similar or dissimilar nature of things, ((ppovrjo-if fx,ecrri to, evctvTia, (pvcrsi ^idKpivova-et.) The four rivers of Eden are the four car- dinal virtues ; and even the circumstances of their position and direction are alle- gorized with a view to that interpretation. The serpent is the gratification of the senses, (jjJovj?;) and the nakedness of our first parents is spiritual °. The circum- stances attendant on the expulsion from Paradise are treated with a yet greater latitude of fancy. The cherubim which guarded its entrance are, he tells us, ac- cording to some, the spheres of the fixed n P. 172. ° 'Aw. Noj«.oy. 1. iii. he explains the various ways in which vouj eoT* yvfj^vo^. LECTURE II. 53 and erratic stars, which form as it were a barrier between the soul and that heavenly and intellectual paradise from which she is exiled : the fiery sword, that energy which produces and regulates their movements, (the Kivtjo-if of the Greek philosophy.) But his own mind, he boasts, indulging in a conjecture akin to prophecy, prompts him to see in the former the divine power and benevolence, in the latter, the eternal Word of God P : an exposition which, like many others of Philo, and of the Midraschic school, has been misapplied by the pious ingenuity of those who have sought in the remains of Jewish learning for the con- firmation and illustration of that which is revealed in the New Testament, as to the nature and union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit \ In examining the characters of the first-born Cain, and his unoffending victim, he takes a somewhat different ground. Cain is the type of the contentious and unholy sophist ; Abel of P De Cherubim. ^ See Scotfs Christian Life, vol. iii. Note on p. 51. hb. 2. E 3 54 LECTURE II. the contemplative and pious mind, refer- ring every thing to the power and wisdom of its Creator : a character which Philo de- scribes with a truth and beauty as highly creditable to his religious feeling, as to his powers of language and imagination "■ : the field in which they walked is that of dis- cussion or controversy. Here however he does not appear to question the literal purport of the history. In the case of Enoch, on the contrary, he regards what is said concerning the translation of that patriarch as descriptive of the conversion of the soul to God and better things by repentance; a laxity of interpretation which his readers may almost be tempted to over- look, in consideration of the beauty and eloquence with which he describes and contrasts the state of man before and after that important change of the heart and af- fections \ The history of Noah, though its general truth is neither directly nor indi- ' P. 264. (De Conf. Ling.) s P. 276. The passage may not impossibly have sug- gested to Hooker the yet more beautiful and eloquent contrast in his first sermon on St. Judc, sect. 14. LECTURE II. 55 rectly questioned \ yet furnishes an ulterior lesson of philosophy. When we are told that that patriarch was the tenth from Adam, we are to look, not so much to the genealogical fact as to the perfection of character typified by that perfect number. The increase of his family, and at the same time of all flesh, teaches that the moral contraries virtue and vice always coexist, but that in the present condition of human affairs the preponderance is unhappily on the side of the latter ". In the ark we see the material frame of man " : in the ani- mals which it enclosed, the passions and evil affections which inhabit that frame. The flood itself is the tempestuous and ever-flowing state of man's existence upon earth. The egress from the ark is the ulti- mate delivery of the imprisoned mind into a state of spiritual and intellectual free- dom y. Thus Philo discovers in the brief history of the antediluvian patriarchs all that he had learnt from the traditions of his countrymen, and the theories of the t Vid. p. 512. " Hep) Ttyavrm. ^ P. 172. Y P. 262. E 4 56 LECTURE II. eclectic school, as to the constitution and moral government of the universe and its rational inhabitants. Nor in those later periods, where the history becomes more detailed and circumstantial, is he at any time content to rest in the bare letter. To such an extent does he carry these specu- lations, that if we admit him not to have lost sight of his own first principle % we must suppose him also to have believed that the only object worthy the divine in- terference, was the leading pious and ex- alted intellects to a knowledge of the phi- losophical and moral tenets of his own pe- culiar sect. Thus while he allows that the history of Abraham exhibits in its literal acceptation the example of a man wise and dear to his Creator, he sees in the outward circumstances of that history the progress of the human mind from a state of dark- ness and error to one of intellectual and spiritual illumination. Chaldea is the re- gion of vain and earthly imaginations, of astrology, idolatry, and false philosophy. ^ See page 46. LECTURE II. 57 Haran is the type of the sensible and ma- terial universe, of the creature with whose elements alone the unenlightened man is conversant. The handmaid Agar shadows out that discipline of the mind in the study of the liberal arts and sciences which is a prerequisite for the attainment of the highest and only true wisdom. She is termed an Egyptian, because the body (of which Egypt is the symbol) is needful for the acquisition of this elementary know- ledge ; and, lastly, she is subordinate to, and in time to be supplanted by, the real and legitimate partner of such a mind, the perception of things purely intellectual, and of their eternal author, figured in the person of Sarah, whose name he interprets to signify, my superior or ruling principle, {a,px^ fA,ov.) * In Isaac, Philo discerns the type of a mind ranking yet more highly in the scale of spiritual and intellectual ex- cellence ; a mind possessing intuitively, as it were, and by the immediate gift of its author, the supreme wisdom ; not a deni- a Tlepi SuvoSou, p. 282. et seq. 58 LECTURE II. zen of the fleshly Egypt, not seeking for previous instruction from the handmaid and the slave, from human erudition and accomplishments, but choosing one virgin partner, the heavenly and spiritual Re- becca, a patient continuance in the truth, (xjTTOfjLovYiv.) In like manner the wives of the other patriarchs are declared to be seve- rally typical of some good quality of the heart or understanding *". The life of the patriarch Jacob, like that of Abraham, is regarded as symbolical of the progress of human intellect from the earthly and visi- ble things to the heavenly and invisible. The well of Haran is the fountain of science. To the vision of the ascending and descending angels a yet more remark- able interpretation is affixed ". The ladder ^ P. 88. Ao'yoj ju,sv £i(r* yuvaixej egyw 8* ocpsTal. So else- where, Ow TTsp) yvvaixwv Xoyog, uKKoL diavolaov. lisp) "^uvoiou. ^ P. 455. rispj 'Ovelpcuv. This, according to INIanasseh Ben Israel, the most learned (in the opinion of Boyle on Scripture, p. 90, ed. 1671.) of all the modern rabbins, has been in all ages the opinion of Jewish divines. See M. B. I. Ue Creatione, p. 62. et De Res. Mort. pp. 215 et 327. Both these works are among the most interest- ing and authentic depositories of Jewish traditions and philosophy. LECTURE II. 59 is the region of the air interposed between our own globe and the lunar sphere ; a re- gion peopled through all its extent by in- tellectual and incorporeal essences, some of whom are continually descending for the purpose of animating the bodies of men ; others, having quitted those bodies, are re- turning to their aerial mansion, destined either to make this their sole and endless dwelling-place, or to return to the prison of the body, according to their respective degrees of purity and advancement in the love and knowledge of spiritual things. It is needless to add, that this is precisely the doctrine of the Platonic school as to the preexistence and descent of the human soul. On the history of Joseph \ Philo evi- dently dwells with the patriotic feeling of an Hebrew, endeavouring to recommend the memory of his illustrious forefather to the country which had once so powerfully felt the benefit of his rule. Independently of the natural interest which in all ages ^ See the whole section dedicated to this subject. 60 LECTURE II. and all states of society this most beautiful and affecting of narratives must possess, the courtly and cultivated Alexandrians, and the author who wrote for them, were doubtless more to be captivated by the character of the prince and statesmen of Egypt, than by that of the simpler race, whose sole wealth consisted in the produce of the flock or the tillage of the soil. All its circumstances therefore are detailed and amplified in a manner designedly, I think, adopted for the purpose of attracting and conciliating those who were familiar with the Kvpov Trcn^sid of the philosophical Athe- nian. Yet here, worthy, even in his own view of worth, as the literal history evi- dently appeared, Philo cannot abstain from allegory. It has, he declares, in common with nearly the whole of the Pentateuch, an ulterior and recondite meaning. Joseph is the political, as opposed to the natural life, (the /3/o$- KctTo. (pva-iv :) the coloured vest is the versatility and address requisite for the politician, {'^oAvrpoTria, Tou TToXniKov.) He is truly said to be sold to a many-headed master, the populace, or rather the whole LECTURE II. 61 body politic. Joseph we are told inter- preted dreams ; the statesman is called up- on to do the same ; but his art is not that of the sophists and impostors of the kyo^cL, It is his higher province to interpret the great waking dream of life, for what is life but a dream. The life of Moses, affording a splendid picture of the achievements and institutes of one expressly commissioned by Jehovah to guide and legislate for the people of his choice, is, probably with the same view as that of Joseph, treated with as strict or a yet stricter adherence to its historical import. In surveying the moral portions of the law, he rarely deviates into his favourite mysticism ; and his exposi- tions are usually pertinent, and at times clothed in language of much beauty and energy. In those ceremonial institutions w^hich our Lord and his apostles have taught us also to regard as symbolical of a dispensation yet higher and holier, he uni- formly discovers the types of his own phi- losophical creed, as to the order and go- vernment of the material and intellectual universe, and the agency of that divine 62 LECTURE II. Word which upholds and regulates all things. Of this latter, the chief adumbra- tions are found in the person of the high- priest ^ and in the ephod which formed so conspicuous a part of his sacred vestments. And here Philo undoubtedly uses in more than one place expressions which should seem to indicate, that he had attained to some notion (though but an obscure and imperfect one) of that mediatorial office of the eternal Son of God, which forms the belief and the consolation of those who have learned and received him as he is. It must however be admitted, that the Chris- tian application (if it may be so called) of these passages is not so unquestionable or free from difficulty as it might at first sight appear to be ^. But this question is not ^ P. 362. The golden plate of the frontlet is, accord- ing to Philo, a type of the archetypal, the bells and pomegranates, of the material universe. The tabernacle is again a type of the same, and its measurements are grounded on the mystic properties of numbers. The candlestick, tables, and other ornaments, are referred to the parts and phenomena of the sensible world. f On this point the well known work of the venerable J. Kryant cannot, I think, be implicitly depended upon. A more correct general view of Philo's ojiinion will be LECTURE II. 63 necessarily connected with our immediate design, and its discussion would far exceed the limits to which I must at present con- fine myself. It may be sufficient briefly to state, that Philo regarded the character and offices of the divine Aoyos" as altogether distinct and different from those of the Messiah, to whom, with the mass of his countrymen, he looked as an earthly and temporal deliverer ; a circumstance which of itself throws much doubt on the hypo- thesis of those who suspect him to have been partly, at least, indebted for his know- ledge of divine truth, and his method of interpreting the Mosaic records, to the preaching of our blessed Lord or his im- mediate followers. On this point however, and upon many found in the admirable treatise " On the Trinity of " Plato, &c." by the Rev. C. Morgan. London 1795. From this learned and acute writer, I can differ only as to the personality of the Ao'yoj, a doctrine which I can- not but think that Philo certainly held. See Keil, Opus- cula, (Lipsise, 1821.) p. 514, who appears to have exa- mined this subject with great care. The view, however, taken by Lohdius, in his ingenious but sometimes fanci- ful tract, De Vestigiis Rel. Christ, in Philone, Lipsiae 1774, coincides with that of Mr. Morgan. 64 LECTURE 11. of those analogies which have been thought to exist between the opinions of Philo and those of the Christian church, there is yet ample field for the research of the pious and studious inquirer. Was Philo's equi- vocal use of the term itself {Aoyog) inten- tional or merely inaccurate ? Did he in some passages understand his own expres- sions to imply strict personality, or did he use them only in a strain of highly figura- tive prosopopoeia? Did he derive his no- tions on this subject from the Platonic school alone, or was there some more an- cient and mysterious source whence both Plato and himself might derive the ground- work of those doctrines, which the hand of the beloved disciple corrected, amplified, and affixed to him in whom only they could be realized? Did these opinions originate in a traditionary corruption of the patriarchal faith, or were they pro- duced by the tendency which the human mind (conscious of its own inability to see and comprehend the Almighty in his pro- per essence and character) may have felt for the interposition of some more intel- LECTURE II. 65 ligible existence ; some ^ fxe^ofiov ka) julso-itsvov- To? between itself and Him who inhabiteth eternity. Lastly, can it be probable (as some have conjectured) that those passages of this remarkable work which afford the strongest points of resemblance to the apo- stolical remains, should in every case have been inserted, or altered at least, and ac- commodated to the Christian scheme at a subsequent period ? These (and the num- ber might easily be enlarged) are questions which can hardly be without their share of interest for the theological student, for him at least who is anxious to acquaint himself with all that may illustrate the hi- story and the tenets of the faith which he has received. He needs only to be cau- tioned, (and examples are not wanting to prove that such caution is requisite,) he needs only to be cautioned, that these spe- culations of human ingenuity are not to be received and valued as adding any thing g Q. R. D. H. Lohdivis seems to feel the difficulty of reconciling this epithet to the Aoyo; considered merely as an attribute, p. 28. F G6 LECTURE II. to, still less as explaining that which is re- vealed in the word of God. The inspired writers are to be regarded, not as borrow- ing and imitating, but as correcting the er- rors and supplying the deficiencies of their less favoured predecessors and contempora- ries. To illustrate this briefly, and from the case under our immediate considera- tion : were the student to accept the la- bours of Philo and those who most closely resemble him, as an authoritative exposi- tion of the views which pervade the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to the He- brews, he might in all probability be led into the error of those who have denied the proper divinity of our Lord, and the existence and personality of the Holy Spi- rit ; while he who looks upon the unin- spired writers as merely the advocates of human opinions, or at best the occasional depositaries of tradition, obscurely and im- perfectly understood ; and who seeks for the corrective of those opinions, and the real import of those traditions from the higher and purer source of inspiration on- LECTURE II. 67 ly ; can scarcely be tempted so to misun- derstand and pervert the faith delivered to the saints. It has been felt necessary for more than one reason to dwell thus long upon the general character of the system adopted by the Alexandrian expositor for the inter- pretation and illustration of the sacred vo- lume chiefly, because it appears nearly un- questionable that his works present the earliest, fullest, and most faithful docu- ment to which we have at present access of the opinions entertained, and the modes of exposition practised, by the philosophical Hebrews of his own time. It may be af- firmed indeed, and the opinion will not I believe be found to differ very essentially from that of the most learned biblical cri- tics of later times, that the mystical and theosophical remains of the Talmudical and the Midraschic ^ authors (to say no- thing of the obscurity and doubtfulness of S Accounts of the Midraschim, or allegorical exposi- tions of the later Jewish writers, may be found in the Philosophia Hebraica of Buddeus, the Bibliothecae of Buxtorf and Wolfius, and the Horae Hebr. of Schoet- gen. F 2 68 LECTURE II. their age and origin) do in fact contain little or nothing of real importance which is not to be met with far better and more intelligibly expressed in the commentary of Philo ''. Neither is it less certain, that the example and opinions of this eloquent and pious philosopher influenced the the- ory and practice of those Christian exposi- tors who succeeded him to an extent by no means generally understood or appre- ciated ' : that his fundamental tenets are in fact to be traced with some additions and some occasional modifications, (often rather apparent than real,) through a long descent of mystic authors to a period al- most within our own memory. The vision- ary imaginations (as we not unjustly re- gard them) which in later days so fasci- nated and engrossed the powerful mind of him to whom the Christian church owed the " Serious Call," and the refutation of h See Jahn, Hermen. p. 159, et App. Hermen. vol. i. p. 3. There are also some judicious remarks on the critical value and use of Philo in the Hermeneutica of Morus, vol. ii. pp. 179 and 209. ' Photius has noticed this with his usual chscrimina- tion, Bibl. C. 105. LECTURE II. 69 the errors of Hoadly and the paradoxes of Mandeville, were in all their essential and characteristic features nothing more than the philosophical reveries of the Jew- ish Platonist^ It has already been stated, that the dis- position for allegorizing every part of the ancient history and legal institutes of the chosen people prevailed equally in those societies of contemplative men, whose as- cetic habits are described both by Philo and by his countryman Josephus, and who (as we are expressly told by the former) held, that the letter of Scripture was as the material and outward body of man, while the latent allegory was as the spirit which animated and gave value to its frame ' ; an ^ See Law's Spirit of Love and Spirit of Prayer. The same fundamental theory may be traced in the extrava- gant and frequently unintelligible work of the well known J. Behmen, (Mysterium Magnum,) from which Law professes to have derived his materials. It is most sin- gular that so learned a writer should have given Beh- men credit for the originality of his reveries. A synop- sis of the doctrines which Law received through this channel will be found appended to Tighe''s Short Ac- count of his Life. London. Hatchard. 1813. ' De Vit. Contempl. et Therapeutis. F 3 70 LECTURE II. opinion, it may here be noticed, enter- tained also by Josephus himself, who, though agreeably to the character of his great work, he treats the early records of his nation as matter chiefly of historical truth, yet clearly expresses his acquies- cence in, and his intention even of writing more fully and exclusively upon, their mystical interpretation '. Neither should it perhaps be unmentioned, that in those schools, whence the Hellenistic Jews de- rived the greater part of that philosophical creed which they ingrafted on the faith of their ancestors, it was already the custom of ingenious and speculative men to em- ploy their talents in allegorizing, in no very dissimilar manner, the varied and in- coherent fictions of heathen mythology "'. That Philo was influenced, or at least felt himself countenanced by this example, seems highly probable. In the same quar- ' Anriq. Jud. npoo//x,jov, sub fine. '" See the stoical expositions of this character in Ci- cero De N. D. Such works as enter much into the de- tail of these allegt)ries, such at least as are preserved to us, are of a date posterior to Philo. LECTURE II. 71 ter, possibly, he might have found author- ity for the laxity and inconsistency at times so glaringly conspicuous in his ex- positions ". And this brings us finally to the consi- deration of that which was in truth the radical defect in Philo's principles of inter- pretation, in his whole view indeed of re- ligious truth, a consideration the more need- ful, as the same form of error still not un- frequently possesses and exercises the same attraction on the minds of ingenious and learned individuals, of those especially who have been accustomed to attach a paramount importance to the study of some specific " This will be evident to any one perusing continu- ously any section of his Commentaries. To give a single instance : in that on dreams, the sun is interpreted to mean, 1. the Deity ; 2. intellect; 3. sense, (aiVfl>]o-»j.) In general too, so desultory and excursive is his manner of writing, as to occasion much of fatigue and dissatisfac- tion to the student. Yet Pere Lamy, in the true spirit of his communion, ventures to insist upon the example of Philo as proving that arguments grounded on the sensus mysticus are legitimate and " of force;" that sense itself he would have determined by the traditions of the church. Apparatus Biblicus, Bundy's translation, pp. 358 et 360. F 4 72 LECTURE II. branch of abstract or physical science, and that too possessing in many cases perhaps a temporary only, or a local popularity. Philo bent his own intellect, and would fain have bent the revealed word of God also, to an unjustifiable conformity with the social and philosophical prejudices of his age and country ; or such, it would perhaps be more strictly accurate to say, was the character of the system which Philo em- braced, and recommended by the exercise of talents and acquirements certainly of no common order. The heathen philosopher contended that his school alone was in pos- session of the great and universal truths of physical and theological science. He ex- plained away his national mythology into mere symbolical representations of the attri- butes and operations of the Supreme Mind, or the phenomena of the material universe. In total ignorance of the real character and economy of the Mosaic dispensation, he re- garded its details as unworthy the dignity of that Being from whose will they ema- nated, a Being of whose power and bene- volence he had at best but obscure and im- LECTURE II. 73 perfect notions. The Hebrew, separated from a country which had no more a name among the kingdoms of the earth, accus- tomed to bow to the authority, and anxious to concihate the favour of a people so long his masters, was but too naturally led to ac- quiesce in their notions of philosophical and religious truth, as well as in many of their outward habits of life and conduct. He conceded all, or nearly all, that his hea- then fellow-students could demand, and did virtually and in effect, if not in terms, consent to invest the Athenian sage with the authority due only to the inspired law- giver". A compliance similar in its nature and effects has in after-times but too fre- quently and too deeply sullied the purity and diminished the usefulness of various branches of the Christian church. In our own age and country we have not been without examples of the same defection from the humility and simplicity of the ° Traces of this tendency are constantly observable in perusing his works. Thus in one place he asserts the 8ajju,ove5 of the Greeks to be the same with the angels of his countrymen ; in another he states that Greek philoso- phers were employed to assist in the education of Moses. 