LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Theological Seminary, 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BR 45 .H84 1844 ' .ono 1 
 Marsden, John Howard, 1803- 
 
 1891. 
 The evils which have 
 resulted at various times 
 
-^m/^ieivv^- "-iU^c^-i^ti^ . 
 
 THE EVILS WHICH HAVE RESULTED AT VARIOUS TIMES FROM 
 A MISAPPREHENSION OF OUR LORD'S MIRACLES. 
 
 EIGHT DISCOURSES 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CAMBRIDGE IN THE YEAR 
 
 MDCCCXLIV. 
 
 AT THE LECTURE FOUNDED BY THE 
 REV. JOHN HULSE, M.A. 
 
 BY THE y^ 
 
 REV. JOHN HOWARD MARSDEN, E.D. 
 
 KECTOR OF GREAT OlliLEY, ESSKX, A.ND l.ATE FELIXtW 
 OF ST, JOHN'S COLIJ.GE, 
 
 LONDON 
 
 W I L L I A M PI C K E R I N G 
 
 MDCCCXLV 
 
TO 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM HODGSON, D.D. 
 
 IIASTICR OF ST, PUTER'S COLLEGE, ANU LATE VICE CHANCELLOR, 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D. 
 
 MASTER OK TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE REV. RALPH TATHAM, D.D. 
 
 MASTER OF ST. JOHN's COLLEGE, 
 
 %liZ0z Mmnv0z0, 
 
 PREACHED BY THEIR APPOINTMENT, 
 
 ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY 
 
 INSCRIBED. 
 
THE duty of the Lecturer or Preacher, appointed under 
 the Will of the late Rev. John Hulse, M. A. of St. 
 John's College, was originally to preach twenty Sermons 
 during the year at St. Mary's Church in Cambridge; upon 
 " The Evidence for Revealed Religion ; the Truth and 
 Excellence of Christianity; or the more difficult Texts 
 and obscure parts of the Holy Scriptures, such as might 
 appear to be more generally useful and necessary to be 
 explained." 
 
 By an order of the Court of Chancery, the number of 
 Lectures has been reduced to eight : and the Preacher is 
 required to print them within twelve months after the 
 delivery of the last Lecture. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 Recapitulation of the former Course. — A revelation such as that of 
 Jesus could not have been established without miracles. — Certain cases 
 in which it might be otherwise. — Mahometanism, and the modern 
 imposture of Mormonism. — Objections to miraculous evidence in the 
 abstract. 
 
 Exodus iv. 1. 
 
 But, behold, they xoill not believe me, nor hearken to my voice : for they will 
 say, — The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Alleged partiality in the mode of evidence by miracles. — This not the case 
 with our Lord's miracles. — Reason why their effect upon the Jews was 
 not overpowering. — Prevalent belief in the powers of magic. 
 
 Luke xi. 15. 
 But some of them said, — He casteth out devils by Beelzebub the Prince of devils. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Our Lord's miracles of a character different from what the Jews had been 
 accustomed to. — Yet in harmony with His doctrine, — And both of them 
 incompatible with the notion of an evil agency. 
 
 John x. 21. 
 These are not the words of one that hath a devil. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 In what sense our Lord came *' not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil " it. 
 — The Jews could have no valid ground of objection to Ilim on this 
 account. — The sin against the Holy Ghost. — Observations on the charge 
 of arguing in a circle. 
 
 Matthew xii. 31. 
 
 All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men : hit ihc blasphemy 
 (igninst the Holy Ghost sitall not be forgiven unto men. 
 
VI II COiVTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 The question proposed, — whether in the miracles themselves there was 
 any hidden meaning. — Metaphorical actions frequently mentioned in 
 Scripture. — Alleged grounds for believing that in certain miracles a 
 spiritual meaning was intended. — Need of extreme caution in seeking 
 for it. 
 
 Matthew xiii. 51. 
 
 Have ye understood all these things? 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 Rules for our guidance in spiritual interpretation. — Rashness of some 
 allegorists. — Their arguments in self-defence. — Danger of tampering 
 with the miracles. — Instances of mystical interpretation. — Vagueness 
 and uncertainty of it. 
 
 2 Timothy iv. 4. 
 
 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto 
 fables. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 Inquiry into the origin and history of allegorical interpretation.— Philo. — 
 Clement of Alexandria. — Origen. — Its tendency when employed with- 
 out discretion. 
 
 2 Timothy iv. 4. 
 
 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto 
 fables. 
 
 LECTURE Vlir. 
 
 Gradual progress of its evil effects upon Woolston. — His early admiration 
 of Origen. — Growing distaste for the letter of Scripture. — Denial of the 
 literal narrative of the miracles. — Attempt to justify himself by the 
 example of the Fathers. — Gross misrepresentations of them. — His 
 objections to the miracles of healing. — To the destruction of the barren 
 fig-tree. — Conclusion. 
 

 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 [PREACHED ON EASTER DAY.] 
 
 EXODUS IV. 1. 
 
 BEHOLD, THEY AVILL NOT BELIEVE ME, NOR HEARKEN TO MY 
 
 VOICE : FOR THEY WILL SAY, THE LORD HATH NOT APPEARED 
 
 UNTO THEE. 
 
 IN the former course of these Lectures, our attention 
 was directed to certain important announcements 
 made by our blessed Saviour to Nicodemus, at the 
 commencement of his ministry ; and in particular to 
 the clear intimation which he gave of his future re- 
 jection by the Jewish rulers, and of his death upon 
 the cross. We endeavoured to trace the process by 
 which these predictions were fulfilled ; — the mode in 
 which men's passions and prejudices operated in 
 accomplishing the designs of Providence. We found 
 reason to believe that our Lord was rejected, because 
 he did not answer the popular interpretation of those 
 ancient prophecies, which described in magnificent 
 
 B 
 
2 LECTURE I. 
 
 phrase and metaphor the glories of the Messiah. We 
 found also, that having been rejected, he was by the 
 same persons condemned to death : — being made ame- 
 nable to the law against blasphemers, on the ground 
 of his having claimed a divine character in calling 
 himself the Son of God. And we know that all this 
 was done in open defiance of his miracles. The works 
 were acknowledged to be supernatural, and yet the 
 commission was not recognized as divine. Their evi- 
 dence was set aside on the presumption that they 
 were wrought by a Satanic agency, and not by any 
 special interposition of God. 
 
 According, then, to the popular definition of " a 
 miracle," the great question which presented itself to 
 the Jews of old was, — whether the immediate agency 
 in the production of the miracles of Jesus, was that 
 of the Almighty, or of demons. Or, — if it be under- 
 stood that a miracle cannot be wrought without the 
 direct interposition of God, — whether the works of 
 Jesus were miracles, or not. This question it is now 
 proposed to investigate. We are about to examine how 
 far those unhappy men were justified in acting, as they 
 did, on the assumption that the works which w^re 
 exhibited before their eyes, — such being the character 
 of him who wrought them, — such the character of 
 his teaching, — and such the character of the works 
 themselves, — were merely Satan's devices to under- 
 mine their faith, and to seduce them from their alle- 
 oiance to Jeliovali. 
 
LECTURE I. 3 
 
 This proposed arrangement will not only afford 
 me the advantage of pursuing one continuous line 
 throughout the two courses of these Lectures, but 
 will also embrace both of the great subjects to which 
 the Lecturer is especially directed to turn his atten- 
 tion : namely, the " explanation of Scripture," and 
 the demonstration of the " evidence " upon which the 
 divine authority of Scripture rests. In the former 
 course, we were employed in examining an important 
 passage in the Gospel of St. John ; a passage, which 
 although neither peculiarly difficult nor obscure, may 
 nevertheless be fairly classed among those, which the 
 Founder of the Lecture has pointed out, as " more 
 generally useful to be explained." And now we pro- 
 ceed to investigate a most essential branch of the evi- 
 dences for revealed religion, namely the ** evidence" 
 of miracles. 
 
 When a revelation is published to mankind by one 
 who professes to bear a commission to that effect 
 from the Supreme Governor of the Universe, it is 
 only natural that he should be required to exhibit his 
 credentials. His own bare assertion is not enough. 
 There must be some convincing token of the divine 
 presence and authority : we must see and recognize 
 the broad seal of heaven. No doctrine, however holy 
 and excellent it may be, however consonant with our 
 natural apprehension of the divine attributes, will at 
 first make its way among men without some other 
 force than that of its own intrinsic goodness. If he 
 
4 LrXTURE I. 
 
 who proclaims it, be a man of apparent sincerity, for 
 the doctrine's sake, and for his own sake, we may be 
 disposed to believe him ; or at all events to be of 
 opinion, that there is a greater probability of his being 
 an authorized messenger than the reverse. But no 
 further effect than this will be produced, even upon 
 the thoughtful and well-disposed. If the Almighty 
 has in truth communicated to him a direct revelation, 
 as He did to the prophets of old, tliere can be no 
 doubt that his soul is possessed with an irresistible 
 conviction of the divine original of that which he pro- 
 claims. But inasmuch as no man is a competent 
 judge of what passes in the bosom of another, this in- 
 ward sense can be no ground of conviction to any save 
 the immediate recipient. For how can men either 
 satisfy themselves or convince others, that this self- 
 called messenger from heaven is in reality so void of 
 deceit as he appears to be ? Or how can they be 
 satisfied that he has not mistaken the impression of a 
 dream, or the musings of imagination, for reality ? — 
 And while he makes so little way with the serious and 
 thoughtful portion of the world, upon the great bulk 
 of mankind, with their evil habits and blind preju- 
 dices, he will produce no impression whatever. 
 What moral effect did all the arguments and all the 
 eloquence of ancient philosophy produce upon the 
 character of the multitude in Rome and Athens ? 
 How many converts from idolatry were made by their 
 dialogues on the nature of the Gods : — how many bad 
 
LECTURE I, 
 
 men were brought over to the practice of virtue, by 
 their disquisitions upon good and evil ? The disease 
 was too deeply rooted to be expelled by so feeble a 
 remedy. Philosophy was taught, indeed, but it was 
 not practised even by the teachers themselves: and it 
 is acknowledged, that the disciples derived no more 
 advantage from it, than a sick man would, by merely 
 listening to the discourses of a physician, without 
 following his advice. 
 
 In short, it will scarcely admit of a question, that 
 in order to enforce upon mankind the observance of 
 any stringent precept "of moral discipline, in oppo- 
 sition to the selfish passions of their nature, it is 
 necessary in the first place to arouse their attention ; — 
 and then to convince them, by some forcible and ex- 
 peditious mode of proof, that it is the voice of God 
 that speaketh. There must be no long and laborious 
 deductions for them to follow out, no tracing of the 
 dependence of one truth upon another through a 
 tedious and intricate line of consequences. It must 
 be something which all can understand ; something 
 of which they will see the meaning and perceive the 
 force at once. A vast majority of mankind are far too 
 busily occupied in providing for their daily suste- 
 nance, to find much leisure for the discussion of an 
 argument. They look around, and they see in the 
 works of the creation, a standing evidence of God's 
 existence and attributes. In the continued order of 
 the universe they see a sure demonstration of his 
 
6 LECTURE I. 
 
 constant Providence. It is on the theatre of nature 
 that they behold the Almighty continually declaring 
 himself; and hence, if he should see fit to make any 
 new and special discovery of his will, it is here that 
 they are prepared to look for the evidence of it. 
 Supposing, therefore, that one should come to them 
 as a messenger from heaven, and in proof of his mis- 
 sion should give sight to the blind, or walk upon the 
 sea, or raise a dead man from the grave, — this is pre- 
 cisely the kind of evidence to make an impression 
 upon them. Every one who can distinguish between 
 blindness and the faculty of sight, between a dead 
 corpse and a living man, is able to comprehend its 
 force. However men may be engrossed with worldly 
 business, they will pause to examine it. Like Moses, 
 when the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness, 
 '' they will turn aside, and see this great sight, why 
 the bush is not burnt." ^ 
 
 With the generality of mankind, then, even the 
 truths of natural religion will require some super- 
 natural authority to impress them, with their neces- 
 sary obligations, upon the mind. How much more, 
 then, will such supernatural authority be required, to 
 introduce those mysterious doctrines and positive 
 institutions, which it may please tlie Almighty to 
 superadd to the religion of nature ! If miracles be 
 
 Exodus iii. 3. 
 
LECTURE r. 7 
 
 required to confirm man's belief in the great doctrine 
 of the immortality of the soul, how much more 
 necessary will they be to induce a faith in such mys- 
 teries as the distinction of persons in the Godhead, 
 and the salvation of mankind by the blood and inter- 
 cession of a Redeemer ! In vain would it be to pro- 
 claim the nature and efficacy of the Sacraments, and 
 the resurrection of the body from the grave — in vain 
 to preach forgiveness of wrong to the revengeful, and 
 beneficence to the selfish, — in vain to exhort the 
 churlish to do to others as he would have others do 
 to him, — unless the messenger speak with more than 
 human authority. No revelation, in short, upon 
 those points which are of the most overwhelming im- 
 portance, will be received without the evidence of 
 miracles : and the more important the doctrine, the 
 more needful will it be to bring a supernatural con- 
 firmation of it. Without miracles, the messenger will 
 be thrust aside, like one who reproved a wrongful 
 man in the days of old ; and they will cry out, — 
 " Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?"'^ 
 Fearful, if not despairing, he will be constrained to 
 exclaim, — " Behold, they will not believe me, nor 
 hearken to my voice, for they say, — The Lord hath 
 not appeared unto thee." 
 
 Circumstances, however, inay occur, in which it 
 might be possible for a pretended messenger from 
 
 2 Exodus ii. 14. 
 
8 LECTURE I. 
 
 heaven in some degree to establish his claim to divine 
 authority, without the aid of miracles. 
 
 If, for instance, to some untutored and barbarous 
 race of men, whose traditional know^ledge of the truth 
 is debased and darkened, if not totally lost, in idolatry, 
 — if to such a race of men there should be offered a 
 pretended revelation, having for its basis the great 
 principle of the unity of God, and giving out that 
 the truth, originally delivered to the Prophets and 
 Patriarchs of old, was now to be restored to its ori- 
 ginal purity. If this revelation should contain no 
 strict precepts of humiliation and self-denial, imposing 
 little or no restraint upon the sensual appetites, re- 
 quiring no change of heart, placing among its primary 
 obligations, the easy and salubrious rites of an out- 
 ward ceremonial. If at first, while powerless, it 
 should speak the language of peace and toleration ; 
 and having, by degrees, stirred up a warlike spirit 
 among a courageous race of men, should then begin 
 to breathe fiery denunciations against its opponents ; 
 announcing a divine commission to exterminate un- 
 believers, and to propagate the true faith at the point 
 of the sword. If it should find a ready access to the 
 hearts of men, by promising the most exquisite joys 
 of a voluptuous paradise to those whose destiny it 
 may be to expend their lives in the cause, and to 
 those who survive to divide the spoil, every gratifi- 
 cation of avarice and lust; declaring that a drop of 
 blood shed in the cause of God, or a night spent in 
 
LECTURE r. 
 
 arms, is of more avail than many clays' fasting and 
 prayer; and offering a higher reward in heaven to 
 those v^ho fight for the faith, than to those v^^ho 
 merely perform the peaceful and obscure duties of 
 domestic life. If it should describe in glowing terms 
 the future anguish of infidels, and the still more 
 bitter torment of apostates. If it should abstain from 
 any interference with the sacred character of more 
 ancient forms of faith ; offering at first little or no 
 violence to religious prejudices ; treating, with an 
 affectation of respect, names that have been held in 
 reverenceof old:— professing to be sent for the express 
 purpose of healing divisions, and to bind men toge- 
 ther in one common and universal faith ; and yet 
 turning to its own advantage the mutual hostility of 
 contending sects. Under such circumstances as these, 
 — in the absence of many of those obstacles which 
 must have impeded the progress of the Gospel of 
 Christ, — it might be possible for this pretended 
 revelation to gain a footing in the world, although 
 unsupported by miracles. For if once its author 
 succeeds in establishing a spiritual dominion over 
 the minds of a small body of followers, he may then 
 persuade them that the evidence of miracles is unne- 
 cessary : or he may venture, perhaps, to assert the 
 performance of miracles, without the inconvenience 
 of being called upon for proof. Such was the case of 
 old with the pretended Prophet of Arabia ; and such 
 also, in some respects, has been the case with another 
 
10 LECTURE r. 
 
 Impostor vvlioni it has been reserved for our own age 
 to produce, in one of the remoter and less civilized 
 states of the great republic of the West.^ 
 
 To institute a parallel betvi^een these two pretended 
 messengers from heaven, — between the conqueror of 
 Arabia, the founder of a civil and religious empire, 
 the author of a mighty revolution, which changed 
 the features, whether social or political, of half the 
 countries of the known world ; — to institute a com- 
 parison between one, to whom, so far as he brought 
 his idolatrous countrymen to the knowledge and wor- 
 ship of one Supreme Creator, must certainly be 
 awarded the credit of having opened their eyes to 
 some faint glimmering of the truth ; — to institute a 
 comparison between him and that Impostor of mo- 
 dern times, will scarcely be thought to be — what 
 in truth it is — a work of serious and sober earnestness. 
 But when it is considered, that with all the apparent 
 disadvantages of mean origin, and unlettered ignor- 
 ance, and infamous reputation,* — with so little about 
 him to spread the contagion of enthusiasm, — with 
 scarcely one better quality to redeem the falsehood 
 and treachery, the cruelty and selfishness of his cha- 
 racter ; — well described by one who knows him well, 
 as *' a polluted mass of corruption, iniquity and 
 fraud ;" — when it is considered that this man, in the 
 
 ^ The founder of the American Sect of Mormonites. 
 * See an account of the Sect of Mormonites, by the Rev. H. 
 Caswall. 
 
LECTURE I. 11 
 
 nineteenth century, and among professing Christians, 
 has in our own country attached to himself several 
 thousand disciples, and not less than a hundred thou- 
 sand in the West, during a period in which the faith of 
 Mahomet was working its slow and painful progress 
 in comparative obscurity. When we see him already 
 assuming the regal office as well as the sacerdotal, 
 giving laws to his Medina,^ raising new fortifications, 
 assembling an army round his person, and indulging 
 in projects of conquest and spoliation.^ When all this 
 is considered, it will appear that in the two cases 
 there is at least one striking similarity ; — each afford- 
 ing an instance of the wonderful effects accomplished 
 by religious fanaticism, in the hands of subtle and 
 unscrupulous ambition. 
 
 Were it not a departure from the object which we 
 have more immediately in view, it w^ould be an easy 
 task to give in detail, the points of resemblance be- 
 tween them. In each of these pretended revelations, 
 it is acknowledged that Moses and our blessed Sa- 
 viour were Prophets, and that Jesus was greater than 
 all who had preceded him. In fact, the modern im- 
 postor has engrafted his own scriptures upon the 
 historical part of the Bible ; putting them forth as a 
 continuation or supplement : and like the Koran, they 
 
 5 ''The Holy City of Nauvoo," on the Mississippi, — which is 
 stated to contain already 12,000 inhabitants, 
 
 ^ Soon after this, the pretended Prophet lost his life in a popular 
 tumult ; and yet his followers are still increasing-. 
 
