frequently frame their interpretations of passages in the Old Testament. Of the foundation of which sort of allegory see my book de S. Poes. Hebr. Prælect. 11," Agreeably to this account I have mentioned before, that the Bishop explains literally those words "How beautiful upon the mountains," &c. of the good news of the delivery from Babylon, which the evangelist applies prophetically to the advent of Christ; and the same in a variety of other passages afterwards. Now this serves as a lesson and example to us of the great latitude of that medium mode of explication between the two opposite extremes of being all literal or all typical, which the prophecies admit of, and which readers may reasonably allow to their expositors and to one another, without loading them with suspicions of an intention to undermine the evidences for the Messiahship of Jesus. For here we find that this learned advocate for Christianity is directly at variance with another more ancient advocate, Origen, who was one of those, who would not allow these prophecies of Isaiah and the servant referred to in them to have any relation at all to the return from Babylon, and he could not see that they had any other sense than what related to the Messiah, just as many do at present; in which he differed also (just as well as the Bishop) from Saadias, Grotius, and Rosemuller, as to my servant referring to some prophet or other, instead of the whole people of Israel in captivity; and yet there is no need of testimonies to prove that those writers were all equally true Christians or well designing men. But after so many different explications as have been given of the contents of the fifty-third chapter, both by ancients and moderns, Jews and Christians, during the space space of 1600 years from the time of Origen, it is certainly somewhat remarkable, that the sense which Origen reprobated in the beginning of that period, should be the very sense which the late Bishop of Lon. don should defend at the end of it, namely, that my servant means the whole people of Israel in captivity, and thus should justify the interpretation of those Jews of that early age; although in opposition to Origen the most Christian advocate then existing. * Let this example The words of Origen are these "Memini me olim in quâdam cum Judæorum sapientibus disputatione usum de hac prophetiâ in capite 53, quam Judæus aiebat vaticinari de uno integro populo disperso et percusso, occasione dispersionis Judæorum inter gentes plurimas-in ea disputatione multis verbis coargui, hæc, quæ de unâ aliquâ personâ prædicta sunt, non rectè illos referre ad integrum populum; sciscitabarque ex cujus persona dicatur "Hic peccata nostra fert,"-manifestè enim hi qui dudum in peccatis fuerant, servatoris passione sanati hæc dicunt apud prophetam futura vi dentem, sive sint ex illo populo sive ex gentibus,➡si enim juxta illorum opinionem populus est de quo prophetatur, quomodo propter iniquitates populi dei hic ad mortem ductus est, nisi intelligamus de quopiam alio quam de dei populo? Quis autem is est nisi Jesus Christus? Contra Cels. 1. i. p. 42. It is equally difficult to reconcile the explication of the Bishop as above with these words of other writers. "It was very little to be expected, that any scholar of the present age would revive the obsolete application of my servant to the Jewish people, which has been so often proved to be unfounded, and which even Grotius has reprobated in his refutation of that opinion first broached by Celsus's Jew."-This he may have done properly if it was meant solely of the Jewish people and not also typically and ultimately of Christ, which latter he maintains equally with the Bishop, as his own words thus prove. "Ipsa autem historia Christi nos admonet ita directam a deo mentem prophetæ loquentis, ut quod de populo Israelitico ab ipso dicebatur non minus rectè, aut etiam rectius in Christum conveniret." And hence he adds, “that the delivery from captivity in Egypt was as it were a prefigurative sketch of the delivery by Christ, majoris libertatis fer Christum pariæ rudimentum quoddam fuit. (Not. Matth. i. 22.) This is the same with the explication of the Bishop concerning the delivery from captivity at Babylon. example be applied to the case of others in their not rejecting some literal explications of the modern Jews, which the conviction of their reason could not refuse any more, than this late head of the Christian church in his ingenuous and candid statement of the above subject in question. This revival and defence of the propriety of typical and allegoric prophecies had been begun by Martin in his Pugio Fidei, in which he made a vast collection of all the allegoric interpretations of scripture by the ancient Jews, both weeds and flowers, and by the productions of