74 LECTURE 11. believer's wisdom ; and in that continental school which was alluded to in our last Lecture, the like compromise of Christian faith and principle at the shrine of the un- certain and fluctuating theories of human philosophy has been mainly instrumental in reducing the profession of Christianity to a state, in which it is scarcely deemed of consequence sufficient to excite the distaste or opposition even of those who totally and avowedly disbelieve and disown it p. This P See the language held on the present accordance of divines and philosophers in the Histoire de la Philoso- phie moderne of Buhle. On this point I am much gra- tified to find my own feelings in unison with the ex- pressed opinions of a much weightier and more compe- tent authority, the learned editor of the Reliquiae Sa- crae. " Exteros quosdam nil moror, qui libertatem " quidvis sentiendi ac dicendi quo majorem sibi suisque " comparent, unitatem cum ecclesia^ turn doctrinae labe- " factant et convellunt, re utique neglecta atque derisa, " quae usque ab evangelii ortu magni facta est, et sine " qua periditetiH" necesse est Christiana fides. Isti ni- " miruni })er causam laetioris cursus atque successus ve- " ritatis, non solum antiquos patres, et veterum Chris- " tianorum religionem, parvi faciunt, verum etiam post- " habitis Sacris Scripturis, quas quldem ipsas incerta? " volunt esse originis, regulam fidei iis inesse denegant; " et, si praecepta excipias moralia, iisdem baud necesse " esse ut credatur, temere prorsus statuunt. An isti LECTURE II. 75 dereliction of Christian truth, and (in speak- ing of those who yet call themselves by the name of the Redeemer) it may not un- fairly be added, of Christian duty, has been there, and may be elsewhere, gradual, and to incautious minds nearly imperceptible in its fatal progress ; and the student can- not therefore be too early or seriously warned against so unauthorized, uncandid, and, I will venture to add, so irrational a view of the oracles of divine truth. He cannot bear it too strongly in memory, that when the simple and unequivocal sense of those oracles has been attained to by the diligent and sober use of the best and most legitimate means of interpretation, by the " sirrt ex animo Christiani, hand quaero ; ita esse quani- " obrem debeant, ex principiis scilicet, quae ipsi sibi " posuerint, idoneam satis causam reperire non possum. " Stent enim oportet auctoritate fontium divinoruin no- " stra? religionis, quicvmque veritateni ejus diligenter ac " serio investigatam se amplecti profiteantur ; nisi forte " omnia sus deque habere velint, et fundanienta sanctas " disciplinse callide et veteratorie subvertere." R.S.Prcef. p. xii. An able and judicious censure of the same school will be found in Laurence''s Sermon on Excess in Philo- logical Speculation, and in Dr. BlomfiekVs learned Dis- sertation on the Traditions relative to the Messiah. 76 LECTURE 11. comparison of Scripture with Scripture, and by a pious regard to the great scope and object of the whole ; it is then the Chris- tian's duty to acquiesce in that sense as the express communication of him who knoweth all things, and has the right of demanding in all the credence and submis- sion of those to whom he speaketh. And he who thus receives the truth with single- ness of heart and earnest prayer for that Spirit which alone can effectually teach and preserve us in it, he shall indeed be made wise, not perhaps according to man's wisdom, but wise unto present holiness, wise unto eternal salvation. LECTURE III. 1 COEINTHIANS ii. 5. That yourjaith should not stand in the zvisdom of men, XN the two former Lectures it was endea- voured to shew, that there were reasonable and scriptural grounds for attaching a se- condary and spiritual sense to much of the Law and the Prophets ; and that such was, so far as we have the opportunity of ascer- taining matters of this nature, the opinion, if not of the whole Jewish church, yet cer- tainly of many among its most learned and pious members. That the practice of such interpretation was carried by some to an unwarrantable excess, affords no proof that it was not originally founded upon just conceptions of the character of the older revelation, or that it is repugnant to the wise and benevolent intentions of Him by whom all Scripture was given, and to whom 78 LECTURE III. ivere known all his works from the begin- ning. The course of our inquiry has now brought us to that period, at which the preaching of a new and more perfect dis- pensation was committed by its divine Au- thor to the apostles and ministers of his choice ; committed with the express assur- ance, and confirmed and sanctioned by the conscious and sensible presence of his in- forming Spirit. If we believe them to have spoken and written under the guidance of that Spirit, to have been led (as it was pro- mised) into all tr?(th ; if we hold upon any theory the proper inspiration of that which they delivered ; I do not see with what consistency we can refuse (as some would do) to acquiesce in their interpretation of the Scriptures of the Old Testament. That to these Scriptures they do affix a second- ary and spiritual meaning, and that they refer to them with this view, not merely in a few partial and dubious instances, but repeatedly, and with a distinctness to be questioned only by the most determined prejudice, seems equally clear. If indeed with one school we are to deny the exist- LECTURE III. 79 ence of all types and prefigurations of the Messiah and his kingdom, and to contend that where the Law is said to have had the shadow of the good things to come, no more is meant than that in comparison with the gospel it was as valueless as a shadow when compared to a substance " ; we would answer, that such a theory claims for plain and specific language a much greater laxity and licence of interpretation than any which it objects to. If with others'" we attempt to resolve the whole into one system of accommodation, we cer- tainly do not a little shake the credibility of those witnesses who could rest so much upon so sandy a foundation. But the wri- ters of the New Testament in no place ap- pear either to confess or to suspect that the secondary or allegorical sense, which they attach to the Law and the Prophets, are thus arbitrary and unreal. That we ^ This is the hypothesis of Sykes in his answer to ColUns. b See the first Lecture, p. 27. This hypothesis the theologians of modern Germany have derived chiefly from tlie school of Le Clerc. 80 LECTURE III. are content to regard some few instances of obscure application as thus accommo- dated, (and the hsts usually given of such accommodations might indeed be much reduced,) does not, any more than the ex- ceptions in various other cases, invalidate the general rule. And here I would venture even to sub- mit, whether, as we consent, both from their own internal evidence, and from the acknowledged inspiration of those who ad- duce them, to receive the great bulk of the scriptural quotations so adduced in the New Testament as truly and originally typical and prophetical, it may not be the part of Christian humility and sober criti- cism rather to suspend the judgment as to those few which present real difficulties, than to attempt the accounting for or re- conciling them by any hypothesis of ac- commodation, or partial and individual ap- plication ; by conceding that they are no more than ornaments of diction, or at best argumenta ad liominem. Upon the whole then it must be granted, that the writers of the New Testament did LECTURE III. 81 regard the Old as exhibiting in many of its leading features a real and intentional adumbration of those foreknown counsels of God, which were to receive their com- pletion in the gift of a Saviour and the preaching of his Gospel. And this is all with which we are at present concerned ; for our time would not permit, nor indeed does it come within the scope of the pre- sent Lectures, to examine even cursorily into the import and bearings of every pas- sage thus adduced from the Old Testa- ment by the evangelists and apostles : but it may be useful briefly to call to mind that they are uniformly adduced with re- ference either to the personal history and mediatorial office of our blessed Redeemer, to the spiritual character of the kingdom which he established upon earth, or to the future destiny of his universal church ; and that with respect to the latter they are rather applied to its great and general outlines than to any minuter circumstances of detail ; a point in which the expositors of after-times but too often and too un- wisely deviated from their example. G 82 LECTURE III. It cannot, lastly, be denied or ques- tioned, that even in the records of the new covenant, the things which concern the re- newal of the inner man, and the salvation of the believer, are in more than one case shadowed out to us under types and ana- logies, which, if we accept the testimony of those records, we are not only authorized but bound to understand and to apply spi- ritually. To pass over much of that part of our Lord's teaching which was confess- edly in parables; if we allow that there be any spiritual grace connected with the right usage and reception of the Christian sacraments, we must admit their outward elements to be the certain and preordained symbols of that grace, and of the means whereby it is conveyed to us : we must (be it spoken with reverence and faith) admit the material body and blood of our glori- ous Redeemer himself to be typical of that spiritual food whereby the inward life of the believer's soul, that life which, as we are expressly told, is hidden with Christ in God, is produced and supported. When the apostle urges, (in which our church LECTURE III. 83 has well and wisely followed him,) that as our Saviour died and rose again for us, so should we who are buried with him in baptism die unto sin and rise again unto righteousness : when he expressly exhorts the believers as those who are risen tvith Christ, we cannot deny that he sees in the history of thus much at least of his Mas- ter's life a spiritual as well as a literal im- port. The luxuriance of human ingenuity may indeed, as it has often done, push its imitation of these mysterious analogies much too far ; the pride of scepticism may refuse to be taught at all after this man- ner, and its votary may question the inspi- ration of those Scriptures which would thus teach him : but neither the abuses of the one nor the perverseness of the other can invalidate the truth of the general position, that the New Testament does not only as- sert the secondary and spiritual meaning of much that is contained in the Old, but authorizes and strengthens the legitimacy of such interpretation by affixing the like to portions also of its own contents. It were pleasing, did our immediate ob- G 2 84 LECTURE III. ject permit it, to delay yet somewhat longer in these regions of inspiration and of cer- tainty ; for we pass on to those in which the infirmity of human reason, and at times even the influence of human passions and prejudices, will be found intermingling themselves with the pure and infallible dictates of the revealed word. Of the age immediately succeeding the promulgation of the Gospel, so little (so lit- tle at least which can be regarded as free from all suspicion of forgery or interpola- tion) is preserved to us, that we are scarce- ly competent to judge how far those holy men, to whom the superintendence and teaching of the earliest churches was in- trusted, felt themselves authorized to imi- tate, in the spiritual interpretation of Scrip- ture, the example of their great instructor. In their public ministrations and exer- tions for the setting forth and recommend- ing to those without the faith delivered to them, they rehed in all probability rather on the earnest and authoritative enuncia- tion and application of those great Chris- tian truths, which are at no time the less LECTURE III. 85 important because they are simple and ele- mentary. They spoke of death and judg- ment, of conversion from sin, and belief in the divine power and atoning blood of the Son of the living God : but, excepting in their actual discussions with the Hebrew, or in the researches of those few more in- formed and advanced believers who em- ployed themselves on the detailed research of Scriptural truth'', we can scarcely sup- pose that much would be found of this species of interpretation, or any thing in- deed added to that which was already so copiously afforded by the apostles. Next to the inspired volume of the new covenant, the most ancient Christian re- mains which we possess are doubtless those which are well known under the title of the Apostolical Fathers. Whether or no c To these studies the terra yvao(Tig seems to have ap- phed from the earhest times ; and such persons of undis- ciphned minds and vivid imaginations as substituted for or engrafted upon the simple and scriptural tenets of the church their own speculations and hypotheses, probably carried with them, on separating, the name (yvwcrTJxoj) which they had already assumed, or been distinguished by, among the faithful. G 3 86 LECTURE III. these can be satisfactorily proved to have been written in all cases by those whose names they bear, it does not concern us for our present purpose to inquire ; since it will be conceded (upon any hypothesis of their real origin) that they afford com- petent evidence as to the methods of scrip- tural interpretation prevalent at least as early as the middle of the second century. The only traces of allegorical or spiritual exposition which I have observed in these venerable documents, are to be found in the former epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians ; (a composition which even the most sceptical of ecclesiastical histori- ans '^ does not venture actually to reject as a forgery;) and in that attributed perhaps with somewhat less of certainty to St. Bar- nabas. In the former, these expositions oc- cur incidentally and rarely, and are made (as might be expected) to bear chiefly on the objects of the Christian's faith. In re- garding Israel as a type of the Messiah's church, '^ and in his application of the pro- <^ Semler. Hist. Eccl. vol. i. ^ Sect. xxix. LECTURE III. 87 phecy of Isaiah to the Messiah's suffer- ings % and in his assertion that the Spirit of Christ spoke also by David ^, the beheyer will scarcely be disposed to question or dis- sent from him. In one or two instances only does he appear to transgress the boundaries of legitimate interpretation. But these (even admitting that the most objectionable of them^ is not, what there appears some reason for suspecting it to be, an interpolation) are defects, which, in a fair and candid estimate of this most va- luable remain of Christian antiquity, can be regarded as but trifling drawbacks on its claims to our respect, and its authority in questions of practice and doctrine. Alto- gether, the great character of this epistle is an earnest and practical application of scriptural admonition and reproof; a cha- racter which, it may be here briefly men- tioned, it has in common with the shorter ^ Sect. xvi. f Sect. xxii. g The notion, (grounded on a misconception of the scriptural comparison of the righteous to a pakn tree, ipojvj^,) that the fabulous bird so named (phoenix) af- forded a legitimate type of the resurrection. G 4 88 LECTURE III. epistles of Ignatius. The whole complexion of that attributed to Barnabas is very dif- ferent, and seems to bespeak it a produc- tion, if not of late date, assuredly of a more fanciful and visionary mind. The author abounds in mystical expositions, many of which at the present day, even among those who are by no means inclined to dis- countenance such a practice, would find but few advocates. Some of these have reference to the person and sufferings of our blessed Lord ; others appear traceable to some earlier, perhaps to a Jewish or Alexandrian source. Such is the belief al- ready mentioned as attributed to Eleazar, that the division of animals into clean and unclean bore a typical analogy to the vir- tuous and vicious habits of man. Such perhaps the notion, that the three whose office it was to sprinkle the heifer of the Levitical sacrifice, enjoined in the 19th chapter of Numbers, were figurative of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Ja- cob. Here too we find for the first time the opinion so widely prevalent in after- ages, that the duration of earthly things LECTURE III. 89 was limited by the decree of the Ahnighty to a period of six thousand years ; that period being shadowed out, as it was sup- posed, by the six days of the creation ; an analogy for which support was derived from a single, and that an ill understood pas- sage of the Psalmist ; In his sight a thou- sand years are hut as a day ^. From a bet- ter and more sober school the writer ap- pears to have derived most of his Christian applications of the prophetical writings, and of those portions of the Law which relate to the vicarious nature of all sacri- fice. Here he errs (if error it be) only in pressing occasionally the parallel to some of the minuter circumstances of ritual ob- servance ; points, most assuredly, with re- spect to which, when urged by an unin- spired writer, however ingenious his posi- tions, or however pious his intentions, the Christian must be left to the free exercise of his own judgment and discretion. The other writings, attributed in earlier times to the first and purest age of the apostoli- h Psalm Ixxxix. 4. 90 LECTURE III. cal church, have, by more learned and cri- tical inquirers, been regarded (and that in most cases very justly) with so much of suspicion, that we cannot safely appeal to them, either as to the matter under our immediate consideration, or indeed as to any point of faith or practice. One how- ever among these presents so remarkable a mixture as well of the methods employed by the philosophical adversaries of the ris- ing church to invalidate its authority and refute its doctrines, as of the arguments used by some at least of its members in their defence, that it should not be passed entirely without notice. I allude to the Clementine homilies, extant both in the original Greek and, with much variation, in the Latin paraphrase of Rufinus ; known usually by the name of the Recognitions of St. Clement '. That the author, whosoever he might be, was rather skilled in philoso- ' It is certainly doubtful whether the Latin of Rufi- nus may not present a more genuine form of the ori- ginal than the Greek as it now stands : but in the pre- sent state of our knowledge, it appears safer to look for alterations and additions in that which we know to be a translation. LECTURE III. 91 phy and philology than in the pure and universal principles of the Christian faith ; and that he was either tainted with, or had derived from his philosophical studies, notions somewhat analogous to the heresy of the Ebionites, seems little doubtful. Nor is it improbable that the work, as we now possess it, may be a compilation from more than one original source, partially at least disfigured by interpolations. Still it is on many accounts highly interesting ""j and it bears especially upon our present inquiry, as containing the earliest distinct recognition made by any one professing the Christian faith, of the principle al- ready mentioned as having authorized, in the opinion of Philo, the widest laxity of allegorical interpretation ; that the Scrip- ^ So Mosheim, de Causis Supp. Libb. Ssec. 1. et 2. p. 259. " Liber quamvis ex eorum numero sit qui nullo " jure magnorum virorum nomina prae se ferunt, vel " ideo tamen baud segniter evolvi debet ab bomine an- " tiquitatum Christianarum studioso, quod doctrinam, " disputandi rationem, et arguinenta veterum illorum " haereticorum clarius aliis exponit." See also Diss, de turbata per recentiores Platonicos Ecclesia, pp. 176 et seq. where a full and accurate account of this singular work is given. 