12 LECTURE I. 
 
 are a palpable imitation of Holy Writ, both in thought 
 and diction. In each of these pretended revelations 
 there is a studious assertion of the wonderful dignity 
 and infallibility of its own Prophet. Each abounds 
 in promises rather than precepts, and each is diffuse 
 and circumstantial in its description of a future state. 
 If the Arabian Prophet placed the practical part of 
 religion in the observance of an easy code of morals, 
 and a not very onerous ceremonial ; the other makes 
 it to consist, for the most part, in feeling and impulse ; 
 — estimating the believer's growth not by the degree 
 of fidelity with which he performs the moral duties 
 of life, but by the amount of pleasurable sensations 
 which he may be able to excite in his own bosom. 
 In each the standard of morals is far below that of 
 the Gospel ; and each makes a special allowance for 
 the irregularities of its own Prophet. In each there 
 is a studied perversion and falsification of the Bible ; 
 and in the latter, this species of impiety is of the 
 most revolting description. The point, however, to 
 which our attention must be especially directed, is 
 that of miracles. In each it is tacitly acknowledged 
 that miracles are needful, for miraculous visions 
 are made the very basis upon which the revelation 
 rests ; but in each there is a positive disclaimer 
 of all 7xal miracles, that is, of all such as depend 
 upon external and independent testimony. Each of 
 these impostors " bears record of himself;" and his 
 record is nothing more than the unsupported asser- 
 
LECTURE I. 13 
 
 tion of a bold and profligate adventurer. When the 
 Prophet of Mecca expatiated upon the inimitable 
 beauties of his Koran, — challenging either angels or 
 men to equal the transcendent beauties of a single 
 passage, and appealing to the perfection of his reve- 
 lation as a sufficient proof of its divine origin, — his 
 opponents called upon him for some visible sign from 
 heaven. They desired that he vs^ould bring down an 
 angel to confirm his mission; that he w^ould create a 
 garden in the desert, or kindle a conflagration in the 
 unbelieving city. To which he replied, that if they 
 would not believe in God's word which he had pro- 
 mulgated, although a revelation should be given by 
 which mountains are removed, or the earth cloven in 
 sunder, or the dead caused to speak, it would still be 
 ineffectual . He told them that God in his merciful 
 providence refuses such signs and wonders, as would 
 depreciate the merit of faith, and aggravate the guilt 
 of infidelity. And that the only reason for which he 
 had not been sent with the evidence of miracles, like 
 other prophets before him, was, that the miracles of 
 those prophets had been charged with imposture. 
 
 Similar in purport, but marked with a more auda- 
 cious impiety, are the answers given to a similar de- 
 mand by the Prophet of the West. In one place he 
 denies that the miracles of the Bible were intended 
 to be any attestation of a divine commission ; assert- 
 ing that they were simply acts of compassion, wrought 
 for the special benefit of those particular believers 
 
14 LECTURE I. 
 
 who were the objects of them. In another place, the 
 reply is abruptly given in a perverted passage of 
 Scripture — '* A wicked and adulterous nation seeketh 
 for a sign, and verily there shall no sign be given 
 them." In another, the inquirer is gravely dismissed 
 with the following advice : — " If you wish to receive 
 proof of the doctrine, ask in faith, as we have done, 
 and it shall be given you." In other words, — first 
 believe, then inquire, and then you shall know it to 
 be true. And yet, in the face of this attempt to de- 
 preciate the evidence of miracles, it is upon miracu- 
 lous evidence indirectly, that is, upon the pretended 
 evidence of prophecy, that this impostor founds his 
 claim. He alleges the preternatural discovery of 
 a number of sacred documents, collected and com- 
 posed by an inspired Jew in the fourth century, and 
 hidden in the earth from that time to the present. 
 In these documents it is predicted that a seer shall 
 arise in the latter days, who shall be divinely com- 
 missioned to bring them forth from their hiding place ; 
 adding to them other words which God shall speak 
 unto him ; and amid many conflicting opinions, 
 restoring the true faith. These are the prophet's 
 credentials ; and these credentials, after all, rest upon 
 a pretended miracle. 
 
 If, then, it should be thought, that the rapid and 
 wide propagation of an imposture, such as either of 
 those to which we have been alluding, affords any 
 argument that a divine revelation like the Gospel, 
 
LECTURE I. 15 
 
 might gain a footing among men without the con- 
 comitant evidence of miracles, it will be found on 
 further examination, that the circumstances are en- 
 tirely dissimilar, and that the conclusion is false. 
 That men will be predisposed to embrace a system, 
 whieh rather sanctions than condemns the indulgence 
 of carnal appetites, — and that they will be predis- 
 posed to reject another, which not only forbids the 
 outward act, but the inward desire, the adultery com- 
 mitted in the heart, — needs no demonstration. And 
 after all, each of these systems of faith is founded 
 upon a pretended miracle ; and a miracle, too, which 
 being void of all external testimony, is of the kind 
 which must necessarily carry with it the least 
 weight. 
 
 It is altogether superfluous, and beyond the scope 
 of the present design^ to occupy the time in reca- 
 pitulating objections which have been made to the 
 proof by miracles in the abstract, or to tell in this 
 place the often-told tale of the fallacy of those objec- 
 tions. We do not deny that miracles are ^' contrary 
 to experience ;" — that is, to our own experience ; — 
 but to assume that they were contrary to the expe- 
 rience of our Lord's contemporaries, is to assume the 
 very point in question. It is acknowledged that ** the 
 course of nature is unalterable ;" or in other words, 
 that it is governed by laws which man is not per- 
 mitted to interfere with : — in fact it is this consi- 
 deration which gives to the miracle its efficacy, as a 
 
16 LECTURE I. 
 
 proof that the revelation proceeds from God. It is 
 acknowledged, that the laws established by a Creator 
 of infinite wisdom, for the government of the material 
 creation, cannot be supposed to stand in need of sub- 
 sequent alteration, or to require that he should derange 
 the machine and suspend its operations in order to 
 improve it. But it is no imputation on the wisdom 
 of those laws, to suppose that they may be suspended 
 for some purpose of a moral character ; for the pur- 
 pose of exerting an influence over the vmids of men, 
 in matters relating to their eternal happiness. It is 
 acknowledged that it would be derogatory to the 
 Almighty's character, to represent him as altering his 
 plans, ordaining one thing, and issuing a subsequent 
 ordinance to counteract it. But who shall undertake 
 to say, that the system of miraculous evidence may 
 not have been ordained from the very foundation of 
 the world ? It is acknowledged that our acquaint- 
 ance with the powers of nature is imperfect, espe- 
 cially as to their extent, and that we may consequently 
 be led to ascribe to supernatural agency, that which 
 is in reality the effect of natural causes, unperceived 
 by us, and unknown. But nevertheless, to walk upon 
 the sea, to raise to life a corpse already advancing in 
 the stages of putrefaction, are acts so far beyond the 
 reach of any power with which man has hitherto been 
 acquainted, as to make it incredible that a merciful 
 God would permit them to be performed before his 
 creatures for the mere purpose of delusion. 
 
LECTURE I. 17 
 
 One of those miracles, the latest and most impor- 
 tant of them all, we are called upon this day to com- 
 memorate. We recognize in it not only a stupen- 
 dous manifestation of Divine power, but also, in a 
 double sense, the fulfilment of prophecy. It was a 
 proof that the Psalmist spoke true, when he said, — 
 '• Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt 
 thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption :" and 
 it was that " sign of the prophet Jonas," spoken of by 
 our blessed Lord himself, and declared to be the only 
 sign which should be given to an " evil and adulte- 
 rous generation." It was a miracle, to the truth of 
 which, even the Chief Priests and Pharisees by their 
 studied precautions, gave an unwilling evidence. All 
 the miracles proved that Jesus *^came from God :" 
 but this miracle proved that he had accomplished 
 the object for which God had sent him, by triumph- 
 ing over sin and death. When the widow's son of 
 Nain, the daughter of Jairus at Capernaum, and 
 Lazarus of Bethany, were raised to life from the 
 dead, it was only a temporary suspension of the 
 tyrant's power, — a brief respite from the doom that 
 still awaited them. The bodies in which they rose 
 were the same " natural" bodies in which they died : 
 and ere long the dark valley of the shadow of death 
 was to be travelled by them again. But when Jesus 
 rose from the grave, it was in a '^ spiritual" and glo- 
 rified body. '' Death had no more dominion over 
 him."— He was '* the first fruits of them that slept." 
 
 c 
 
18 LECTUllE I. 
 
 When the disciples, faithless and faint-hearted, 
 had seen the stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre, 
 all their hopes being buried with Him in whom 
 those hopes had centered, they departed to their 
 homes in shame, and sorrow, and confusion of face. 
 As the sky is darkest during the hour that precedes 
 the break of day, so was the face of the Church 
 during that awful interval. But at length the *' sun 
 of righteousness" arose, and the darkness was dis- 
 pelled for ever. In like manner as our Lord's former 
 miracles had proved his power and beneficence, his 
 disposition to do good to the bodies and souls of 
 men, and his perfect ability to suspend the laws of 
 nature with that gracious intent ; so this last and 
 greatest miracle proved the certainty of our own resur- 
 rection, and all the points of doctrine connected with 
 that important truth. The soul's separate existence 
 from the body, its immortal nature, and its future 
 existence in happiness or misery, are all implied in 
 the great event which we now commemorate. To use 
 the words of that blessed Apostle who first entered 
 the sepulchre, and saw with his eyes the reality of 
 what had taken place; — God hath " begotten us 
 again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ from the dead ; to an inheritance incorrupti- 
 ble, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.''^ 
 
 T 1 Peter i. 3. 
 
LECTURE 11. 
 
 LUKE XI. 15. 
 
 BUT SOME OF THEM SAID IIECASTETH OUT DEVILS BY BEELZEBUB 
 
 THE PRINCE OF DEVILS. 
 
 IT will be agreed, perhaps, that such a j'evelation 
 as that of the Gospel, imposing duties so repug- 
 nant to man's natural propensities, and enjoining a 
 constant control over some of the most powerful 
 passions by which he is actuated, is not likely to make 
 its way to general acceptance, without some unques- 
 tionable evidence of its coming with the authority of 
 God. An objection, however, which has been brought 
 to the mode of evidence by miracles, will here demand 
 our consideration. Not as in itself of more import- 
 ance than others which have been passed over 
 without remark, but as being closely connected with 
 the question touching the prevalent opinions among 
 the Jews on the subject of miracles, which it is pro- 
 posed to investigate. 
 
 It has been alleged, that the mode of confirming a 
 
20 LECTURE II. 
 
 revelation by miracles, wrought in one place, and at 
 one period of time, is lieible to the imputation of 
 partiality. That to those who are the subjects and 
 eyewitnesses of such miracles, the evidence is alto- 
 gether overpowering. That its impression continually 
 grows fainter under the operation of time, so that 
 each successive race of men is submitted to a moral 
 trial of greater severity than that of the age which 
 preceded it. And that at length the trial becomes 
 one of such extreme and disproportionate severity, 
 when compared with that of the contemporary gene- 
 ration, as to be incompatible with our ideas of the 
 mercy, and even of the justice, of Almighty God. 
 
 If such were, indeed, the case, it is not easy to see 
 by what mode it would be possible for any messenger 
 from heaven to be accredited, or his revelation proved 
 to be divine. Whether the doctrine were of God, or 
 whether it were of man, according to this mode of 
 argument, it must alike '* come to nought.*' Perhaps 
 it might be suggested, that the difficulty would be 
 obviated by a periodical repetition of miracles. But 
 would not such a repetition of miracles frustrate the 
 very design which it is intended to promote? For if 
 miracles were made an every-day occurrence, they 
 would at length produce no more effect upon men's 
 minds than the rising of the sun, the ebbing and 
 flowing of the tide, or the return of fresh life and 
 verdure in the spring. In fact, they would cease to 
 be miracles. 
 
LECTURE IT. 21 
 
 Such speculations as these, however, are altogether 
 unnecessary and out of place ; inasmuch as the notion 
 of partiality in this mode of evidence is, in itself, 
 purely theoretical. If we look more closely into the 
 actual arrangement of things, we shall find that the 
 trial which falls upon the successive generations of 
 men in their turn, is one of unvarying severity. For 
 although an intelligent and right-minded man of the 
 present day, on witnessing the performance of such 
 miracles as those of Jesus, would at once be convinced 
 that he who wrought them was invested thereby 
 with a Divine commission and authority, it must be 
 remembered that in our Saviour's time such a con- 
 clusion was by no means inevitable. In the judg- 
 ment of that generation, acts of superhuman power 
 were not necessarily received as the acts of God. 
 There was a general belief in the powers of sorcery 
 or magic : and it was easy to stifle investigation by 
 ascribing to the influence of that principle any sur- 
 passing performance, which they could not otherwise 
 explain, and the testimony of which they knew not 
 how to invalidate. This was the course which, in 
 fact, they adopted. For although it is not expressly 
 stated in the Gospels that they ascribed to the prince 
 of devils any miracles except the casting out of devils, 
 it must certainly be implied that such was the case. 
 To suppose that the same person could one day 
 be working with the finger of God, and the next day 
 with the power of Satan, is utterly incredible ; 
 
22 LECTURE II. 
 
 as indeed it was felt to be, by one who put to the 
 Pharisees this very pertinent question — " Can a devil 
 open the eyes of the blind?" If you ascribe to 
 Satanic agency the casting out of devils, to the 
 same agency you must ascribe the opening of the 
 eyes of the blind ; which latter position the objector 
 Was inclined to dispute. The Pharisees, however, 
 asserted it, and their assertion was believed. To 
 come away from the spectacle of one of our Lord's 
 miracles, with a determination to press forward in 
 the inquiry, — '* to try the spirits whether they were 
 of God," ^ — and, like the Bereans of old, "to search 
 the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so,"^ 
 • — required a degree of sincerity and of fortitude, 
 which in these days can scarcely be appreciated. 
 And of the few who persevered in such an inquiry, 
 there would be required some considerable exercise 
 of moral and mental fairness ; quite as great, perhaps, 
 as is now requisite for those who would estimate aright 
 the whole weight of evidence presented to an inquirer 
 among ourselves. The evidence of ihefact^ — as, for 
 instance, that a blind man had been caused to see, by 
 the ostensible operation of certain words pronounced 
 over him by a Galilean peasant, — was doubtless 
 irresistible. But the inference from that fact ; namely, 
 that the aforesaid Galilean peasant was a messenger 
 from God, — and if a messenger from God, then the 
 incarnate Son of God Himself, — this they were un- 
 
 * 1 John iv, 1. 2 Acts xvii. 11 
 
LECTURE II. 23 
 
 prepared to admit. And the degree in which they 
 were worse prepared to admit the inference, was at 
 least equal to the degree in which they were better 
 prepared to appreciate the evidence of the fact. If 
 the sceptic of modern times has been known to say, 
 — ^' Only convince me that Lazarus was raised from 
 the dead, and I will admit the entire substance of 
 what is taught in the Gospel ;" — so the sceptical 
 Sadducee of old might have said, — " Only convince 
 me that thou dost not cast out devils by the prince 
 of devils, and I will believe all that thou sayest." 
 Circumstances are changed, and with them the spe- 
 cies of trial has been changed. If our own experi- 
 ence of the conveyance of ordinary testimony assures 
 us, that it is liable to numberless misrepresentations, 
 which, at every successive remove, both violate its 
 purity and impair its credit, so that we conceive 
 ourselves to be placed in a position much less favour- 
 able than that of our Lord's immediate contempora- 
 ries ; it must be considered, on the other hand, that 
 men in the present day are much less likely to be 
 imposed upon ; — that it is no longer possible to pass 
 off as miracles the mysterious operations of nature, 
 or the juggling feats of art; — and that a sounder 
 mode of judging with respect to the association of 
 miracles with doctrine, has shown us the perverse 
 impiety of ascribing such miracles as those of Jesus 
 to the agency of Satan. And thus we are led to 
 contemplate the Divine wisdom, which has tempered 
 the severity of the trial by the admixture of external 
 
24 LECTURE II. 
 
 circumstances. A trial it still remains of the same 
 essential character; a trial of lowliness and docility, 
 —of those qualities of soul which are most suitable to 
 man's present condition, as an aspirant after God's 
 favour, and a probationer for the pure and holy plea- 
 sures of His presence in Paradise. 
 
 Witli the question in the abstract, whether from 
 reason and revelation there is sufficient evidence to 
 induce a belief that evil spirits are allowed to exercise 
 among men a supernatural power, we have no imme- 
 diate concern. Our object is more particularly to 
 ascertain the prevalent opinion in Judaea, among our 
 Lord's immediate contemporaries. At the same time, 
 we must not pass over unnoticed the argument which 
 is adduced from analogy in support of the affirmative. 
 
 On the supposition that there exist other orders 
 of beings, between man and his Creator, with powers 
 and properties corresponding to the stations which 
 they occupy; there is nothing improbable in the idea, 
 that they, like ourselves, are left in some degree 
 to the free exercise of those powers. By a skilful 
 use of the means and materials which nature has 
 given even to ourselves, it is unquestionably possible 
 to produce effects in the external world, which to an 
 unenlightened body of spectators would appear truly 
 miraculous. By man's ingenuity the elements are 
 pressed into his service, and the mechanism of nature 
 is directed to perform his pleasure. The buoyancy 
 of water, the elasticity of steam^ and other of nature's 
 
LECTURE 11. 
 
 subtle and mysterious properties, are daily producing 
 effects, which must appear as truly supernatural to 
 the untutored savage, as some of the real miracles of 
 old. Man quits his own province, and invades that 
 which nature has appropriated to others. And in 
 this his agency is altogether free:— his application 
 of the knowledge and power w^hich he possesses is 
 without restraint. What is there to prevent him 
 from setting out on a voyage to the simple-minded 
 inhabitants of some remote island ; and there, having 
 attracted their notice and gained their confidence by 
 the performance of acts which appear to them super- 
 natural, from proclaiming to them whatever dogmas 
 of immorality and impiety he chooses ? If man, 
 then, is not restrained by any special law from prac- 
 tising such deception upon his fellow men, by the 
 simple use of the faculties with which nature has 
 endowed him, who shall say that there is any special 
 law to restrain those superior beings from exercising 
 their proper powers, within the limits of man's pro- 
 vince, — or, in other words, from lending their aid to 
 the performance of miracles ? If it be not inconsis- 
 tent with the Divine wisdom to create such beings, 
 surely it is not to be deemed inconsistent with the 
 Divine wisdom to permit the exercise of any power 
 with which it has been judged fit to endow them. 
 
 But is it not an impeachment of the Divine be- 
 nevolence, to suppose that such supernatural power 
 may be exercised for purposes of delusion ? 
 
