entitled "A Vision of the Kingdom of Christ among men,"* has these raptur ous stanzas: "From the third heaven, where God resides, That holy, happy place, The New Jerusalem comes down, How long, dear Saviour, O how long Shall this bright hour delay ? Fly swifter round, ye wheels of time, And bring the welcome day.". Altogether, then, I trust, it is perfectly evident, that had the Revelation of John been written by that Apostle as an express commentary upon the Old Testament, it could not have taught us more clearly than it does, that every thing relating to the history of the Jews, to their worship, and to the countries and cities inhabited by them and by the nations with whom they had intercourse, as recorded by the pen of inspiration, had a symbolic and spiritual meaning. Had the Revelation been an express commentary, we might indeed have been informed more explicitly what that meaning is: but the general principle, that there is such a meaning,—that all the inspired writings do positively contain a sense beyond that which is extant on the surface, could not have been more decisively established. If we deny this principle, we deny to the whole of the Revelation of John any meaning at all: we convert his sublime symbols into a senseless jargon : and, if we still admit his book to have been written by inspiration, we charge with egregious trifling the unerring Spirit of God. No. II. (Page 166.) AN ATTEMPT TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN THE BOOKS OF PLENARY INSPIRATION, CONTAINEd in the Bible, AND THOSE WRITTEN BY THE INSPIRATION GENERALLY ASSIGNED TO THE WHOLE. We are advocating in this work" the Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures ;" and we are endeavouring to shew, that no writing can be produced by Plenary Inspiration without including stores of spiritual and divine wisdom within the outward covering of the literal expression. It must however be admitted, that there are some books contained in the collection called the Bible, which, though they are to be received as the productions of men endowed with an extraordinary share of divine illumination, do not contain the spiritual sense here claim Book i. Hymn 21. ed for the absolute Word of God, and thus cannot be the results of that immediate and Plenary Inspiration which is essential to such writings as are the Word of God indeed. The particular examination of this subject could not conveniently be introduced into the Lectures themselves; wherefore we will make some remarks upon it here. It is necessary that the distinction should not be passed without notice; since, without a knowledge of its existence, they who should endeavour to interpret the Scriptures by the Rule drawn from the Analogy between natural things and spiritual, or to try the validity of the Rule itself, might be disappointed in the results, in consequence of applying it to those parts of the Bible which are not composed according to it, or are not written by the plenary and immediate, but by the more lax and mediate species of inspiration. We have stated in our early Lectures the sentiments which are now generally held by the learned on the nature of the inspiration of the Word of God; and we objected to them as not going far enough, and as not giving a proper idea of compositions that are absolutely divine. They all proceed upon the supposition, that inspiration, be it what it may, is a personal and permanent gift to the man by whom an inspired book is written; that the writers of the Scriptures were divinely illuminated men, who, with few exceptions, wrote in their own words the perceptions of their own minds, which were the constant seats of the illumination of the Holy Spirit: (though some will not admit so much as this.) If this definition were intended for a certain portion, only, of the books commonly called the Holy Scriptures, we should be constrained to admit it to be correct; but we deem it grossly defective when applied to the greater part of them. The inspiration by which these were written, was, we have endeavoured to shew, such as took an entire possession, for the time, of the faculties of the writers; and after they had written what was intended, it again would leave them, and then they would return into their ordinary state; in which they would not necessarily understand the meaning of the things, which, in their state of ecstacy, they had spoken or written. The other books admitted into our Canon of Scripture, appear, for the most part, to have been composed by persons, who were endowed with such a degree of illumination, by the Spirit of God, as to discern, in the former class of writings, the doctrine suited to the dispensation of Divine Truth under which they lived, and which they were raised up to assist in establishing,-such of them as lived under the Jewish dispensation, the doctrine of the Jewish church, and such of them as were raised up to establish Christianity, the doctrine of the Christian Church : and the writings of the latter are justly taken, by the Christian Church, as authoritative declarations of her authentic doctrines. Beside the doctrinal writings of this class, there are also some historical ones. All writings of this class are to be