92 LECTURE III. tures, namely, of the Old Testament, con- tained many things, which, unless so un- derstood and expounded, were contrary to the nature and derogatory from the ho- nour of the Supreme Being ' ; a position far too deeply and extensively influential in that school which still continued to seek in human philosophy an authoritative in- terpreter, and a guide, supplementary per- haps but hardly subordinate to the re- vealed word. The power of discerning, or affixing rather, such mystical speculations on the literal text, is of course highly ex- alted ; ahii? Trig (^cJLo-iheictg, he affirms, yvuxri? Tuv a,7roppriTMv ™. His own practice is ac- cordingly fanciful, even to licence. The Spirit of God, which at the first creation moved upon the face of the waters, he con- nects by a mystical analogy with the spi- ritual washing of Christian baptism. In the six days of creation he sees, like Philo, 1 See Horn. XVIII. sect. 19. Ap. Clerici Patt. App. vol. i. p. 749. Also Horn. II. s. 88. p. 637. and elsewhere. The author of the Recognitions states the same princi- ple yet more broadly, but does not so decidedly seek a remedy in the mystical sense. ^ P. 743. LECTURE III. 93 a type of its divine perfection. In the re- lative priority of Cain to Abel, of Israel to Isaac, of Esau to Jacob, of the coming of antichrist to that of our glorified Saviour ; and even in the character of the birds suc- cessively dismissed from the ark, he finds (agreeably to that which he terms the kavmv crv^vytctf) illustrations of the preordained connection of moral evil v^^ith its appro- priate remedy ". In general, he appears to reject much of the literal history of the Old Testament °, and affixes a long but not very intelligible allegory to that of our first parents, and their immediate progeny p. The more recondite, at least, of these mys- tical expositions he speaks of as matters of esoteric communication rather than popu- " Horn. II. s. 16. p. 631. His theory of the neces- sary precedence of evil in all cases is at least question- able. His application of that theory pro re nata is to the last degree absurd. St. Peter is made to affirm on these grounds, that Simon Magus having Jirst preached to the people of Caesarea, must be an impostor; and himself as being the second must preach the truth. I cannot but regard Rosenmuller as too favourable in his opinion of this writer. See R. Hist. Interpretationis. « Horn. II. s. 52. p. 640. P Hom. III. sectt. 20. et seq. p. 645. 94 LECTURE III. lar teaching ; but he openly gives his testi- mony to that which was doubtless the faith of the universal church ; " that our Lord " was made known to the faithful under " the old covenant, and that he is wise " who sees in the revelations "^ of Moses and " of Christ one God and one doctrine '." But I pass to one who, though perhaps he still retained on some points a false bias, derived from his philosophical educa- tion, has yet at all times occupied a much higher place in the estimation of the Chris- tian world ; Justin, usually surnamed the Martyr. The chief works remaining to us from the pen of this eminent believer are, as it is well known, two Christian Apolo- gies, and a Dialogue (not altogether free from suspicion) with Trypho the Jew. In q Horn. XVIII. s. 13. p. 747. ^ Honi. VIII. s. 7. p. 682. In the Recognitions it is true (as Rosenniuller has observed) that there are more traces of the Hteral, and some reprobation of the allego- rical interpretation of Scripture : but the author, or per- haps the translator, does not differ so materially in spirit from the Clementina as RosenmuUer has represented him to do. Compare especially p. 631. s. 15. et seq. with Recoff. lib. 3. n. 55. 59- 61. , LECTURE III. 95 the former and longer of these Apologies, he follows the example of his predecessors in the faith, in applying largely and li- berally to our Redeemer's person and king- dom the oracles of the Law and the Pro- phets. Here it cannot be denied, that he occasionally substitutes for the plainer and more literal meaning of the prophetic text an adaptation to higher objects, of which it is doubtless incapable. Thus, in the prophecy of Jacob concerning Judah, he applies not to the latter patriarch, but to the Shiloh, whose advent should cause his sceptre to depart from him, the verse which stands in our Bibles as the 11th; Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine, — he ivashed his ga?'me?its in ivine, aiid his clothes in the blood of grapes \ The former clause he ad- duces as prophetical of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem : the latter, of the cleansing his people (the typical vestments of the in- dwelling word) by the effusion of his blood. He conceives our Lord to be spoken of s Genesis xlix. 11. 96 LECTURE III. under the figure of the Just, in the first as well as the second Psalm ; but appears else- where disposed to regard the words of Da- vid rather as primarily and directly pro- phetic of the Messiah, than as bearing or capable of a double application \ He urges, from a false translation or rather interpola- tion of the 10th verse of the 96th Psalm, that our Lord should reign from the cross, Kvptof ejicKriXivcrev clwq tov ^vKov. It would be easy perhaps to select further instances of fanciful and careless interpretation from the Apology, and others yet more numer- ous and remarkable from the Dialogue with Trypho " ; but these are of a truth neither in number nor weight to be com- pared with the expositions in which he still commands the assent of the pious and soberminded believer. It is assuredly the great merit of Justin, (not to insist upon the lessons of Christian holiness and self- t Sect. 53. " Especially from the latter sections of that Dialogue : but it should be recollected that some have entertained suspicions as to its genuineness, or at least its freedom from those later interpolations which seem to have ex- tended to so many patristical remains. LECTURE III. 97 devotion which adorn his writings,) that he no where indulges in that boldness of denying and explaining away the literal and intelligible sense of holy writ which characterized the Alexandrian school ''. But it is, as I have said, impossible alto- gether to exonerate Justin from the charge of a laxity of interpretation undemanded by and unserviceable to the cause of truth ; nor is it pretended to justify such exposi- tions, upon whatever theory they be adopted or applied. With the same wholesome sus- picion therefore we are bound to regard many of those fanciful interpretations of Scripture which the venerable Irenaeus has preserved, in his great work against here- sies, as delivered to him by certain elders, probably of the Asiatic churches > ; who stood by one generation at least nearer to the apostolic age than himself; and on these also the Christian is doubtless at X Compare Trypho, sect. 21. on the meats forbidden by the Law, with the Comments of Aristobulus and Barnabas. y See Grabe, Notes, p. 263. H 98 LECTURE III. full liberty to use his own judgments Though we may own the full beauty of the illustration, yet we could not press it in argument, that the extension of our Lord's arms upon the cross of his passion was typical of his embracing under the new covenant both Jew and Gentile ; ^vca Kci^ovg ^mtTTTct^iJLivovg sg TrepctroL rrjf yv\g. Though we should readily bow to the general law, that it is not ours to condemn where God hath not condemned, w^e cannot argue from that law that such faulty actions of the pa- triarchs and prophets as are not, like the sin of David, actually rebuked by him in his revealed word, must be understood in a typical sense alone '\ Though we may firmly believe that all the operations and dispensations of God with regard to the universe, in which he has placed the rea- sonable creatures of his hand, are con- nected by links, " to us invisible or dimly z For the excerption of these we are indebted to the pious and learned labours of one who is yet amongst us. Routh, in Rel. Sac. vol. i. a See Routh, Rel. Sac. vol. i. p. 50. LECTURE III. 99 " seen," in one great and harmonious sys- tem of wisdom and benevolence ; we may yet refuse to consider (as more than one of these early believers are said to have done) that the whole record of the creation is but a typical adumbration of the history of our Lord and his church "". We may re- ceive most unhesitatingly the testimony of St. John, that by the Word all things were made ; and yet may not derive any addi- tional proof to that testimony from the simple and unequivocal statement of Mo- ses, that in the beginning (sv a^px^") Grod created the heaven and the earth. We may fully rest our faith and hopes on the all atoning power of our Redeemer's blood ; we may recognise in the lamb of the pas- chal sacrifice, in the institution, indeed, and vicarious nature of all sacrifice, a clear, intelligible, and consistent type of the cha- racter and necessity of the great work of propitiation ; but may hesitate to affirm that that precious bloodshedding was pre- b Routh, Rel. Sac. vol. i. p. 15. ^ ev «p%^, i. c. Iv Ao'yo). Routh, Rel. Sac. vol. i. p. 91- H 2 100 LECTURE III. figured by the scarlet cord of Rahab '^ ; or the exact manner of our Lord's passion, by the extended Umbs of the victim ^ But although in these and the like expositions of holy writ we condemn the want of judgment and sobriety, though we regret the handle which has thus been given to the attacks of the infidel and the scoffer ; we should not forget that the passages thus perverted are in scarcely a single in- stance applied to the illustration of any doctrines but those which were held by the universal church, and which are capa- ble of most 'ample and demonstrative proof from other sources. It is, too, the grossest want of candour and truth, to affirm or in- sinuate that the early fathers always argue in this lax and inconsiderate manner ; and it may safely be added, that the most fan- ciful of their interpretations are, in com- parison with the gross and absurd fictions extorted by the Valentinians and other contemporary heretics, not only from the '^ This notion is to be found in Clemens, Justin against Trypho, and elsewhere. See Irenaeus, p. 337. ed. Grabii. '' Justin c. Tryphon. sect. 40. LECTURE III. 101 Old Testament, but from the teaching even of our Lord himself, the very words of truth and sober7iess ^. To Irenaeus himself, (and in some de- gree perhaps to others among his contem- poraries,) that w^hich has already been said of Justin w^ill, with some fevs^ exceptions, be found pretty closely applicable. The same copious use of the typical and pro- phetical parts of the Old Testament, with the same occasional extension of such a sense to portions of Scripture in which the instructed Christian of the present day will scarcely recognise it ^, distinguish especially the great w^ork in which that illustrious confessor exposed, with no small share of acuteness and erudition, the schemes of f See Iren. pp. 34. 78. 156. 157. and elsewhere. So Tertullian of Theotimus; " Multa circa imagines legis " operatus est.*" Adv. Valentin, cap. 4. That the spirit of their allegorical interpretation was very different from that which prevailed in the church, is evident from their rejecting the Epistles of St. Paul as savouring too much of "the literal and historical sense. See Semler, Hist. Eccl. p. 42. s Vid. lib. iii. cc. 27. 29. 31. SS. lib. iv. cc. 38. 49. 50. lib. V. c. 4. &c. H 3 102 LECTURE III. the early heresiarchs ; schemes, which, if they were meant to be literally accepted, were both absurd and blasphemous; if they were considered as the veil of mere meta- physical abstractions and speculations ^ were utterly useless as a religious creed, and repugnant both to the doctrines of the Gospel, and to the method in which those doctrines were propounded by its divine Author and his immediate followers. It appears to have contributed also to the disadvantage under which the fathers of this age occasionally exhibit themselves to the modern and more critical inquirer, that they were accustomed (besides adding somewhat of their own to the common stock) to adopt, without suspicion or ex- amination, such mystical or allegorical com- ments as had already been promulgated by, or received the sanction of their pious and orthodox predecessors. This, too, ren- ders it the more difficult, in proportion as h This appears to be the opinion of Semler; (De Gnosticis, Hist. Eccl. vol. i. p. 40, &rc.) but witli all his undoubted erudition, his view of this subject is both un- candid and uncritical. LECTURE III. 103 we recede from the age of the apostles, to affirm with any certainty, whether or no the exposition which has our assent or dissent did in reality originate with the author in whose works we find it. In a long and copious work of detail more espe- cially, such as is that of Irenaeus, it is by no means improbable that many things may have thus been taken upon trust from others. Such may possibly be the source of that remarkable passage in which, press- ing too closely (a fault already adverted to) the analogy between Israel and the church, he draws, in reference to the spoiling the Egyptians, a conclusion not very dissimilar in its spirit to the dangerous position of after-times, that dominion is founded on grace ; " Nobis secundum quid debi tores " sunt ethnici, a quibus et lucra et utili- " tates percipimus ; quaecunque illi cum la- " bor^e comparant, his nos in fide cum si- " mus, sine labore utimur." He insists in- deed that the wealth obtained from the heathen is to be employed in the service of the true religion ; and there is some- what of obscurity in the whole of his state- H 4 104. LECTURE III. ment and reasoning ; but still as he urges the Christian's right '■'■ per aliena Deo de- " servire" on the grounds of the universal agreement of the type and antitype, and strengthens it by the assertion that we are taught by prophecy to expect no less ; " eas- " dem plagas universaliter accipere gentes " quas tunc particulatim accipiebat M- " gyptus :" I cannot but admit (though with much reluctance) that even in this early age an imprudent and unwarrantable application of a scriptural type had led to one moral error of judgment at least, if not of practice '. But this, although a very remarkable ' If I be proved to have misunderstood the language and argument of Irenaeus in this singular passage, no one will be more gratified by the correction than myself. That the same doctrines were broached in later days we are well aware. Is it not possible that the whole para- graph, wliich is extant only in the Latin, may have been interpolated by the translato}*, or by some yet more re- cent liand ? It should be added, that the most objec- tionable form of this tenet (the power of coercing here- tics by the sword) was not thought of until long after the age of Irenaeus, not indeed until the Arians em- ployed it against the orthodox. See Mosheim's disser- tation on persecution in his Diss, ad Disciplinas Sancti- ores pert. LECTURE III. 105 and not uninstructive instance of the faulty excess to which this mode of interpretation is peculiarly liable, should by no means be regarded as exemplifying the general tone and character which pervades the spiritual expositions of Irengeus. On the contrary, these are almost uniformly (in strict agree- ment with a canon explicitly and prudently laid down by himself) nothing more than adaptations of scriptural history and lan- guage to those fundamental truths which had been plainly revealed, and generally acceded to by the whole body of the church. Such (affirms the venerable pas- tor) is the Tyirj? vovg kcli ccmvovvog kol) svXctf^yig Hcti (pthctXrffi]? 5 and its objects are those things only, Ocra, ipcivs^oos kcc) Avct/^LcpifiQAug ctv- ToAe^s) £]/ ToTtg 'ypA(f)cug XsAsktoli ^ ; and it is evi- dent, that the due observance of this rule of truth, if it did not always secure the ex- positor from the danger of misinterpreting and misapplying the Scriptures, would at least fully exonerate him from the charge ^ See lib. ii. cap. 46. which, with the one preceding it, is well worth the perusal of the student. 106 LECTURE III. of mischievously perverting and dishonour- ing them'. But, to the povs^er of thus il- lustrating the great articles of our faith, the Ota sv TrctpctfioAcuf eipyjrcci, Trpoo'STrep'yccl^sirQa.i, ycoLi oiKStovv rv\ tyj^ Triimoo? vTroUa-ei'", he assigns a rank, subordinate indeed (as he piously and wisely urges with the apostle) to the great Christian grace of charity", but still among the highest gifts of an enlightened intel- lect ". In the abstract position we may not perhaps altogether dissent from his autho- rity, however in some cases we be disposed to withhold so high a praise from those mystical interpretations to which it may have given rise. Above all, it should be remembered that neither these, nor any other peculiarities which may be observed in this learned and valuable controversialist, have the remotest tendency to impeach or to obscure the great and universal founda- ^ Thus as he truly vu'ges elsewhere, (lib. i. cap. 3.) 0'6ts 6 7r«vu SuvaTOj ev tm Aoyaa krepu toutwv egsT, ovts 6 a.a$zVYj{ ev xcio Aoyu) sXoiTTcvj ts-ao-cl uoi TTCog (di cclviyf^ctTd) 9e(r7ri^€Tcci ypccipyi ^. He ' They will be found in Rosenmuller''s Historia Inter- pretationis S. S. (under the article Clemens Alex.) and inserted (from that source) in the 4th vol. of Bauer's edition of Glass. ; a work however not to be recom- mended without a caution as to its infidel tendency. Walchius (a writer of far different character) has dedi- cated a long and learned dissertation to the subject of Clemens. It is avcII worth the studcnt''s perusal. See also the learned and accurate note in INIosheim. Dc Re- bus Christ, ante Constant. M. ** p. 299- ^ Stromal, lib. v. p. 6()4. ed. l*otter. LECTURE IV. 125 elsewhere states his belief, that the mean- ing of the Mosaic law was fourfold ; literal, moral, mystical, and prophetical'. In ap- plying the commencement of the book of Genesis to the Platonic theory of an ideal or archetypal universe ; and in allegorizing the description of paradise and the history of our first parents, he is the imitator, almost indeed the very transcriber, of Philo. In the tree of life however he sees a type of that cross which was made instrumental in bringing life and immortality to light ; an addition which may illustrate what has been noticed as to his occasional engraft- ment of Christian matter on the fancies of his Jewish predecessor"". Nor was this a work requiring any great share of inven- tion or research, since it consisted in little else than applying to the incarnate Word of God that which Philo had already ap- plied to the Aoyo? of his own theosophy. ^ Stromat. lib. i. cap. 28. He defends his system by the immediate authority of Plato : 'A/x,u>]toj ol Trpa^sig xa» ysvsTSJj xai ttolv to uopuTOv ovk a7ro8=p^ojtx.5VOJ, oog sv oiXTiaig y.spei. Plat. Theaetet. See also Strom, p. 675. "^ Pp. 86. 690. 126 LECTURE IV. The history of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah, he applies to the progress of the enlight- ened mind from the region of mere human acquirements to that of higher and diviner knowledge, in the spirit altogether, if not in the very language of Philo, forgetting or disregarding the previous and authorita- tive exposition of that history left us by the apostle ". In his allusions to the tem- ple, and ceremonial law of Moses, he con- stantly recurs to the same authority, modi- fying his original in the same manner. Thus in various parts of the temple, even in its bells and lesser ornaments, he sees the person, in the year of jubilee, the ac- ceptable time of the Redeemer. Nor does Clemens even hesitate to affix more than one allegorical sense to the same passage ; even where that passage, literally accepted, should seem to be matter of the simplest and most intelligible character. Thus in the three days journey of Abraham, pre- vious to the offering of Isaac, he discerns the progressive advancement of the human " Stromal, p. 335. Mosheim (De R. C. p. 301.) ap- pears to have overlooked the source of this exposition. LECTURE IV. 127 mind towards the comprehension of the ideal universe, (figured under the place afar off;) the cto-uf^dTm laem ka-M^aLjog xooqcl of his master. The same event he con- ceives also to aiFord an adumbration of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity ; and the third of those days to prefigure that on which our Lord rose from the dead. Whatsoever were the nature of those ca- nons of allegory to which the writers of this school are wont to appeal, it is suffi- ciently evident that they enjoined nothing of a prohibitory or limitative character be- yond the general law already alluded to, that the expositions should not contain or insinuate any tenets contrary to the gene- ral analogy of the Christian faith. Even this law, we have seen that the Platonizing Christian, either from his love of philoso- phical speculation, or from a real miscon- ception of the sense and purport of Scrip- ture ", was not unfrequently led to violate. *' It may here be noticed, and might indeed have been urged before, in extenuation of the peculiarities of Philo and his imitators, that one great key-stone of their sys- tem, the accommodation of Scripture to the theory of an 128 LECTURE IV. In his occasional applications of the Psalms and Prophets, Clemens is not less fanciful ; and he extends, literally and un- doubtingly, the same principles of inter- pretation even to the plain narratives of the Gospel. Thus the five loaves mira- culously blessed by our Lord to the suste- nance of so great a multitude, are inter- preted to be the five senses of man ; and the feet of the Redeemer himself, bedewed (as he expresses it) by the ointment of re- pentance, to typify either the doctrines of truth, or the apostles who preached those doctrines •" ; though in this latter exposi- tion he admits himself to be open to the charge of excess''. Even the simple and pathetic lamentation of our Redeemer over ideal universe, had, partly at least, its origin in tiie Sep- tuagint translation of the first chapter of Genesis : " the " earth was without form/' (Sept. A0PATO2.) P This exposition of the word " feet" is repeated by him elsewhere. We shall soon have occasion to notice, that the mystical acceptation of certain words and phrases, regulated perhaps by custom or tradition, seems to liave formed a part of the xavovsg ctXXrjyogla:. *4 El jw.