26 LECTURE II. 
 
 If any one were to assert, that such malignant 
 agency is permitted to work without limitation and 
 without control, it would indeed be a bold and im- 
 pious assumption. But the fact is, that both parties 
 profess an implicit confidence in the Divine bene- 
 volence ; differing only in their notion of the mode 
 in which that benevolence is likely to be exercised. 
 The one party believe most undoubtingly, that a 
 benevolent Creator will not permit us to be exposed to 
 trial from which there are no means of escape ;■ — the 
 other affirm, that although the world is full of trials, 
 this particular trial is one which we shall never have 
 to encounter. Though men are tempted and deceived 
 every day by the craft of their fellow men, and by the 
 operation of natural causes ; that they should be ex- 
 posed to such deception by acts beyond the usual 
 course of things, is thought incredible. Although 
 spiritual agency in general is employed to sift and 
 try men's faith, and that with the most consummate 
 subtlety, from this particular branch of spiritual 
 agency it is assumed that we are exempt. And yet, 
 is it not possible, and even likely, that the ordinary 
 mode of temptation, which is by a secret influence of 
 the devil upon the soul, may be even more subtle 
 and perilous than the exhibition of deceptive miracles? 
 In the case of a miracle performed in support of any 
 doctrine which militates against our natural percep- 
 tion of what is right, we should be naturally on our 
 guard : whereas to the subtle insinuations of the 
 
LECTURE II. -Zi 
 
 father of lies, we are predisposed by our carnal pas- 
 sions to lend a willing ear. If the miracle were such 
 as to command an acquiescence in the doctrine, 
 whether true or false, with which it is connected, — 
 if the Almighty had issued a special injunction that 
 miracles should in all cases be admitted without ques- 
 tion, as the criterion of a divine mission, — of course 
 no subordinate being would be permitted, in that case, 
 to exercise a miraculous power, except in confirmation 
 of His wilL But if He has given us a faculty, by 
 which we are enabled to discriminate between such 
 doctrines as are, and such as are not, consistent with 
 His attributes ; then the trial to which we are exposed 
 becomes similar in its character to our ordinary trials, 
 — severe, but by no means insurmountable. After 
 having cautioned His people against the delusion of a 
 sign or a wonder given by false prophets, the Almighty 
 expects them to be careful in their inquiries into the 
 proofs of all pretended missions from Himself. If 
 they are deceived, the deception is in some degree 
 voluntary : the shield is put into their hands, but 
 they refuse to make use of it. That the moral facul- 
 ties, by which we are enabled to challenge the im- 
 posture, and to discover from his doctrine that the 
 messenger has not come from God, are seldom exer- 
 cised, may be true. But if we are in possession of 
 such faculties, the delusion is not necessarily irresisti- 
 ble ; nor is it an impugning of the Divine benevolence 
 to suppose it possible that man may be exposed to it. 
 
28 LECTURE II. 
 
 In fact, tl]is argument from the Divine benevolence, 
 if it proves any thing, seems to prove too much. It 
 goes to prove, that it is inconsistent with the Divine 
 benevolence to suffer men to fall into severe tempta- 
 tion ; though we know from experience that they 
 fall into such temptation every day. The trial of 
 that man, — if such there should ever be — who sees a 
 miracle wrought in support of a system which his 
 moral sense disapproves; — a system, for instance, of 
 fraud and cruelty ; — would not be more severe, than 
 the trial of another who must go to the stake or the 
 scaffold, if he refuses to abjure the creed which he 
 solemnly believes to be true. Our notion of the 
 Divine attributes, whether derived from reason or 
 revelation, will prevent us from believing that any 
 man will be exposed to a temptation from which there 
 is no way to escape : but to prescribe the exact de- 
 gree and specific kind of temptation which shall assail 
 us, is to take into our own hands the moral govern- 
 ment of the world. 
 
 The sum of the matter, then, is this : — They who 
 hold that a subordinate being is allowed to work 
 miracles, must admit nevertheless, that he is re- 
 stricted from the exhibition of such miracles as may 
 not be distinguished, by some sure and intelligible 
 mark, from those which the Almighty gives as a seal 
 and testimony of His revelations. And they who 
 believe, that no miracles can be wrought except by His 
 immediate interposition, must take it for granted that 
 
LECTURE II. 29 
 
 there- is a perpetual law to restrain all subordinate 
 agents, from using their natural faculties in any in- 
 terference with what ive call the " order of nature." 
 Each reposing a full confidence in the Divine good- 
 ness, and differing only in their idea of the peculiar 
 mode in which that goodness is exercised. 
 
 Having thus endeavoured to state the question as 
 to the antecedent probability or improbability of an 
 evil agency being allowed in the working of miracles, 
 I proceed to inquire what opinion prevailed upon this 
 subject among the Jews who were contemporary 
 with our Saviour. 
 
 Supposing, then, a miracle, like those of our 
 blessed Saviour, to be wrought in the presence of an 
 assembled multitude ; according to the different cha- 
 racters and tempers of those present, it would produce 
 different effects. One class would gaze upon it with 
 a kind of passive wonder ; a feeling insufficient to 
 urge them either to investigate a cause, or to draw 
 an inference. If their own ease or indulgence were 
 in any way affected, they would regard it with in- 
 terest ; but not otherwise. It is probable that in our 
 Saviour's time, this class of persons constituted a 
 large proportion of the eyewitnesses of his miracles. 
 " They sought him, not because they saw the miracles ; 
 but because they did eat of the loaves, and were 
 filled.'"' Any slight curiosity that might be excited 
 
 3 John vi. 26. 
 
30 LECTURE II. 
 
 on the subject, would at once be set at rest by the 
 summary declaration of their teachers, that for some 
 unmentioned cause the miracles were not conclusive 
 of Divine authority. In a case which is especially 
 recorded, after vainly attempting to make it appear 
 that no real miracle had been performed, they dis- 
 missed the man who had been the subject of it, with 
 the following conclusive admonition : — '* Give God 
 the praise, we know that this man is a >si/uie?\''* Sit- 
 ting in Moses' seat, they assumed a like authority 
 with that of Moses : and their assertion, although 
 unsupported, was not without its weight. 
 
 But while a large proportion of the spectators, 
 either through incompetency or indolence, resting 
 upon this broken reed of the Pharisees' authority, 
 would spare themselves the trouble of investigating 
 the cause, a few more inquisitive minds would proceed 
 further. According to the popular notions of the day, 
 there were three modes of accounting for an apparent 
 miracle. These were, — by the interposition of God, 
 — by the agency of evil spirits, — and by the pre- 
 sumption that it was a mere trick or delusion. To 
 admit the first of these causes, and to receive the 
 iviracles as valid proofs of a Divine commission, both 
 Jews and Gentiles were extremely indisposed, both 
 at the time of our Saviour's ministry, and for a con- 
 siderable period afterwards. This appears, not only 
 
 •* John ix. 24. 
 
LECTURE II. 31 
 
 from the Scriptures, but from the fragments of several 
 opponents of Christianity which are still extant, and 
 from the general line of argument pursued by some 
 of the early fathers. The number and nature and 
 variety of our Lord's miracles w^ould prevent any 
 rational man from setting them down as mere delusions 
 of art ; nor do the Jews appear to have attempted 
 it. The prevailing cry, when they proceeded to 
 suggest a cause at all, was that of enchantment and 
 evil spirits ; the belief in which mode of agency 
 seems to have been universal.^ 
 
 That His ministering spirits have been, in certain 
 instances, commissioned by the Creator to exercise a 
 supernatural power, is unquestionable; as will appear 
 from a reference to the account of the destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, the deliverance of Lot, and 
 
 * The reader may take an interest in being informed *' how the 
 events of the Gospel History are regarded by the Israehtes of 
 modern Jerusalem," — *' in some sort the representatives, if not 
 the actual descendants" of those who rejected the miracles, and 
 crucified Him who wrought them. A recent traveller gives us 
 the result of his inquiry. — " I understood that the performance of 
 the miracles was not doubted by any of the Jews in the place ; 
 all of them concurred in attributing the works of our Lord to the 
 influence of magic, but they were divided as to the species of en- 
 chantment from which the power proceeded. The great mass of 
 the Jewish people believed, I fancy, that the miracles had been 
 wrought by aid of the powers of darkness ; but many, and those 
 the more enhghtened, would call Jesus '' The Good Magician." — 
 EoTHEN, or Traces of Travels brought home from the East, 
 p. 231. 
 
32 LECTURE II. 
 
 the smiting of the army of Sennacherib. Although 
 the notion of free agency on the part of the angel in 
 these visitations is expressly precluded by the con- 
 text, the minds of men would be familiarized thereby 
 to the idea of spiritual agency in general. In the 
 account of the competition between Moses and the 
 magicians of Egypt, they would find certain facts still 
 more decidedly bearing upon the point in question. 
 If Jannes and Jambres were permitted to withstand 
 God's Prophet, and up to a certain pointy at least, to 
 work the same wonders as Moses himself; might not 
 an eyewitness of the miracles of Jesus be sincerely 
 of opinion, that this self-styled messenger from God, 
 of whom it was reported that he wished to destroy 
 the temple and to abrogate the Law, was permitted 
 to try their faith by the exhibition of wonders in no 
 degree more indicative of a superhuman power than 
 the changing of a rod into a serpent, or of rivers of 
 water into blood ? What can be inferred from the 
 forcible and explicit warning in the Law, against the 
 " enchanter, the witch, the charmer, the consulterwith 
 familiar spirits, the necromancer, the wizard," and 
 "him that useth divination"^ — what can we infer 
 from this explicit mention of so many varieties of the 
 same mysterious character, — but that he exercised, 
 or, at least, was generally believed to exercise, his 
 vocation among them ? And again, in later times, 
 
 '» Dent, xviii. 10. 
 
LECTURE ir. 33 
 
 when the prophet Isaiah calls upon '* the astrolo- 
 gers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators" 
 in the city of Babylon, to stand up and save them- 
 selves from destruction,^ — when he tells the proud 
 city herself to stand " with her enchantments, and 
 the multitude of her sorceries ; if so be she shall 
 be able to profit, if so be she may prevail,' — although 
 taunting them with the emptiness and insufficiency 
 of their art, he gives clear proof that it stood in high 
 repute, and that many had confidence in its efficacy. 
 St. Paul speaks of one who should come with '' lying 
 wonders," — " after the working of Satan ; "^ and of 
 those also to whom ^' God shall send strong delusion, 
 that they may believe a lie." ^ And our blessed Lord 
 himself warned his disciples against " false prophets 
 and false Christs " that should arise, and *'show 
 great signs and wonders; insomuch that if it were 
 possible, they should deceive the very elect." ^^ 
 
 Of the popular belief in another branch of Satanic 
 agency, I mean demoniacal possession, there can be 
 no doubt whatever. It might be sufficient, perhaps, 
 for our present purpose, to advert to the mere preva- 
 lence of this belief: but I will also call your atten- 
 tion to various particulars in the account of these 
 cases by the Evangelists, which lead us to conclude 
 that the mode of expression was not adopted merely 
 
 7 Isaiah xlvii. 12, 13. s o Thess. ii. 9. 
 
 9 2 Thess. ii. 11. lo Matt. xxiv. 24. 
 
 D 
 
34 LECTURE II. 
 
 in conformity with popular prejudices, but that the 
 possession was real. We find the action of the demon 
 expressly distinguished from that of the man pos- 
 sessed : we find the demon holding a conversation on 
 the subject of his expulsion ; and we find a special 
 account of the manner in which he was disposed of 
 afterwards." What can more distinctly mark the 
 personality of the evil spirit, and the separate per- 
 sonality of the man, into whose body he had entered, 
 as Satan entered into the body of the serpent, than 
 the circumstantial narrative of the Evangelist? — 
 **Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit," — said 
 Jesus. *^ Upon which the evil spirit came out : and 
 the man, becoming tranquil, prayed that he might be 
 suffered to remain in the presence of his deliverer. 
 
 It is to be observed, too, that many of the demo- 
 niacs mentioned in the New Testament agree in 
 paying homage to our Lord and his disciples, with 
 a degree of consistency, which in the case of persons 
 suffering under natural diseases, whether of the body 
 or the mind, is scarcely credible. If these persons 
 had been merely lunatics, their conduct would have 
 been marked with the characteristic and capricious 
 vagaries of lunacy. Some might have worshipped 
 Jesus, but others would have treated him with insult. 
 Some might have followed him, but others would 
 have fled away from him ; just as they were affected 
 
 " Matt. viii. 31. 12 Mark v. B. 
 
LECTURE TI. 35 
 
 by the disease. Whereas they all seem to have been 
 actuated by a common feeling : — they all paid him 
 worship. 
 
 In fact, the frequency of the cases of demoniacal 
 possession about the time of our Lord's appearance, 
 might almost lead us to suppose, either that Satan by 
 these frequent possessions, and by the wonderful 
 actions which were performed, strove to invalidate 
 the evidence of our Lord's miracles, giving occasion 
 to the Pharisees to ascribe them to the same agency ; 
 — or, that inasmuch as he " was manifested, in order 
 that he might destroy the works of the devil," it 
 pleased the Almighty to give Satan the greater liberty 
 about that time, for the express purpose of heighten- 
 ing the glory of our Lord in dispossessing him, and 
 of affording thereby the strongest evidence, that the 
 power which tended in so eminent a degree to the des- 
 truction of Satan's empire, must assuredly be of God. 
 
 The prevalence of a belief in the powers of magic 
 in the heathen world at that period, is too well 
 known to require more than a passing allusion. It 
 reigned in every climate of the globe, and was com- 
 patible with every system of religious opinion. Men 
 of all ranks, statesmen, scholars, and philosophers, 
 were found in the number of its votaries. Truly 
 has it been remarked, that the genius of those times 
 was in a middle state between credulity and sceptic- 
 ism, believing all that ought to be doubted, and 
 doubting all that ought to be believed. 
 
36, LECTURE II. 
 
 And although the different sects of philosophy were 
 divided in their opinions, — the Pythagoreans advo- 
 cating its reality, and the Epicureans deriding it, — 
 we find that Celsus, a professed Epicurean, who had 
 written several books against magic, reiterates the 
 cry of our Lord's contemporaries ; asserting, with 
 marvellous inconsistency, that "the Christians seemed 
 to prevail by the names and enchantments of certain 
 demons." ^^ In the very epithets applied to Chris- 
 tianity by two Roman historians, we trace at once the 
 prevalence of this imputation : the same terms of 
 reprobation being attached to the Christian faith, 
 which were usually applied to the art of magic. 
 Magic was deemed a mischievous and destructive 
 art; — Christianity was styled a mischievous and 
 destructive superstition.^"^ In fact, a belief in this 
 mystic power, which professed to control the order of 
 the planets, to blast the works of creation, to inflame 
 the passions, and to extinguish or recall life, retained 
 possession of men's minds to a comparatively recent 
 period. There can be little difficulty in understand- 
 ing that acts of wonder might be ascribed to evil 
 spirits nearly two thousand years ago by the Jews, 
 when it is remembered that the crime of witchcraft 
 has been recognized in the legislative enactments of 
 the most enlightened nations of modern Europe ; and 
 
 ^3 Orig. adv. Cels. 1. i. p. 7. 
 
 ^* By Suetonius, " superstitio walc.fcaS' — by Tacitus, '' cx- 
 iiiabilis superstitio." 
 
LECTURE II. 37 
 
 that the gravest functionaries of the law have sat in 
 judgment upon those accused of it, and condemned 
 them to the flames. There can be little difficulty in 
 understanding that the Pharisees of old might depre- 
 ciate the miracles of Jesus, and ascribe them to any 
 cause rather than the right one, w^hen we find the 
 Mahometan disputant of the present day gravely 
 arguing, — that since the powers of nature and the 
 powers of magic are alike involved in mystery as to 
 their complete extent, and since the world is in a 
 constant state of improvement, no act whatever can 
 be fully known to be a miracle, until the arrival of 
 the day of judgment. ^^ 
 
 Enough has been said to show the prevalence of 
 the belief in an infernal agency, at the time when 
 the miracles of Jesus were performed. It will be 
 my endeavour on a future opportunity, to point out 
 the most striking part of the evidence, both in the 
 miracles themselves, and in the doctrine connected 
 with them, that he who wrought them was a mes- 
 senger from God, and not a confederate with the 
 powers of evil. 
 
 ^^' See Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mahometanism, 
 by the late Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. pp. 194 — 215. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 JOHN X. 2L 
 
 THESE ARE KOT THE WORDS OF ONE THAT HATH A DEVIL. 
 
 TO those who would ascertain the opinions on 
 the subject of miracles which prevailed among 
 the Jews, at a period not far removed from that of 
 our Saviour, the reflections of a pious and enlight- 
 ened writer present themselves, in the Apocryphal 
 Book of Wisdom. He compares the whole creation 
 to an instrument of music, varied and regulated in 
 the hands of its Supreme Governor to one purpose of 
 harmony. In the process of Israel's miraculous 
 deliverance from their Egyptian bondage, *' Every 
 creature," he says, "was fashioned anew, serving the 
 peculiar commandments that were given unto them. 
 The things of the earth were changed into things of 
 the water ; and the things that before did swim upon 
 the water, went upon the ground. The fire had 
 power in the water, contrary to its own virtue ; and 
 the water forgot his own nature to quench. Thus 
 tlie elements were changed among themselves by a 
 kind of harmony ; as when the tune is changed upon 
 
LECTURE Iir. 39 
 
 an instrument of music, and the melody still re- 
 maineth." ^ 
 
 In this passage, we mark how the writer dwells 
 upon that subserviency of the elements to God's pro- 
 phet, of which his forefathers had so often been eye- 
 witnesses. In fact, it was by controlling the ele- 
 ments, and in some instances by changing their 
 natural operation, that the Almighty had usually 
 chosen to give evidence of his immediate presence 
 and interposition. When He called to Moses in the 
 wilderness, they're forgot its nature to burn, and the 
 bush remained as before. When He guided Israel 
 in their wanderings in the desert, it was a pillar of 
 Jire that went before them ; in the words of that 
 writer whom we have just quoted, it was, " a harm- 
 less sun to entertain them honourably."^ He des- 
 cended upon Mount Sinai in Jire : and hy Jire from 
 heaven He consumed the sacrifice of Elijah. The 
 sun stood still upon Gibeon, at the command of His 
 servant Joshua, and the moon stayed in the valley 
 of Ajalon. When He gave the Law, the mountain 
 quaked; and when He destroyed the congregation of 
 Korah, the earth opened her mouth and swallowed 
 them up alive. — " The sea fled at His presence, and 
 Jordan was driven back." — *' He turned the hard 
 rock into a standing water, and the JUnt-stone into 
 a springing well.'' — In that memorable competition 
 
 1 Wisdom of Solomon, ch. xix. 2 \\)\(\, ch. xviii. 3. 
 
40 LECTURE HI. 
 
 between Moses and the magicians of Egypt, the 
 Divine interposition was acknowledged even by those 
 who opposed it, and they said, " This is the finger 
 of God." At their own word, indeed, the rod had 
 become a living serpent, the frogs had left their 
 marshy bed to invade the dwellings of man, and the 
 waters were turned into blood. But at the word of 
 God's prophet, there came down hail and fire froni 
 heaven ; and the land was covered with darkness, 
 *' even a darkness that might be felt." In the dwell- 
 ings of Israel there was light : but the Egyptians 
 *' saw not one another, neither rose any from his 
 place for three days." — ** Being shut up in their 
 houses (fsays the writer already quoted), the pri- 
 soners of darkness, and fettered, not with bars of 
 iron, but with the bonds of a long night, they lay 
 there fugitives from the eternal Providence. Noises 
 as of falling waters sounded about them ; and sad 
 visions appeared unto them with heavy counte- 
 nances. And being much terrified, they thought the 
 things which they saw to be worse than the sights 
 they saw not." ^ 
 
 In this subserviency of the elements — in these 
 " signs from heaven" — there was an external gran- 
 deur, which seemed to stamp them with the impress 
 of Jehovah's immediate interposition. In our Lord's 
 miracles, and especially in the earlier of them, this 
 
 •'' Wisdom of Solomon, ch. wii. 
 