interpreted by their literal sense alone; allowing, however, for their occasional use of figurative expressions, and of words and phrases taken from those Scriptures which have a spiritual sense, and which, of course, must bear the saine meaning when excerpted as in their original repository. In short, these writings are to be explained by the same sort of criticism as would be exercised to ascertain the meaning of other ancient authors. B I. The assertion, that there are writings of two so distinct classes contained in the sacred collection called the Bible, may at first appear arbitrary and unsupported by the reason of the case: and yet when it is more attentively considered, I apprehend it will be discovered to be founded, not merely in reason, but in absolute necessity; for it will appear, that the designs of the Almighty Father in giving a dispensation of his will to man, could not otherwise have been made effectual. 1. We have endeavoured to prove, in the third, and in the preceding part of this fourth Lecture, that no composition which is truly and absolutely the Word of God, could be produced, the literal sense of which should not be composed of natural images, and of appearances of things taken from the world of nature: and that such is actually the case with the books of Scripture which are written by the plenary inspiration, is shewn in the sequel of this, and in the following Lecture. From this peculiarity of construction, it inevitably follows, that the letter cannot every where present such ideas openly to the view, as are proper to form the doctrine of the church founded upon it :-as remarked in our second Lecture,* passages which even appear to be in opposition to each other not unfrequently occur, one of which delivers the genuine truth, and the other the truth covered with the veil of a mere appearance taken from human ideas. But the choice between them is not without its difficulties. It is evident, for the construction of coherent doctrine, that one of these classes of passages must be so explained as to be reconciled with the other: but man, in his untutored, natural state, is not qualified to decide with accuracy by which he ought to abide; and when he studies the Word under the influence of an unpurified heart, he is but too apt to catch at the appearance to the exclusion of the reality; he is ever disposed to kill the prophets, and to stone them that are sent unto him, and he is never so well pleased as when he can destroy, spiritually, the disciples of the Lord, or the pure truths of which the disciples are the depositaries, under the persuasion that he is doing God service, and can allege as his authority the letter of God's Word, of the ambiguities of which he avails himself for the purpose. That the ambiguities of the letter of the Word are very numerous, that it is a sword which turns every way,—is a fact which has become proverbial. Every sect turns it in favour of its peculiar doctrines; and into what a multiplicity of sects the Christian Church has been divided, and what monstrous sentiments have by some of them been maintained, are things well known: yet the most extravagant of them all have professed to found their sentiments upon the Word of God, and have produced passages from its letter which might be construed in their favour. Of this fact, the writers of the Romish Communion have not failed to take advantage: the Word of God, on account of its admitting, as to its letter, of such a variety of interpretations, has, by them, been blasphemously denominated Liber Haresiarum; and they invite their opponents to take refuge from its uncertainties in the ever-consistent de * P. 81. cisions of a self-constituted infallible church. If then men have thus parted the Lord's garments among them, and cast lots upon his vesture, (which circumstances are explained in our fifth Lecture,) notwithstanding it has been provided, as will presently be seen, that the books written in the language of Analogy should be accompanied with others in which the leading doctrines of the former are explicitly developed; to what extremes of perversion would they not have gone, had they been left, without such help, to draw their doctrines from the more mysterious books for themselves! It being then a demonstrable fact, that writings composed in the style which belongs to the absolute Word of God, cannot be understood by the simple and unenlightened, without the help of doctrine, as a lamp to direct their path, drawn thence by some person or persons endowed with special illumination for the purpose; there arises a necessity, that, ever since a written Revelation has been the medium of conveying the divine will to man, in every church possessed of such a Revelation, divinely illuminated persons should be raised up, qualified to deliver, either by oral instruction or by writing, such views of doctrine, founded on that Revelation, as were adapted to the genius of the people among whom they lived, and to the character of the dispensation of which they were the subjects: and there can be no reasonable doubt that the Author of Revelation would provide the aids necessary to render it effectual to its object. Under the Jewish dispensation, which, as well