SECT. VI. THE IMPROPER TREATMENT OF SCRIPTURE.

We pick out a text here and there to make it serve our turn; whereas, if we take it altogether, and considered what went before, and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing. — JOHN SELDEN.

In every age, man has imported his own crazes into the Bible, fancied that he saw them there, and then drawn sanctions to his wickedness or absurdity from what were nothing else than fictions of his own. - THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

What monstrous absurdities will not fanatics be able to elicit from the Scripture, if they are permitted to allege every detached and illunderstood word and syllable in confirmation of their notions? JOHN CALVIN: Institutes, book iv. chap. xvii. 23.

It is no wonder if they can accommodate Scripture expressions to their own dreams and fancies; for, when men's fancies are so possessed with schemes and ideas of religion, whatever they look on appears of the same shape and color wherewith their minds are already tinctured. ... All the metaphors and similitudes and allegories of Scripture are easily applied to their purpose; and, if any word sound like the tinkling of their own fancies, it is no less than a demonstration that that is the meaning of the Spirit of God; and every little shadow and appearance doth mightily confirm them in their preconceived opinions. DR. WILLIAM SHERLOCK: Knowledge of Christ, chap. iii. sect. 4.

The first and great mark of one who corrupts the word of God, is introducing into it human mixtures; either the errors of others, or the fancies of his own brain. . . . Scarce ever was any erroneous opinion either invented or received, but Scripture was quoted to defend it; and, when the imposture was too barefaced, and the texts cited for it appeared too plainly either to make against it, or to be nothing to the purpose, then recourse has usually been had to a second method of corrupting it, by mixing it with false interpretations. And this is done, sometimes by repeating the words wrong, and sometimes by repeating them right, but putting a wrong sense upon them; one that is either strained and unnatural, or foreign to the writer's intention in the place from whence they are taken; perhaps contrary either to his intention in that place, or to what he says in some other part of his writings. And this is easily effected: any passage is easily perverted, by being recited singly, without any of the preceding or following JOHN WESLEY: Sermon 133; in Works, vol. ii. p. 504.

verses.

There is no more common error in many departments of study, and especially in theology, than the prevalence of a love of system over the love of truth. Men are often so much captivated by the aspect of what seems to them a regular, beautiful, and well-connected theory, as to adopt it hastily, without inquiring, in the outset, how far it is conformable to facts or to scriptural authority; and thus, often on one or two passages of Scripture, have built up an ingenious and consistent scheme, of which the far greater part is a tissue of their own reasonings and conjectures. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: Essays on Difficulties in Paul's Writings, pp. 243–4.

Too many nominal Christians entertain only the most miserable idea of the nature of the gospel they profess to believe. Their only notion too often consists in a confused general impression of a certain sacredness in Scripture, which produces little effect beyond that of making them afraid to enter its precincts, and search its recesses for themselves, and yet more fearful lest its sanctity should be invaded by others. And their dread of openly encountering any contradictions, and their anxious desire to shelter themselves under even the most frivolous explanations, if it does not betray a lurking distrust of the proper evidences of their faith, at least evinces the lowest and most unworthy conceptions of the spirit and meaning of the Bible, and an almost total absence of due distinction between the design and application of the several portions of which it is made up. That such misconception should prevail is indeed a lamentable, but not a surprising, instance of the liability of human nature to misapply the best gifts, whether of providence or grace. And its influence has been unhappily cherished and confirmed by the prevalence of those theological systems which have dictated the practice of literalizing upon all the expressions of the sacred writers; so that the magnificent imagery of the finest passages of inspiration is reduced to the lowest standard of verbal dogmatism; and minds incapable of appreciating the divine sublimity of those descriptions think to add to the evidence of their truth by a forced and unnatural perversion of their meaning. With others, again, the sincere, but (as we must consider it) misguided, spirit of religious fanaticism produces similar effects. Blinded to all but the internal light of his spiritual impressions, the enthusiast will always entertain a deeply-rooted and devoted hostility against any such distinctions as those here advocated. Maintaining the literal application of every sentence, every syllable, of the divine word, he rejects as impious the slightest departure from it. Human reason,

along with all science which is its offspring, is at best carnal and unsanctified; and, should any of its conclusions be advanced in contradiction to the letter of a scriptural text, this completely seals its condemnation as absolutely sinful, and equivalent to a rejection of revelation altogether. - BADEN POWELL: Connection of Natural and Divine Truth, pp. 242-3.

A want of due investigation of what is really the proper object of reverence in the Sacred Volume has caused that reverence to be most erroneously applied. When the learned Dr. Bloomfield prefers a "charge of irreverence for the Book which was intended to make men wise unto salvation" (Pref. p. x.), against those who, like Griesbach, would alter the commonly received text, he begs the question, that that text constitutes that Book; a point which cannot be conceded to him. That text is now clearly discovered to be, in numerous places, a corruption of "the Book" which demands our reverence; and our reverence is evinced in restoring it from the corruptions which it has sustained, to the most ancient and purest standard that we possess. Thus, our reverence for "the Book" is to be ascertained by determining the previous question, “Which is the Book to which our reverence is legitimately due?" If we direct it to the least corrupted, there is no irreverence; if to the most corrupted, the reverence savors of superstition and of bigotry. — GRANVILLE PENN: Annotations to the Book of the New Covenant, p. 43.