LECTURE II J. 41 
 
 characteristic was wanting. The elements, indeed, 
 were subject to his control ; and on two occasions 
 the stormy winds and the swelling waves became still 
 when he commanded them. But of these miracles 
 one took place in the night, with no other witnesses 
 than his own disciples. In fact, the subjects of our 
 Lord's miracles were, for the most part, not the ele- 
 ments of nature, but the bodies of afflicted men — the 
 blind, the maimed, the dumb, and the cripple. This 
 characteristic was doubtless pointed out to their dis- 
 paragement by our Lord's opponents at the time ; 
 and the people were called upon to observe, that the 
 miracles of old were wrought on a far more gigantic 
 scale, and presented a far more imposing character, 
 than the cures wrought by the Galilean. It was not 
 enough that five thousand persons were miracu- 
 lously supplied with food^ unless the bread came 
 down, like the manna in the wilderness, " from 
 heaven." In the midst of his daily works of won- 
 der and mercy, exhibited upon all who came to him 
 for relief, there was a daily repetition of the same cry 
 ■ — ''Show us a sign/rom heaven^ 
 
 In the place, however, of this characteristic which 
 marked the ancient miracles, there was given another, 
 of a different character indeed, but not less decisive. 
 Each was suited to its particular exigency. The 
 one class of miracles were wrought to assert Jeho- 
 vah's supremacy over the idols of Canaan, or the 
 "juggling fiends of Egypt;" — to make known his 
 
42 LECTUKE III. 
 
 power over those who would attempt, by rival mira- 
 cles, to discredit his messenger, and persuade men 
 to disregard his message; — while the others were 
 wrought to establish the Divine commission of 
 the gentlest and most benevolent Being, who had 
 ever appeared among the children of men. It is 
 only reasonable to expect, that the character of the 
 miracles should, in some degree, harmonize with the 
 character of the messenger; and that he, who pro- 
 fessed to have come upon an errand of mercy, should 
 be furnished with such proofs of his mission, as 
 would argue not merely the power of God, but his 
 love to men, and his disposition to promote their 
 welfare. And such we find in reality to have been 
 the case. He who came to save his people from the 
 disease and death of the soul, thought fit by his 
 miracles to ward off death and disease from their 
 bodies. It was not in the fire, nor in the earthquake, 
 that God made his presence and his power mani- 
 fest ; it was in the still small voice of compassion. 
 Among so many exertions of a supernatural energy, 
 there was scarcely one that did not minister relief to 
 the afflicted. To multiply the loaves and fishes, was 
 an act of power : but to do this in behalf of a famish- 
 ing multitude, who found themselves at nightfall 
 without food in the wilderness, was an act of boun- 
 tiful compassion. To restore life to a dead man, 
 was an act of power : but to give back her only 
 son to the widow, was an act of merciful loving- 
 
LECTURE III. 43 
 
 kindness. Well might the by-standers exclaim — 
 '* It was never so seen in Israel." Although it was 
 expected that the miracles which Messiah should 
 work would surpass those of the ancient prophets, yet 
 the question was asked, — *' When Christ cometh will 
 he do more miracles than this man hath done ?" — 
 It was on this account that our Lord pronounced 
 their sin in rejecting him to be of the deepest dye. 
 *' If I had not done among them the works which 
 none other man did, they had not had sin. But 
 now they have both seen and hated both me and my 
 Father." * Not that the mitigation of human suffer- 
 ing w^as the sole purpose for which the laws of 
 nature were suspended : — the effects were not exten- 
 sive enough to warrant any such supposition as this. 
 When compared with what is often suffered from a 
 war, a famine, or a pestilence, all the miseries alle- 
 viated by the miracles of Jesus were perhaps trifling. 
 But as the natural effect of the exercise of a mira- 
 culous power must always be to excite fear, and 
 wonder, and curiosity, and to call men's attention to 
 the person who exercises it ; so the maimer in which 
 this miraculous power was exercised by Jesus, 
 stamped upon him a character of benevolence, in per- 
 fect harmony with the doctrine he taught, and the 
 commission he laid claim to. Surely the works of 
 evil spirits would be like themselves, malicious, im- 
 
 * John XV. 24. 
 
44 LECTURE III. 
 
 pure, and cruel. To suppose that they would be 
 permitted to work such miracles as those in question 
 for the mere purpose of trial, would be hard indeed 
 to reconcile with the idea of a just and merciful 
 Creator. For who would be so likely to be de- 
 ceived thereby, as the compassionate and pure of 
 heart ; — who so likely to disregard them, as the sen- 
 sual and the selfish ? That a trial should thus be 
 proposed, a delusion thus permitted, from which the 
 bad, by reason of their depravity, would escape ; and 
 to which the good, in proportion to their goodness, 
 would be the more likely to succumb ; is so repug- 
 nant to our ideas of a merciful Providence, as to be 
 utterly incredible. 
 
 Besides this, it will be agreed that the impostor, 
 who is endeavouring to delude mankind by false 
 miracles, must use perpetual vigilance in order to 
 guard against discovery ; while the worker of mira- 
 cles, who is in truth a messenger from God, will 
 desire that they may be tried by the severest scru- 
 tiny. And were not the miracles of Jesus performed 
 in the most open and fearless manner, before men 
 fully competent to detect such a delusion if it had 
 existed, and who would have rejoiced in the expo- 
 sure ? As every successive miracle in that glorious 
 catalogue was exhibited, so did the probability of 
 imposture dwindle away and vanish. One single 
 act might fairly enough be questioned, especially by 
 those who had not been spectators of it. But if 
 
LECTURE III. 45 
 
 the professed messenger from heaven has a power 
 constantly abiding in him — a power, too, which he 
 not only exercises himself, but communicates when 
 he pleases to others — the proofs of a Divine original 
 are multiplied, and become irresistible. If such 
 works as the Christian miracles be performed by 
 different persons, at different times, and in different 
 places, in support of the same cause, they afford the 
 strongest possible evidence of its truth. It is incredible 
 that the Almighty should permit so systematic a con- 
 trivance for the deception of mankind by evil spirits. 
 So far, then, as we are able to judge from the 
 character of the miracles themselves, every thing 
 was in favour of their being in reality what they 
 were professed to be, conclusive evidence of a Divine 
 commission. To suppose that a confederacy with 
 evil spirits could have existed on the part of such a 
 body of men as our blessed Saviour and his dis- 
 ciples, for the purpose of deluding the world by the 
 exhibition of such miracles as those which they per- 
 formed, is incredible. From their education, their 
 employments, and their general character, they were 
 the most unlikely persons in the world to co-operate 
 in such an imposture, or to keep it secret. One of 
 them deserted the cause, and betrayed his Master. 
 If, then, there had been any collusion with evil 
 spirits, would not this man have rejoiced in making 
 a public exposure of it? Why did he not adopt 
 that obvious method of rebutting the imputation of 
 
^^ LECTURE III. 
 
 treacherous ingratitude, and justify himself in de- 
 livering up an impostor to the righteous indigna- 
 tion of those whom he had attempted to dehide? 
 So far, however, was this from being the case, that 
 when Jesus was condemned, the repentant traitor 
 came back to his employers with the price of his 
 treachery, confessing that he had betrayed innocent 
 blood. Had there been any plausible ground for 
 the charge, how can we account for the Roman 
 governor coming forward in public to declare, that 
 he found no fault in him '^touching those things 
 whereof he was accused?" The Roman law, equally 
 with the law of Moses, condemned the practice of 
 magic : and neither the Roman governor nor the 
 Jewish rulers would have found so much difficulty 
 as they did, in devising a legal excuse for condemn- 
 ing him to death, if there had been the slightest real 
 evidence of a confederacy with evil spirits. — Unable, 
 then, to discover in the miracles themselves any 
 thing to warrant such an imputation, w^e proceed to 
 the doctrines propounded on the authority of the mira- 
 cles, with a view to ascertain their bearing upon the 
 point in question. Was there, then, in the doctrines 
 any thing to countenance the notion that they were 
 the result of a confederacy with evil spirits? 
 
 We are met at the outset by a protest against this 
 principle of judging of the miracles by the doctrine. 
 We are told that our blessed Lord himself made 
 use of several expressions which seem to set up the 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 47 
 
 authority of miracles as exclusive and paramount. He 
 says, for instance, " If I bear witness of myself, my 
 witness is not true. But I have greater witness than 
 that of John : for the works which the Father has 
 given me to finish, the same woi^ks that I do, bear 
 witness of me that the Father hath sent me." ^ And 
 again, *' If I had not done among them the woi^ks 
 that no other man did, they had not had sin." ^ And in 
 another place, " If I do not the works of my Father, 
 believe me not: but if I do, though ye believe not 
 me, believe the works ; that ye may know and be- 
 lieve that the Father is in me, and I in him."'^ Why 
 are we called upon to suspend our acquiescence in 
 miracles as the proof of a Divine mission, until we have 
 tested the doctrine, when in each of these passages 
 the miracles alone seem to be brought forward by 
 our blessed Lord himself, as a sufficient proof of 
 his Divine authority and mission ? 
 
 It will be found, on further inquiry, that notwith- 
 standing the stress which our Lord may seem on 
 particular occasions to have laid upon his miracles, 
 and which, — inasmuch as without miracles there can 
 be no revelation, — is only what we should be prepared 
 to expect ; in other passages he makes a direct appeal 
 to his word, and the doctrines which he taught. 
 These he represents to be of such a nature as to con- 
 firm the evidence of his mission. Thus he urges as 
 
 5 John V. 31. <5 Ibid. XV. 24. 7 Ibid. x. 38, 
 
48 LECTURE III. 
 
 a reason that men should love and believe in him, 
 that " the word which you hear, is not mine, but the 
 Father s which sent me." ^ In another place he says 
 that "the word" will judge all who " receive it not ;" 
 — inasmuch as " I have not spoken of myself, but the 
 Father that sent me, he gave me a commandment, 
 what I should say, and what I should speak." ^ In 
 cautioning them against false prophets, he says, " Ye 
 shall know them by their fruits." ^° St. John enjoins 
 the church " not to believe every spirit, but to try the 
 spirits, whether they are of God." ^^ And again he 
 says, " If any man come unto you, and bring not 
 this doctrine, receive him not." ^^ And some, at 
 least, of those who heard our Lord's discourses, 
 argued rightly when they said in the text, — " these 
 are not the words of one that hath a devil." But to 
 mention no more, his answer to the Jews, who said 
 that he cast out devils by Beelzebub the chief of 
 devils, established the point beyond contradiction. 
 His argument was, that if he through the powder of 
 the devil cast out devils, the kingdom of Satan was 
 divided against itself, and therefore could not stand. 
 But the mere fact of a person casting out devils by 
 the power of tlie devil, was no evidence that Satan 
 was divided against himself. If an emissary of Satan 
 should be permitted to cast out devils, it would not 
 
 8 John xiv. 24. 9 John xii. 49. lo Matt. vii. 16. 
 
 " 1 John iv. 1. ^" 2 John 10. 
 
LECTUllE III. 
 
 49 
 
 shake the stability of Satan ; but rather confirm it by 
 giving strength to imposture. But when one who 
 inculcates good and virtuous doctrines, such as will 
 destroy the works of the devil, and bring men to the 
 knowledge and worship of the true God, appeals to 
 miracles as the evidence of his mission, and among 
 others to the casting out of devils; it is clear that if 
 such miracles were wrought by the aid of Satan, 
 Satan would in that case be divided against himself, 
 and his kingdom brought to destruction. 
 
 We may proceed then, at once, to the point which 
 it is proposed to establish ; namely, that the Jews, 
 allowing as they did that a superhuman power was 
 exercised, and seeing that it was exercised in deeds 
 of benevolence, in strict accordance with our notions 
 of the Creator's attributes, were not justified in as- 
 cribing that power to an evil origin, unless in the 
 doctrine propounded on the strength of those mira- 
 cles there was something clearly incredible, or incom- 
 patible with what had previously been promulgated, 
 on at least equal authority. ^^ 
 
 For if both the parts of which a revelation con- 
 sists, — that is, the miracles, and also the doctrine, — 
 be of unquestionable authority, the revelation must 
 necessarily be believed. But if in the doctrine there 
 be something at variance with truth and virtue; — if 
 
 ^^ See Penrose on the Evidence of the Scripture miracles. 
 Also a R eview of that work by the Rev. C. W. Le Bas, p. 30. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 LECTURE Iir. 
 
 reason, the' faculty which God has given us for the 
 purpose of examining what is propounded, — or if the 
 principles of natural religion, by which all reasonings 
 upon Divine revelation must necessarily be governed, 
 — if either of these pronounce the doctrine to be 
 inadmissible, the revelation must be rejected in 
 spite of the miracles. We have no other way to 
 determine what is w^orthy of God, and fit to be re- 
 ceived as a revelation from Him, but by the instinc- 
 tive perception we have of His moral attributes : and 
 our reliance upon this, would be stronger than our 
 conviction of the negative proposition, that none but 
 He can interfere with the system of nature. If any 
 one should tell mankind, that he had received a Divine 
 commission to teach them that the Almighty is cruel 
 and vindictive, or that there is no obligation to per- 
 form acts of piety, and justice, and benevolence ; and 
 should work miracles in support of his assertion ; it 
 would be allowed at once that such miracles must 
 be ascribed to an evil agency. How far the sinful 
 heart of man may, by the devices of Satan and the 
 example of sinners, be estranged from the love of 
 what is praiseworthy and excellent, it is hard to say. 
 But if there remain one single spark of sound and 
 virtuous principle, no one who attempts to sap the 
 belief of these fundamental truths, or to undermine 
 the obligation of these natural duties, how great 
 soever may be the signs and wonders which he per- 
 forms, will be received as a messenger from God. 
 
LECTURE III. ^i 
 
 And, again, if any one should teach a doctrine 
 which is essentially opposed to the tenor of a former 
 revelation, admitted and established upon sufficient 
 authority, — that person must not be received as a 
 messenger from God, although he may work miracles. 
 
 It is allowed, that the very supposition of a second 
 revelation implies of necessity an addition to that 
 which has been already granted, and, within certain 
 limits, a change. A particular form of outward cere- 
 monial which was adapted to the exigencies of one 
 age or nation, may not be so well suited to another : 
 and this without any impeachment of the original 
 contrivance. Rites which have been long in use 
 may be abrogated, when the reason of them has 
 ceased : new ones may be substituted, which shall 
 be more significant and more suitable. Any posi- 
 tive institutions, the value of which consists, not in 
 their intrinsic excellence, but in the external im- 
 press of Divine authority which they bear, may be 
 repealed without any imputation on the wisdom of 
 the original enactment. But any attempt to dis- 
 prove the truth, or to cancel the essential doctrines 
 of a former revelation, would prove the condemna- 
 tion of the messenger in the teeth of his miracles. 
 The admission of the former involves the rejection 
 of the latter. God cannot contradict Himself. lie 
 who ascribes the miracles of the former revelation to 
 God, must necessarily ascribe the miracles of the 
 latter, -if indeed they be miracles, — to evil s[)irits. 
 
52 LECTURE HI. 
 
 But if neither of these should be the case : — if the 
 doctrine be consonant with our natural perception of 
 what is right ; and if it be in accordance with the 
 tenor of previous revelation : — believing, as we do, 
 that truth, and justice^ and mercy, are among the 
 Deity's essential attributes ; — believing that He is 
 incapable either of being deceived Himself, or of 
 deceiving others ; we cannot suppose it consistent with 
 the perfection of His nature, to suffer miracles, and 
 especially such miracles as those of Jesus, to be 
 wrouo'ht for the delusion of an innocent seeker after 
 truth. Is there not something within us which 
 prompts the assurance, that the error which no cau- 
 tion, no integrity, no wisdom, could guard against, 
 is one to which a kind Providence will never permit 
 us to be exposed ? Such is the constitution of our 
 minds, that when doctrines which the conscience 
 approves, concur with actions which the understand- 
 ing pronounces to be superhuman, a weight of evi- 
 dence is formed, which to the sound and fair judg- 
 ment must necessarily carry conviction. And this 
 constitution of our minds — is it not a declaration of 
 the will of God ? 
 
 In reference, then, to the miracles of Jesus, what 
 course ought the searcher after truth to have pur- 
 sued ? 
 
 It was his duty, previous to any hasty rejection of 
 our Lord, by the unwarrantable ascribing of His 
 miracles to evil spirits, to examine the doctrines 
 
LECTURE III. 53 
 
 which He taught ; and to suspend his decision until 
 he had ascertained whether, in those doctrines, there 
 was any thing incredible, or at variance with the 
 essential truths which the Almighty had revealed to 
 his forefathers. 
 
 Supposing, then, that the Jew had pursued his 
 course without prejudice, and simply made himself 
 master of the substance of our Lord's teaching, what 
 would have been the result of his inquiry ? Did 
 the doctrine contain any thing unworthy of God — 
 any thing opposed to those conceptions which the 
 wisest and the best men have always had of His 
 attributes, and of the service which He may be ex- 
 pected to require? — If to bring the heathen from 
 the worship of idols to the confession of One only 
 living and true God, and to teach the Jews that He 
 is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth ; — if to in- 
 culcate a simple and sublime morality, which regu- 
 lates not the actions only, but the desires of the 
 heart; — if to teach the practice of meekness and 
 humility, self-denial and purity, generosity, grati- 
 tude, and a readiness to forgive, together with a 
 disposition to return blessings, and prayers, and kind- 
 nesses for execration, hatred, and wrong; — if to 
 supply consolation, elsewhere sought in vain, to the 
 weary and fainting sufferer ; — if this were incompat- 
 ible with any instinctive perception of virtue, then 
 would it have been right for the inquirer to suspend 
 his judgment. If to forbid hypocrisy and covetous- 
 
54 LECTURE Iir. 
 
 ness, to warn men against deceit, lasciviousness, and 
 pride, against evil thoughts and desires of the heart ; 
 to condemn not only murder, but causeless anger, 
 not only adultery, but all unrestrained concupiscence ; 
 — if, in the forcible language of one of old, to assert 
 that a man may " stab with his tongue, and assassi- 
 nate with his mind, and pollute himself with a 
 glance ;" — if this be at variance with any principles of 
 natural piety, the Jewish inquirer would have acted 
 with proper discretion in questioning the authority 
 of the miracles. If, in short, to enforce the prac- 
 tice of all that is virtuous, and to condemn every 
 vicious propensity, by the strongest motives that can 
 influence the human heart ; — if to enjoin the love of 
 God in its most intense form, and the love of man in 
 its widest extent ; crowning the whole by establish- 
 ing the certainty of future rewards and punishments, 
 according to the deeds done in the flesh ; — if this has 
 any tendency to promote an evil design, or to be sub- 
 servient in any way to the machinations of evil 
 spirits ; then might the Jews with reason have set 
 down Jesus as an impostor, and His miracles as the 
 works of Satan. But until it can be shown that 
 such is the case ; or that it is consistent with the 
 views and interests of an evil spirit to promote men s 
 happiness, by teaching them the practice of holiness ; 
 we must pronounce the conduct of those who as- 
 cribed our Lord's miracles to an evil agency, to have 
 
LECTURE III. 55 
 
 been marked either with an infatuated credulity, or 
 with the most obstinate wickedness. 
 
