that, in fact, many of those things which we find it most difficult to understand are not (as I have already observed) properly speaking the subjects of revelation. For instance, there seems to be no doubt that we might comprehend much more, on the subject of angels-of their origin, nature, numbers, qualities, modes of action, history and destiny, if it had pleased God to reveal it. Nay, it may be reasonably supposed, that such a farther revelation would make the few, brief, and scattered notices which we have, more intelligible. But this does not seem to have been the object of revelation; and they are only incidentally mentioned, as connected with that which is its object. It seems to me that this is the more correct way of stating the matter, though there is certainly some truth in the common statement.

II. A second difficulty has been raised by the opinion that the Bible, unlike other books, has a secret or mystical meaning in addition to, or even to the exclusion of, the plain meaning of the words.

I believe this opinion to have arisen from man's wisdom becoming, through a vain philosophy, ashamed of the wisdom of God. The

"latitude of application) is common to all the "earlier advocates of allegorical exposition."* Speaking of Philo, whose bold absurdity in this way of what is called interpreting is suffici ently notorious, the same writer says, "The 66 principle which induced him to adopt the "allegorical method, he expressly states to be, "the conviction of the necessity for thus inter"preting those portions of the inspired volume, "which, to speculative and philosophical "minds, might appear to contain any thing "derogatory to the acknowledged nature and "attributes of the Almighty."+

I heartily wish that what Mr. Conybeare says of "the earlier advocates of allegorical exposition" applied to them only. Certainly they avowed and acted on the principle with the utmost boldness; perhaps even in a way that would startle most modern, spiritualising interpreters. In arguing with Celsus, Origen flatly tells him that the law is twofold, literal and spiritual; and that this is no new doctrine of his. That God himself, by his prophet, speaking of the former, had declared it to consist of “statutes that were not good," Ezek.

* Conybeare's Bampton Lectures for 1824, p. 43.
+ Ib., p. 46.

xx. 25.* In his xvth homily on Joshua, he tells us, that if the Jewish history were not to be understood spiritually, it would never have been directed to be read in the Christian Church; and in his Philocalia we find a chapter on the necessity of making out a sense such as shall be "worthy of God." Something not unlike this was avowed by Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, &c., and was even adopted by some of the later Jews; among them by Maimonides. A mode of interpretation so well adapted to discover any preconceived error, or evade any plain truth, in the Word of God, was useful in its turn to all parties; and it was, and continues to be, most popular.

I must add my belief that the cumbersome apparatus of systematic interpretation ought to be placed among the impediments to the right understanding of the Word of God. The learning and labour which have been bestowed on it seem to me to have been worse than wasted; and so far from its helping towards the understanding of the Word of God, it appears more calculated to puzzle and perplex the student, and to supply to those who may desire it, the means of confounding common

* Con. Cels., Lib. vii. No. 20.

sense, and perverting the plain text of Scripture. Those who wish to see the subject in all its grandeur may read Glassius's Philologia Sacra; and those who are satisfied with a more brief survey of it may consult Waterland's Preface to his Scripture Vindicated, from which I extract the following "Sketch of the several divisions and subdivisions of Scripture interpretation."

This systematic scheme is probably unknown to most readers, and therefore is not directly

an impediment to them; but it is obvious that complex machinery which they never saw, and could not understand, may have a great effect on the manufactured article of which they are the consumers.

3. The Old Testament is the only book in what is now a dead language. This, of course, does not affect the principle of interpretation, though it may make the actual interpretation more difficult; and has encouraged critics to take such liberties with Hebrew, as they could not venture upon with languages of which we have more ample remains.

The use of the dialects in discovering the meaning of a language circumstanced like the Hebrew, is obvious; but their abuse to the maintenance of fanciful and forced interpretation is too notorious, and it is clear that, unless under very sober management, they are likely to be impediments, rather than helps, in any case of real difficulty. The natural flux of language renders a modern dialect a very unsafe guide in interpreting its own original source, even when, in any given case, we are sure that we have found it.

To come, however, to the liberties which have been taken with the language itself.