Lexicons, grammars, hermeneutics, yea vernacular power over a language, are all set aside by the process that we are investigating. To what arbiter then shall we repair? Who or what is to decide, so that we may put confidence in the decision?

Is fancy, or imagination, or the spirit of allegorizing, to sit on the throne of judgment? These judges, as I apprehend, are hardly grave and sober and considerate enough to be trusted with so weighty and difficult questions. Besides, inasmuch as the matter now before us is not one within the province of common sense, but one sui generis and altogether beyond the reach of scientific principles, who among the many judges, differing widely from each other and often standing opposed to each other, is to be acknowledged as the Supreme Court? Candidates for this honor, I am aware, make their appearance on all sides. All, moreover, possess equal authority, unless some one or more can show that he or they are inspired. By what rule or principle shall we adjust their conflicting claims? By the degree of learning which they possess, or the strength of imagination, or the dexterous power to draw vivid fancy-sketches, or the depth of piety? None of these principles of judging will answer our purpose. It were easy to name men to whom some one of these characteristics belongs in a high degree, who nevertheless have indulged in most extravagant phantasies as to making out the double or second sense of Scripture. Some examples of this nature will be produced in the sequel, but at present we are merely concerned with the principle. In the usual cases of exegetical error, we have a test to which an appeal may be made, and this is, the laws and usages of language in general. If men will not conform to these, in their criticisms, then one may justly show their unreasonableness, and thus deprive their exegesis of any important

influence. But in the case before us, we have launched on an ocean without bottom or shore, and have neither chart, compass, or rudder. How we are safely and surely to steer our course, no one, so far as my knowledge extends, has yet shown us.

In fact, unless we say that every man's own fancy is his rule, in the matter of an occult sense, I wot not where we are to find a rule. Is there any resort except to inspiration? I can see no other. If then we should resort to inspiration as the guide-whose inspiration, or alleged inspiration, is to be trusted? I am aware that there are claimants, even on this ground. But we are not accustomed to give credit to claims of such nature, since apostolic times. When interpreters will heal the sick, and raise the dead, and cast out devils, we will begin to bow submissively to their alleged authority for making out a second or occult sense. Until that time has arrived, I would hope that we may be permitted to withhold our assent from their decisions, provided we find them not well supported.

From its very nature, an occult sense is one which language does not naturally convey. Of course, nothing less than the authority and influence which dictated any particular passage of Scripture, can with certainty inform us what the hidden or secondary sense of it is.

In the third place, if such a principle of interpreting Scripture be admitted, how is it possible to ascertain within what bounds it shall be confined?

By some, every part and parcel of the Old Testament is regarded as capable of a double sense; and consequently, whenever it becomes in their view desirable, on any account, to resort to such a sense, they hold themselves at liberty to do so. Nor have such views always been confined to minds of the lower order, or to men of little knowledge. Origen, who believed in the eternity of matter, in

terpreted the first chapter of Genesis as having an occult moral or spiritual sense throughout. The waters of the firmament above, were the good thoughts and desires of men; those in the depths below, the bad ones. The history of the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve he regarded as an allegory, in order to set forth the power of sin. Even so the history of Sarah and Hagar. The Mosaic ritual was never intended to be taught as a literal and historic reality, but in all its parts it must be regarded as conveying an occult sense. Of course all other parts of the Scripture may be subjected to a similar process; but more especially the Canticles. Origen, moreover, has had many followers, both in ancient and modern times. Who has not heard too of Cocceius, in recent times, who, with much more learning than Origen and with equal strength of fancy, outdid his illustrious predecessor? The piety and learning which were united in Cocceius have given great authority to his exegesis; and throughout all Protestant Christendom, even down to the present hour, there are followers of his mode of interpretation to be found, although with great varieties both in the theory and practice of expounding.

In the Roman Catholic church the practice of spiritualizing, (as the developing of a double sense is called), has been even more general and more unlimited than among the Protestants. The Jesuit, who discovered that the account of the creation of " the sun to rule the day, and of the moon and stars to rule the night," in the first chapter of Genesis, was intended, mystically and in the way of iлóvoa, ὑπόνοια, to teach the supremacy of the Pope and the inferiority of kings and cardinals, was merely a specimen of what has been very common in that church. But who among all the Protestant mystical interpreters can refute the Jesuit? I know of no argument that can reach him, when iлóvoa in

the Scriptures is once fairly and fully conceded. He has as good a right to say, that Gen. 1: 16 was designed to convey an occult sense, as such Protestants have to aver, that Ps. II. XXII. XLV. cx. and other parts of Scripture, have a double sense. Who is, or can be, the final arbiter in such

cases?

Once admit that an occult or mystic second sense may be given to any passage of Scripture, and you must of course concede to every man the liberty of foisting in upon the Scriptures such a meaning, whenever and wherever he pleases. If he is abundant and excessive in his phantasies, it would be difficult to say by what court he is to be tried; much more difficult to point out the authority which has a right to pass final sentence of condemnation. In a cause to be tried, where there is neither statute nor common law for a guide, and where every man (as to the matter under cognisance) has the right to do what seems good in his own sight, a court must be somewhat puzzled in making out a final and authoritative decision.

You smile when one tells you of the Jesuit, who preached seven sermons from the interjection O! Yet nothing more was necessary even to double this number, than a lively fancy, and the power of spiritualizing with such vigour as to make out a variety of meanings for the said interjection. You smile perhaps still more, when one tells you of the preacher, who selected Cant. 1: 9 for his text, (in which the bride is compared to the horses in Pharaoh's chariot), and drew from its occult meaning eighty-two particulars of resemblance between the horses and the church, the last of which was, that as the steeds of Pharaoh moved with a steady pace over both hill and dale, so the church moves with the steady gait of perseverance through the wilderness which she is traversing. You will say: "This is excessive; this is ridiculous." But who shall prescribe the bounds of

fancy, when she is once authorized to move in any direction she pleases? If you should suggest that, at least, imagination must be bound by the principle of producing something useful, in such a development of occult meanings; one might reply by asking: How can you show that the seven sermons of the Jesuit were not all useful sermons? Certainly they may have been so. And as to the expatiator upon the points of resemblance between Pharaoh's horses and the church, at most we cannot, on your ground, condemn him unheard. If all his points of likeness were as well chosen as the last, he surely might have important subjects before him for discussion; and who can aver, that he did not gravely and profitably discuss them?

Indeed this plea of converting the Old Testament in particular to useful purposes, proffered by Origen and in vogue more or less since his time, may be urged on to any extent that fancy or imagination may judge best. Who that is familiar with the history of interpretation does not know, that many a grave interpreter has spent much time and pains in analyzing the proper names of Scripture, in order to evoke from them some mysterious spirit with a message from a terra incognita? It is thus, according to the view of such expositors, that the Scriptures become edifying; thus that every part of the Old Testament becomes lighted up, as it were, with the lamp of gospel truth. On this ground, also, any man who understands Hebrew as well as Cocceius did, (and truly he was no ordinary adept), may make the first chapter of the first book of Chronicles as edifying as the 19th Psalm, or equally didactic with the Sermon on the Mount. In the first verse of the Chronicles, the name Adam might suggest, not unnaturally, the whole history of the race of man, with all their attributes, powers, developments, and destiny. Seth, (i. e. ng from ny to put, place, substitute, etc.), naturally suggests the great Redeemer of