^ tpopTixhi eivui Soxw. FlaiSayajy. lib. 2. The whole section is however replete with allegories scarcely less defensible. LECTURE IV. 129 the fate of those to whom he came as un- to his own, mid who received him not ; in which, gracious, and pregnant wdth in- struction and warning as it is, one could scarcely have supposed that any one would seek for a meaning beyond that which is literal and obvious, is perverted by the same cold, I had almost said, the same heartless affectation of philosophical refine- ment. Jerusalem is made to typify the in- quirers after divine truth, and the oft re- peated invitations of the Saviour are the means of philosophical and moral disci- pline (the 7rfo7rctM^ci.rcJL) by which the mind progressively arrives at that truth. It may be added, that the works of Clemens exhi- bit much of obscurity, and somewhat of real or apparent inconsistency. Attached there- fore as he evidently was to the allegorical method, it is not easy to pronounce exactly what degree of authority or argumentative value he might attribute to that method. He had however, we are told, received it from his master Pantaenus, who is stated, even in his professed commentaries on va- rious parts of Scripture, to have applied it K 130 LECTURE IV. in its fullest extent'. These commenta- ries, which would doubtless have served to throw considerable light upon the earlier history of mystical interpretation, have long since been lost ; a fate which, to the no small detriment of sacred literature, they have shared in common with many documents of the first and second centu- ries ; from which, were they extant or re- stored to us, the scholar might derive much of historical and of doctrinal information. The time and attention which have been dedicated to the earlier expositors of the Alexandrian school will very well admit of our passing, more rapidly than might pos- sibly have been anticipated, over the la- bours of one, whose name is more generally and intimately associated with the history of allegorical interpretation than that of any among his predecessors ; of any ancient commentator perhaps upon the Scriptures, whose works remain to us. Nor in this place could it be needful indeed, or desir- able, to enter at length into any details as ' V. Moshelm, ut supra, p. 30(). LECTURE IV. 131 to the character and opinions of the illus- trious Origen. Every scholar, who has in any measure applied himself to the study of biblical criticism or ecclesiastical history, must be sufficiently conversant with the memory and tenets of one, who, through good report and evil report, has in all ages attracted that attention to which his learn- ing, genius, and piety (however at times mistaken) gave him an undoubted title. It will be remembered, too, that our pre- sent concern is not with those critical and controversial labours by which he conferred so unquestionable a benefit upon the Chris- tian church, but solely with his philoso- phical and spiritual applications of the li- teral text of Scripture ; and with regard to these, however by the weight of his au- thority and talents he may have contri- buted to their popularity in after-ages, he is assuredly neither entitled to the praise (if praise it be) of originality, nor justly subject to the imputation of having first obtruded them upon the church as legiti- mate vehicles of doctrinal and moral in- struction. His philosophical creed, his K 2 132 LECTURE IV. theory of interpretation, the arguments by which it is justified, and the manner in which it is applied, are precisely those which his predecessors in the Alexandrian school had adopted from Philo. His labours indeed were more extensive, and, from hav- ing been collected under the form of some- what like a perpetual commentary upon many parts of holy writ, became the more readily (if I may so express myself) a store- house and a text-book for those who suc- ceeded him. Hence, even with those who were far from uninstructed or unpractised in the criticism of the sacred writings, he has been occasionally alluded to as the first advo- cate, if not the actual inventor of the alle- gorical system \ A very brief reference to the voluminous productions of this extra- ordinary man will be sufficient to illustrate and justify the remarks which have already been offered. In the collection made from * Even the learned Sixtinus Amama appears to have fallen, partially at least, into this error: " Praecipua ** mali labels ab Origene fuit.'"' Antibarharus Bibl. lib. i. Er. Gen. vii. Dupin was perhaps among the earliest who formed a more accurate judgment. (Method of stu- dying Divinity; Engl. Trnnsl. p. 140.) LECTURE IV. 13S his works under the title of Philocalia, a considerable section is dedicated to the ob- ject of shewing, that the allegorical is the only method by which the Scriptures can be explained in a manner worthy of their divine Author, or even intelligible to the hearer \ Here he extends that method to the Levitical prohibitions concerning food in the Old, and to the temptation of our Lord in the New Testament. In his an- swer to Celsus, who, like Porphyry ", had, with but too much reason, objected to Christians the invalidity of arguments drawn from mystical interpretation, he states that interpretation to be fully de- fensible % and refers for its defence to his commentary upon Genesis ; probably to the very portions of it which are preserved in the Philocalia. He considers therefore, and presses it as actually having the force ' Philocalia, Cap. Hsf>] tou hlv tov ©sou a^iov vovv Iv toi- auTOJf (aSuvaxoij) ^rjTslv. " Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. lib. vi. cap. 19- ^ Contra Cels. (ed. Spenc.) p. 14. Compare Horn. XIII. in Genesin. Thus in arguing against Celsus (p. 192.) he adopts the mystical exposition attached by Philo to the auvoSot ^sgonraivcav, K 3 134 LECTURE IV. of argumentative proof; an error which, however partially atoned for by the co- gency and value of his reasonings from other grounds, is yet assuredly to be re- gretted, as laying him justly open to the reprehension of his acute and subtle ad- versary. Elsewhere he defends this prac- tice by the authority of St. Paul ^ and seems occasionally (not altogether perhaps without reason) to oppose the superior use- fulness of the spiritual, to the barely literal and carnal sense in which some passages were received by the more ignorant and superstitious of his contemporaries^. He loses, indeed, no opportunity of urging and magnifying its value. In his exposition of the earlier sections of the Pentateuch, Origen treads so closely in the footsteps of Clemens and of Philo, that any abstract of that exposition must of ne- cessity present little better than a recapi- tulation of what has been already adduced. I confine myself therefore to a few remark- able examples of his opinions, and his man- y Origen. Huetii, vol. ii. p. 13(j. ^ Yleg) vlwv Zs/3sSa/ou, p. 411. LECTURE IV. 135 ner of affixing them to the sacred text. In the history of the tower of Babel, and the dispersion of its builders, he contends that there is involved a spiritual meaning of such dignity that he fears to reveal if. Elsewhere he affirms that the Scripture contains some mysteries so far beyond hu- man comprehension, as to be incapable of explanation ; and instances the thunders of the Apocalypse and the unspeakable things heard by St. Paul *". It is evident that one who could thus trifle with his readers must at times have permitted to his fancy an entire dominion over his bet- ter judgment. Nor can we wonder that such a writer is frequently inconsistent with himself; or that the endeavours of learned men to reduce his method of alle- gory to any thing like determinate and in- telligible principles, or to defend and ex- tenuate his practice, have been attended with but little success \ And what indeed a Contra Celsum, p. 250. / b Horn, vol.ii. p. 201. / c See the critique of Rosenmuller on the attempts of Mosheim. (Hist. Interpret, article Origen.) The de- K 4 136 LECTURE IV. could be affirmed with safety as to the opinions of him, who at one time admits that it is needless to seek for allegories where the letter tends to edification **, and at another, affirms that there is not an iota, either in the Law or the Prophets, which has not a mystic sense ^ : who ob- jects to the heterodox, that by their alle- gorical interpretation they referred the mi- racles of our Lord to the cure of spiritual diseases only ^ ; and was yet himself virtu- ally guilty of the very same error, in apply- ing to those miracles an explanation, which, by his ow^n confession, w^as uncalled for, wheresoever Christian instruction might be derived from the letter ? In the historical portions of the Old Testament, we might certainly expect an interpreter like Origen fence of Huct, however elegant and ingenious, is yet un- satisfactory. '^ Horn, in Num. xi. e Horn, in Exod. i. Rosenmuller has attempted his defence, but is constrained to admit him " sibi non satis " constitisse/"' Rosenmuller's aim, like that of Semler and others, appears to have been the depreciating the la- bours and impeaching the judgment of Mo.sheim. f Hom. in Joan. viii. vol. ii. p. 308. LECTURE IV. 137 to find (even on the milder and more mi- tigated scheme, which professed only to raise all things to its own philosophical standard of dignity) frequent opportunities for the exercise of his ingenuity ; and this he accordingly does with more or less of plausibility. That the wrestling of Jacob, for instance, was spiritual, we can easily conceive him to have been himself per- suaded. That the well of that patriarch typified the Scriptures, and its waters our Redeemer^, is assuredly more difficult of belief. The assertion that Naaman erred through ignorance, not knowing the bap- tismal waters of Jordan to possess a spiri- tual efficacy \ though by no fair means de- ducible from the literal text, is at least destitute neither of piety or beauty. That Joshua, inasmuch as he led the chosen people into the land of promise, was a type of the great Captain of our salvation, might appear to those who do not altogether re- ject the typical application of the Old Tes- tament, far from improbable. But that all s Vol. ii. p. 201. h Vol. ii. p. If37. 138 LECTURE IV. the warfare of Joshua presented a conti- nued picture of the spiritual victories of his great antitype, few would grant. Still less should we hold it to follow, (as Origen affirms it to do,) that, because the sacrifices and ceremonial of the Jewish temple are confessedly typical, the whole history of the Jewish people must be typical also ' : and that were it otherwise, the first preach- ers of the Gospel of peace would not have permitted it to be read in the churches ''. Upon this principle however we do not wonder to find him teaching, that the down- fall of the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpet clearly prefigures the ruin and prostration of the strong holds of sin and Satan before the preaching of the word ; or seeing in the destruction of the heathen princes of Libnah, of Lachish, and of Ai, the death unto sin, and translation to light and life, of souls beset, and held in darkness ' Homil. X. in Josh. This and the following sections of his commentary on Joshua arc well calculated to illustrate the allegorical method of Origen, and the grounds on which he defends it. ^ Josh. Hom. XV. LECTURE IV. 139 and captivity by the various evil disposi- tions and habits of our fallen nature '. In these and the like interpretations, as where, for instance, he sees in Jael the type of the church, and in Sisera that of the carnal man, Origen possibly imagined him- self to find some arguments in defence of his favourite notions of the remedial na- ture of all punishment, and the final res- toration of the whole spiritual universe to the state which had been interrupted and impaired by the entrance of sin '". That the same excessive tone of mysti- cism should pervade his commentaries upon those parts of the Old Testament which are confessedly prophetical of things to come, might readily be anticipated and overlooked " : but the manner in which he ' Josh. Horn. XIII. "^ See Yleg) 'Ap^aiv, lib. ii. c. 11. where he affirms, that there are " imagines''' in Scripture which favour this opi- nion. Compare Horn, in Exod. x. 27. " See his exposition of the driving the money-changers from the temple, especially p. 173. vol. 2. ed. Huet. In general, however, Origen does not appear to question the history. His expositions of our Lord's entrance into Je- rusalem, and of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, will 140 LECTURE IV. applies his theory to the exposition of the New is altogether indefensible. It is in- deed calculated to excite both wonder and regret, that one so distinguished for learn- ing, genius, and, it may fairly be added, for piety, should have attached so little of va- lue to the plain, literal, and practical expo- sition of the text ; should have spoken at times as though doubtful, not only of the worth, but even the truth of the simplest narratives, unless viewed through the me- dium of allegory *'. Not only in the para- bles and the actions or institutions express- ly recorded as having a symbolical and spi- ritual meaning, but in every miracle, every speech, (I had almost said,) and every move- ment of our blessed Lord, in every men- tion of time, place, or outward circum- stance, he finds a mystical designation of somewhat more closely and highly con- nected with the progress of the Gospel, afford a sufficient example of his general manner ; they are fully illustrative of what is stated above. " It is not unworthy of notice, that his commentary on the book of Job is unusually free from attempts at allegory. He probably regarded that extraordinary work as already sufficiently philosophical and spiritual. LECTURE IV. 141 and the reception of Christ into the hearts of his faithful people. Both the limits of this discourse, and the reluctance to throw any thing approach- ing to ridicule upon labours which, how- ever unsound in their critical foundation, are, for the most part, if considered ab- stractedly from that foundation, of a high- ly Christian and edifying character, will sufficiently plead my excuse for not enter- ing into the details of those expositions, which subjected their author to the suspi- cion of wishing to reduce our Lord to the merely allegorical type of a higher and more exclusively spiritual Saviour, the un- seen and eternal Word of God p. The ac- cusation, though in the main groundless, derived but too much countenance from the vague and inconsiderate manner in which this eminent father frequently ex- pressed himself P See the Apology of Pamphilus, usually subjoined to the works of Origen. Indeed, if fairly examined, Ori- gen does not appear to deny the historical portions even of the Old Testament. 142 LECTURE IV. I cannot however quit this part of our subject without repeating what has already been urged in his exculpation, what does in fact constitute his personal exculpation, both on this, and on matters perhaps of yet higher importance ; that he did not, namely, either invent or first introduce into that branch of the Christian church to which he was attached, any of those opinions which he is so generally known to have entertained. That the opinions themselves, and the manner in which the plain text of Scripture was often perverted to their support, are indefensible, is allowed on all hands ; but he who fairly estimates all the circumstances of the case will find, in the prejudices of education, and the force of early habit and example, no incon- siderable or unavailing excuse for their il- lustrious advocate ; will rise even from the perusal of his writings with much of admi- ration and respect, not unmingled perhaps with somewhat of regret, and, above all, with a salutary conviction of the insufii- ciency of human talents, and the better LECTURE IV. 143 wisdom of submitting the intellect, as well as the heart and the affections, to the sim- plicity of revealed truth. Thus, before the termination of the third century, such a body of spiritual and alle- gorical interpretations had been accumu- lated, as to leave to subsequent expositors the power and opportunity of little more than actual repetition, or direct and ob- vious imitation. The principle was gene- rally recognised as applicable to the Scrip- tures of the New as well as the Old Testa- ment ; and the chief alteration perhaps ob- servable, as we advance, appears to be this, that the philosophical expositions are gra- dually either omitted, or so modified, as to harmonize more readily with the establish- ed faith of the church. As the ttol^cl^oo-u^ too became more copious, and more techni- cally defined, the subjects, believed to lie concealed under the mysterious veil of the letter, naturally became somewhat more numerous ''. 1 Some remarkable instances of this, at a more mo- dern period, will be found in the arguments of S. Ja- vorski, opposed by Mosheim in his treatise " De poenis " Haereticorum."'"' (Diss, ad Sanct. Uiscipl. p. 435, &c.) Ja- 144 LECTURE IV. A very few examples will shew the prac- tice to have prevailed in various ages with but little variation of character. In the fourth century, Eusebius, whose Evangeli- cal Demonstration contains many exposi- tions of this nature^ scruples not either to adduce them as legitimate proofs, or to seek for them even in the miracles of our Lord. Thus he regards the miracle of Cana as symbolical of the reception of those who dwell in Zebulun and Naphthali equally with the inhabitant and worshipper of Je- rusalem : and in our Lord's walking upon the sea, he finds the type of his universal dominion over a world yet polluted by the presence of the evil spirit '. It appears to vorski professed, and doubtless with trutli, to speak the sentiments of the later Greek theologians. ^ It should be stated both of this and the various other patristical works which arc alluded to in this Lec- ture, that they generally contain, intermixed with this more questionable matter, many expositions of the typi- cal and prophetical parts of Scripture more especially, to which the believer of the present day would find little reason for objecting. '^ The sea is the universe ; the great dragon, (perhaps the leviathan of rabbinical tradition,) which inhabits its deeps, is Satan. LECTURE IV. 145 have been usual with nearly all the com- mentators and preachers of these later ages, to consider the miraculous cures performed by our Lord as typical of the higher and spiritual benefits conferred by, or to be hoped for from his grace and Spirit. The well known Epiphanius sees in the resur- rection of Lazarus the awakening of the soul from the sleep of sin, and the voice of the Saviour calling men from dead works to serve the living God \ Cyril of Alexan- dria teaches, that the ship which held the apostles is a symbol of the church of the faithful borne safely over the tempestuous ocean of the world ". It were an easy, but neither a pleasing nor a profitable task, to multiply instances of a character far more extravagant and objectionable than those which have been adduced'. And it will rea- t Tom. iii. p. 372. ed. 1632. " Comment, in Evang. S. Johan. c. 11. ^ See Cosmas (ap. Whitby, Stricturae Patr.) in Mat- thaei, c. 3. The commentary on the four evangelists, falsely ascribed to Theophilus of Antioch, abounds with expositions of the most fanciful kind. Its author regards the first five days of creation as typical of the Penta- teuch ; the sixth day, of the remainder of the Old Tes- tament ; the sabbath, of the Gospel. L 146 LECTURE IV. dily be understood, that they who felt themselves at liberty thus to deal with the plain and intelligible contents of the New Testament, would scarcely be less fanciful and uncritical in their expositions of the Old : still the majority of those expositions were objectionable on these grounds alone. The Qsupict'' (for this term had now been substituted for the yvcoa-is of an earlier age) was made subservient, if not to the com- munication of doctrinal and historical know- ledge, at least to the purposes of edification unto holiness. Nor does it appear just (how- ever we may dissent from them) to accuse the great masters of this art, of incapacity, and impatience of all intellectual labour ^ Howsoever the pride of modern learning may dogmatize on this point, it yet remains to be proved, that these mystical applica- tions of the Scripture (however erroneous) did not require a mind of as high an order, * V. Catenam Patr. in Job. p. 160. Not. Didymi, sub fine. y It is almost the uniform practice of the German school to attribute all such expositions to the " socordia *' et pigritia hominum ecclesiasticorum." LECTURE IV. 147 and as powerful an exertion of that mind, as the minuter details of verbal criticism. He, for instance, who will even cursorily inspect the works of the pious and spiritual Macarius ^,, or even the homilies of the Alex- andrian Cyril, especially if he will separate their spiritual deductions from the texts on which they are for the most part (I fully grant) unwarrantably grounded, may as- suredly find matter for the exercise of the mind, and, under God's grace, for the im- provement of the heart. The general reception and popularity of this mode of interpretation appears to have produced, and perhaps in turn to have been augmented, by a very remarkable and voluminous forgery; originating most probably with the Alexandrian school early in the fourth century "* ; the fabrication and dispersion of several treatises bearing the well known name of Dionysius Areopa- ^ Especially his homilies. Macarius flourished to- wards the end of the fourth century. He is highly praised by Mosheim, and was among the chief favourites of Poiret and Arndt. (V. Macarii Opuscula, ed. J. G. Pritius. Lipsiee. Praefat. sub fine.) The homilies of Cy- ril, which I have inspected, are those on Jeremiah. * See Buddcus, Isagoge Hist. Theolog. vol. i. p. 602, L 2 148 LECTURE IV. gita. Those which remain to us, the trea- tises "On Mystical Theology," and on the " Celestial Hierarchy," abound in, and seem expressly written for the purpose of recom- mending the scheme of allegorical inter- pretation adopted by the Christian Plato- nists ; like many other productions of that school, they exhibit occasionally (the for- mer more especially) much of incoherence and obscurity. Such an authority however did their supposed origin obtain for them, that they were largely paraphrased and ex- plained in the 7th century by Maximus, and in the 1 3th by Georgius Pachymeres ^\ A third work, now no longer extant, under the title of 'T7roTV7roo LECTURE VII. the age of Grotius, it should appear, that we must look for any undue and injurious objections to the spiritual interpretation of God's word. The example however of the early re- formers, and the daily progress of litera- ture and criticism, while they contributed in this, as in every other point of religious learning, to the improvement of the several protestant communions, were not without their influence even on the theologians of the Romish church. By the more learned of these, the fourfold division of the sense, so long adopted in all her systems and ex- positions, a division wanting even in logi- cal accuracy, was no more insisted upon % and no objection was made to any other paedobaptist communities of the present day entertain on this and many other points opinions totally different. c See Sixtinus Amama, Antibarbarus Bibl. p. 153. Thus the mystical system of S. Paguinus was qualified by the Bibliotheca Sancta of Sixtus Senensis, lib. 3. The latter work is well calculated to give a full and compre- hensive view of the state of biblical literature among the Romanists of that age. (Venice, 1566, et postea saepius.) The still more recent critics of that communion are known in many instances (as in that of Simon) to have adopted a yet laxcr and less spiritual standard. LECTURE VII. 255 technical distribution (provided the exist- ence of the secondary and spiritual mean- ing were not impeached) which might be deemed better calculated to facilitate the labours of the interpreter. The most exceptionable use of the alle- gorical system was undoubtedly to be found among those persons, who from time to time addicted themselves to the study and culti- vation of spiritual mysticism. Into the de- tail of their system, and history, (an history full of interest both for the divine and the philosopher,) neither our time nor our im- mediate object would permit us to enter. It is sufficient to notice, that, like their great masters of the Alexandrian school, they scrupled not to misapply (and that frequently with the visionary authority of teachers actually and personally inspired) the whole letter of Scripture to the support and illustration of their own obscure and untenable theories ^. f The student will find an able section on the " scrip- " tores mystici" in the Isagoge of Buddeus, already so often referred to. The more curious reader may inspect any of the mystic works of Paracelsus of J. Behmen, or Van Helmont, or the more intelligible treatise of P. Poi- 256 LECTURE VII. But it should not be omitted, that the earlier part of the seventeenth century pro- duced, in the person of Glassius, a divine of the Lutheran communion, one of the ablest and most pious systematic writers, in every department of biblical criticism, who had as yet appeared in the Christian church. In the Philologia Sacra of this eminent author, a work which even at the present day cannot fail to convey much and solid information, and to edify by its piety, while it instructs by its erudition, the subject of allegorical, typical, and parabo- lical exposition is treated at much greater length, and with much greater precision, than it had been by any of those who pre- ceded in the same career. Glassius dis- tinctly separates the two former, and ob- ret, Epistola de Auctoribus Mysticis. (De Eruditione, V. 2. Tract. 