which he meant to oppose the too literal expositions of the same passages by the modern learned Jews in Spain of his own age; and to shew that if there was any defect in such typical explications, as applied by Christians to Christ, yet it was at least a defect, of which the ancient Jews had themselves set the example, who had applied those same passages to their expected Messiah; so that the literal interpretations of those modern Jews were at best innovations reprobated by their ancestors. This was at least a good argument ad hominem, as it is expressed; but it was reserved for the later commentators from Grotius down to Lowth Bishop of London to justify this mode of interpretation as being an equally good one ad omnes homines; so that what Martin begun, Grotius corrected, and Lowth completed. There Babylon. Again, "Verba ipsa prophetæ ad ultimum iilud complementum obtinent significatum magis proprium magisque excellentem.” (Matth. ii. 15.) In the Letters of M. Simon are two being a full vindication of Grotius, and in course of Lowth. Tom. iii. Letter 26, 27. • The real author was so little known before the publication of Pugio Fidei in 1651, that notwithstanding the opportunities for extensive inquiry which There has however been one objection advanced by Collins against allegorical evidence in prophecies, as if they must in consequence be uncertain, unsolid and chimerical. (Liter. Proph. p. 8.) But to draw such a conclusion is in reality to impose upon the rational faculties of readers: for the truth is, that facts or general truths conveyed to the understandings of men by means of allegories have just as much perspicuity, solidity, and certainty, as by the most direct means of information in words which can be employed. Is not the allegoric message by Tarquin to his son (which was indeed only borrowed from a similar allegory by a celebrated Greek) just as intelligible, and as little uncertain and chimerical, as if he had said behead the chief citizens? So at least those citizens found it to be, and had no reason to question the meaning of the allegory. Is not the contempt of Joash for the power of Amaziah just as clearly evident by his allegoric message to him, as if he had said in direct words, I defy and despise you? Is not the moral truth recommended by the parable of the good Samaritan equally intelligible, certain and true, as if it had been a real history instead of a supposed one, and had been found in an ancient historian related in the plainest words? All such truths have been always found to be impressed on the mind with as much, if not with more force by means of allegory than by the most formal and direct precepts in words. Such evasions then as which Jos. Scaliger possessed, yet he supposed the author to have been Raymundus Sebond. M. Simon confirms that R. Juda Haccadosch never wrote any such book, as Gale-raseia ascribed to him by Galatinus, it being a spurious tract, as well as several others (he says) quoted by Galatinus. (Biblioth. Choisee, p. 76.) these these are in contradiction to the universal experience of mankind: and if possible, still more so, whenever information of distant facts and truths is conveyed to men allegorically by means of present and real facts and truths, such as the redemption of mankind in general by the return from the actual captivity and slavery of the particular nation of the Jews: for the fact predicted cannot be the less certain because the fact which allegorically prefigures it is a real fact and not a supposed one. The mind of man easily discerns similitudes and contrarities, and it is by means of the similitude that the information is conveyed in allegories, whether the facts which convey it be real or only supposed: but similitude alone is not sufficient to convey information, unless also it be evident, that the speaker intended by such a similitude in some present object to give information concerning some distant one; and in this consists one chief defect in the many allegoric interpretations of scriptural prophecies by the Jews in Pugio Fidei, that the speaker had himself no idea of them, and never intended to prefigure any such facts, as those Jews suppose; as for example in the description of the return of spring in the Song of Solomon. But another chief defect is, that even if it were probable that the speaker might intend an allegory, yet it ought not to be admitted as such, in case the similitude arises only by putting a forced sense upon the construction of the words, which is not obviously and naturally contained in them. In such cases as these and in no other can an allegory be deemed uncertain in its meaning and chimerical: and in fact all language is in a great degree only a continued tissue of metaphors and allegories, the latter being a more con tinued |