as the Jews themselves, was of a very external character, and in which very enlightened views of doctrine would have surpassed the comprehension of the people, little was wanted beyond the literal enunciation of the Mosaic law, all the rituals of which were by them to be observed according to the letter; yet even then teachers arose, who composed codes of morality, and delivered doctrinal precepts, adapted to impress upon the minds of the Jews such of the truths involved in their law as were more especially calculated for their state and capacities: and, under the Christian dispensation, teachers, gifted with much higher illumination, were raised up, to discover more of the truths involved in the ancient Scriptures, and to declare that "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth;" and that "he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law;"t because "the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." Nor can it be reasonably doubted, that, if any further discoveries of the divine will should ever be necessary, they would be made in a similar manner: nay, many believe that, if not further discoveries, re-discoveries of it have thus been made by Luther and Calvin, to whom some ascribe a spirit of understanding in the Scriptures not much inferior to that enjoyed by the Apostles; indeed, most sectaries entertain a similar opinion of the leaders whom they respectively follow; and though they may be greatly mistaken as to the fact, their belief of it affords a recognition of the principle. So general, indeed, is the conviction, that without sound doctrine as a guide, the Word cannot be understood, that many have viewed the labours of that first of modern Institutions, the British and Foreign Bible • Rom. x. 4. + Ch. xiii. 8. + 1 Tim. i. 5. Society, in circulating the Scriptures without note or comment, as pregnant with mischief, and, tacitly adopting the Roman Catholic principle, have imagined, that thus to communicate the Word of God, is in effect to sow the seeds of heresy. There would have been less room for this apprehension, had the fact not been overlooked, that in the Bible, together with the books which are eminently THE Scriptures, are included writings which deliver the leading doctrines of the former without any recondite meaning. Divine Wisdom knew that books composed in the purely divine style were liable to be misunderstood by the simple and unintelligent; wherefore it has provided that they should be accompanied with writings intended to fix their general import, and to afford a clew to their safe and profitable interpretation.* 2. It may now, we would hope, in some measure appear, that there was reason grounded in absolute necessity for the production of writings of this second class to accompany those of the first: but perhaps it may not immediately be seen that there was any necessity for the production of writings of any other kind than these. The doctrinal purport of these being more easily intelligible, they seem to have acquired, by degrees, a superior degree of estimation: at least it is certain, that it is from these that ministers most frequently take the subject of their discourses in the pulpit; and probably many would wish that the whole Bible consisted of such compositions, and are somewhat scandalized that it does not. But to this it may be sufficient to answer, that had not the Scriptures of plenary inspiration first been given, the others would never have been composed. They were all written by men to whom the compositions which are the Word of God, absolutely, were previously familiar; and the kind of inspiration by which they were produced, consisted in endowing the writers with the faculty of discerning the doctrines contained in that Word; to which, therefore, as higher authority, they continually refer. Indeed, it is a fact, on which something is said in the fifth Lecture, that without the existence of the Scriptures of plenary inspiration in the world, no illumination in divine things could, in the present state of mankind, be afforded. Accordingly, after the resurrection of the Lord, it is said respecting his disciples, "Then opened he their understandings that they should understand the Scriptures" And in giving the promise of the Holy Ghost, the Lord says, * It must however be confessed, that many things in these writings also, are, as must unavoidably be the case in all writings of great antiquity," hard to be understood;" they being full of allusions to circumstances and opinions of which nothing at all is now known, except by the learned, and but little by them, and containing many words used in a sense peculiar to the writers: hence it is but too true, that some of the greatest theological errors have been founded upon these very writings; as was naturally to be expected when men went to the study of ancient writers with minds pre-occupied by modern ideas. † Luke xxiv. 45. It is to be observed, that, in the Bible, no writings are ever called, simply," the Scriptures," but those which are written by the Plenary Inspiration to them the term is applied by way of eminence, and as an ellipsis for the divine or inspired Writings. It will hardly be maintained, that when Peter, (2 |