3. Apud Wetstein, 1707.) An admirable exposilion and confutation of the philosophical doctrines held by the inipurer mystics will be found in the letter of Gassendi against R. Fludd. (Paris, 1630.) The latest work of this character which I have inspected is the "Te- " moignage d'un Enfant de la Verite."''' (Berleburg, 1738.) The well known baron Swedenborg, so far as his theory is intelligible, seems entirely to agree with this school. His only claim to novelty is perhaps the notion of his own commission to institute an external church. LECTURE VII. 257 jects to those definitions which would con- found them, a confusion (if such it be) not easily avoided. This he endeavours to ob- viate, by describing allegory as " the repre- " sentation of some mystic or spiritual mat- " ter, (rei,) by some other related or men- " tioned in Scripture." Yet in many such cases the latter might without any injury to language be denominated the type of the former ; as the term allegorical might be with equal justice applied to much that we usually consider and describe rather as typical. It is among the highest merits of Glassius, that both in the allegory and type he is careful to make a broad distinction between that which has the direct autho- rity of Scripture, (innatus,) and that which is suggested or inferred (Hiatus) merely by the pious sentiments of the expositor. His illustrations of the whole subject are co- pious, and in general highly pertinent ; his cautions especially are strongly marked by good sense and judgment ^. S The theory of Glassius was adopted, with some mo- difications, by Waterland, whose exposition of it may be found (forming the Preface to his Scripture Vindicated) s 258 LECTURE VII. But we now approach to a period at which the difference of opinion upon more important points of doctrine, if it did not actually produce, had at least a powerful effect in fostering and perpetuating a dif- ference to the full as broadly marked in the interpretation of Scripture. With the history of the well known Arminian con- troversy, (a controversy which, originating within the walls of a single college, had, in the course of a few years, from the deep and permanent interest of the questions which it involved, attracted the notice and divided the opinions of nearly the whole protestant world,) we are not at present concerned. In respect to the immediate subject of our inquiry, it does not appear that Arminius himself had dissented in any measure from the more prudent ex- positors of his age and country. Admit- ting fully the existence of the typical and allegorical sense, he qualifies the admission by such cautions only as had the general concurrence of all sober and reasonable di- in the 6th volume of the edition of his works for which we are indebted to Bishop Van Mildert. LECTURE VII. 259 vines '*. Episcopius, the well known and able advocate of the Arminian tenets, though inclining more strongly to the li- teral and practical exposition, neither re- jects the authority nor denies the value of that which is mystical and typical '. That to the spiritual application, properly so called, of Scripture, he was no enemy, may be seen at once by the perusal of his ad- mirable Oration on the Construction and Constitution of our Lord's kingdom ''. But the author whose opinions or rather practice upon this point attracted a degree of notice and animadversion far beyond that which had been excited even by that of Calvin, was one who in this instance alone seems to have chosen the path of the sreat reformer. I allude to the illustrious and accomplished champion of the remon- strant cause, Hugo Grotius. In his Com- mentaries upon the Scriptures, especially upon those of the Old Testament, this emi- h De Sensu et Interpret. S. S. 0pp. p. 174. ed. 1635. ' Institt. Theol. lib. iii. cap. 13. Lectt. in Apocal. 0pp. vol. ii. p. 550. ^ 0pp. vol. ii. p. 536. S 2 260 LECTURE VII. nent scholar betrayed an attachment, per- haps somewhat excessive, to the more learned and temperate of the Jewish ex- positors ; and, after their example, restricted to the immediate history of the chosen people many passages that had hitherto been more generally considered as pro- phetic of the Messiah and his kingdom. Hence he has been accused, with more ^> petulance certainly than justice, of seeing Christ nowhere in the records of the older covenant. From this charge he has been ably defended by our own Hammond, and the inspection of his works will abundantly exculpate him. Many prophecies he ap- plies directly to our Lord, nor does he deny the existence of a secondary and spi- ritual intention to much which he con- siders in its primary sense as historically or literally significant. Thus in treating on the immediate purport of the 15th Psalm "', he adds explicitly, " Latet sensus " mysticus et sublimis ut in plerisque " Psalmis." From his treatise too, written "^ Verse x. LECTURE VII. 261 in opposition to the Socinian heresy, on the satisfaction made by our Redeemer, it is evident that he was fully convinced of the reality of the great apparatus of typical and spiritual prefiguration, by which it pleased the Almighty to shadow out the future blessings of the Messiah's work and government. And in his Commentary on the New Testament he does not scruple to regard the miraculous cures performed by our Lord as symbolical of his higher and more glorious offices in the restitution of our spiritual health and life ". That in some instances he followed his Jewish guides too implicitly, and to the exclusion perhaps of interpretations of a more rea- sonable character and more valuable ten- dency, it has been already conceded ; that his taste for classical literature betrayed him frequently into illustrations drawn " Ann. on Matth. viii. 17. " Sicut veterum res gestae " rerum Christi figuram habuerunt, ita et ipsius Christi " actiones alia3 aliis denotandis inservierunt. Nam be- " neficium corporibus redditae sanitatis quam figuram re- " missionis peccatorum et sanctarum mentium tulerit, du- " bitari non potest.'''' (Apud Rambach de Sensus My- stici Criteriis, p. 22.) 8 3 262 LECTURE VII. from this favourite source, which (not to insist upon their being occasionally calcu- lated to mislead the student) were at least inapplicable and unprofitable, it is not de- nied ° ; that his theological system (though with this we are not immediately con- cerned) had very considerable, perhaps ir- remediable defects, the observant and well- grounded Christian will not be disposed to question P. But his memory has perhaps <* See on this subject Mosheim, Diss, de Interpr. S. S. an essay written with his usual learning and good sense. P For refusing to consider the whole Roman priest- hood as the ministers of Antichrist, he has been accused of popery. Though he wTote expressly against Socinus on the subject of atonement, he has been called a Soci- nian. Calvin went yet further, and stigmatized the author of the treatise De Vcritatc (on what grounds I know not) as an atheist. See Weisman, Hist. Eccles. vol. ii. p. 950. I would take this opportunity of observ- ing, that they who have seen cause to regret tliat the His- tory of Mosheim presents rather an external than inter- nal view of the church of Christ, and who perceive that the pious Milner did not altogether possess the extent of information or the freedom from party spirit requisite for his undertaking, will find in the History of Weisman (2 vols. 4to. Halse, 1745.) both the piety of the latter, and the historical fullness and accuracy of the former. On the subject of Grotius, see also Ernesti, Oi)usc. Theol. p. 477. LECTURE VII. 263 on every point been, in many quarters, subjected to unjust and unchristian asper- sions. However opinions may be divided on the character of his Annotations, (Anno- tations which, it should be remembered, do not, especially in the case of the Old Testament, profess to exhibit a paraphrase, or even a perpetual commentary upon the text,) it is neither true nor charitable to af- firm, that they bear no reference to Him who was the completion of the Law and the Prophets. We may at least admit in his defence that which an able and tole- rant author of the fifth century urged on behalf of Theodorus ; " Consequens non " est ut evacuet omnes in Christum factas " prophetias, qui aliqua mystice in eum di- " eta moraliter quoque recte tractaverit V But it was not long before the system of biblical interpretation adopted by Grotius met, in the person of Cocceius, with an op- '-^ ponent, whose erudition, industry, piety, and powers of language and imagination, were equalled only by the intrepidity with q Facundus Hermianensis in Def. 3 Capit. 1. iii. c. 4. S 4 264 LECTURE VII. which he hazarded and maintained a sys- tem of mystical and spiritual exposition and application, almost equally vague and licentious, if not equally mischievous, with that of Origen and his wildest followers. The fundamental principles of this system have been described as contained in the single assertion, That the Scripture signifies whatsoever it can signify^ (quicquid potest significare.) This assertion however some of his followers are said to have disclaimed : in fact (as Limborch has seen) the position itself is highly ambiguous, and might, ac- cording to the sense attached by each to the words potest and significance, be assented to by persons of opinions diametrically op- posite on the point in question '. But whatever may have been the exact logical form in which Cocceius would have de- fined his own views ', it is evident from his ' Limborch, Theol. Christ. Hb. i. cap. ix. sect. 10. who, in his own sense, (assuredly not that of Cocceius,) pro- fesses his full assent to the formula. s " Impossibilc est"" (arc the words of Cocceius him- self) " aliquid fieri in mundo de quo verba Spiritus " Sancti usurpari possunt, ut id non intuitus sit Spiritus " S. loqucns in prophetis, et non volucrit legentem ea LECTURE VII. • 265 practice, that he did not scruple to regard whatsoever spiritual sense the pious and orthodox Christian could attach to any por- tion or expression, (of the Old Testament at least,) as the real intention of the Spirit, by whose agency those Scriptures were given as preparatory to, and illustrative of, the yet higher gift of a Saviour. That his own exemplifications of this theory are frequently as puerile as its principle is un- tenable ; that, like most other sanguine ad- vocates of the mystic sense, he uses it occa- sionally to the support of his own peculiar opinions, and yet more frequently to the uncertain and visionary application of the " verba ei rei accommodare."''' (Cocceius ap. Wetstein, Libelli in Crisin N. T. ed. Semler, p. 144.) This is lit- tle more than the transcript of a canon already quoted from Augustin. The reader will perceive that the iden- tity of dWme ^rekfiowlcdge and predestination is here pressed, to an extent scarcely usual even in the school to which Cocceius belonged. For my knowledge of the system and practice of Coc- ceius, I am indebted to the inspection of his Commen- taries on the lesser Prophets, of the Explicatio vocum typico-propheticarum of N. Gurtler, (a dictionary of the Cocceian expositions,) and to the perusal of some works by his imitators the elder Vitringa, Lampc, and Cremer and Ewald. 266 LECTURE VII. prophetic details to persons and events in which few others liave been content to re- cognise their fulfilment, even they who were not indisposed to some indulgence of spiri- tual accommodation have long since been constrained to admit : but the student who looks to find in his Commentaries nothing more than a mere wild and fanatical per- version of the sacred text, will be greatly, and, if he peruse them with candid and Christian feelings, not unpleasingly disap- pointed. In the power of explaining Scrip- ture by Scripture, and in his constant at- tention to the spiritual edification of his readers, he exhibits much that must com- mand our attention and respect ; nor can it be objected to him, (as we have seen it objected to the spiritual expositors of an earlier age,) that he was driven to this re- source by any ignorance of the original language and history, or any impatience of mental labour. Frequently he shews him- self an adversary not unworthy even of Gro- tius ; and though it is to be regretted that his language in speaking of that great man is tinged with an unwarrantable acrimony LECTURE VII. 267 and want of charity, his opinions on more than one question of prophetical and ty- pical interpretation will probably meet with the preference of those, who do not wish to subject its practice to the most rigorous and perhaps useless restrictions. Had the case been otherwise, it were difficult indeed to account for the ready and long continued partiality which the Cocceian system experienced at the hands of so many, whose learning and talents pro- moted, during the end of the 17th and the greater part of the 18th century, the credit of their national church and the edifica- tion of the Christian world. It is certainly among the leading, though not perhaps al- together the most valuable characteristics of Vitringa, of Lampe, and of Venema*, * The reader may inspect the Preface of Vitringa to his Isaiah, the Typus Doctrinse Propheticse, the Disserta- tions on the Cherubim and Wheels of Ezekiel, on the Tree of Knowledge, on the Sephiroth, &c. in the Obss. Sacrae ; the posthumous dissertation entitled, Theologia Symbolica, and the 12th chapter especially of the Me- thodus Homiletica of the same writer ; the Comment, in Psalmos Graduum, and the Dissertation De Scala Jacobi of Lampe, and the Prolegomena to the Methodus Pro- phetica of Venema. Ample specimens of tlie Cocceian 268 LECTURE VII. that they adhere closely on this point to the spirit of Cocceius. I speak not this in depreciation or discommendation of those learned and pious teachers : the instructed Christian, while he may easily separate and exercise his own right of judgment on that which he feels objectionable on the score of doctrinal severity or critical inaccuracy, can yet seldom rise from the perusal of their works without a rich accession of biblical knowledge and Christian improve- ment. It was not to be expected that the Re- monstrants, either from the general charac- ter of their theological views, or from the feelings with which they were but too na- turally inclined to regard their Calvinistic adversaries, should do otherwise than op- method may also be found in the Antiquitates Theol. Typica? of Cremer, and the Symbohcal Dissertations of Ewaldus. Venema\s work was written so late as 1775. An exposition of the defects of this school, not so unjust in its affirmations as discreditable from the spirit and tone in which it is written, will be found in the Entretiens sur les differentes Methodes des Cocceiens et Voetiens, (Amsterdam, 1707.) Sec Waterland's opinion of Vi- Iringa, Works, vol. vi. pp. 18, 19. LECTURE VII. 269 pose that theory of interpretation which had been in the first instance opposed to themselves. This appears to have been done, however, with very different degrees of judgment and moderation (and perhaps with very different intentions) by different members of their party. Some are accused, not unjustly, of defending the exclusive use of the literal sense, in the design of recom- mending opinions but little short of Soci- nianism ". Others, though not averse to the temperate use of the spiritual exposition, or to many of the great fundamental truths which it is eminently calculated to illus- trate and enforce, protested only against the extravagant excess of the Cocceian school, and the palpable want of candour and charity which subjected all those who did not concur in that excess to the charge of being themselves averse and dead to spi- ritual feeling. Of this latter class the stu- " " Hodie modus quandoque nullus est in asserendo " Socinismo dirccte in probatis dogmatibus et scripturis " S. Vet. et Nov. Testamenti, obtentu scnsiis literalis, in *■' Anti-Trinitarioruni ac Rationalistarum sensuni in- " flexis." Spanheim, Elenchus Controv. cum Armin. p. 243. ed. 1694. 270 LECTURE VII. dent may form an accurate estimate, from the inspection of that portion of the " The- " ologia Christiana" of the well-known P. a Limborch "" which is dedicated expressly to our present subject^'. It cannot, he af- firms, (illud certum,) be denied, that, espe- cially in the prophetical and typical parts of the Old Testament, there does exist a secondary and spiritual sense, developing it- self more clearly to the intellect of the be- liever, in proportion as the things spoken bear a less immediate relation to the type itself than to its completion. He admits that the same paragraph contains, occasion- ally, matter partly referring to the type, partly to the antitype''; and in cases where ^ " Absit" (adds the author just quoted, with a feel- ing highly creditable to himself) " ut his implicemus, si " qui in causa de S. Trinitate, de vera Deitate Christi, " Filiatione vera, vero in terris sacerdotio, vero Xurgco ab " eo persoluto, et morte nostri loco suscepta {satisfactio- " nis adeo re, si non nomine) Socinismi notam ingenue " deprecantur; quos inter apparuit nuper Phil, a Lim- " borch, vir clarissimus." (Spanheim, eodem loco.) y Theolog. Christ, lib. i. c. 9. De Interpretatione. z " Admiscentur prophetiis nonnunquam aliqua ad ty- " pum solum spectantia. Ita 2 Samuel, vii. 12 — 14. de " Christo; 14,15. de solo Salomone. Proceditur etiam LECTURE VII. 271 prophecies, which might otherwise be over- looked, or understood as bearing reference to the temporal fortunes and restoration only of Israel '', are applied by the inspired writers of the New Testament to the mis- sion of our Lord and the preaching of his Gospel, he appears fully content so to un- derstand and receive them without any re- ference to that theory of accommodation, which, if not altogether untenable, is liable at all events to constant and dangerous perversion ''. He censures only the violence done to the sacred text, by extorting from it at every step prophetical and spiritual " a typo ad antitypum solum, ita ut vel istius temporis " fideles magis aliquod perspicerent."" ^ " Qua,' in typo plene comperta.'" b On this subject, already touched upon in the com- mencement of these Lectures, the student may safely be referred to the arguments and authorities adduced in the excellent work of Rambach, Hermeneutica Sacra, pp. 155 et seq. In his general view, however, of the mystical sense, Rambach assuredly exceeds the bounds of sober criticism ; and his censures on Grotius and Limborch are rather applicable to the laxer school of Le Clerc. This work, however, and his dissertation De Sensu Mystico, are well worth the perusal. Mr. Home, in his very use- ful and comprehensive Introduction, has made much use of Rambach. 