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tianity by anathematizing all who do not think with himself; both err from the same principle; both cry up uniformity.* Let us leave these quixotic gentry to go on with their saint-errantry, until history, philosophy, scripture, and good sense, reclaim their understandings, and enable them to extol and honour the king of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways are judgment. Happy for us if we can quit the world with the protestation which Calvin inserted in his will.—“ I

protest that in all my contentions and disputes "with the enemies of the gospel, I have made use "of none of the sinful tricks of sophistry, but have "endeavoured to maintain the truth with integrity "and candour."

*

Enough of this may be seen in the history of our own country. See Neal's History of the Puritans, Vol. I. Dr. Law's Considerations, et etiam Clerici Prolegomena. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History. Sect. 11, Chap. 3-11.

DISSERTATION II.

CONTAINING SOME BRIEF LITERARY PRECAUTIONS NECESSARY IN THE STUDY OF

THEOLOGY.

A critical accuracy in the sacred writings is by no means necessary to the man who contents himself with simple, genuine christianity; but if he stirs a step beyond the most plain and obvious truths, if he pretends to determine the most abstruse mysteries of religion, which are determinable only by the voice of scripture, all the world expects that he should free himself from those mistakes which render that voice unintelligible.--Now there are several vulgar errors, which if they attend us in our examination of the sacred writers, I will tend to obscure the clearest truths. It is therefore absolutely necessary to deposit these as unclean things without the camp, before we approach that God, who with the froward shews himself froward, with the pure shews himself pure, whose words do good to him only who walketh uprightly.-Dionysius of Alexandria, who flourished about 250 years after Christ, pretended to find barbarisms and solecisms in the revelation of St. John, yet he received that book as canonical. And herein he acted wisely, for deviations from the rules of grammar would no more affect the authenticity of the sacred writings, than such improprieties affect the established reputation of the

most polite English writer: Dr. Lowth has shewn us a number of such solecisms in our best models of eloquence.-Nor does it injure the inspiration of the sacred writers, for they did not profess oratory but divinity.-How wise in God, who to secure the glory of the promulgation of divine truth to himself, left marks of weakness on the first heralds of revelation! Whether there be solecisms in scripture or not, is a question that has nothing to do with our present enquiry.-Be it also allowed that there are some interpolations.-Nobody pretends that the doctrines are interpolations, or any passages relative to them.-All own the originality of the passages we shall mention; the meaning of them only is questioned.-Every body knows that each language has some modes of expression peculiar to itself; these are called its idioms. are peculiar to the Hebrew tongue, are called Hebraisms; to the Greek, Grecisms, and so on. The Hebrew tongue is remarkable for bold, pompous, figurative, expressions. Cedars are called trees of Jehovah. The warm advocates for ceremonies are said to have a zeal for God. Adam is told that in the day he eat, dying he should die.— Christ is said to sit at God's right hand.-All these and many more of the same kind, ought not, cannot fairly be literally pressed into controversy. The apostles were Jews, from their infancy used to their own idioms, and when they wrote in Greek, they frequently expressed these hebraisms in Greek. "In the Greek tongue," (says Le Clerc) particularly in the polite attic dialect, there are

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innumerable particles which grammarians call expletives, added not for the sake of any ideas which they convey, but only to put a gracefulness into the oration, which it would be destitute of without." Such are the particles alla, gar, dec, oun, an, men, de, &c. which are always cut off in latin versions of Greek writers. As in this instance, from the defence of Socrates written by Plato, e (uso) vμess [w] ardges Adnvasos. In translating these into latin μ and must be left out, quid vos, viri Atheniensis. These idioms ought to be carefully attended to, otherwise we shall often be wise above what is written. Tertullian never would have made out so many strange notions about the corporeal nature of souls, their generation from Adam, their colour, with more absurdities of the same kind, unless he had entirely neglected all idioms of speech, as well as all other rules of judging.The rich man in hell lifted up his eyes. Lazarus was in Abraham's bosom. One had a thirsty tongue, the other a spare finger, and thence that father gathered many things never intended by the speaker. He is not the only one who has raised lofty doctrines on the sandy foundation of a mistaken idiom.--If a bare idiom be dangerous when mistaken, how much more so are the bold, figurative allegories of the easterns? The prophet Joel says-A great people and strong are spread like the morning clouds on the mountains; their appearance is like the appearance of horses, and as horsemen so shall they run; they shall run like mighty men, they shall climb the wall like

men of war, they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks; they shall walk every one in his path, and when they fall upon the sword they shall not be wounded; they shall run to and fro in the city, they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb upon the houses, they shall enter in at the windows like a thief, the earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble, the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining; and Jehovah shall utter his voice before his army, for his camp is very great. And what is this great army of Jehovah described with so much pomp ? A swarm of locusts.-Le Clerc observes from Eusebius, "That Porphyry complained of interpreters," (Eusebius says of Origen) " for finding so many hidden mysteries, and boasting of their expositions of them, and for applying the allegoric allusions of the Greeks to the writings of the Jews." In good truth, Porphyry had reason to complain, when Origen said, "Eden was in heaven, Adam and Eve before the fall unembodied spirits, and the fig-leaves which they put on after the fall, their mortal bodies."-Long since that time, a successor of Porphyry's complains of some of his cotemporaries, (and for the same allegoric art I suppose) says they are,

"For mystic learning wond'rous able,
"In magic talisman and cabal,
"Whose primitive tradition reaches
"As far as Adam's first green breeches:

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