 To believe that One, who lived in the constant prac- 
 tice of every virtue which He taught, in no single 
 respect falling short of the purity, and patience, and 
 painful self-denial, which He required from His fol- 
 lowers ; — One, against whom even His bitterest ene- 
 mies dared not utter a word of reproach ; — One who 
 always pursued the same steady course, still con- 
 sistent with Himself, never varying His doctrines to 
 suit particular exigencies, allowing no license to 
 sinful passions for the sake of gaining proselytes, 
 still furthering the welfare of mankind, and assert- 
 ing the honour of God, in all that He did ; — One 
 who despised those worldly advantages which it is 
 usually the object of an impostor to secure ; fearlessly 
 exposing Himself to brutal insult and ignominious 
 death, in the prosecution of His design ; and in the 
 very moment of His mortal agony commending His 
 spirit into the hands of God ; — to believe that such 
 a Being as this was a hardened impostor, pretend- 
 ing to be a messenger from Heaven, although con- 
 scious of the falsehood of His pretensions ; and in 
 order to confirm this claim, becoming confederate 
 with the powers of darkness ; — surely this is to 
 believe a greater improbability, than that His mira- 
 cles should be real, and His commission from above. 
 — That the heathens, who were conscious that the 
 
56 LECTURE I J I. 
 
 prodigies of their own mythology were absurd and 
 irrational, should attempt to throw ridicule upon 
 our Saviour's miracles, of which their knowledge 
 must have been at best extremely imperfect, may be 
 accounted for. But that the Jews should admit that 
 their ancient prophets were messengers from God, on 
 the evidence of miracles which they never saw, — and 
 yet affirm that the blessed Jesus wrought those 
 miracles of which they were eyewitnesses, by an evil 
 and malignant agency, — argues an inveteracy of pre- 
 judice which has seldom, if ever, been surpassed. 
 
 If a prophet should arise among men, and teach 
 the opposite doctrines to these, we should unques- 
 tionably refuse to admit him as a messenger from 
 God, though he were supported by miracles. But 
 such teaching and such a life as that which has been 
 described, instead of diminishing the weight and 
 authority of miracles, ought to have increased it ; 
 and instead of suggesting doubts, ought to have 
 established certainty. It ought to have convinced 
 them that all He asserted was true, even though He 
 declared Himself to be the Son of God. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 MATTHEW XII. 31. 
 
 ALL MANNER OF SIN AND BLASPHEMY SHALL BE FORGIVEN UNTO 
 MEN, BUT THE BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST SHALL 
 NOT BE FORGIVEN UNTO MEN. 
 
 SO far as we have advanced in our examination 
 of our blessed Saviour's miracles, and of the 
 doctrines which He taught in virtue of the commis- 
 sion grounded upon those miracles, every thing con- 
 spires to set forth the impiety of those who could 
 accuse Him of being confederate with evil spirits. 
 
 One other point, however, remains to be noticed. 
 Perhaps the Jew might argue, that the teaching of 
 Jesus had a tendency to subvert the Law and Dis- 
 pensation of Moses. For, if this was the case, and 
 if the Law of Moses could not be altered or repealed 
 without derogating from the perfection of the 
 Creator's attributes, then, by the principles which 
 we have laid down, the Jew was right in his refusal 
 to admit the revelation as proceeding from God. 
 
58 LLCTURE IV. 
 
 There is no doubt, in fact, that upon this ground 
 the principal opposition to our Lord was founded. 
 They were constantly endeavouring to "entangle Him 
 in His talk ;" — to surprise Him in the utterance of some 
 sentiment on which they might build this accusation 
 against Him. They caught at a figurative expression 
 which He made use of, in allusion to His own future 
 resurrection, and they construed it into a threat that 
 He would *' destroy the temple :" and this saying was 
 so carefully treasured up in their memories, that they 
 taunted Him with it, even when He was hanging upon 
 the cross. ^ They attempted to excite the popular indig- 
 nation against Him as a traducer of Abraham :^ they 
 reviled Him as a Samaritan and a schismatic.^ The 
 plucking of ears of corn, and the healing of diseases, 
 on the Sabbath, were gravely urged as a violation of 
 the commandment. And it was in reply to such 
 charges that He assured them in His sermon on the 
 Mount, that He was not come " to destroy the Law 
 and the Prophets, but to fulfil them."-^ A decla- 
 ration which has in fact been frequently brought 
 forward by the Jews, for the purpose of arguing, 
 that His words and His actions were at variance with 
 each other. They assert, that at the very time when 
 He was abrogating so many ceremonies, and sacri- 
 fices, and distinctions of meat, so many purifications 
 
 I Matt, xxvii. 40. 2 jghn viii. 53. 
 
 ^ John viii. 48. ^ Matt. v. 17. 
 
LECTURE IV. 59 
 
 and judicial enactments, He treacherously gave out, 
 that He was not come to destroy the Law, but to 
 fulfil it. 
 
 Was there, then, in our Saviour's example and 
 doctrine, any thing to countenance so grave an ac- 
 cusation ? 
 
 His own personal observance of the Mosaic ritual 
 appears to have been extremely scrupulous : and 
 upon this point, excepting those frivolous objections 
 which have been alluded to, His adversaries with all 
 their acuteness could find no charge to bring against 
 Him. And as to the precepts which He gave to 
 others upon this subject, it must be observed, that 
 the external rites enjoined by Moses, relating as they 
 did merely to the purification of the flesh, were only 
 figurative of an inward and spiritual purification ; 
 which so far excels the other, as the soul is more 
 excellent than the body. This defect the doctrines of 
 the Gospel were especially calculated to supply ; by 
 teaching a real and substantial holiness, of which the 
 legal purification was a mere type or shadow ; such 
 a quality as will bring men into a closer resemblance 
 to that good and perfect Being whom they worship. 
 This was the sum, the scope, and the ultimate design, 
 of the Law and the Prophets : in comparison with 
 which, the ritual and ceremonial part of religion is 
 spoken of, as of little moment, even by the Prophets 
 themselves. '' Behold," (says Samuel,) to obey is 
 better than sacrifice ; and to hearken than the fat of 
 
60 LECTURE IV. 
 
 rams."^ *' To what purpose," — says the Almighty 
 Himself, speaking by the mouth of Isaiah, — '* to what 
 purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? 
 — Bring no more vain oblations. — Your new moons 
 and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. — Wash 
 you, make you clean, put away the evil of your 
 doing from before mine eyes : cease to do evil, learn 
 to do w^ell : seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, 
 judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."^ Al- 
 though the Jew appeared to have forgotten the very 
 existence of such precepts as these, the writings of 
 the ancient prophets abound with them. ^' Where- 
 with shall I come before the Lord" — says the inquirer 
 spoken of by Micah, — " shall I come before Him 
 with burnt offerings ? Will the Lord be pleased with 
 thousands of rams, and with ten thousand rivers of 
 oil ? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good. 
 And what doth the Lord require of thee ; but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God?"^ Let the substance of our Lord's teach- 
 ing be compared with these precepts, and their 
 identity will at once be apparent. If he forbade any 
 thing which the Law of Moses permitted, as in the 
 cases of retaliation and divorce ; and if he com- 
 manded any thing which Moses had not insisted 
 upon, as the rendering of good for evil, and the 
 
 * 1 Sam. XV. 22. 6 Isaiah 1. 11—17. 
 
 7 Micah vi. 6—8. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 61 
 
 loving our enemies ; it was merely the carrying out 
 of the same principle to a higher degree of perfec- 
 tion. In the place of shadows, He gave substance 
 and reality. 
 
 It was not inconsistent with the Divine wisdom, to 
 make additions to the revelation given to Adam and 
 the Patriarchs ; — why then should it be deemed so, to 
 make additions to the Law of Moses ? It was God's 
 pleasure to temper His revelation according to the age 
 and growth of His people ; feeding them with a ritual 
 and ceremonial law, as with ^'milk," in their infancy ; 
 training them up by degrees in the nurture of the 
 Prophets ; and at last giving them the '' strong meat" 
 contained in the Gospel of His Son. It was true, 
 then, that Jesus came, " not to destroy, but to fulfil." 
 He destroyed, indeed, that which was merely suited to 
 men's carnal apprehension, and admitted in pity to 
 their ignorance ; but all the inward and spiritual part 
 of the Law, He fulfilled. If the Jew had only referred 
 to his own Scriptures, he would have found that the 
 strictness of the Law had already on several occa- 
 sions been dispensed with, even under the Dispensa- 
 tion of Moses. The rite of circumcision was discon- 
 tinued during the wanderings in the desert ; — David, 
 " when he was a hungred," ate of the shew-bread; — 
 and in the reign of Hezekiah,a multitude of the people 
 were permitted to eat the passover without the pre- 
 vious legal purification. The prayer of Hezekiah on 
 this occasion is worthy of especial notice. We read, 
 
62 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 that Hezekiah prayed for the people, saying, ^' The 
 good Lord pardon every one, that prepareth his heart 
 to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers ; though he 
 be not cleansed according to tlie purification of the 
 sanctuary."^ And we read, that '* the Lord hearkened 
 to Hezekiah, and healed the people." And the Al- 
 mighty expressly declared his willingness on all occa- 
 sions to dispense with the ritual and ceremonial law, 
 if it should stand in competition with the weightier 
 precepts of internal morality; saying, that He desired 
 "mercy, and not sacrifice ; and the knowledge of God 
 more than burnt-offerings;"^ — a passage to which 
 our Saviour expressly referred, when He was accused 
 of violating the ordinance of the Sabbath.^° 
 
 In short, if those objectors had only studied their 
 own Scriptures with a docile and unprejudiced mind, 
 they would have discovered that the Law was nothing- 
 more than *^ a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ." 
 It was ordained by unerring wisdom for the purpose 
 of maintaining among them the knowledge of the 
 true and only God, and of cherishing the persuasion 
 of the efficacy of an expiatory sacrifice, until the 
 rising of a brighter day-spring from on high. How 
 could it be assumed that God s worship was to be 
 confined for ever to His temple at Jerusalem, and to 
 the Priesthood of Aaron; when the voice of prophecy 
 declared, that " all nations of the earth " should come 
 
 fi 2Cl)roii. XXX. Id. 9 llosca, vi. (i. lo iMatL. xii. 7. 
 
LECTURE IV. 63 
 
 to serve Him/^ and that a Priesthood after anotlier 
 order should be established, even 'Uhe order of Mel- 
 chizedek?" ^^ How could such a notion be retained, 
 when it was foretold that both " city and sanctuary" 
 were to be destroyed ; both " sacrifice and oblation" 
 caused to cease ?^^ How could it be affirmed that the 
 covenant with Moses should remain for ever ; when 
 God Himself had declared that He would make '' a 
 new covenant, not according to the covenant made 
 with their fathers ?"^'^ How could it be held that 
 Moses was to be their only lawgiver, and the obliga- 
 tion of his law to endure for ever; when another *'like 
 unto" Moses was promised by that Prophet himself,^^ 
 — One before whom '^ kings should bow down, and 
 nations do Him service." ^^ And with respect to this 
 promised Lawgiver, it was expressly foretold by 
 Daniel, that He should " bring in everlasting righte- 
 ousness,"^^ — or in other words, that He should con- 
 firm and elucidate those laws of holiness, which are 
 of indispensable and eternal obligation. 
 
 The more seriously we reflect upon the character 
 both of the miracles and the doctrine, the more shall 
 we be appalled by the daring impiety, which charged 
 their Divine Author with having leagued with the 
 
 " Psa. Ixxii. 11, and elsewhere. ^^ Psa. ex. 4. 
 
 13 Dan. ix. 26. i"* Jer. xxxi. 31. 
 
 15 Deut. xviii. 15. '^ Psa. Ixxii. 11. 
 *^ Dan. ix. 24. 
 
'^-1 LECTURE IV. 
 
 powers of evil. Our minds will be fully prepared 
 for the sentence which pronounced it to be beyond 
 reach of pardon. '* All manner of sin and blasphemy 
 shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy 
 against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto 
 men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the 
 Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever 
 speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be for- 
 given him, neither in this world, neither in the world 
 to come." ^® All the reproach and insult which was 
 cast upon the Saviour's person, — whether in reference 
 to the meanness of His extraction, or the place of His 
 nativity, or the class of persons with whom He asso- 
 ciated, — might be forgiven. Though they taunted 
 Him with being the son of a carpenter — though they 
 sneered at Him as the Prophet who came out of Ga- 
 lilee — though they reviled Him as a glutton and a 
 wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners, — all 
 these calumnies, inasmuch as they cast no imputa- 
 tion upon the Divine power by which He wrought 
 His miracles, were declared to be within the reach 
 of pardon. But the blasphemy, which deliberately 
 ascribed to the power of Satan, that which was 
 wrought by the Spirit of God, would not be forgiven 
 either in this world, or in the world to come. Be- 
 cause they said — "He hath an unclean spirit "^^ — 
 that is, because they charged Him with being a ma- 
 
 " Matt. xii. 31, 3-2. '" Mark, iii. 30. 
 
LECTURE IV. 6*5 
 
 gician, and employing a familiar spirit to do the 
 works of wonder and mercy which were done by the 
 Spirit of God, they were guilty of a sin beyond even 
 the possibility of remedy. For, if another messenger 
 should be sent from heaven to convince the blas- 
 phemer of his criminality, no stronger testimony 
 could be given than that of miracles: and if, when 
 miracles are wrought, he imputes them to the power 
 of Satan, he defeats thereby the last and utmost means 
 which God has ever yet vouchsafed to employ for the 
 recovery of sinners. If he doubted only, and denied, 
 there might be hope for him : but if he opposes the 
 doctrine, and reviles the evidence, then he " neither 
 enters into the kingdom of heaven himself, nor suffers 
 them that are entering to go in." His temper ex- 
 cludes him from the softening influence of Divine 
 grace; and the Spirit, whom he hath so foully blas- 
 phemed, will strive with him no longer. 
 
 Inasmuch, then, as the Jew could not pretend to 
 have discovered in our Saviour's doctrine any thing 
 in itself inadmissible, nor any thing at variance with 
 the essential truths of that revelation which had been 
 granted to his forefathers, he was bound to receive 
 the miracles as evidence of a Divine mission : it 
 being premised that the character of the miracles 
 themselves was in strict accordance with our notions 
 of the Creator\s attributes. 
 
 We are met, however, by a protest against this 
 mode of reasoning on the subject. We are accused 
 
6(3 LECTURE IV. 
 
 of arguing in a circle ; of attempting to prove, in tlie 
 first place, the doctrine by the miracles, and after- 
 wards the miracles by the doctrine. 
 
 That there are certain doctrines, — those, for in- 
 stance, which would encourage cruelty, or any other 
 flagrantvice, — which could not by any miracles what- 
 ever be proved to come from God, will easily be 
 granted. Supposing, then, that we make a division 
 or classification of doctrines. There might be some, 
 which would be essentially true in their nature ; being 
 plainly enjoined by our moral sense. Others might be 
 indifferent; commanding no necessary obedience in 
 themselves. And others, again, in their nature abso- 
 lutely false ; involving absurdities and contradictions, 
 or tending to the encouragement of vice. To the first 
 of these classes, miracles can attach no greater evi- 
 dence than that which they already possess. The 
 second can exert no obligation without the evidence 
 of miracles. And the third would not receive any 
 degree of proof from all the miracles in the world. 
 
 Whenever, therefore, miracles are adduced as a 
 proof of doctrines, by examining the tendency of the 
 doctrine proposed, so as to ascertain to which of the 
 three classes it belongs, we see at once its capability 
 of being proved. If the doctrine be not in itself in- 
 admissible ; and if, after due examination, we see no 
 reason to question the fact of the miracles ; by those 
 miracles it will be established. But if the doctrine 
 is repugnant to our sense of right, and to our know- 
 
LECTURE IV. 67 
 
 ledge of God's attributes, then we are sure that in the 
 evidence, that is, in the miracles, there is something 
 deceptive. Applying, therefore, these principles to the 
 doctrine and miracles of our Saviour, we shall find 
 that a certain portion of what He taught would have 
 been infallibly true, had He never wrought a single 
 miracle; — although its obligation perhaps would 
 not have been so clear to all capacities : — and that the 
 rest of it, inasmuch as it contained nothing but what 
 tended to the honour of God, and the welfare of man- 
 kind, was capable of being enforced by miracles : 
 and that this part of the doctrine the miracles did so 
 enforce, proving beyond all question that it came 
 from God. Supposing, however, that any part of 
 the doctrine had been in itself absurd, or contradic- 
 tory, or in its tendency immoral, no miracles whatever 
 would have been sufficient to prove it. It is evident, 
 then, that although the nature of the doctrine be 
 taken into consideration, before the mission is recog- 
 nized as divine, we prove, nevertheless, the doctrine 
 by the miracles, and not the miracles by the doctrine.^^ 
 But now it will be asked, whether, upon so diffi- 
 cult and delicate a question as the credibility of a 
 doctrine, the generality of mankind are capable of 
 forming a judgment? Are the illiterate and ignorant, 
 and those who have been educated in a false faith, fit 
 persons to decide whether it is worthy of a Divine 
 
 20 See Clarke's Boyle Lecture, p. 252. 
 
68 LECTURE IV. 
 
 interposition ? Are they likely to detect a false 
 doctrine, if it be supported by the testimony of 
 miracles ? — In the minds of a few thoughtful per- 
 sons, it is possible that, according to the nature of 
 the communication, there may be generated a dis- 
 position to admit or to reject the probability of its 
 Divine original. But will this effect be produced 
 upon the multitude ? Supposing that a doctrine should 
 be propounded which is favourable to men's corrupt 
 passions ; this consideration would doubtless awaken 
 the caution and prejudice of a few good men against 
 it : — but to the approval of the greater portion of 
 mankind, would it not thereby be the more strongly 
 recommended ? When we consider what flagrant vices 
 were ascribed by the heathen to their divinities, and 
 what gross immoralities were practised by them in 
 the ritual of their religion, even without the sanction 
 of miracles ; and when we consider, further, how often 
 the principles of Gospel purity are treated as imprac. 
 ticable, and their very excellence urged against them ; 
 — how often Christians themselves endeavour to 
 soften down the rigour of Christian precepts, and 
 attempt to bring them nearer to the level of their 
 own frailty; — when all this is considered, will it not 
 be agreed that a doctrine, which should connive at 
 the indulgence of carnal appetites, would overcome 
 all dictates of conscience, and perceptions of innate 
 morality ; offering a temptation too strong for human 
 nature to resist ? 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 69 
 
 That the state of morals among the heathen, at the 
 time of our Saviour's incarnation, had arrived at an 
 awful pitch of depravity, — that the leprosy of sin had 
 incrusted them with its loathsome humour, — and that 
 each race of men was more corrupt than the pre- 
 ceding, — is an unquestionable fact. And yet, the sad 
 and reproachful strains,^^ in which one of their own 
 poets, — and he, too, no very strict moralist, — has 
 recorded it, afford a sufficient evidence in themselves 
 that the voice of conscience was sometimes loud 
 enough to be heard. And when we find another of 
 their writers describing, in his indignant satire,^- the 
 reckless and headlong career of profligacy ; comparing 
 the consciousness of secret guilt to the most exquisite 
 tortures of the bull of Phalaris, or the sword of Da- 
 mocles ; and invoking upon the head of the tyrant, 
 
 2' jEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
 Progeniem vitiosiorem. 
 