272 LECTURE VII. meanings which were unauthorized by its obvious scope and tendency, and could in no case possess any doctrinal or argumenta- tive value, even for those who admitted the very principles out of which they arose. That views, which to a sober-minded Chris- tian w ould not appear to contain any thing derogatory to the inspiration or prophetical character of Scripture, should have drawn (as he openly complains) upon himself, and those who thought with him, the charge of actual impiety, seems the more unreason- able, as he might with justice have retorted, that his concessions on this point were much more liberal, and his language as to the writers of the New Testament much more guarded, than those of the great reformer, whose general system of theological opi- nions was so warmly espoused and defended by his accusers. It is not however to be questioned, that many among the Remon- strants were far from imitating the pious and Christian reverence with which Lim- borch, after the example of his predecessors Arminius and Grotius, was disposed to re- gard and treat the inspired word. Some of LECTURE VII. 273 them inclined, on various points, much more decidedly to the Socinian scheme ; and these found, so far at least as our present subject is concerned, a popular and indefatigable champion in the well-known Le Clerc. This ingenious but often injudicious writer, disposed to question almost every opinion which had received the sanction of his pre- decessors, and constantly mistaking bold- ness and novelty of assertion for liberality and freedom from prejudice, not only re- jected those spiritual expositions of the Old Testament which were not immediately confirmed by the authority of the New, but carried his notions of accommodation to such an excess, as nearly to invalidate the prophetic character of the former, and indirectly at least to depreciate the divine authority of the latter, and of him who was its minister ^ c See Rambach, Inst. Herm. p. 156. (note.) " Cleri- " cus" (says Eichstadt, in his preface to the Hermeneu- tica of Morus) " imprimis facem in Hermeneuticis prae- " tulit." The reader acquainted with the principles of the modern German school will be at no loss to under- stand the drift and value of this commendation. 274 LECTURE VII. The example of Le Clerc, aided perhaps but too much by the palpable excesses of the Cocceian school, gradually found many imitators in nearly all the churches of continental Europe. In the mystical in- terpretation of Scripture, no other Calvin- istic communion had perhaps at any time so far departed from the severity of their great master, as that whose schools were chiefly led and influenced by the followers of Cocceius ^. With respect to those which had always been disposed to follow Calvin himself on this point, it was scarcely to be ex- pected that their sentiments or practice as to scriptural interpretation would undergo any change from that silent but fatal approxi- mation to a system little short of philoso- phical scepticism, which has from various causes been produced even in the very cra- dles and schools of the protestant reforma- tion. The divines of the Lutheran school, who appear to have retained a more uni- ^ The younger Turretin, Wyttenbach, Zimmennan, and Werenfels, all afford examples of the more restricted and cautious (perhaps occasionally too cautious) admis- sion of the secondary and spiritual sense. LECTURE VII. 275 form attachment to the use of the alle- gorical method, (guarded as it had been by Melancthon and others against any serious or considerable perversion,) were more back- ward to surrender the spiritual and typical character of the Old Testament, especially to those whom they saw eager to obtrude their innovations into every department of theology. Some among these appear to have inclined to the opinion, (an opinion at least highly probable,) that there is, strictly speaking, no mystical or allegorical sense in Scripture, but such as is contained in or subordinate to the typicaP; but in their con- cessions, as to the extent of the typical it- self, to have differed but little from the ge- neral principles of Glassius. The celebrated Ernesti, without impeaching the divine and prophetical character, or opposing in any e M. CEder, Obs. Sac. 1729. p. 749. et Diss. 8. I have not seen his treatise " De Sensu Mystico." Carpzov, Bengel, Buddeus, and Rambach (see the Institt. Theol. of the former, in the section on the Interpretation of Scripture, and the Hermeneutica Sacra of the latter) ap- pear disposed to indulge to themselves and others a very considerable latitude in the expository use of the mystic sense, however obtained. T 2 276 LECTURE VII. great and fundamental points of doctrine the Christian interpretation of Scripture, adopt- ed more rigorous principles of literal and historical criticism '. With Ernesti may be classed the historian Mosheim, and perhaps the well-known Michaelis. Had the career of critical refinement upon this and upon other points terminated here, we might perhaps have claimed for ourselves some- what more of Christian liberty in the spi- ritual exposition and application of Scrip- ture, but could not have found any serious cause for reprehension or complaint. But that more lax and more sceptical sys- tem, both of scriptural interpretation and of doctrinal theology in general, which the example of Le Clerc and his followers had recommended directly to his own, and in- f The student, probably acquainted long since with the Instit. Interp. N. T. of this writer, may find a yet further illustration of his sentiments in the dissertation already alluded to, De Interpretat. Prophet. Messian. The Elementa Theol. Didact. and yet rather the dis- sertation De Interpretat. et Emend. S. Litt. (Diss, ad Sanct. Discipl. pp. 204, &c.) will give the ophiions of Mo- sheim. Those of Michaelis may be found in his Ele- ments of Theology. LECTURE VII. 277 directly to some other Christian communi- ties, was now introduced into, and we might almost say imposed upon, the theological schools of the Lutheran church, by the la- bours and authority of the learned and in- defatigable Semler. Possessed of an erudi- tion on almost every subject of biblical criticism and ecclesiastical history, beyond that which was usually acquired even by the proverbially industrious scholars of his own country ; with considerable acuteness, rather than comprehensiveness or depth of intellect ; with an attachment to that which he esteemed the more philosophical and liberal view of the Christian dispensation, which rendered him sufficiently illiberal in his own critiques and sarcasms on those from whom he differed ; with a disposition in all cases rather to question and overturn the decisions of others, than to establish any clear and tangible principles of his own, Semler aspired at remodelling every branch of theological study, and becoming the founder and oracle of a new and more philosophic school. With all the ostenta- tious pretence however of a reformer and T 3 278 LECTURE VII. a discoverer, he was in truth but little enti- tled to the praise of originality, either in the conception or execution of his numerous and somewhat desultory performances. All, or nearly all, the essential elements of his sys- tem, or rather of the objections which he made to the system usually acquiesced in by his countrymen, are drawn from the Arian and Socinian writers of other na- tions ; sometimes, it should seem, from sources yet more objectionable^. In depre- ciating the inspiration and prophetic cha- racter of the Old Testament, and pronounc- ing all the references made to it by our blessed Lord and disciples to have been the mere result of a compliance with the false and rabbinical theories of their unen- lightened countrymen ^ in rejecting all spi- g See his edition of the " Philosophia Scripturae In- *' terpres f ' a work at one time attributed to, and scarcely unworthy of, the notorious Spinosa. h It were easy to quote many passages to this inten- tion from various works. Our immediate object however will be answered by the inspection of his Apparat. ad lib. V. ct N. T. Interpret, vol. i. p. 229. 359. and vol. ii. p. 191- He has the unfairness to assert, that Calvin and Grotius, as well as Le Clerc, held opinions similar to his LECTURE VII. 279 ritual exposition and application whatso- ever of the Law and the Prophets, Semler persuaded numerous divines, who were anx- ious for the reputation of philosophical reasoners, to follow, and very speedily in- deed to outstrip his footsteps. The process by which these reasoners have changed the whole face of scriptural interpretation is simple and expeditious, although it may to the enlightened Christian appear no more satisfactory in its proofs and princi- ples, than it is beneficial in its results. Be- cause the allegorical and spiritual methods have been frequently exaggerated and mis- used, they are, it was argued, to be dis- carded altogether. The doctrine of accom- 7nodation once employed for this purpose, and fully admitted as legitimate, was easily extended to all that had hitherto been considered as typical. All the prophecies of secondary intention were thus ques- own. Even the third of these would have hesitated, and the second would undoubtedly have refused to accom- pany him in the full range of his critical scepticism. From the first he would most probably have experienced much harsher usage. T 4 280 LECTURE VII. tioned and invalidated; there remained then only those few which were still ad- mitted to be historically and obviously re- ferable to Christ alone. But as long as one even of these remained undisputed, so long the proper inspiration of the prophetic books must be conceded ; and the authority of him in whom that one was fulfilled, and who applied and taught his disciples to apply not only that one, but many others, to himself and his kingdom, might justly be urged against the assailant. No re- source therefore was left, but to deny at once and in toto the prophetical character of the Old Testament ; and to attribute boldly that which had hitherto been con- sidered as such, to the mere ordinary opera- tion of natural and moral causes. But our time will not permit us (nor indeed is the task such as to present any temptation to a Christian mind) to trace in its longer de- tails the almost general and utter derelic- tion of Christian faith and doctrine, which has ensued in this and in every other school where the same pretended ration- ality has superseded, I will not say only LECTURE VII. 281 the ancient and universal teaching of the church, but the plain and obvious declara- tions and pretensions of those through whose agency the word and will of God was revealed to man. For our present pur- pose it has been sufficiently noticed in a former Lecture ; nor should I have ven- tured to press the subject even thus much upon your attention, were it not for the conviction, that they who are anxious to pursue on any extensive scale the studies often requisite for, and always creditable to, the ministerial profession, are, on minor points especially of biblical criticism and ecclesiastical history, led almost of neces- sity to seek for information in many works deeply and uniformly tinged with the spi- rit of a theory, which would reduce the eternal records of God's grace and wisdom to a level with the Shaster of the bramin, or the Cyropaedia of the philosopher *. ' There have not, however, been wanting some (though comparatively few) who have faithfully withstood the in- novations in question. Professor Knapp, of Halle, (a name already honourably known to our own church,) and Storr, of Tubingen, may be noticed. Those of Seiler, Jacobi, and 282 LECTURE VII. With the various shades and fluctuations of opinion which on this, as on many sub- jects of theological speculation, have ob- tained in our own country, most students are in all probability too intimately ac- quainted to derive much of information from such an outline as it is permitted us to draw within the limits of the present discourse. And here too we are partly im- peded from the want of those materials with which the history of other European churches so abundantly supplies us. The English divines who established and de- fended the faith of the Reformation during the reigns of Elizabeth and her successors, able and distinguished as many of them were both for depth and originality of thought, and extent of learning, were con- tent to remain indebted either to the ve- nerable remains of the earlier fathers, or to the labours of foreign scholars, for works expressly and systematically written on the criticism and interpretation of the Scrip- Munter are mentioned by others, but with their writings I am not acquainted. It were unjustifiable to omit the church of the Unitas Fratrum. LECTURE VII. 283 tures '. This is not however to be regarded as arising from any want of knowledge or industry on their parts : their attention was daily called to matters of yet more primary and immediate consequences. Many of them produced commentaries and exposi- tions on various parts of Scripture, distin- guished as well for their erudition, as for their practical and spiritual utility : and no less an authority than Bacon himself has pronounced, of those who adorned his own and the preceding generation, that " if the ' It may be observed, that Bishop Wilkins, in his List of Works on the Interpretation of Scripture, (Ecclesiastes, p. 51. ed. 1679.) on Scriptural Allegories and Figures, (p. 56.) does not give the name of a single English au- thor. In Vertue's Parallels, (London, 1658,) a work well calculated to give a general notion of the manner and principle of those who allowed themselves the fullest lati- tude of typical apphcation, the following authors (Eng- lish) only are referred to. Ainsworth, (the well-known Hebraist and commentator on the Pentateuch,) Bright- man, (on the Canticles,) Broughton, (the great rabbinical scholar,) Cartwright, (the eminent and learned puritan,) Gouge and Sibbs, (also puritans,) Mason and Pemble, (church of England,) Weemse, (church of Scotland.) " I •' do not at present recollect" (Waterland writes, at a yet later day,) " whether any of our English writers have *' professedly handled this subject." Preface to Scrip- ture Vindicated, p. 1. 284 LECTURE VII. " choice and best observations which have " been made dispersedly in our English " sermons (leaving out the largeness of ex- " hortations and applications thereupon) " had been set down in a continuance, it " would be the best work in divinity that " hath been written since the apostles' " times ^" In this deficiency of more immediate and direct evidence as to the received theory of spiritual application, it may be fairly ar- gued, from the general tone and tenor ob- servable in their practical and controversial writings, that the higher luminaries of our rising church, while they fully admitted those typical applications of Scripture which were in that age questioned only by the open advocates of Arius and Socinus, were fully aware of, and studious to avoid, the dangerous and enthusiastic practice of seek- ing in every portion of God's word for some mystic and recondite intimation of a pro- phetic or spiritual nature, which might with equal facility be elicited from any other preceptive or narrative work of any ^ Bp. Wilkins, Ecclesiastes, p. 82. LECTURE VII. 285 age, country, or language whatsoever. The expositions of Jewel and of Hooker, for in- stance, are as remarkable for their general tone of right reason and sobriety, as they are for their tendency and power to in- struct and build up the Christian in the faith and knowledge of his Lord and Re- deemer \ Some, indeed, from a strong pre- dilection to the studies of rabbinical litera- ture, and to the method as well as the au- thority of the fathers, were not indisposed to admit many fanciful and unfounded ex- positions derived from these sources. But the most extravagant and objectionable use of the interpretation, in this case at least falsely termed spiritual, was undoubtedly to be found among those more enthusiastic advocates of puritanism, who applied not only to the progress of the inteimal church, but to the fortunes and privileges of their own eocternal communion, the promises, the ' It may be added, that a fair and ready criterion of the extent to which the Elizabethan divines admitted the allegorical and typical methods, may be obtained from an inspection of the titles and marginal references affixed to their editions of the Bible. 286 LECTURE VII. types, and the history of Scripture, until their abuse of its sacred text became, as it were, a by-word and a proverb, and lite- rally converted the schools of the prophets into the seminaries of dissension, violence, and bloodshed. That the various fanatical and mystical sects who sprung up during the eventful and stirring season of the great rebellion should (when they chanced to appeal to Scripture rather than to their own supposed inspiration) have usually so distorted and allegorized its obvious mean- ing, as to afford some colour and patronage to their own visionary notions, might rea- sonably be anticipated, and will be readily confirmed by the inspection of such of their works as have escaped the oblivion into which the greater part of them have long since fallen. Neither can we be asto- nished, that, after the restoration, the learned and illustrious race of divines who had witnessed these extravagancies, and who, with but few exceptions, had embraced the tenets and views of the Arminian school, should have regarded with some- what even of suspicion and jealousy, a mode LECTURE VII. 287 of interpretation liable to such ready and dangerous perversion. They who, like the eloquent and learned Taylor, permitted themselves occasionally the indulgence of such licence, were pro- bably betrayed into it rather by the fer- vency and fertility of their imagination, and their fondness for and imitation of the patristical homilies, than by any false prin- ciples of biblical criticism "\ The general character however of scriptural exposition was, and remained for many years, in our own church, I do not say the denial and rejection of all secondary and spiritual senses, but the over timid and and cautious "^ Taylor has left his systematic opinions as to this subject on record in his sermon on the ministerial duties. (Works, vol. vi. p. 513.) They are by no means so lax, as from some of his oratorical applications we might con- jecture. Speaking of the conjectural allegories of some, he observes, with as much strength as truth, " Of these " things there is no beginning and no end, no certain " principles, and no good conclusion.'^'' A very singular attempt to restore the patristical mode of allegory in its full extent was made in the Bibliotheca Biblica of Parker; (A. D. 1720-25.) which however does not appear to have met with any success. It is a work by no means of scarce occurrence, and may serve to give those who have not the opportunity of consulting the original authorities a general view of that method and its usual application. 288 LECTURE VII. abstinence from a means which, when op- portunely and judiciously used, may be ren- dered, under God's blessing, no ineffectual instrument for the enlivening the devotion and promoting the edification of the Chris- tian. It is not however meant to insinuate, for the insinuation would be palpably un- true, that any doubts were entertained or expressed as to the typical and prophetical intention of many parts of the older cove- nant, of those especially which come to us ratified by the authority as well as fulfilled by the history of the newer. Even the illustrious Locke" (I select purposely a com- mentator the most unlikely to have yielded to any opinion which he deemed fanciful or unreasonable) fully admits its reality, and the validity of the arguments dedu- cible from the use made of it by the apostle Paul. It does not indeed appear that this part of the divine economy was questioned among ourselves, until the rise of that which has been denominated the Hoadleian school. Most of the supporters of this active and ingenious, though unsound theologian, were " Commentary on Romans iii. 25. note ^. and v. 14. 