Few sources of error have been more copious, above all in the interpretation of the Scriptures, than the propensity to realize images, —which, in fact, is a main element in all idolatry,—and to deduce general propositions from incidental and partial illustrations. — JULIUS CHARLES HARE: The Victory of Faith, p. 37.

Any human abstract which comes in between my Bible and me distorts Scripture, to some extent, by abridging it. It brings things together which were separate, giving them its own arrangement; it destroys delicate shades of meaning, and cuts off all the brilliancy and the life of the word. The dried flower in a collection still preserves its essential characteristics, and suffices for the classification of the botanist, though it has lost its shape, and its hang, and its delicate colors, and its sweet smell. But Christianity, dried up in a confession of faith, does not even retain all its characteristics: the proportion of its parts is all changed, and the eye of the believer can scarcely recognize it. COUNT AGÉNOR DE GASPARIN: The Schools of Doubt and the School of Faith, p. 177.

When we see methods of interpretation applied to them which no other book will bear, and which would hold any one up to scorn if he should adopt them in explaining a classic, how can it be expected that the understanding and reason will not distrust them, and sooner or later be sure to revolt against them? Among all the abuses of the Old Testament, none are more conspicuous than those which result from sectarian views and purposes. What a mere lump of wax does the Bible become in the hands of a zealous defender of sect, perfectly mouldable at his pleasure! No laws of language or of grammar stand in his way. The original intention of the writer of the Scripture is little or nothing to the purpose. The occult meaning is summoned to his aid; and this is always ready, at his bidding, to assume every possible form. Armed in this way, his antagonists are cut down by whole ranks at a blow, and the standard of sect waves speedily over that of the Bible. MOSES STUART: Crit. Hist. of the Old-Test. Canon, pp. 410-11.

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Nothing can be more preposterous [than the law of rigidly literal interpretation]. All agree that the Scriptures ought to be so interpreted as to express the mind of their Author, and the sense which the writers of them intended to convey. . . . If there be doubtful and obscure passages in their writings, they are to be rendered clear and intelligible by those that are not obscure and doubtful. . . . To affirm a literal construction of those passages which are professedly contained in the most figurative and symbolical books of the Scriptures, would go far toward destroying all the fixed laws of sound interpretation. This would be to make prose of poetry, and bold imagery as though it were doctrinal statement. No sober man would interpret such passages as one would interpret a law, a deed, a contract, or a last will and testament. To do so would be a perversion of language, and an outrage upon common sense and common honesty. DR. GARDINER SPRING: Glory of Christ, vol. ii. pp. 109-11.

No man will call in question what he concedes to be a real decision of God, however made; but there have been, and still are, those who think so much more of the verbal revelations of God than of any other, that they almost overlook the fact, that the foundations of all possible knowledge have been laid by God in the consciousness and the intuitive perceptions of the mind itself. Forgetful of this fact, they have often, by unfounded interpretations of Scripture, done violence to the mind, and overruled the decisions made by God himself through it, and then sought shelter in faith and mystery. · DR. EDWARD BEECHER: Conflict of Ages, p. 20.

SECT. VII.

PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION, APPLICABLE CHIEFLY TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.

A critic on the sacred book should be

Candid and learned, dispassionate and free;
Free from the wayward bias bigots feel,
From fancy's influence, and intemperate zeal.

§ 1. CRITICISM.

COWPER.

Before presenting the laws of criticism commonly laid down by Biblical scholars, it may be well, for the sake of those who have paid little attention to the subject, to quote the following observations on the manuscripts of the New Testament, by Dr. G. J. PLANCK (Introduction to Sacred Philology, p. 51): "By means of the most laborious researches, the latest efforts of criticism have resulted in the conclusion, that most of the manuscripts which we possess belong to three families, or may be traced to three recensions, the diversity of which cannot be doubted. An Alexandrine, a Constantinopolitan, and a Western copy, may have been the originals of all the manuscripts, amounting to some hundreds, which we have of the writings of the New Testament. Another recension, arising from Asia, may perhaps be added to these."

[1] The first place belongs to ancient, uninterpolated, good Greek copies. Their authority is paramount. From them chiefly should the text be derived. The nearer their testimony approaches to unanimity, the greater certainty belongs to it. And the authority of ancient manuscripts is unquestionably superior to that of the modern, though the number of the latter is very much greater. — DR. SAMUEL DAVIDSON: Treatise on Biblical Criticism, vol. ii. p. 380.

Dr. JOHN HEY (Lectures in Divinity, vol. i. p. 48) and other critics remark, what is obviously just, but not always borne in mind, that "the earlier manuscript, cæteris paribus, is more likely to be right than the later, because every copying is liable to new errors."

The modification to which this rule is subject, we present from the pen of G. F. SEILER (Biblical Hermeneutics, § 235, 1): "As the value of a manuscript rests not only on its antiquity, but also on the authority of the class or family to which it belongs, and on the antiquity of that codex from which it was immediately taken, a manuscript of the tenth or eleventh century may thus be of far more value than one which has descended from the fifth century to our times; namely, when the manuscript of the tenth century can be proved to have been immediately derived from one of the third or fourth."