and the heavenly Jerusalem. In the Book of Judges there are as many figures as there are leaders of the people. The Book of Ruth is connected with Is. xvi. 1. The history of the Kings becomes an enigma which indicates the struggle of heretics against the Church. The Ethiopian wife of Moses, and the bride in the Canticles who is "black but comely," are the Church. The adulteress in Hoshea becomes a Mary Magdalene or a Rahab. The last chapter of the Book of Joel is explained as referring to Pentecost and the Fall of Jerusalem, but as to the locusts, Jerome gives a liberal choice, for he says they may be Assyrians and Babylonians, Medes and Persians, or Greeks, or Romans. Scripture narratives, full of warning and instruction, are regarded as too shocking to be matters of sacred history. It would be an endless task to furnish specimens of his many frivolous and tasteless fancies. He cannot even abstain from allegorising such plain New Testament narratives as the stater in the fish's mouth and Christ's entry into Jerusalem, or so simple a text as, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." 3 He flatters himself that he succeeded in steering safely between the Scylla of allegory and the Charybdis of literalism, whereas in reality his "multiple senses" and "whole forests of spiritual meanings" are not worth one verse of the original.* He was constantly swayed by a spirit of compromise, by tradition, by boundless credulity, by the preference of the facile talent of the compiler to the severe and sincere labour of the original thinker. He found it easier to give a literary

1 Abishag is divine wisdom. Taken literally, the story is no better than the figment out of a mime, or even one of the Atellanae.' Ep. 52, ad Nepotian. $2; yet he takes it literally, c. Jovin. i. 24. He calls Deut. xxi. 12, 13 "ridiculous" if taken literally. Tamar, Rahab, Delilah, Bathsheba, are all allegorised.

2 On Ecc. iv. 1, "If two sleep together they will be warm," he thinks it necessary to refer to Elisha raising the son of the Shunamite! In his Ep. 21 ad Damas. § 6, "He divided unto them his living" becomes "He gave them free will."

3 Eph. iv. 26.

4 What Du Pin says of Paulinus is even more true of Jerome. "He interlaced his discourses with endless texts and often gave them a forced meaning." Ann. Eccl. iii. 449. See too Dr. Maitland, Dark Ages, p. 174, n.; Church of the Catacombs, p. 229, n.; Gilly's Vigilantius, p. 93 &c., and for the more favourable views Möhler, Patrologie, p. 21.

grace and a dogmatic colouring to the thoughts of others, than to work out his own genuine opinions with consistency and courage.1

XII. ST. AUGUSTINE-" the oracle of thirteen centuries" -is greater as an Apologist and as a Theologian than as an interpreter of Scripture. Nothing, indeed, can be theoretically better than some of the rules which he lays down. He dwells on the desirability of multifarious knowledge.2 He insists that allegory should be based on the historic sense. He recognises the "more excellent way" of spiritual intuition derived from love. He perceived that there is in revelation a progressive element, and that there is an inferiority in the degree of revelation furnished by the Old Testament.5 But when we read his actual comments these principles are forgotten. He was badly equipped for the work of exposition. He knew no Hebrew, and had but a meagre knowledge of Greek. He is misled by the LXX. and by the old Latin versions. He attempted to find "all," or "almost all," the truth of the Gospel in the Old Testament.

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1 C. Rufin. 1. "Commentarii quid operis habent? Allerius dicta edisserunt, multorum sententias replicant," Prooem. in Gal. "Legi haec omnia, et in mente mea plurima coacervans accito notario vel mea vel aliena dictavi." Prooem. in Matt. "Omnes legere qui in Evangelia scripserunt, deinde, adhibito judicio, quae optima sunt excerpere," and Prooem. in Eph. see Praef. lib. i. Comm. in Jerem., where he answers the objections of Grynaeus (as he rudely calls Rufinus) and "indoctus calumniator" (Pelagius). R. Simon, Comment. du N. T. 230; Clericus, Quaest. Hieron. p. 493. On St. Jerome's life and works see Engelstoft, Hieronymus ; Amédée Thierry, St. Jerome, 1867; Zöckler, Hieronymus, 1865.