 HoRAT. 3 C. vi. 46. 
 
 22 Magne pater Divlim, saevos punire tyrannos 
 Haud alia ratione velis, cum dira libido 
 Movent ingenium ferventi tincta veneno : — 
 Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta. — 
 Anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera juvenci ; 
 Et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis 
 Purpureas subter cervices terruit ; — Imus, 
 Imus prsecipites — quam si sibi dicat ; et intus' 
 Palleat infelix quod proxima nesciat uxor ? 
 
 Pers. Sat. iii. 35 — 43. 
 
"7^ LECTURE IV. 
 
 as the heaviest curse that could be invented, that he 
 should ever retain before his eyes the fair form of 
 virtue, and waste away under the consciousness of 
 having forsaken her ; it affords a tolerably clear proof, 
 that although wellnigh choked by education, and ex- 
 ample, and unrestrained indulgence, there were still 
 some seeds of virtue lying in the neglected soil of 
 the human heart. Although inactive, and wellnigh 
 extinct, through want of due culture and discipline, 
 there may still be traced that instinctive moral per- 
 ception, by which man is led to approve what is good, 
 and to condemn what is evil. As the natural eye 
 perceives a natural beauty in the shape, and colour, 
 and proportion of outward objects, as soon as they 
 are presented to it ; so the inward eye distinguishes 
 the fair and the amiable, from the foul, the odious, 
 and the deformed. In either case, differences of 
 opinion may occur; but these are the exceptions 
 which prove the rule. And among them all, there 
 is a preponderating unanimity. The shapeless rep- 
 tile will be regarded with universal loathing : the 
 ungrateful and the cruel man will be treated with 
 universal abhorrence. Supposing that you were to 
 relieve an innocent person in distress ; and supposing 
 that you were, afterwards, to inflict some grievous in- 
 jury upon one who has been your benefactor; and then 
 coolly reflecting upon what you have done, to make a 
 candid statement of your reflections : — most truly has 
 it been observed, that to assert that you would be 
 
LECTURE IV. 71 
 
 affected in the same way towards both the actions, 
 or that you would make no distinction between 
 them, but approve or disapprove them equally, is a 
 falsity too glaring to require serious confutation."^ 
 
 As the sensitiveness to pain which pervades our 
 outward members, was intended as a law to protect 
 them from injury ; so, in the moral sense, we have a 
 more excellent and Divine law to warn us against 
 the sin which may assault and hurt the soul. When 
 man was placed in paradise, the faculties of his soul 
 were perfect. He saw the truth of God as clearly, 
 as with the natural eye he beheld the objects of the 
 material creation around him : distinguishing the good 
 from evil, as he would distinguish the light from dark- 
 ness; relishing the one, and abhorring the other. 
 When sin entered, he fell from this perfect state into 
 one of insensibility and ignorance. The eye became 
 blind; the ear became deaf; and the soul like a 
 maimed and distempered body. But although de- 
 faced and mutilated, there may still be traced the 
 impress of the original and eternal image of God. 
 Still there is left a spark of the celestial light alive 
 among the embers.^^ — It was to quicken and revive 
 this dormant faculty, to raise man from this fallen 
 and corrupted state, that the Son of God became in- 
 
 23 Butler's Sermon upon Human Nature, p. 15. 
 
 -* — 'Ey/cetrpu^ jueVoe yfuv (nrivSrjp. Basil. 
 — Exigua lucis scintillula. Calvin. 
 
72 LECTURE IV. 
 
 carnate among us. The miraculous cures winch He 
 wrought upon the body, were an emblem of the re- 
 novation of the soul. And the effect of His Gospel, 
 under the preventing and furthering grace of the 
 Holy Spirit, is to bring the child of fallen Adam still 
 nearer and nearer to the image in which God ori- 
 ginally created him. 
 
 It appears, then, that although the generality of 
 mankind are living in habits of sin, and although, 
 even among those who profess to be treading in the 
 footsteps of Christ, there is sometimes found a dis- 
 position to adopt a lower standard of moral purity 
 than that which is set up in the Gospel ; no one can 
 reasonably deny the existence of a moral perception 
 of right and wrong, sufficiently acute to prevent man- 
 kind in general from admitting doctrines as Divine, 
 which are inconsistent with the Almighty^s attributes, 
 although they should be supported by miracles. 
 
 In fact, unless in subjects of this nature the appeal 
 be made to the heart and conscience, in the case of a 
 vast majority of mankind, it will be found impossible 
 to make any appeal at all. It requires no profound 
 knowledge of human nature to be aware, that to esti- 
 mate evidence is what comparatively few are capable 
 of; and that abstract reasoning upon religion is of 
 little avail. What people of old had sharpened the 
 natural keenness of their reasonino^ faculties with more 
 assiduity and success than the Athenians? — And yet 
 the only person who attempted to argue them out of 
 
LECTURE IV. 73 
 
 the absurdities of their polytheistic idolatry, was con- 
 demned by them to death ! It may be true, that the 
 sober and thinking portion of their philosophers had 
 convinced themselves of the existence and nature 
 of One supreme and invisible God ; but they kept 
 the truth locked up within their own bosoms. In 
 their outward profession and worship they still went 
 along with the multitude ; and if they acknowledged 
 the Deity at all, it was done in secret. For, having 
 no preternatural revelation of the Almighty's will to 
 offer, no instructions as to the acceptable mode of 
 worshipping Him, no expiatory sacrifices, no sprink- 
 ling of purification, no oblations of thanksgiving, no 
 festivals to be observed in honour of the Deity, no 
 altar nor priesthood dedicated to His service ; al- 
 though they had reason on their side of the ques- 
 tion, it was of no avail, when so many ancient asso- 
 ciations and natural feelings were enlisted against 
 them. 
 
 In fact, it is not upon reason exclusively, or even 
 principally, that the religion of the majority of man- 
 kind must repose as its foundation. How rarely, 
 even among such as are faithfully seeking after the 
 truth, do we meet with those habits of patient and 
 dispassionate inquiry, which the difficulty and im- 
 portance of the subject demand ! — How much do we 
 see of controversy and cavilling ! — How often are the 
 speculations, which one age has received with defer- 
 ence, superseded and forgotten in the next ! — Is there 
 
74 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 a sect, among the many by which we are surrounded, 
 which does not represent the tenets of every other 
 shade of doctrine, except their own, as either un- 
 worthy of the Almighty's attributes, or at variance 
 with the conclusions of reason ? With the illiterate 
 portion of mankind, so far as their religion is any 
 thing more than mere habit, or confidence in others, 
 it is by the conscience, rather than by the intellect, 
 that the doctrines of revelation are to be estimated 
 and received. With those who are incapable of ap- 
 preciating the conclusiveness of an argument, the 
 great governing principle must be conscience : and 
 whenever the Almighty speaks, there is a chord in 
 man's heart which vibrates responsively. 
 
 Many a simple-minded Christian cherishes a firm 
 faith in the Saviour who died for him, and the Spirit 
 by whom he is strengthened and sanctified ; — many a 
 simple-minded Christian lives and dies in this faith, 
 undisturbed by a single doubt as to the Divine origin 
 of the Bible in which it is contained ; — without know- 
 ing, and without being able to comprehend if he did 
 know, one jot of the evidence upon which we receive 
 that Bible as the word of God. When told of his 
 own sinfulness, and of the justice and purity of the 
 Almighty, and of the intercession of the Saviour ; what 
 is it that melts his stony heart, and causes the tear to 
 flow down his rugged cheek, but the voice of con- 
 science bearing an irresistible testimony from within, 
 and pronouncing the doctrine to be true ? The efiect 
 
LECTURE IV. 75 
 
 is produced, not by the mere word of him that 
 speaketh, but by that inward process thus described 
 by the Apostle : ^' The invisible things of the 
 Creator, even His eternal power and Godhead," — ^His 
 greatness and goodness, and the rest of His essential 
 attributes — " are clearly seen and understood from 
 the things that are made,"^^ — even from the law 
 written by His own finger upon the heart of man. 
 The effect is produced, not by presenting to him a 
 confutation of the sophistry of Atheism, — not by at- 
 tempting to convince him that he has a soul, — not 
 by proving to him that there will be a future state of 
 retribution, — but by simply calling upon his con- 
 science; by appealing to that natural apprehension 
 of good and evil which God has planted within him. 
 
 -5 Rom. i. 20. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 MATTHEW XIII. 51. 
 
 HAVE YE UNDERSTOOD ALL THESE THINGS ? 
 
 AMONG Other arguments which have been 
 brought forward to show that the Jew was 
 bound to admit the evidence of our Lord's miracles, 
 and to receive Him in the Divine character to which 
 He laid claim, I have had occasion to point out the 
 general tendency and character of the miracles them- 
 selves, and the absence therein of any shadow of 
 foundation for the charge of an infernal agency. It 
 was observed, that they were something more than 
 the mere exercise of a superhuman power. In almost 
 every instance, they were the exercise of a super- 
 human power with a compassionate and beneficent 
 intention : and as such, they afforded an intimation 
 at least that they were wrought with the immediate 
 co-operation of that Being, who is beneficent, as He is 
 Almighty. They afforded a presumption, that He 
 who wrought them, had come upon a beneficent and 
 
LECTURE V. 77 
 
 compassionate errand. And they were also examples 
 of love and compassion to be exercised by His fol- 
 lowers towards the rest of mankind, according to 
 their own respective, though inferior, opportunities. 
 And now the question presents itself, whether this 
 was all. — Was there, or was there not, any meaning 
 or intention in the miracles further than this ? Did 
 they, like the parables of our Lord, contain any 
 spiritual sense, any mystical allusion ? Was the out- 
 ward act, besides being an exercise of supernatural 
 authority, the type or figure of any hidden meaning ? 
 For some of those expositors, who have sought to 
 minister to the church's edification, by bringing to 
 light latent and spiritual truth from beneath the 
 literal narrative of Scripture, have professed to dis- 
 cover it in the narrative of the miracles. The period 
 is yet fresh in our recollection, when the Christian 
 student found his occupation in defending these foun- 
 dations of his faith against that monstrous assertion, 
 that no human testimony, no historical evidence 
 whatever, is sufficient to prove that the miracles 
 were ever wrought. But now we find our attention 
 called to the miracles, not only as proofs of Divine 
 power, and foundations of the faith, but also, and in 
 a more especial manner, as vehicles of hidden and 
 spiritual instruction. So far as the fondness for 
 mystical interpretation tends to generate a deep and 
 awful reverence for Scripture, on the part of the 
 theological inquirer, it must ever be a subject of joy 
 
78 LECTURE V. 
 
 and congratulation: — and, so far as it kindles any 
 new sentiments of devotion in the cold and selfish 
 heart, it is profitable. But inasmuch as if it be 
 used without due caution and sobriety, especially 
 when applied to the miracles of Scripture, it may 
 lead, and has led, to results of a very disastrous 
 character ; I may be allowed, perhaps, to dwell for 
 a time upon the subject, and to endeavour to point 
 out the danger. 
 
 Into the great question between the literal and 
 the figurative interpretation of Scripture in the ab- 
 stract, it is scarcely necessary to enter. It may be 
 sufficient to observe, that in this matter, as in many 
 others, there is danger in each extreme. That a 
 spiritual interpretation is to a certain extent autho- 
 rized by the usage of the inspired writers themselves, 
 cannot of course be questioned, without in some 
 measure questioning the fact of their inspiration : nor 
 can any faithful expositor, in the face of the Scrip- 
 tures themselves, argue against its reception. By 
 observing the great natural effect of figurative lan- 
 guage in arresting the attention, and captivating the 
 affections ; and by reflecting that the nature of the 
 truths to be conveyed in Holy Writ is frequently 
 such as to render it difficult to express them in any 
 other way ; the prejudice against this mode of inter- 
 pretation will be removed from all candid minds, and 
 a store of spiritual truths will be opened to us, with 
 which we should not otherwise have become ac- 
 quainted. 
 
LECTURE V. 79 
 
 But with respect to the I'miits within which the 
 search for allegorical meanings ought to be con- 
 fined, there has been a wide diversity of opinion. 
 According to the fashion of the age, or according to 
 individual temperament and local circumstances, the 
 views taken of this question have been extremely 
 different. On the one hand, a figurative meaning 
 has been attached, not only to those passages in the 
 Old Testament, which our Lord Himself and His 
 disciples have expressly pointed out as prophetical, 
 and to those objects which they have referred to as 
 types ; but to every part of the Old Testament, and a 
 considerable portion of the New. Urged on by that 
 love of imagery which is natural to the mind, an 
 expositor of luxuriant fancy is easily carried over the 
 boundary lines of prudence and sobriety : and he 
 pants for the distinction of producing an interpreta- 
 tion which has never been discovered before. In 
 this case a very slight evidence, or even semblance of 
 evidence, is deemed quite sufficient to guarantee the 
 propounding of such interpretations, as authorized 
 expositions of truth. It has been contended, that 
 every thing which proceeds from God, must neces- 
 sarily have a depth of spiritual meaning, like Him- 
 self, unfathomable and infinite : ^ and that any pro- 
 fitable meaning, which the ingenuity or the piety of 
 
 ^ Nihil vacuum, neque sine signo, apud Deum. 
 
 Iren^us iv. 21, 
 
80 LECTURE V. 
 
 an expositor may attach to any particular passage or 
 event, is a portion of what was originally intended. 
 This, it is alleged, is " the Spirit which givetli 
 life ;" as by St. Paul set in opposition to the " letter 
 which killeth." While some, on the one hand, in 
 fearful apprehension of the evils resulting from a 
 principle so uncertain and fallacious, have kept them- 
 selves, as they think, out of danger, by admitting a 
 small number only of such figurative interpretations, 
 and such as it would be unwarrantable to reject ; 
 others have discarded all spiritual interpretation 
 whatever, professing to regard it as opposed to the 
 rules of sound criticism, if not to the plain dictates 
 of reason. Thus every ancient type and prophecy, 
 every adumbration of the Messiah's office and cha- 
 racter, on which the mind of the pious inquirer has 
 ever been accustomed to dwell with joyful faith, is 
 stigmatized as enthusiastic and visionary, and rejected 
 as the offspring of mere superstition. 
 
 In examining the probability of there being a 
 mystical meaning in our Lord's miracles, it will be 
 our business to inquire, not so much into the preva- 
 lence of figurative language, as of figurative actions, 
 in the lives of the inspired men and prophets of 
 old. 
 
 We shall find, that metaphorical actions in general 
 were extremely common. A custom which had ori- 
 ginated among that imaginative people, at a period 
 when their language, in its poverty, was insufficient 
 
LECTURE V. 81 
 
 to express the sentiments and feelings of the mind, was 
 still retained among them, even after their language 
 had become so copious as not to require it. The sim- 
 ple gesture used for the ratification of an oath, is fre- 
 quently alluded to in the early portions of Scripture 
 history;^ and the expressive act, which was intended 
 as an outward manifestation of sorrow, is familiar to 
 all. From these we come to the more special and par- 
 ticular instances of metaphorical action : — the rending 
 of a garment into twelve pieces, to signify the twelve 
 tribes:' — the pushing with horns of iron, to denote the 
 expulsion of the Syrians ;"* — and the smiting a certain 
 number of times upon the ground, in order to show 
 how often Syria should be smitten.^ By such sym- 
 bolic action the prophets were empowered to signify 
 future events. Isaiah was commanded to walk bare- 
 foot, and uncovered ; in order to show that Egypt and 
 Ethiopia should be led into shameful captivity.^ Jere- 
 miah was ordered to take a potter's earthen bottle, and 
 to break it in pieces before the ancients of the people ; 
 that they might understand that the Lord would break 
 the city and its commonwealth, '^ as one breaketh a 
 potter's vessel that cannot be made whole again. "^ 
 He put a yoke upon his neck ; in order to signify the 
 dominion which Babylon would acquire over Jeru- 
 
 2 Gen. xxiv. 2. ^ \ Kings xi. 30. 
 
 4 1 Kings xxii. 11. * 2 Kings xiii. 18. 
 
 ^^ Isaiah xx. 2. 7 Jer. xix. 1. 
 
82 LECTURE V. 
 
 salem, if his advice were rejected :^ and he bound up 
 a stone with the book of his propliccy, and cast it 
 into the Euphrates, to show Babylon's final destruc- 
 tion ; — " Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise 
 from the evil that I will bring upon her."^ Ezekiel 
 was ordered to delineate the city upon a tile ; and to 
 prefigure what was about to befall it, by building a 
 fort against it, raising a mound, and setting around 
 it a camp with battering rams. This mimic siege 
 was to be prolonged for the space of forty-three days ; 
 during which time he was to eat and drink by mea- 
 sure, to signify the extremity of the famine : and by 
 certain other symbolical acts, he was to show them 
 that a third part of the inhabitants should die with 
 the famine and the pestilence, a third should fall by 
 the sword, and a third should be scattered to the 
 winds. ^'^ He was also directed to prepare his stuff 
 for removing ; and to go forth with it at even in the 
 sight of the people, as they who go forth into capti- 
 vity : and having dug through the wall in their sight, 
 to carry his burden out upon his shoulders in the 
 twilight, with his face covered, that he might not see 
 the ground/' — Such was the symbolical language of 
 the prophets ; a kind of imagery which all must care- 
 fully study, who would attain to a thorough compre- 
 hension of the depth, and force, and sublimity of 
 
 " Jer. xxvii. 2. 9 Jer. li. 60. 
 
 '" Ezek. iv. and v. " Ezek. xii. 3. 
 
LECTURE V. 83 
 
 their writings. In fact, it has justly been designated 
 as *' almost a science in itself."^* 
 
 And if we proceed to examine the life of our blessed 
 Saviour, we shall find that He, also, made use of cer- 
 tain significant actions, with the obvious and declared 
 intention of adding expressiveness and force to His 
 words. When He was inculcating upon His disciples 
 the practice of humility, for instance, — " He called a 
 little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of 
 them." ^^ When He laboured to inspire them with a 
 readiness to make personal sacrifices for the good of 
 others, He girded Himself with a towel, and washed 
 their feet.^'* It is argued, then, that since our Lord has 
 left unquestionable instances of this symbolical mode 
 of action, in the cases which we have quoted, we may 
 presume that in the miracles also, — that is, in the 
 circumstances under which they were performed, 
 and the mode of action which He adopted in per- 
 forming them, — there may probably be the same kind 
 of spiritual and hidden meaning. 
 