15. (Paraphrase.) cap. vi. (Summary.) LECTURE VII. 289 disposed to concede to human reason sacri- fices which (when confined within her pro- per limits) she neither does nor can de- mand of revelation. Sykes especially, partly from his admiration of his continental mas- ters of the Arian and Socinian schools, partly from a wish perhaps to cut short or evade at any expense the subtleties and so- phisms of the infidel Collins, is w^ell known, both in his answer to that writer, and in his elaborate Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, to have surrendered the whole scheme of typical prefiguration and of secondary prophecy as destitute of all real proof and foundation ; and accommo- dated to the mission and circumstances of our Lord and his disciples, in condescension only to the reigning prejudices of the Jew- ish people. The opinions of this school did not, we would trust, ever obtain widely among ourselves ; and at this day no mi- nisters of our Zion would, I believe, be found to avow or to harbour them. It is not however the less certain, that there was a time when, both on this and on subjects of yet higher importance, the tenets of u 290 LECTURE VII. Hoadly and of Sykes had more than one advocate even in the bosom of a church, from which unquestionably such reasoners M^ould have done more faithfully and con- scientiously in withdrawing themselves. In the mean time, that class of dissent- ers from our church who retained the doc- trine and discipline of Calvinism, or of In- dependency, retained also (partly from the imitation of their earlier teachers, partly perhaps from that of the Cocceian school) an habit of unrestrained indulgence in spi- ritual and mystical exposition, which many of their more acute and learned successors of a more modern age would scarcely admit or extenuate, and which they not unfre- quently employed in such a manner as was by no means calculated to diminish, in the minds of more informed and sober inquir- ers after evangelical truth, the suspicion with which their predecessors had caused the allegorical method to be pretty gene- rally regarded °. o Instances of this excess abound in the "Parables'" and " Tropology" of Keach, in the " Sacred Tropology'" of Brown, and in the " Christ Revealed" of T. Taylor. LECTURE VII. 291 Some too among those pious and con- scientious men, who thought with the non- jurors of the rebellion, appear to have been by no means indisposed to those mystical expositions which had the sanction of the fathers. But the most singular instance presented by the last century of a return in our own church to the consideration (not perhaps altogether uncalled for) of the typical and spiritual import of many pro- minent portions of holy writ, is undoubt- edly to be found in the rise and progress of the opinions usually termed (after the name of their first promulgator) Hutchin- sonian. The pious and ingenious, though highly fanciful, supporters of these tenets, while, in affixing with the most liberal and, it must be confessed, uncritical profusion mystical and spiritual meanings to the ge- neral text, and even to most individual words and expressions of holy Scripture, they followed the example of their nume- rous predecessors in the same career, added to the theory of those predecessors one te- net perfectly, I am disposed to believe, no- vel, and peculiar to themselves. They who u 2 292 LECTURE VIL had in an earlier day mingled the stu- dies of philosophy with those of theology, had endeavoured to strain and pervert the sacred text to the mystic adumbra- tion of their ow^n peculiar theories ^ But the school of Hutchinson, with an inten- tion certainly more reverential, if not more reasonable, sought to find in the Mosaic records a true and divinely inspired system of physical as well as of spiritual truth, and to apply those records in that which they believed to be their real and original, though recondite sense, to the correction of all philosophical theories of mere human invention. They appear also to have held, that all natural objects whatsoever, those perhaps especially the names of which are metaphorically used in Scripture, have a preordained connexion with, and are thus designed as permanent and intelligible wit- nesses to, the existence of their several di- vine and spiritual antitypes. *> These had in this later age been imitated by Bur- net, and that which Waterland terms with sufficient apt- ness the mythic school. LECTURE VII. 293 Upon the obvious defects of this system it is unnecessary to dwell ; but it should in candour be added, (and the assertion may be made without the fear of contradiction,) that to the theological labours of this school our church is indebted for no trifling or inconsiderable benefits. Its advocates ear- nestly recommended and diligently prac- tised the study of the sacred language, the comparison of Scripture with Scrip- ture, the investigation of the typical cha- racter of the elder covenant, and the per- fect and universal spirituality of the new ; that they never lost sight of the soundness of Christian doctrine, or the necessity of grounding evangelical practice upon evan- gelical principles. It cannot be remem- bered indeed without gratitude, that their views of the Mosaic and Christian dispen- sations were the views of men of no com- mon intellects or attainments ; that to this source, under one yet higher, we owe the Christian spirit which attracts and delights and edifies in the pure and affectionate mi- nistrations of Home, which instructs and u 3 294 LECTURE VII. convinces in the energetic and invaluable labours of Horsley p. We have now arrived at a period, when the further condition of spiritual interpre- tation may be fairly regarded as matter of criticism rather than of history. Some al- lusions to the character which it has as- sumed, and the extent to which it has been practised, in yet more recent times, must of necessity be interwoven with the observa- tions on its proper grounds and limitations, which will form the subject of our conclud- ing Lecture. P My knowledge of the Hutcliinsonian tenets is de- rived chiefly from the works of Jones, and from some Latin treatises on the theory drawn up, if I am not mis- taken, by Catcott. LECTURE VIII. Proverbs iv. 27. Turn not unto the right hand nor to the left. J-N the attempt which has been made to trace from its first origin until the present day the history and various modifications of the allegorical and spiritual exposition of the sacred volume, our attention has hi- therto been directed to certain points which may, I trust, be assumed, in the present dis- course, as needing no further proof or con- firmation. First, it has been shewn, that such a sense is in many parts of Scripture coexistent with and subordinate to the let- ter ; and that this is not only established by the express authority of the inspired re- cords themselves, (and not lightly therefore to be questioned by any one who truly be- lieves in their real and immediate inspira- tion,) but is not in the abstract liable to u 4 2196 LECTURE VIII. any objections drawn from its improba- bility or unreasonableness, as a method of conveying to and impressing upon the hu- man mind the great truths which concern our peace and salvation. It has been fur- ther shewn, that with a very few, and those perhaps very questionable exceptions, such has been, until within the last age, the opi- nion of all those who have accepted and acquiesced in the doctrines of revelation. Nor can it have been unobserved, that, un- til within the same period, theologians even of the highest and most justly deserved re- putation have erred in this point rather on the side of excess than of deficiency ; that meanings of a spiritual nature have been systematically sought for even in portions of holy writ, where no reasonable and so- ber-minded believer could (we would think) from its simple and obvious tenor have an- ticipated their existence, and pursued and multiplied to an extent as unsafe as it was uncritical. At the same time it must have been remarked, that a considerable check to the delusion and injury which (as in the case of the impurer mysticism) might LECTURE VIII. 297 be expected to result from so lax and erro- neous a standard of interpretation, has been very generally found, in the admission, that nothing is to be regarded as spiritually con- cealed beneath the veil of the letter, which is not already, upon the authority of its express and unquestioned purport, accepted and agreed to as matter of Christian faith and doctrine ; and that even in this case the secondary sense cannot be considered as having in itself the force and validity of argumentative proof. It now remains for us to inquire, (so far as the limits of this discourse allow,) what may fairly be considered as the legitimate extent to which the Christian teacher is entitled to avail himself, either in his pub- lic ministrations, or in the professed and systematic exposition of holy writ, of the resources offered by this method. And here at the first outset I would pre- mise, on the one hand, that I now address myself to those only who fully acknowledge the inspiration, and are content to admit in their clear and obvious meaning the pretensions and reasonings of our blessed 298 LECTURE VIII. Lord and his immediate followers. On the other, I would bespeak the candid allow- ance, and (if I be in error) the pardon of those pious and spiritually minded Chris- tians, to whom I may appear, in any man- ner or measure, to derogate from the im- portance and dignity of Scripture, or to di- minish its applicability to the purposes of instruction and edification in the faith. In contemplating, however, the gradual de- velopment of and preparation for the great work of our redemption, in comparing the evidently temporal and imperfect nature of the first covenant, and the spiritual and moral blemishes permitted to remain under that covenant, with the pure and sanctify- ing influences of light and life vouchsafed under the new, and in the full admission and acceptance of the testimony which the latter gives to many prophetical and figu- rative intimations of the former, it is, I trust, by no means impossible to see, truly and beneficially to see, in both, him we ac- knowledge, equally with those who indulge in the widest range of allegory, to be the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. It LECTURE VIII. 299 is not, we hope, to be denied, that they who are thus minded, may be in their heart and spirit as firmly intent upon the things of his kingdom, as though they be- lieved that every phrase and expression of the Scriptures was ordained and chosen and framed with a mystical and enigmati- cal view to its description and prefigure- ment. It has been repeatedly urged in the course of these Lectures, (and I would not therefore at this moment detain you by entering more fully upon the question,) that it does not appear reasonable, I would even say, logically possible, for those who do acknowledge the real and immediate inspiration of Scripture, to evade the ac- knowledgment also of a secondary and spi- ritual sense actually existing in those por- tions of the Old Testament so quoted or alluded to in the New, that even though we admit some few passages (and this per- haps were best abstained from) to be thus accommodated or deflected (as Calvin has expressed it) to a purport foreign to their original intention, no Christian could, we 300 LECTURE VIII. should think, either justify himself or be- nefit others in the universal application of a theory so palpably derogatory, in its first and most immediate deductions, to the ho- nour of the Gospel and its divine Author. I would now only observe, that in more than one instance the supposed necessity for having recourse to this theory has arisen only from the apprehension, that matters quoted or referred to by the apostles, and even by our Lord himself, merely in illus- tration of their precepts or warnings, were adduced by them, and to be regarded there- fore by ourselves, as having a character originally symbolical or typical. To con- fine ourselves to a single case. Our blessed Lord, in warning his disciples that they hold themselves in faithful and constant preparation for the great day of his com- ing, illustrates the suddenness of that com- ing, and the destruction in which it shall involve the careless and impenitent, by a natural and striking reference to the con- dition of the inhabitants of Sodom and Go- morrah in the days of Lot, and those of the whole earth in the days of Noah. In LECTURE VIII. 301 that part of this awful denunciation which appears to bear an immediate and primary reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, He that is in the field (it is said) let him not return back. Remember Lofs vnfe. Up- on this allusion, Glassius (whose labours we have already noticed, and who may cer- tainly be regarded in general as a tempe- rate and cautious expositor) insists as a proof of the allegorical (he might equally well have named it the typical) intention of this and other passages of the Old Tes- tament. It were not difficult to multiply instances where matter applied merely as illustrative of the case or argument in hand, has been considered, without any adequate reason, as possessing originally a typical or prospective character. In pursuing our subject in the detail, it will (unless I be much mistaken) appear, that some confusion has arisen from the divisions of the secondary or mediate sense which have been adopted in different ages. It has long since been admitted that this was unquestionably the case as to the three- fold division of the patristical and Roman 302 LECTURE VIII. Catholic schools. Later divines have, as- suredly with a much closer approximation to critical accuracy, followed Glassius in referring all such meanings to one of the three general heads of allegory, type, or parable. To myself it appears that the question would be ridded of some encum- brances, and no injury offered to the legi- timate interpretation of Scripture, by con- sidering the former (allegory) as a genet' ic term, equally applicable to both the latter. The type being an allegory founded on that which is real^ the parable an allegory founded on that which is simply possible, or even in some cases imaginary. The illustrations usually given in systematic works of the allegory, considered as a distinct species, are very few, and those few by no means satisfactory ; and the only reason for so considering it which should seem to possess even the show of authority, is that drawn from the well-known passage of St. Paul, in which the history of Sarah and Hagar is said to be allegorized {aKK^yo^w^ivA). I can certainly however see no objection to re- garding the term as used in this place ge- LECTURE VIII. 303 nerically, and the narrative itself as having the same typical and prefigurative charac- ter M^hich has been uniformly ascribed to that of Jacob and Esau *. The two species of type and parable are separated by a line sufficiently marked and obvious to all ; nor is there any doubt, as to the latter, of the extent to w^hich it pre- vails, or the places where it may be found in the sacred volume of either covenant ^ ^ Thus Gen. ii. 2. compared with Hebrews iv. 2. may be explained, by regarding the sabbath as typical of the rest of the children of God, the spiritual Israel. In Ephesians chap. V. the institution of marriage is typical of the spi- ritual union between our Lord and his church. Psalm xix. 4. compared with Romans x. 18. and Deuteronomy XXX. 12. with Romans x. 6, 7. present certainly some difficulty ; but that difficulty will not be removed by considering the 19th Psalm or the passage of Deutero- nomy as allegorical. 1 Corinthians v. 7, 8. may be mere- ly figurative language ; or if leaven were symbolical of malice and unrighteousness, it might be regarded as one of the many types which made up the ceremonial law. 2 Corinthians iii. 7. 13, 14. appears equally the exposi- tion of a type. The well-known application of the law, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corjiy appears to me, I confess, like our Lord's Not a sparrow Jhlleth to the ground, a mere argument a minori. The above are all the passages adduced as allegorical by Wa- terland, (Pref. to Scripture Vindicated, p. 14. note.) b The many expositions of the parables for which we 304 LECTURE VIII. The former presents more of difficulty on these points, and its investigation has given rise to much variety of opinion, and to some controversy. That wheresoever any person or thing is decidedly proposed in Scripture as the type of another, the tvtto^, (TKia, rov fxsXXovTog, it is to be at once acknow- ledged as such on that authority, it has been fully conceded. But here a question immediately arises as to the real extent in each case of the typical character so esta- blished. And on this point whatsoever may have been the practice of some, it has been unquestionably the uniform advice of have been from time to time indebted to able and pious divines, appeared to preclude all necessity of entering upon any consideration of their general character, or of the allegorical language in which they are clothed. The student perhaps will need only to be reminded, that here, as in the case of many typical images, we are rather to keep in view the general drift and scope of the apologue, than to indulge in seeking a mystical intention in every expression which occurs in its detail. Of the faulty excess on this score, many examples will be found in Keach on the Parables; a work which (like his Tro- pology) has been long a text-book for one class of spi- ritual expositors, and has been reprinted within these few years. LECTURE VIII. 305 the most considerate and intelligent writers on scriptural interpretation, that we should abstain from, or use at least the greatest caution in, pushivig the analogy beyond that point to which the authoi^ity of revelation has extended it. Thus where we find St. Paul, by a singular usage perhaps of the word TVTTo^, expressing that connection and contrast which existed between the first and the second Adam, and his illustration of the subject, amounting strictly to this, that as in (the one) Adam all die, so in (the one) Christ shall all be made alive ; are we therefore authorized to pursue this same idea of relation through all the cir- cumstances of our first parents' creation and fall ? to advance, that, as Eve was drawn forth from the side of Adam, so from the wounded side of our Redeemer was drawn his mystic consort, the church of the faithful ? that as Adam was made on the sixth day, and did eat the fruit at the sixth hour, so our Lord was crucified on the same day, and at the same hour ? that as Adam's soul was in spiritual darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour, so the X 306 LECTURE VIII. earth was covered by the material dark- ness which succeeded our Lord's death, for the same space of time*"? That Moses, again, as being (though in an infinitely in- ferior sense and degree) the mediator of a covenant, and the captain and deliverer of the visible and typical Israel of God, bore a figurative and predictive relation to the eternal and heavenly captain of our salva- tion, the apostle plainly insinuates : but are we hence entitled to argue, that Moses was also in his birth, education, in all the general outline, in short, of his history, equally the type of Christ ? are we to be- lieve that the business of a shepherd, exer- cised by him previously to his important mission, prefigured the higher office of the great Shepherd of the sheep, who, until after his own mission had been fully made known and ratified to the people, did not announce himself in that character '^ ? Can we look for any confirmation of our belief c These, with many similar examples of imaginary re- semblance, will be found in Vcrtue's Parallels, article Adam : they arc chiefly from patristical sources. d Taylor, Christ Revealed, (Lond. 1653.) rcpr. Trc- vecka, 1766. chap. vii. LECTURE VIII. 307 in the divinity of Christ from the typical application of the passage in Exodus which declares Moses to have been made a god to Pharaoh % or for any real similarity in the death of Moses on mount Abarim, and of the Saviour on Golgotha ^ ? Can we follow the expositor who urges that the gift of the Holy Spirit was prefigured by the ap- pointment of Joshua, while he asserts Joshua to be (with much greater proba- bility) the type also of the Saviour himself, and that on the very ground, among others, that he succeeded Moses ^ ? That David in his kingly power and character typified the future king of the spiritual Israel ; that in the sufferings and sorrows which caused him so repeatedly and pathetically to pour out his soul before God, he bore, however faintly and imperfectly, the figure of him who for us suffered and sorrowed as no man ever has or could, we readily grant : and though, in this case, we may not be able to assent to all that is proposed even ^ Exod. vii. 1. Vertue. The application is Tertullian's. * Taylor, p. 44. n Taylor, ibid. X 2 308 LECTURE VIII. by a Home or a Horsley, yet by denying this typical character of the royal Psalmist, we incur the danger at least of sacrificing to the excessive and ungrounded indulg- ence of critical refinement, means of per- sonal edification and advancement in the love of Christ, which no man may despise or overlook with safety. But are these feelings, we would ask, enhanced or enli- vened, are we not rather disposed to sus- pect and doubt the grounds on which we have hitherto cherished them, when it is urged to us by our partners in this blessed faith and hope of the Christian, that the voice and harp of David expelling the evil spirit of Saul prefigured the authority with which our Lord commanded the evil spirits, and they obeyed him; that the rescue of David's two wives from the hands of the Amalekites prefigured the rescue of the spiritual sisters, Israel and Judah, both the daughters of one mother, the heavenly Je- rusalem '^ ? It were easy to occupy a much longer time with instances which shew h 1 Samuel xxx. 17, 18. Analytical View of Christian- ity, p. 193. LECTURE VIII. 309 abundantly the necessity and wisdom of re- stricting in general our exposition of scrip- tural types to those express points in which the Scripture itself authorizes us to consider them as typical, or which immediately flow from the nature of the relation or character which we are taught to regard as co?istitut- ing the analogy between the type and its an- titype. Thus we readily grant that Aaron, as the appointed high priest of Jehovah, was a real and intelligible type of him who is made for us a high priest for ever ; and that the sacrifices which he offered were typical. Admitting this, we can see no ab- surdity in admitting also, that when in his sacerdotal character he stood betwixt the living and the dead, and stayed the plague from Israel, he exhibited the prefigura- tion and symbol of a yet higher deliver- ance '. And there are types, it may be add- ed, of so general and extensive a character, as to admit, by the fairest deductions of criticism, the application of much that is ' Glassius de Typis; who adduces it as a " typus il- " latus."" I should rather consider it as rising out of the typical and priestly character of Aaron. X 3 310 LECTURE VIII. said concerning them to the known cha- racter and features of their estabhshed an- titype. This appears to be especially the case with respect to the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, and the analogy existing l>e- tween the typical and the spiritual Israel ; an analogy which I cannot but regard as intentionally and largely adumbrated in all the prophetic writings. And here I would suggest, that a very considerable safeguard may be found in the restriction mentioned in a former Lecture, as proposed by some divines of the last century : that we are not, namely, to look for any secondary or mystical sense in the Scriptures, but such as is inherent in and consequential upon the typical; that typical sense being, as I have stated, determined by and limited to the real and esseyitial points of analogy between the correspondent objects. Nor am I certain that some advantage may not be derived from considering the types of Scripture as divisible into those which are strictly of a ptrophetic or prefigurative character, and those ivhich appear to be simply analogical ; both equally being the intention of the LECTURE VIII. 311 Spirit which has pronounced them to be such by the mouths of those who spoke and wrote only under his influence, but the one more peculiarli/ adapted to give evidence to the Gospel, the other to illustrate and en- force that which the Gospel teaches ^. Further, it has doubtless occurred to every inquirer after divine truth, (and from hence perhaps originally sprung the theory of accommodation,) that some things are quoted or alluded to in the New Testa- ment as bearing a mystical and typical character ; in which, without the express sanction of such authority, we should hard- ly have suspected its existence. This would naturally lead us to inquire, whether the ^ The establishment of this latter as the genuine and legitimate character and intent of much that is typical, appears to be the drift of the well known passage in St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he asserts, that the Israelites were, in certain circumstances of their journey through the desert, examples or types to the fu- ture church of God. That