2 De Doctr. Christ. ii. 16, § 24-28, § 42; Ep. 137, 1. He was the first to suggest something in the shape of a Biblical Dictionary, id. ib. c. 19, Trench, P. 15.

3 De Civ. Dei, xiii. 21.

* De Ver. Rel. 17, § 34 ; Enarr. in Ps. lxxiii. 1. See Trench, The Sermon on the Mount, p. 42. His system of " periods" was seized by the later Reformed Theology. See De Civ. Dei, xv.-xvii., where he speaks of seven periods, of which the creative week was a type. This is the first attempt to treat Old Testament theology. Oehler, Theol. of Old Testament, i. 26-30 (E. T.).

5 His De Doctr. Christ. is practically an exegetical treatise (praccepta trac tandarum Scripturarum).

6 Confess. i. 13, § 20; 14, § 23; xi. 3, § 5; De Doctr. Christ. ii. § 23 ; De Trin. iii. 1, § 23. This is admitted even by his Benedictine editors, and is the subject of severe remarks by Walch, Bibl. Patr. 352; Rosenm. Hist. Interpr. iii. 404; Winer, in Gal. p. 22; but see a more favourable view in Trench, 1.c. p. 20. His etymologies are terribly weak.

7 C. Adim. iii. 4. He corrects the "nulla quae illis veteribus libris desint” into "pacne nulla" in the Retract. i. 22, § 2; comp. Tert. C. Marc. iv. Such

He actually ventures to maintain that David wrote the whole Psalter but sometimes prefixed to a Psalm some other name which he considered appropriate ! If he puts forth his best strength in resisting the unworthy view of Jerome, that the dispute between St. Peter and St. Paul at Antioch was a "pious collusion," he exhibits his greatest weakness in the opposition which he offered to Jerome's new translation. In the former controversy he showed the power of insight, in the latter the feebleness of traditionalism, and a total absence of the critical faculty. By his dialectic skill and speculative curiosity he became the father of scholasticism, and at the same time he gave an impulse to the mediaval mystics by his spiritual ardour. His ecclesiastical tendencies helped to strengthen the hierarchy of catholicism, and yet the Jansenists relied on his writings to establish their doctrine of grace, and more than any Father he became the favourite doctor of the Reformation by virtue of his insistence on the sufficiency and perspicuity of Holy Writ. In all respects he exercised a creative influence over future ages, but it would be false to say that the influence was in all respects wholesome. To him are due in no small degree the excesses of the subtle and systematising spirit of the schoolmen; the over-weening pretensions of sacerdotalism; the extravagant exaltation of "the Church," as represented by an imperious hierarchy; the exaggerated doctrine of total human depravity; and above all the bitter spirit of theological hatred and persecution. His writings became the Bible of the Inquisition. His name was adduced-and could there be a more terrible Nemesis on his errors ?-to justify the murder of Servetus, to sanction the massacre of St. Bartholomew, to countenance the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. As the teacher of views, as contrasted with the Ep. of Barnabas, show the strong reaction against the Antitheses of Marcion.

1 He believed in the inspiration of the Seventy, De Doctr. Christ. ii. § 22. Thus, as Liebner points out, Hugo of St. Victor who first united and reconciled the principles of scholasticism and mysticism, was called Lingua Augustini, and Alter Augustinus (see Trench, p. xii.).

3 14 "Scriptura sacra. omnibus accessibilis quamvis paucissimis penetrabilis." Ep. 137, § 18. "Ut exciperet omnes populari sinu." Conf. vi. 5, § 8. See proofs of these facts in Owen, Evenings with the Sceptics, ii. 211, who

intolerance he has flung a dark shadow across the Church of Christ, and his intolerance was mainly the result of his views of Scriptural interpretation.

The exegesis of St. Augustine is marked by the most glaring defects. Almost as many specimens of prolix puerility and arbitrary perversion can be adduced from his pages as from those of his least gifted predecessors.1 He was warped by dogmatic prepossessions. He laid down the rule that the Bible must be interpreted with reference to Church Orthodoxy, and that no Scriptural expression can be out of accordance with any other. He therefore, in support of this view, demanded that all interpretation should be panharmonic, and he helped to stereotype the current misapplication of the phrase "the analogy of faith." He warns us against the fraud of those who distort the meaning of isolated texts, yet he is constantly guilty of the same fraud. He could not fail to observe the human element in Scripture, and he accounts for the

3

quotes Nourisson, Philos. de St. Aug. ii. 181; Flottes, Études sur St. Aug. P. 542. The Spanish Jesuits, in their indictment of St. Augustine in the seventeenth century, said that "his sentiments are too hard, and unworthy of the goodness and mercy of God."