 It is alleged, too, that in the performance of some 
 of His miraculous cures, our Lord actually made use 
 of certain outward acts and gestures, which we cannot, 
 without presumption, deny to be symbolical. When 
 He was about to work a miracle in behalf of the mo- 
 ther of Peter's wife, who was sick of a fever, — and also 
 
 Van Mildert : Bampton Lecture, p. 240. 
 Matt, xviii. 2. '* John xiii. 4. 
 
84 LECTURE V. 
 
 in behalf of the daughter of Jairus, who was dead, — 
 He took each of these persons by the hand. In tlie 
 act of giving sight to a man who was born blind, He 
 spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and 
 anointed his eyes therewith ; and bade him " go, wash 
 in the pool of Siloam." And in several instances, in 
 the miracles themselves an ulterior meaning seems 
 to be intimated ; either by words which our Lord Him- 
 self made use of on the occasion, or by their corres- 
 pondence with other circumstances mentioned or al- 
 luded to by Him, the allegorical meaning of which is 
 unquestionable. When we find, for instance, that a 
 certain fig-tree, upon which our Lord sought in vain 
 for fruit, was condemned by Him for its unproductive 
 uselessness ; and, by an exercise of his miraculous 
 power, withered and dried up even to the roots : ^^ — 
 and when we find, in a certain parable, the mention 
 of a fig-tree, which, when the owner came and sought 
 fruit upon it, and found none, was sentenced to be 
 cut down, that it might no longer cumber the ground : ^^ 
 — and when we are instructed, that in the latter there 
 was avowedly an ulterior and spiritual meaning ; it is 
 suggested, that in the former there must have been a 
 spiritual meaning also. This conclusion would seem 
 to be confirmed, by a reference to the tenor of the two 
 parables which our Lord delivered immediately after- 
 
 Matt, xxi. 19. '" Luke xiii. 7. 
 
LECTURE V. 85 
 
 wards ;^^ and still more, by an important declaration, 
 that the exclusive privileges which the Jewish nation 
 had so long enjoyed, would be taken away from 
 them, and given to a nation *' bringing forth the 
 fruits thereof." ^^ 
 
 Again, when our Lord fed the multitude with 
 bread in the wilderness, there was given a certain 
 illustration of the miracle in the subsequent declara- 
 tion respecting the " bread from heaven." ^^ And in 
 the miraculous draught of fishes, Jesus intimated to 
 Simon the future success which was to await him as 
 *' a fisher of men."^*^ In the case of the man born 
 blind, He did not proceed to perform the cure until 
 He had given a spiritual meaning to the power by 
 which He performed it : — " As long as I am in the 
 world, I am the light of the world ;"^^ — I give a 
 spiritual discernment to the eyes of the mind. — And 
 again, after the miracle had been wrought, He an- 
 nexed to it a spiritual meaning when He told the 
 Jews, that the object of His coming into the world 
 was that the blind and ignorant — " they which see 
 not" — might be enlightened ; and that they " which 
 see, might be made blind." In the observations 
 which He addressed to those around Him, after 
 casting out an evil spirit. He made an application of 
 the state of a relapsed demoniac to the condition of 
 
 '^ Matt. xxi. 28 and 33. i^ Matt. xxi. 43. '^ John vi. 32. 
 20 Luke V. 10. " John ix. 5. 
 
86 LECTURE V. 
 
 the Jews; intimating that their last state was " worse 
 than the first." '^^ And lastly, when He was about to 
 raise Lazarus from the dead, He made a direct allu- 
 sion to that future exertion of Divine power at the 
 last day ; when, in like manner, He will call forth 
 all mankind to appear before Him. ** I am" — He 
 said — " the resurrection and the life."'^^ 
 
 From these instances of symbolical meaning 
 avowedly attached to the miracles, it is inferred, that 
 in others of them, although performed without any 
 declaration of such meaning, it may, nevertheless, 
 lie hid. In fact, an imaginative mind may easily 
 arrive at a persuasion, that many of our Lord's mira- 
 cles are in some degree prophetical : emblems of His 
 designs, and visible representations of the invisible 
 benefits which He was about to confer. When He 
 cast out evil spirits, for instance, did He not seem to 
 prefigure His intention to destroy the empire of the 
 prince of evil spirits, and to remove the effects of 
 Adam's curse? Thus, also, when His disciples told 
 Him that even the devils were subject to them, He 
 spoke of Satan's fall " like lightning from heaven ;" 
 and intimated that a similar downfall awaited his 
 dominion upon earth. At all events, by repeatedly, 
 professedly, and publicly ejecting those evil spirits, 
 He nullified the imputation of any confederacy with 
 them in the performance of His other miracles. — If 
 
 *2 Matt. xii. 45. 33 Joiin xi. 25. 
 
LECTURE V. 87 
 
 we find that in the early ages of the Church, certain 
 heretics arose, who condemned the use of wine, and 
 forbade marriage ; crying up the importance of celi- 
 bacy, and recommending austerities of the body : — 
 and if, again, we find that the first miracle which 
 Jesus wrought, was at a festive entertainment; and 
 that this festive entertainment was on the occasion of 
 a marriage ; and that the object of the miracle was 
 to supply the lack of wine in the needy household 
 where He was a guest : — and if, again, we find this 
 miracle recorded by only one of the Evangelists ; that 
 one writing his Gospel at a period when the erroneous 
 notions which we have alluded to, were already 
 adopted and propagated : — who will venture to ^ay 
 that the miracle was not wrought in anticipation of 
 those foolish errors, and recorded for the express 
 warning of such as entertained them ? 
 
 Jesus came into the world to *' destroy the works of 
 the devil :" the worst of which are those which take 
 place upon the soul. These, however, cannot be 
 apprehended by the bodily faculties, inasmuch as 
 the soul is invisible. Whenever we have occasion to 
 speak of the faculties of the soul, we are forced to 
 borrow our words from the faculties of the body :^^ 
 and the evils and distempers of the soul, in like 
 manner, we are wont to represent by the evils and 
 distempers of the body. If the body had not fallen 
 
 ^'* See Jones on the Figurative Language of Scripture, p. 210. 
 
88 LECTURE V. 
 
 into infirmity along with the soul, we should not 
 have been able to understand the soul's disorders. 
 But now, by comparing the state of the body, when 
 in perfect health, with the state of the same body 
 when oppressed with disease, we may form some 
 idea of the effects of sin upon the soul. Like a body 
 maimed and distempered, so is the soul in its state 
 of degeneracy and corruption. The eyes of the soul 
 are blind, its ears are deaf, its tongue is dumb, its 
 feet are lame ; and it is throughout infected with 
 foul disorders. When He, therefore, who was the 
 great Physician of the soul, exercised a miraculous 
 power of healing upon those who were diseased in the 
 body, — the deaf, the dumb, the maimed, the infirm, 
 and the leper; — does it not appear as if His intention 
 was to prefigure the cure of spiritual diseases, the 
 leprosy of sin, the various ailments and infirmities of 
 the soul ? When the light of day was for the first 
 time poured upon the sightless eyeballs of the man 
 who was born blind, it was a miracle well suited to 
 the character and oflBce of Him who wrought it, and 
 who announced Himself on this very occasion as the 
 "light of the world." 2^ 
 
 And as He cured all bodily diseases, so He over- 
 came that which is the consummation of them all, 
 even death ; signifying, as it were. His final victory 
 
 " John ix. 5. 
 
LECTURE V. 89 
 
 over that which is the consummation of all spiritual 
 disorders, even spiritual death. In the restoration 
 of a dead body to life, is there not a visible emblem 
 of the renovation of a soul, dead in trespasses ? 
 
 It is recorded, that some of His miracles were 
 vs^rought upon strangers and aliens; which might 
 seem to indicate that the spiritual blessings which 
 He had to confer, would not be confined to Israel 
 alone. And when those strangers showed a higher 
 degree of faith and gratitude than the Jews, did it 
 not seem intended to show beforehand, that the Gen- 
 tiles would surpass the Jews in their readiness to 
 embrace the Gospel? We find Him, indeed, expressly 
 declaring, in immediate connexion with the commen- 
 dation which He bestowed upon the faith of the Gen- 
 tile centurion, that — *' many shall come from the 
 East, and from the West, and shall sit down with 
 Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of 
 heaven : but the children of the kingdom shall be 
 cast out." On several occasions we find His mira- 
 culous power exerted upon persons at a distance, 
 whom He neither visited nor saw : which may seem 
 to intimate that spiritual diseases should, in like 
 manner, be removed at a distance ; and that His 
 Gospel should convert and save those who had never 
 seen His bodily presence upon earth. 
 
 It has been observed by a writer of the last cen- 
 tury, a man of deep research, and one by no means 
 
90 LECTURE V. 
 
 addicted to visionary speculations,^^ that, in the mira- 
 culous draught of fishes, which took place when our 
 Lord met His disciples a short time before His ascen- 
 sion, the number^ of them is recorded with a precise- 
 ness which cannot have been without its meaning. ^"^ 
 And, having ascertained from sufficient authority,^ 
 that it was the exact number of the kinds of fishes 
 known to the naturalists of the age ; he asks, whether 
 it does not appear like an indication that persons of 
 all nations and conditions should be enclosed in that 
 net of the Gospel, which these ** fishers of men " 
 were shortly about to cast ? 
 
 When we see the Saviour rebuking the winds and 
 the waves, we may take it as an emblem of His power 
 to quell the madness of the people, " so furiously 
 raging together : " — we recognize the authority of 
 that Being, who alone " stilleth the raging of the sea, 
 and the noise of the waves thereof, and the tumult 
 of the people." And when He walks upon the sea, 
 it may be received as a personification of His Gospel, 
 winning its way over the ocean to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth. 
 
 When we find, that at the moment of His expiring 
 upon the cross, the veil of the temple, which fenced 
 off the Holy of Holies from the less sacred parts of 
 
 26 Jortin : Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 21. 
 The observation seems to have been made previously by Basnage. 
 
 27 John xxi. 11. 28 Oppian. 
 
LECTURE V. 91 
 
 the edifice, was miraculously rent in twain, — laying 
 open thereby that sanctuary which the Law allowed 
 no one to enter but the high priest, and him only 
 once in the year, with the blood of the sin offering, — 
 do we not discern a prefiguring of the abolition of 
 that ritual Law, — a breaking down of the wall of par- 
 tition, — and the effecting of an entrance for all be- 
 lievers into the sanctuary of heaven by the blood of 
 Jesus, which was poured out at that moment upon 
 Mount Calvary ? And has not St. Paul declared, in 
 more than one passage of his Epistles, that the great 
 miracle of the Resurrection was, in some measure, 
 figurative of the Christian's rising up from the waters 
 of baptism, to walk " in newness of life?" '^^ 
 
 Besides this we are told, that in ancient prophecy, 
 that is, in the portions of it relating expressly to the 
 miracles, it is rather the spiritual blessings to be 
 conferred by the Gospel, than the temporal effects of 
 the miracles upon which it is founded, which seem 
 to be predicted. When Isaiah, for instance, des- 
 cribes the conversion of the Gentiles, he speaks of it 
 as a blossoming of roses in a desert, a sound of joy 
 and singing in a lonely wilderness: — '^ the eyes of 
 the blind " — he proceeds to say — " shall be opened, 
 and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped ; the 
 lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the 
 dumb shall sing.''^° Inasmuch, then, as the former 
 
 29 Rom. vi. 4 ; Col. ii. 12. 3o Isaiah xxxv. 6. 
 
92 LECTURE V. 
 
 part of this prediction is obviously and avowedly 
 figurative, it is suggested that we cannot^ without 
 inconsistency, refuse to admit a figurative sense in 
 the latter part of it also. In other words, that the 
 miracles of giving sight to the blind, and opening 
 the ears of the deaf, and making the lame man walk, 
 though doubtless to be performed in the letter, — as 
 indeed they were, — were signs also of the blessings 
 of that spiritual salvation, which it was the Mes- 
 siah's mission to convey. 
 
 I have thus given a brief statement of the argu- 
 ments which are assigned for the applying of the 
 principle of spiritual interpretation, in a cautious and 
 modified form, to some of our blessed Saviour's mira- 
 cles. So apt and precise is the coincidence with im- 
 portant events which afterwards came to light, as to 
 make men pause before they assert that such coinci- 
 dence was, in all instances, accidental. And although 
 there be no direct evidence of the fact, it is pre- 
 sumed that these miracles, besides being acts of super- 
 natural power, and evidence of the Divine mission of 
 Him who wrought them, were intended to convey 
 such figurative meanings to the mind of the faithful 
 inquirer in aftertimes. 
 
 But if, in general, the use of allegorical interpre- 
 tation as applied to Scripture narrations, be fraught 
 with danger; how much is that danger increased 
 when it is applied to the narrative of miracles ! — The 
 dispensation of Moses was, itself, only a shadow : 
 
LECTURE V. 93 
 
 and therefore tliat in the miracles of that dispensa- 
 tion, — in the manna that came down for the hungry, 
 the rock that was smitten for the thirsty, and the ser- 
 pent that saved from death, — there should be some- 
 thing shadowy and figurative, we are prepared to 
 expect. But let us beware, lest in allegorizing the 
 dispensation and miracles of Jesus, we seem to turn 
 the substance itself into a shadow. In venturing to 
 lay down certain rules for our guidance in the matter, 
 which will be done on a future occasion, most gladly 
 shall I put myself under the directions of one, to 
 whose authority every sober-minded inquirer will 
 submit with reverence ; one who, although no blind 
 admirer of antiquity, is always less desirous to ad- 
 vance a position or precept on his own responsibility, 
 than to seek for, and combine, and embody the opi- 
 nions of the wisest and soundest of those who have 
 gone before. 
 
LECTURE VL 
 
 2 TIMOTHY, IV. 4. 
 
 AND TIIEY SHALL TURN AWAY THEIR EARS FROM THE TRUTH, 
 AND SHALL BE TURNED UNTO FABLES. 
 
 IN proceeding with our inquiry into the intention 
 and effect of our Lord's miracles, it was proposed 
 in the last Lecture, that we should discuss the ques- 
 tion, whether it is probable that there lies hid in 
 those miracles any mystical and spiritual meaning. 
 After pointing out instances of the prevalence of meta- 
 phorical action among the Jews in general, we ob- 
 served that our blessed Lord Himself, besides making 
 use of it in matters of less importance, employed 
 it on several occasions in the performance of His mi- 
 racles. We then remarked, that in some of the mira- 
 cles, — as, for instance, in that of the barren fig-tree, 
 the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, and 
 the abundant draught of fishes, — our Lord expressly 
 signified the existence of an inner and spiritual sense. 
 And having shown the facility with which an imagi- 
 native mind may discover traces of what may be 
 
LECTURE Vr. 95 
 
 designated a prophetical meaning in some of the 
 other miracles; we proposed that certain rules should 
 be laid down for the guidance of such as may turn 
 their steps into a path so beset with difficulty. For, 
 while some expositors would scarcely allow that there 
 exists any spiritual meaning at all, even in the three 
 miracles already alluded to ; others would take them 
 as merely specimens of what this mode of interpre- 
 tation may be made to produce. The former would 
 urge us to repudiate many figurative and prophetical 
 intimations, because they are not expressly accredited 
 as such by the inspired writers ; and the latter would 
 inundate the field of biblical research with many 
 visionary lucubrations, which certainly are not " pro- 
 fitable for doctrine," if, indeed, they be harmless. 
 
 It is agreed by all judicious writers upon the sub- 
 ject, that, before any figurative or mystical meaning 
 is assigned to any passage in the narrative of Scrip- 
 ture, there must be produced some urgent cause for 
 deserting the letter, — amounting almost to necessity. 
 If, for instance, the literal meaning of the words is 
 such as would be derogatory to the Divine perfec- 
 tions, as is the case when bodily organs or human 
 passions are ascribed to the Almighty : — if, on the 
 other hand, the expressions are so elevated and figu- 
 rative in their character, when applied in the literal 
 sense, as to amount to absurdity and extravagance : 
 • -or if, again, the figurative interpretation be so 
 obvious in its coincidence with another subsequent 
 
96 LFXTURE VI. 
 
 event, as to strike conviction into the mind at once ; 
 — in all these cases ; in addition, of course, to those 
 in which the figurative meaning is asserted, or alluded 
 to, by the inspired writers themselves ; the internal 
 evidence of Scripture requires that it be adopted. 
 
 Having determined, then, that a figurative inter- 
 pretation is what we are fully authorized to seek for, 
 and in some cases obliged to admit, we now come to 
 the question, — how is that interpretation to be regu- 
 lated ? And here it may be laid down as an incontro- 
 vertible maxim, that due regard must be had to the 
 tenor of all other passages, of which the interpreta- 
 tion is already fixed upon undisputed authority. No 
 fundamental article of faith, no necessary rule of life, 
 can be supposed to depend upon texts which are 
 doubtful or obscure. We must not venture, therefore, 
 to interpret any figurative passage in a sense which 
 cannot be reconciled with truths elsewhere expressed 
 with more clearness. If a metaphorical interpreta- 
 tion be applied at all, it must be so applied as to 
 elucidate the subject, not to embarrass it. It must 
 not be sought for in matters of trifling moment ; nor 
 must it, under any circumstances, be made the para- 
 mount subject of investigation.* 
 
 In applying these rules to the case of the miracles, 
 it is evident, in the first place, that no figurative 
 
 See Van Mildcrt, Bampton Lect. p. 251. 
 
LECTURE VI. ^7 
 
 interpretation of any of those miracles ought to be 
 admitted, which is not so obvious as to strike the at- 
 tention of every observer ; unless an ulterior meaning 
 be pointed out by Holy Writ itself: and, in the 
 next place, that it must not be sought for in mat- 
 ters of trivial importance, nor in cases where it tends 
 rather to mystify than to elucidate. These are the 
 precautionary maxims, which the lovers of allegory 
 seem more particularly to have neglected. 
 
 Smitten with admiration of the more visionary 
 among the ancient expositors, and trusting impli- 
 citly to their somewhat questionable guidance, they 
 seem disposed to apply this mode of interpretation 
 to every part of Scripture without distinction; and 
 to carry it, in all instances, as far as their ingenuity 
 and imagination can find a path to follow. In regard 
 to the actions of our blessed Saviour, (with which 
 we are now more particularly interested,) it is as- 
 serted by a distinguished writer of the school of 
 Alexandria, and maintained by his admirers among 
 ourselves, that they who rest content with the out- 
 ward meaning of Gospel history, — forgetting, as 
 they go along, that in this same Jesus they live, and 
 move, and have their being, — are labouring under 
 the same blind delusion with those Judaizers, who 
 profess to find neither type nor prophecy relating to 
 Him in the Old Testament.^ In virtue of that mys- 
 
 " Origen : in Joan. vi. 3. 
 
98 LECTURE VI. 
 
 tical union which subsists between Christ and His 
 Church, it is inferred that every thing which hap- 
 pened to Him when upon earth, was a mystical token 
 of some future fortunes of the Church. In every 
 miracle, every speech, nay, in every movement of 
 our blessed Lord, in every mention of time or place, 
 in every modification of outward circumstance, this 
 fanciful writer discovers a mystical intimation of 
 something connected with the progress of the Gospel. 
 The Saviour is held to be present, in a certain mys- 
 tical manner, in every part of the Scripture which 
 relates to Him. 
 