he did not use the expres- sion TUTToj in the lower sense of example merely, is, I think, evident from the manner in which the whole con- text insinuates the secondary and spiritual intention of the cloud, the sea, the food, and the water, which were made the instruments of their protection and support. X 4 312 LECTURE VIII. secondary and spiritual meaning of Scrip- ture narratives is to be confined to these alone : whether there may not yet be other personages and other circumstances, in which the believer is permitted to look for some adumbration of the Saviour and his work. The affirmative side of this question has had the support of many eminent and pi- ous expositors ; of more than one indeed whose judgment in restricting the exces- sive use of spiritual interpretation gives double force to their concession on this points It has been urged, that St. Paul himself, in declaring that there were many objects within the temple of which his im- mediate intention did not suffer him to speak particularly, does virtually authorize us to consider these also, and by conse- quence other matters connected with the ceremonial law, as typically significant, that in many other cases the type is so obvious as to offer and force itself, as it were, on ' " Typica proculdubio multa sunt de quibus Deus " expressis verbis non pronunciavit quod talia sunt." Salden apud Rambach, De Sensu Myst. p. 26. LECTURE VIII. 313 the notice and acceptance of the believer, and that this has been admitted with re- spect to more than one direct and literal prophecy of the Old Testament. Sykes himself, for example, an expositor but lit- tle inclined to err on the side of conces- sion to received opinions, admits this to be the case at least in three well known in- stances ; the prophecy concerning Shiloh, the weeks of Daniel, and the predictive re- ference of Haggai to our Lord's appear- ance in his temple. It has been objected, lastly, that in questioning the existence of such typical references as have not the ex- press authority of revelation, we are doing injury to the general and acknowledged character of the elder covenant, and cut- ting off one of the most lawful and copious sources of Christian edification. These are assuredly arguments which, proceeding from men of sober minds and well versed in Scripture, demand at least our serious attention. And there are doubtless some re- semblances and coincidences in the details and history of the two covenants so strik- ing, as to impress at once on the pious 314 LECTURE VIII. reader the almost positive conviction, that the objects which present them must have been so connected in the original intention of Him who gave the Scripture. Thus in the histories of Joseph and of Joshua, (though neither be distinctly referred to by the writers of the New Testament as prefiguring our Lord,) there are many points which would seem to justify the Christian in so regarding them. Thus, if we do not admit that our Lord's argument recorded in the 7th chapter of St. John amounts to a positive assertion that he was typified by the manna given in the wilder- ness, and that even the title of St. Paul {(ipcof/,ct Trvsvf^ATiicov} does not immediately at- tach its mystical purport to our Lord him- self, we may yet, from the general charac- ter of typical things, and from the known analogy of that mystic rock from which flowed the living waters, fairly conclude that it was so. The ordinance too of the cities of refuge, and the liberation of the offender by the death of the high priest, presents a yet more striking instance of such an adumbration, unnoticed by the LECTURE VIII. 315 writers of the New Testament. But the number of such cases is so limited, the ex- amples adduced, even by systematic writers anxious to establish the point, are at times so questionable and irrelevant, and the use made of the liberty thus assumed has been frequently so injudicious, that it is scarcely possible for the student to be too strongly guarded against a practice, which, in the hands of persons especially of a lively and fervid imagination, has often exposed that religion, which in truth is founded upon a rock, to the unmerited sneers and cavils of the unbeliever, and has contributed perhaps in many instances to shake the faith and arouse the suspi- cions even of the more candid inquirer after truth. Thus, where one writer ar- gues in favour of the typical character of Noah, that his name by a cabalistic trans- position of the letters signifies grace '"; where another sees in the greater part of that patriarch's history a type of our Lord, but in his sin of drunkenness the type of man's guilt ; in Shem, again, the type of m M'Ewen on Types, p. 20. ed. 1821. 316 LECTURE VIII. him who has covered the spiritual naked- ness of mankind with his covenant, and also of those upon whom the garment of salvation has been laid, and who see not their own nakedness " ; when these and the like imaginations (and the history of scrip- tural exposition affords but too many) are obtruded as the real and unquestionable intentions of the Holy Spirit of truth and wisdom, what accession, we would ask, of probability, or even of power to influence the heart and the affections, is gained to those great evangelical doctrines, which every true believer has received and learnt from a less questionable source ; what advantage " Analytical View of Christianity, pp. 67, &c. As I have found it desirable to allude more than once to this short but comprehensive work, I would express my be- lief in and respect for the Christian spirit and intention with which it is written. Nor would I insinuate that those which I deem its errors originate with the anony- mous author. I have referred to it, in fact, chiefly as be- ing among the latest and fullest examples of that fanci- fid determination and application of the splrHual sense, which we have seen prevailing from the earliest ages. In dedicating his work expressly to the sceptic, it is to be regretted that the author lost sight of the ancient pa- tristical canon ; " Argumcntum mysticum non valet ad " probanda fidci dogmata." LECTURE VIII. 317 is not given to those who would malevo- lently represent the whole fabric of our re- ligion as unfounded upon proof, and un- supportable by any fair and legitimate me- thods of argument ? It has been the usual custom of systema- tic writers, to join with the other branches of our present subject the consideration of the mystical or symbolical meaning (as it is more generally termed) of individual ivords, whether literally denoting objects animate or inanimate, or the active or passive attri- butes of such objects. That such a symbo- lical intention was by the earlier allegorists held really to exist throughout the whole vocabulary (if we may so speak) of Scrip- ture, and that much and often fruitless la- bour was spent upon its investigation, there can be little or no doubt ; nor has it been neglected in a later day, though its chief cultivators have indeed at all times been found among those who have indulged in very considerable licence as to every branch of spiritual interpretation. More conside- rate and prudent critics have evidently been induced to doubt, whether all that was usu- 318 LECTURE VIII. ally so considered might not with greater safety as well as accuracy be regarded as siinYAyJigu7'ative, as belonging, that is, rather to the general and native character of the Hebrew, perhaps of all Oriental, eloquence and poetry, than to any preordained system of allegorical and spiritual correspondency". Upon the hypothesis indeed of such a cor- respondency, no inconsiderable suspicion is thrown by the certainty, that it has been adapted with equal facility and equal suc- cess to the philosophical reveries of Philo and of Hutchinson, to the darkest super- stitions of the middle, and the wildest fa- naticism of later ages ; that it has accom- modated itself with the same pliability to the exclusive theory of the most rigid pre- destinarianism, and to the vague and in- determinate mysticism of Behmen and of Swedenborg. For a full conviction of the extreme uncertainty both of the grounds on which the hypothesis rests, and of the ° This appears to be the opinion of Lancaster, cer- tainly one of the most learned and sensible writers on this subject. (Prelim. Discourse to Daubuz on Revel, p. 2.) LECTURE VIII. 319 method in which it has been apphed, it may be sufficient to refer the student to the inspection (however cursory) of any of those Collections or Dictionaries of symboli- cal teriyis, in which the labour of expositors thus disposed has from time to time been employed p. I cannot therefore but think that we expose ourselves to less danger, both of falling into personal error, and of throwing doubt and discredit upon the sa- cred text, by regarding those insulated words and expressions, which were of old esteemed the authoritative and definite, though mysterious, indications of higher things, as possessing that value and signi- ficance only, which may be fairly attached to them without departing from the laws of interpretation generally applicable to all written or spoken composition, sacred or profane. But (it has been urged, and that by high P Those of Rhab. Maurus, H. Lauretus, Gurtler, and Vitringa have been mentioned; to these may be added Westhemerus de Tropis S. S. (fol.) and Hackspan's Ter- mini, &c. Philos. Theol. per Durrium, Altdorf, 1664. Others are probably to be met with, as Ravanelkis, who has much matter of this description in his Dictionary. 320 LECTURE VIII. authorities) the symbolical language, espe- cially of the prophetic and more highly wrought portions of holy writ, has a pecu- liar character of its own ; inferring, as it should seem, that it must have some pecu- liar and exclusive source, some mysterious system of relations, to which we might in vain search for a parallel in any other quar- ter \ Let this be admitted to bear at first sight some appearance of truth ; yet upon examination we shall be led to ask, whether they who have made such assertions recol- lected that we have no uninspired and con- temporary remains in the Hebrew, or any cognate dialect, which we can bring into comparison with the volume of inspiration, whether they were sufficiently aware of the highly metaphorical nature of all language, and whether they had weighed the diffi- culty and uncertainty attendant upon all the details of the theory which they in- clined to maintain ? That the figurative language of Scripture is not capable of illustration from various 'J See Jones on the Figurative Language of Scripture, Lect. I. p. 7. ed. 1811. and frequently elsewhere. LECTURE VIII. 321 sources, that some part of its symbols, those especially in more common use, may not have been, like the hieroglyphics of old, purely conventional, and that he vs^ho neglects its study can hope to be deemed a competent or useful expositor, I shall hardly be sus- pected of advancing : but that we are en- titled, nay, called upon, to affix a secondary and spiritual import to almost every signi- ficant word in Scripture ; that we may rea- son from the symbolical meaning of the word to that of the context, instead of suf- fering the sense of the former to be deter- mined by the plain and obvious intention of the latter ; that by such a symbolical ac- ceptation of individual words we are per- mitted to give a new character to even the clearest moral precepts, and the simplest narratives of the sacred text •" ; that, lastly, our acquiescence in the meanings which ^ That this is no exaggerated statement of the main principles of the allegorical schools of the ancient fathers, and the modern Cocceians, the reader has already seen. The republication of the works of Keach, Brown, M'Ewen, and others, proves, that the indulgence of ex- cessive licence on this point has still its advocates ; nor is it any recommendation to their cause that it is embraced Y 322 LECTURE VIII. fanciful (though possibly sincere and pious) believers may attach to every separate por- tion or expression of God's word, is to be esteemed a test of our personal spirituality and knowledge of him', the informed Chris- tian will scarcely be disposed to grant. It may be further inquired, to what ex- tent the secondary and spiritual sense of Scripture once discovered and acquiesced in, may with propriety and safety be ap- plied to the purposes of doctrine and in- struction. Wheresoever we believe this sense, upon the direct authority of our by the disciples of Dr. Hawker, and other teachers of the same complexion. (See Cottle's Strictures on the Ply- mouth Antinomians, p. 84.) s " Some may object against this, that the hair of a " man's head is a mean thing to represent so great and " glorious a thing as the church of Christ. To which I " answer, Gloiy over me thou infidelity, thou firstborn of " the Devil, if thou canst." (Samson's Hair, an eminent Representation of the Church of God, by Edm. Jones. Trevecka, 1777.) That many better informed Christians are content on these main points to adopt the benevolent and tolei'ant spirit of Bishop Home, (see the termination of his Preface to the Psalms,) I firmly believe; but that the feelings here exemplified do yet exist, and arc ex- pressed in some quarters with the most uncharitable bit- terness, is certainly true. LECTURE VIII. 323 Lord or his disciples, to be inherent in any passage of Scripture, that passage becomes of necessity invested with a distinct and real argumentative value. To us indeed it may be of subordinate value, because for the positions so confirmed and illustrated by the inspired teachers, we have the more immediate and direct evidence of their own specific and literal declarations ; but still wherever it appears that our own rea- sonings may be fortified by the adduction of that also which has been previously so adduced by them, we have (I conceive) a full right to demand that it should be re- garded as a legitimate means of proof. And this appears to be (by the uniform admis- sion of the ablest theologians of all ages) the utmost extent to which we can consi- der any secondary or allegorical sense as having a character strictly argumentative. But the degrees and shades of moral pro- bability are, we know, very numerous ; and there seems to be more than one case in which, if the great truths which we teach cannot be actually established by, they may yet derive not only much of lively and strik- Y 2 324 LECTURE VIII. ing illustration, but somewhat even of col- lateral support, from such spiritual exposi- tions of the detail, as appear to be most obviously insinuated by the typical and prefigurative character which the New Tes- tament has generically attributed to certain personages and objects occupying a promi- nent station in the Old. There appears no very cogent reason why this extension, if I may so term it, of declared and acknow- ledged types should be proscribed in our attempts to instruct and edify a Christian people. With respect to those spiritual ex- positions which have their ground in sup- posed analogies, more or less plausible, with the typical and mystic character of similar objects, circumstances, or incidents of holy writ, their admission, (if they be admitted at all,) and their management in the appli- cation, must require much more of judg- ment and of caution. " This," (says the learned and judicious Waterland,) " This, " to speak freely my opinion, appears to be " a work of such a kind, as scarcely one in " a thousand will be fit to be trusted with. " It will" (he continues) " be exceeding dif- LECTURE VIII. 325 " ficult to draw out mystical meanings with " sufficient certainty beyond what our in- " fallible guides in the New Testament " have already draivn out for 7is, or have " plcmily pointed out to us V I would add, that both the difficulty and the danger of misapplying the secondary sense become greater in proportion as we endeavour to accommodate it to any other purpose than that which is directly and exclusively of a spiritual nature — our own private and per- sonal advancement in the faith, the love, the knowledge and the service of our Crea- tor and Redeemer. Such appear to be the chief restrictions to which it is desirable to subject the investigation and application of that secondary and spiritual sense which we admit and affirm, upon the highest and most unquestionable authority, to pervade no inconsiderable portion of the Law and the Prophets. To investigate every subor- dinate principle by which its existence may be ascertained, or at least rendered proba- ble, and its uses regulated, would be a task f Preface to Scripttire Vindicated. 326 LECTURE VIII. far beyond the limits or intention of these Lectures ; in fact, would involve little less than the detailed exposition of all those passages of Scripture which appear to speak in parables. Much too has been done for this division of our subject by writers whose works are readily accessible, and to whose intelligence and authority in the various branches of biblical interpretation I can ad- vance no pretensions ". If I have dedicated therefore the larger portion of these Lec- tures to the history of the practice in ques- tion, it was done in the conviction, that that history would not only afford some opportunity for useful and practical infer- ences, but that it had not as yet employed, in our own country at least, the hand of any among those scholars, whose labours might easily have rendered my own need- less, if not presumptuous. To conclude ; it may not impossibly be "It will be readily perceived, that in some points I have ventured to differ from these high authorities, espe- cially from Bishop Marsh. I could wish however to be vmderstood never to do this without the respect due to learning and station, or a proper diffidence in my own views and opinions on a subject of so much intricacy. LECTURE VIII. 327 objected, that the limitations for which 1 have ventured (both in the present, and, occasionally, in previous discourses) to con- tend, are such as bespeak a low and unjus- tifiable notion of the significance and spiri- tuality of the inspired writings, and would, if strictly complied with, cut off at the very root one of the most efficacious means by which the hearing and reading of those writings may be rendered profitable for the instruction and edification of believers. To the former imputation, (which has from time to time been thrown upon expositors whose faith and piety we are now so far from calling in question, that most of us would gladly be found like-minded,) I do not see how any one is liable, who fully acknowledges their whole contents to have been written at the suggestion and under the influence of the Spirit of God, who be- lieves all that they relate to have been brought to pass, all that they prescribe to have been ordained, in the exercise of the most consummate goodness and wisdom, and with a constant and uniform reference to the great and mysterious gift of a divine 328 LECTURE VIII. Saviour, even though he should fail to re- cognise any distinct allusion to or prefigu- ration of that Saviour, where others have seen and rejoiced in it. That the beneficial application of Scripture is crippled and con- fined by such restrictions, that the fiiie gold is rendered less valuable, and less ap- plicable to the purposes of currency and usefulness by its separation from that al- loy which is foreign to its nature, and which might subject even its real and intrinsic worth to doubt and depreciation, we should be careful at least to assert. It should be considered too, that much of that in which the cautious expositor would scruple to find matter of type or prophecy, may yet be safely, and, under the divine grace and blessing, profitably applied on the ground of analogy, and in many other ways, which the intelligence and practice of him who conscientiously strives to inform himself in the word and will of God, and to use that word for reproof, for correction, and for in- struction in righteousness, will readily sug- gest. In admitting too that extension of the typical character, in things authoriU^- LECTURE VIII. 329 tively declared to possess that character, of which I have so lately spoken, no inconsi- derable field for exposition directly and un- equivocally spiritual appears to be left open ; and, above all, in insisting upon the autho- ritative and conclusive nature of the tes- timony which our Lord and his followers have given to the spiritual import of the Law and the Prophets, the greatest and highest source of the edification to be de- rived from those earlier records of divine truth has, I trust, been kept inviolate. Of spiritual exposition, thus grounded and thus guarded, the use and application cannot be too earnestly recommended, cannot, I would add my own firm conviction, be safely or reasonably impeached and questioned. The philosophical or sceptical divine may in- deed object to us the obscurity of the Scriptures thus viewed and interpreted, but it yet remains to be proved, that their ob- scurity (be it what it may) is to be re- moved or lessened by divesting them of the character under which the Jewish and Christian church have from the very age of their composition regarded them. 330 LECTURE VIII. The doctrine of the Messiah's advent, office, and character, the adumbration of and preparation for that spiritual kingdom which he should in the fullness of time establish and spread unto the uttermost ends of the world, form a necessarily inte- grant part of every provision, every ordi- nance, every declaration and promise of the Old Testament. Take away this master-key, and the elder sanctuary of divine truth presents a door closed, which no man may open. Its con- tents, indeed, under this self-called rational view, may be thought to open a wider field for the exertions of human ingenuity, for the free and luxuriant speculations of con- jectural criticism ; but, on the score of in- telligibility, as well as upon that of Chris- tian faith and Christian edification, the loss is incalculable. In these views then of scriptural truth may we ourselves be preserved, and enabled to preserve others. To these may they, who are still in darkness or error, be brought, by Him who can alone control the wills and affections of his weak and sinful creatures ; LECTURE VIII. 331 and may their value and efficacy be shewn forth, and their Author glorified, by the establishment of his spiritual kingdom in our hearts, 7iot in the word 07ily, but in power. Princeton Theological Sem.nary-Speer Library 1 1012 01130 9715 Date Due \0tK^- I '^ ^ #