1 He began a commentary on the Romans, but after devoting a whole book to the salutation alone, found that it would be too laborious, and gave it up. 2 De Doctr. Christ. iii. 10: "Scriptura non asserit nisi fidem catholicam." Perhaps the most startling instance of the crude ecclesiasticism, which increased as Augustine grew older, is his remark, " Ego vero Evangelio non crederem nisi me Catholicae Ecclesiae commoverit auctoritas." Ep. c. Manich. 5, § 6. On this false and degrading opinion see Ritter, Gesch. de Philos. vi. 432. Setting forth the Church as the way to Christ," says Bishop Ewing, "instead of setting forth Christ as the way to the Church, has been a fountain of unnumbered evils." St. Augustine's reversal of the true order of things was exposed before Luther's days among others by Marsilio of Padua in his Defensor Paris, and by John Wessel ("Evangelio credimus et propter Evangelium Ecclesiae, non Evangelio propter Ecclesiam"). See Owen, Evenings with the Sceptics, ii. 181.

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3 St. Chrysostom had explained the phrase rightly, Hom. in Rom. xii. “Faith, though it is a grace, is not poured forth at random but . . . letteth as much flow as it may find the vessel that is brought to be capable of."

4 C. Adimant. xiv. §2: "Istorum fraus qui particulas quasdam e Scripturis eligunt quibus decipiant imperitos, non connectentes quae supra et infra scripta sunt, ex quibus voluntas et intentio scriptoris possit intelligi." Had the warning received the slightest attention, the majority of the texts quoted in party controversy would be seen to be wholly inapplicable. But Augustine was inevitably false to his own rule because he had to reconcile the teaching of Christ with all that the Church taught in the fourth century. See Neander, iii. 510.

5 De Cons. Evang. ii. 12, 24, 28, 66, &c.

variations in the narrative of the Evangelists on purely human principles; and yet he uses the irreverent, misleading, and wholly unscriptural phrase, that the sacred writers were "pens of the Holy Ghost." He held that whatever was revealed mysteriously and enigmatically in one part of Scripture was revealed clearly in another part, yet fails to see that there could be nothing of real or independent value in the incessantly wavering interpretations of dim enigmas. After all his judicious theories he makes his exegesis the facile slave of his personal theology.

In the writings of St. Augustine we see the constant flashes of genius, and the rich results of insight and experience, which have given them their power over the minds of many generations. But these merits cannot save his exegetic writings from the charge of being radically unsound. Snatching up the old Philonian and Rabbinic rule which had been repeated for so many generations, that everything in Scripture which appeared to be unorthodox or immoral must be interpreted mystically, he introduced confusion into his dogma of supernatural inspiration by admitting that there are many passages "written by the Holy Ghost," which are objectionable when taken in their obvious sense. He also opened the door to arbitrary fancy. From the intolerable prolixity of his commentary on Genesis, down to his voluminous remarks on many books of the New Testament, we find incessant instances of that futile method which evacuated the Bible of a significance infinitely precious, in order to substitute for its real lessons the thinnest commonplaces of homiletic and dogmatic edification. By his acceptance of the rules of Tichonius he adopted a system of tropology in which "leaven" might everywhere

1 "Inspiratus a Deo sed tamen homo," in Joann. tract. 1, § 1.

2 Conf. vii. 21, De Gen. ad Litt. v. 8; see Trench, p. 50.

De Doctr. Christ. iii. § 37, whence it passed into the Summa of St. Thomas i. Qu. 1, Art. 10.

De Doctr. Christ. iii. § 14: “Quidquid in sermone divino neque ad morum honestatem neque ad fulci veritatem proprie referri potest figuratum esse cognoscas."

5 He adopts the unfortunate notion that all sorts of explanations must be admissible, because the Holy Spirit must have foreseen them (id. ib. 32). The heretics might have urged the same plea.