both in their opinions and interpretations,) and, as is visible in most of them, made with partial views, and adapted to what the occasions of that time, and the present circumstances they were then in, were thought to require, for the support or justification of themselves. Their philosophy also has its part in misleading men from the true sense of the sacred Scripture. He that shall attentively read the Christian writers after the ages of the apostles, will easily find how much the philosophy they were tinctured with influenced them in their understanding of the books of the Old and New Testament. In the ages wherein Platonism prevailed, the converts to Christianity of that school, on all occasions, interpreted Holy Writ according to the notions they had imbibed from that philosophy. Aristotle's doctrine had the same effect in its turn, and when it degenerated into the Peripateticism of the schools, that too brought its notions and distinctions into divinity, and affixed them to the terms of the sacred Scripture. And we may see still how at this day every one's philosophy regulates every one's interpretation of the word of God. Those who are possessed with the doctrine of aërial and aëtherial vehicles, have thence borrowed an interpretation of the four first verses of 2 Cor. v, without having any ground to think that St. Paul had the least notion of any such vehicles. It is plain that the teaching of men philosophy was no part of the design of divine revelation; but that the expressions of Scripture are commonly suited in those matters to the vulgar apprehensions and conceptions of the place and people where they were delivered. And as to the doctrine therein directly taught by the apostles, that tends wholly to the setting up the kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world, and the salvation of men's souls; and in this it is plain their expressions were conformed to the ideas and notions which they had received from revelation, or were consequent from it. We shall therefore in vain go about to interpret their words by the notions of our philosophy, and the doctrines of men delivered in our schools. This is to explain the apostles' meaning by what they never thought of whilst they were writing; which is not the way to find their sense in what they delivered, but our own, and to take up from their writings not what they left there for us, but what we bring along with us in ourselves. He that would understand St. Paul right, must understand his terms in the sense he uses them, and not as they are appropriated by each man's particular philosophy, to conceptions that never entered the mind of the apostle. • For example, he that shall bring the philosophy now taught and received to the explaining of spirit, soul, and body, mentioned 1 Thess. v. 23, will, I fear, hardly reach St. Paul's sense, or represent to himself the notions St. Paul then had in his mind. That is what we should aim at in reading him, or any other author; and until we from his words paint his very ideas and thoughts in our minds, we do not understand him. In the divisons I have made, I have endeavoured the best I could to govern myself by the diversity of matter. But in a writer like St. Paul, it is not so easy always to find precisely where one subject ends and another begins. He is full of the matter, he treats and writes with warmth, which usually neglects method, and those partitions and pauses, which men. educated in the schools of rheto ricians usually observe. Those arts of writing St. Paul, as well out of design as temper, wholly laid by: the subject he had in hand, and the grounds upon which it stood firm, and by which he enforced it, was what alone he minded; and without solemnly winding up one argument, and intimating any way that he began another, let his thoughts, which were fully possessed of the matter, run in one continued train, wherein the parts . of his discourse were wove one into another. So that it is seldom that the scheme of his discourse makes any gap; and, therefore, without breaking in upon the connexion of his language, it is hardly possible to separate his discourse, and give a distinct view of his several arguments in distinct sections. I am far from pretending infallibility in the sense I have anywhere given in my Paraphrase or Notes; that would be to erect myself into an apostle, a presumption of the highest nature in any one that cannot confirm what he says by miracles. I have, for my own information, sought the true meaning as far as my poor abilities would reach : and I have unbiassedly embraced what, upon a fair inquiry, appeared so to me. This I thought my duty and interest in a matter of so great concernment to me. If I must believe for myself, it is unavoidable that I must understand for myself. For if I blindly and with an implicit faith, take the pope's interpretation of the sacred Scripture, without examining whether it be Christ's meaning, it is the pope I believe in, and not in Christ; it is his authority I rest upon; it is what he says I embrace: for what it is Christ says I neither know nor concern myself. It is 270 ON THE UNDERSTANDING OF ST. PAUL. the same thing when I set up any other man in Christ's place, and make him the authentic interpreter of sacred Scripture to myself. He may possibly understand the sacred Scripture as right as any man; but I shall do well to examine myself whether that which I do not know, nay (which in the way I take) I can never know, can justify me in making myself his disciple, instead of Jesus Christ's, who of right is alone and ought to be my only Lord and master, and it will be no less sacrilege in me to substitute to myself any other in his room, to be a prophet to me, than to be my king or priest. The same reasons that put me upon doing what I have in these papers done, will exempt me from all suspicion of imposing my interpretation on others. The reasons that led me into the meaning which prevailed on my mind, are set down with it as far as they carry light and conviction to any other man's understanding, so far I hope my labour may be of some use to him; beyond the evidence it carries with it, I advise him not to follow mine, nor any man's interpretation. We are all men, liable to errors, and infected with them; but have this sure way to preserve ourselves every one from danger by them, if, laying aside sloth, carelessness, prejudice, party, and a reverence of men, we betake ourselves in earnest to the study of the way to salvation, in those holy writings wherein God has revealed it from heaven, and proposed it to the world, seeking our religion where we are sure it is in truth to be found, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. |