 The drift of the argument by which this mystical 
 mode of interpretation is advocated, may be under- 
 stood from the following observations. Every one, — 
 it is remarked — who contemplates the words and 
 works of God, must be sensible that the least of 
 them is far too deep for human comprehension : — that 
 as the most trivial of His commandments is exceed- 
 ing broad, so the slightest of His actions must have 
 " eternal and infinite associations and consequences:" 
 — and that the words and deeds, therefore, of our 
 blessed Saviour, being the words and deeds of God, 
 must necessarily contain more than met the eye and 
 the ear. ^ Having been taught from His own lips, that 
 a sparrow falleth not to the ground without Him; it is 
 inferred that we cannot be wrong in supposing, that 
 
 3 Tracts I'or the Times, No. 89. p. 119. 
 
LECTURE VI. 99 
 
 in His own actions, and among the rest in those 
 miraculous actions which He performed in evidence 
 of His Divine mission, in an especial manner, must 
 His mysterious presence be exhibited. They must 
 necessarily contain a heavenly and secret meaning, 
 whether we be able to discover that meaning or not. 
 To seek for, and recognize it, is deemed an act of 
 considerate faith ; — to treat it lightly, and neglect it, 
 is denounced as a fearful symptom of irreverent for- 
 getfulness. It is suggested, that the incarnation of 
 the Son of God may have had other objects, relative 
 to other races and other states of being : and, indeed, 
 that intimations are given of a change wrought by 
 that mysterious event in heaven, as well as upon 
 earth. It is said to be probable, therefore, that 
 those actions and words of our Saviour, which are 
 too profound for our comprehension, may have be- 
 longed to Him as the Lord of angels, rather than of 
 men ; and have reference to His government of heaven, 
 rather than of earth. ^ And occasion is taken to laud 
 the watchful piety of those ancient writers, who, in 
 their interpretation of the obscurer portions of Scrip- 
 ture, have not forgotten this. 
 
 The effects of this mode of treating Holy Writ 
 will be visible, it is said, in an increasing regard 
 and reverence for it. He who knows beforehand, 
 that the Personal Word is every where present in 
 
 5 Tracts for the Times, No. 89. p. 127. 
 
100 LECTURE VI. 
 
 the written word, will open the sacred book with the 
 impression that it is an awful thing to look therein. 
 When he draws near, like Moses, to the darkness 
 where God is, it will seem only right to prepare him- 
 self by fasting, and prayer, and self-denial.^ The 
 perception of our Lord's presence through the veil of 
 the letter, is the religious improvement of that fond- 
 ness for type and allegory, which, as we have already 
 observed, is natural to the human mind. And inas- 
 much as this feeling is often found the most strongly 
 developed in those persons, whose means of acquiring 
 literal instruction are the least favourable, — a class 
 which unquestionably forms a great majority of man- 
 kind, — it is inferred, that the practical usefulness of 
 such a mode of treating Holy Scripture will be of 
 very wide extent. "^ 
 
 If this mode of arguing be allowed to prevail, it 
 is clear that one axiom, which has usually been laid 
 down among the characteristics and evidences of our 
 faith, — namely, that all things necessary to salvation 
 are revealed in plain and unequivocal terms, — must 
 be forthwith abandoned. And, most assuredly, if the 
 narrative of our Lord's ministry be thus assumed to 
 contain only 3. pa?'t of the truth, the Divine promise 
 that the Holy Spirit should guide the writers of the 
 Gospels " into all truth" — a promise made in distinct 
 
 ^ Tracts for the Times, No. 89. p. 135. 
 7 Ibid. p. 136. 
 
LFXTUKE Vr. 
 
 101 
 
 terms, and under very striking circumstances, — is 
 rendered of none effect. And while we contemplate 
 with awful reverence the words and actions of Jesus, 
 as the words and actions of incarnate Deity, we are 
 inclined to think that such reverence is rather mani- 
 fested, in holding that they are of a character which 
 would be easily understood by those fallen beings 
 for whose use they were intended ; than in asserting 
 that they contain hidden meanings, which none can 
 arrive at but the student and the recluse. 
 
 It is to be remembered, too, that when these words 
 were spoken and these actions performed, the incar- 
 nate Word had laid aside the attributes of Deity; 
 exercising the power thereof only so far, as was ne- 
 cessary to convince man that He came from God, and 
 that all He asserted was true. For the long period 
 of thirty years He lived among men, as a man, even 
 as a servant. His words and His actions during 
 that time were innumerable. Even in the short por- 
 tion of it which was comprised in the period of His 
 ministry, we are told, that if any one should attempt 
 to record ^^every one" of the things "which Jesus did," 
 " the world itself could not contain the books that 
 should be written." And yet, according to this hypo- 
 thesis, in each of these actions there was a deep and 
 unfathomable mystery. How is it to be reconciled 
 with our ideas of that Providence, which we believe 
 to have superintended the preservation of them^ that 
 
102 LECTURE VI. 
 
 SO few of these mysterious treasures should have 
 been recorded, — so vast a majority of them suffered 
 to perish from the memory of man ! 
 
 And as to the increasing reverence, with which, 
 as it is suggested, the Scripture will be regarded by 
 its readers, and more particularly by the plain and 
 illiterate, in consequence of its being supposed to 
 contain manifold and mysterious meanings; — will not 
 such a notion tend the rather to bewilder and con- 
 found them, and make them doubt whether the 
 Scripture contains any fixed and definite meaning 
 at all ? Will it not be likely to generate a coldness 
 and insensibility as to the old interpretations, and a 
 restless curiosity in seeking after new ? To have 
 discovered a meaning deeply hidden from vulgar 
 observation, will be soothing to the inquirer's vanity; 
 and a very slight correspondence between his own 
 visions, and the substance of the written word, will 
 afford him ample evidence of its truth. 
 
 One of the observations brought forward in refer- 
 ence to this point, seems to be peculiarly unfortunate; 
 inasmuch as it saps the only reasonable foundation 
 upon which this mode of interpretation might be 
 made to rest. We are told, that even the fathers 
 themselves are not " dogmatical," and that they do not 
 pertinaciously insist upon any particular interpretation 
 as the right one : — that upon one point only they are 
 positive, — namely, that there are spiritual meanings, 
 
LECTURE VI. 103 
 
 if we can only find them.^ — Thus are the reins given 
 to private judgment; and the curiosity is stimulated, 
 which would rather have required a check. In fact, 
 an ancient writer has made the following most perti- 
 nent remarks.^ " Whence is it evident," — he asks, — 
 ** how can you prove, — that when you undertake to 
 present these mystical interpretations, you are giving 
 the same sentiments which the writers of the narra- 
 tive — as you allege — had in their thoughts, but which 
 they did not think it right to convey in words suit- 
 able to their proper sense ? Another mystical inter- 
 preter may devise a sense more ingenious and proba- 
 ble than this which you have propounded ; a third 
 may discover another ; and a fourth a different one 
 from all the three. Thus, according to the qualifica- 
 tions of the different interpreters, every thing may 
 be explained with an indefinite number of pretended 
 expositions. For when allegories are taken from 
 things obscure and mystical, and do not aim at any 
 certain end, in which your notion of the subject may 
 be immoveably fixed, every one is at liberty to afl&rm 
 that his own mere conjecture is the meaning which 
 was originally intended. From such uncertainty as 
 this, how can you derive any thing certain ?" 
 
 Although, then, this system of allegorizing the 
 Scripture narrative may attract the attention, and 
 
 3 Tracts for the Times, No. 89. p. 122. 
 9 Arnobius, Adv. Gent. 1. v. p. 181. 
 
104 I.PXTURE VI. 
 
 captivate the fancy, and produce upon imaginative 
 minds a more speedy, and forcible, and perhaps 
 also a more permanent effect, than argumentative 
 evidence, or logic ; it is clear that it must be intro- 
 duced judiciously, and in its proper place, and with- 
 out any authoritative claim to implicit acquiescence. 
 Although when addressed to those who have already 
 received the faith on stronger evidence, it may be 
 attended with profit; it will not satisfy doubts, nor 
 convince the unbeliever. With respect to miracles^ 
 then, which are intended not so much for those who 
 believe, as for those who believe not, the necessity 
 for caution is doubly urgent. If there be peril any 
 where, it is here. That evidence, on which, as on a 
 sure foundation, the whole edifice of Gospel truth is 
 made to rest, ought certainly to be as free from ambi- 
 guity, or double meaning, as possible. A learned 
 writer in the early ages of the Church, who, in his 
 youthful days, had been seduced into a too imaginative 
 mode of exposition by the fashion of the times, in his 
 maturer age acknowledges the error into which he 
 had fallen, and compares the one mode of interpreta- 
 tion to the building on the sand, and the other to the 
 building upon a rock. " Being desirous," he says, 
 ** to imitate the householder in the Gospel, who 
 brings out of his treasure things both new and old, 
 I have intermingled with the figurative interpreta- 
 tions of our own writers, the facts of Jewish history; 
 in order that I might build upon a rock, and not 
 
LECTURE VI. 105 
 
 upon the sand : laying a firm and sure foundation, 
 such as Paul, the master-builder, says that he also 
 had laid."9 
 
 We will proceed to examine an instance of this 
 mode of interpretation, in a case which seems to be 
 somewhat more legitimate than many others : — I 
 mean, the development of hidden meanings from a 
 par^able. 
 
 After concluding the parable of the good Samari- 
 tan, — "Which of these three," — said our Lord, — " was 
 neighbour to him that fell among the thieves?" The 
 lawyer answered, " He that showed mercy on him." 
 *' Who, then," — asks one of the fathers, ^^ — " is neigh- 
 bour to ourselves, and to all the human race ? — Who 
 is it, but Jesus Himself? To whom, rather than to 
 Jesus, are we indebted for pity, after having suffered 
 so much from the rulers of the darkness of this 
 world ; pierced with so many wounds, — with fears 
 and desires, angers and sorrows, deceits and pleasures? 
 Of these wounds, Christ is the only one who can 
 heal us. He pours in the wine, the blood of the vine 
 of David : He brings oil in abundance from the 
 tender mercies of his Father : He engages angels, 
 and authorities, and powers, to minister to our relief; 
 and the reward which He offers to them, is the deli- 
 verance from the vanity of the world, which they 
 
 y Jerome : Prolog, in Zech. p. 105. 
 
 10 Clement: De Div. Servand. § 29. p. 952. 
 
106 LECTURE VI. 
 
 also shall receive at the revelation of the glory of the 
 sons of God." 
 
 Such are the ingenious allusions to the mystery of 
 salvation, which may be derived from this simple 
 parable. Well calculated are they to amuse, to at- 
 tract, and to edify : — to amuse by their fancifulness, 
 to attract by their aptness, and to edify by the solemn 
 truths which they convey. It is not impossible that 
 other imaginative minds, impressed with the same 
 feeling, and directed to the same subject, might have 
 hit upon the same mode of spiritual improvement. 
 But inasmuch as these have come down to us with 
 the sanction of an ancient expositor, we accept them 
 with becoming deference. 
 
 Not so, however, when we proceed to the re- 
 finements and subtleties of another ancient writer 
 upon the same subject. ^^ For we find a strange 
 intermingling of ordinary associations with objects 
 of the most sacred character ; — such as will minister 
 but little to our spiritual edification. Suffice it to 
 say, that the least important personage, and the 
 most trivial objects in the whole narration, — namely, 
 the host who took charge of this wounded traveller, 
 and the two pieces of money with which he was 
 paid by the generous Samaritan, — are made to repre- 
 sent the Three Persons in the ever-blessed Trinity. 
 
 From the parables of our Saviour, we proceed to 
 
 *^ Irenceus : lib. iii. 19, p. 244. 
 
LECTURE VI. 107 
 
 the allegorizing of His actions. On the occasion of 
 the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we are told by 
 some,^^ that in the command to bring to Him the ass 
 accustomed to the yoke, and the colt, ** on which 
 man never sat," He signified an intention to call the 
 Gentiles into His covenant, as well as the Jews. 
 By others ^^ we are told, that the transaction was 
 figurative of the entry of the word of God into the 
 soul of man: — the she-ass, loosed from her bonds 
 by the two disciples, being intended to represent the 
 Old Testament, expounded by two kinds of mystical 
 interpretation : and the New Testament being sig- 
 nified by the young colt. 
 
 The washing of the disciples' feet is understood, not 
 as a recommendation of humility, but as a token of 
 the Saviour's communicating an interest in his passion 
 to all the Saints who had gone before, — the Church 
 of the ancient prophets and patriarchs.^* "In the last 
 days, when the fulness of the time of liberty had 
 arrived, the blessed Word himself, in His own person, 
 cleansed away the filth of the daughter of Zion, 
 washing with His own hands the feet of His disci- 
 ples." — We are told, too, of spiritual meanings that lie 
 hid under the names of places. Our Lord's wandering 
 from place to place among the towns, and mountains, 
 and rivers of Israel, was the moving of the God of 
 
 12 Justin Martyr, Ambrose, and Augustin. ^^ Origen. 
 
 ** Irenoeus : in Joan. xiii. t. iv. 39. 
 
108 LECTURE Vr. 
 
 Israel among places which had been marked out, 
 from all ages, to be the scene of His mighty works, 
 when He should visit the earth literally/^ It is 
 suggested, that the outward objects to which he 
 referred in elucidation of His doctrine, — the birds 
 of the air, the lilies, the vine and its branches, the 
 tares and the wheat, and even the domestic processes, 
 and the modes of trade and husbandry to which He 
 made allusion, — being His own outward and visible 
 works, the preparations of His providence, and 
 created by Him with the knowledge that He should 
 so apply them in His ministry, — were created with 
 an express view to such application.^^ 
 
 We now proceed to the allegorizing of that other 
 division of our Lord's actions, which is more particu- 
 larly connected with the present subject of our con- 
 sideration : — I mean the miracles. 
 
 When our Lord fed the multitude with a miracu- 
 lous supply of provisions in the wilderness, the 
 number of loaves of bread which comprised the dis- 
 ciples' scanty store, is stated with preciseness. It is 
 scarcely needful to observe, that this preciseness 
 increases the effect of the narrative. To have said 
 that a fe\o loaves was all the provision they had 
 brought with them, might have satisfied the reader 
 that it was a quantity altogether insufiicient for the 
 
 15 Tracts for tlie Times, No. 89. p. 122. 
 
 16 Ibid. p. 123. 
 
LECTURE VI. i09 
 
 purpose, without a miracle : but it would not have 
 left upon the mind so decided an impression of the 
 care which had been taken, to represent every thing 
 precisely as it took place. When we are told, how- 
 ever, that it was specially ordained by Providence 
 that there should he Jive loaves, in order that they 
 might represent the Jive senses;^'' and this without 
 the slightest intimation from the Evangelists ; we 
 may pause before we admit the interpretation. It is 
 explained as representing the sacrifice of the whole 
 world of sense ; and especially of the dispensation of 
 Moses, which is styled the dispensation of the senses. 
 We find it stated again in the narrative, that the 
 ingredient of the loaves was barley, — a grain much 
 used in that country among the poor. It is asserted, 
 however, by another expositor,'^ that this also was 
 designed and Providential. This writer, it is to be 
 observed, although retaining the notion that it is the 
 Mosaic dispensation which is intended, repudiates 
 the theory of the senses, and supposes the five loaves 
 to represent the five books of the Pentateuch. He 
 then points out the similarity between the two. As 
 the grain of the barley is so closely enveloped in its 
 natural covering, as to require some trouble to arrive 
 at it ; so the letter of the Old Testament is clothed 
 with the wrappings of carnal sacraments or tokens, 
 
 17 Clement : Strom, v. § 33. 
 
 1^ Augustin : in Jodu. tr. 24 — 5. 
 
110 LECTURE Vr. 
 
 which must be stripped off, before you arrive at that 
 which contains nutriment. As to the lad who bore 
 those loaves, it is suggested, that perhaps he was the 
 children of Israel ; with no more than childish thought 
 and childish knowledge, — bearing them, but not 
 tasting them. There is said to be a meaning even 
 in the attitude of those who were fed. The food 
 was administered to them as they reclined. This 
 was done, in order to show that the spiritual bless- 
 ings bestowed by Jesus, — namely, a cleansing from 
 sin, and a sanctification by the Spirit, — were partaken 
 of, not merely by the living, but also by the saints 
 departed, who are now recrming in the earth. ^^ It 
 must be observed, too, that the expositor just alluded 
 to, who represents the five loaves to typify, not the 
 five senses, but the five books of Moses, acknow- 
 ledges in another place, that upon this point his 
 mind is involved in some degree of doubt. Provided 
 that we understand it to mean the Old Law, it is 
 held to be of little consequence by which of the two 
 interpretations we arrive at our conclusion. 
 
 Such is a specimen of the allegorical interpreta- 
 tion of one of our Lord's miracles. It is not other- 
 wise than a fair specimen ; for it is brought forward 
 by the admirers of the system, in order to recom- 
 mend it. We see that in their interpretation of the 
 miracles, as well as of the rest of Scripture, the 
 
 2*' licnaius: in Joan. xiii. t. iv. 39. 
 
LECTURE Vr. Ill 
 
 tone of these ancient allegorists is not " at all dog- 
 matical." It is acknowledged, indeed, that of their 
 own special expositions they commonly speak as 
 doubtfully as Origen on this very place ; who con- 
 cludes by remarking, that those who are better able 
 to store themselves with spiritual food, will in all 
 likelihood be better able to interpret the narrative. ^^ 
 One argument brought forward to support the 
 authority and usage of mystical interpretation, at 
 least in reference to the great objects of external 
 nature, is the fact of there being, among ancient 
 writers, a wonderful agreement as to their typical 
 signification. When we find, for instance, that, by 
 these writers in general, the sun of the visible world 
 is declared to be an index or token of the invisible, — 
 that the arch of the sky is a canopy, spread over the 
 tents and dwellings of the saints ; — that the flight and 
 hovering of birds, is a token that there are powers 
 above, who watch our proceedings in this nether 
 world ; — that the waters flowing into the sea, are the 
 people gathered into the Church of Christ ; — that the 
 flower, and the blade of grass, are the life of man ; — 
 that weeds and tares are false principles ; — when we 
 find that these and other conventional figures, of a 
 character more or less poetical, are constantly made 
 use of, not by one, but by many of the ancient ex- 
 positors; we are told that they could not have hit 
 
 21 Tracts for the Times, No. 89. p. 122. 
 
112 LECTURE VI. 
 
 upon the same set of figures independently of each 
 other, or without special authority ; and that these 
 figures, therefore, cannot have sprung from poetical 
 association merely, but from a common and more 
 sacred source.^^ In fact, the very poverty of some 
 of the symbols so made use of, is adduced as an 
 argument that they who adopted them, looked up 
 with deference to some high authority from which 
 they had been received : otherwise (it is argued) the 
 more refined w^ould have rejected them. — If, then, 
 the uniformity of usage, in regard to the symbolical 
 meaning of these objects in the natural world, be an 
 argument in their favour ; will not the want of such 
 uniformity, in the mystical interpretation of our 
 Lord's miracles, be an argument against such inter- 
 pretation, — at all events, against such interpretation 
 without some severe and judicious restraint? For, be 
 it remembered, that in dealing with miracles, we are 
 touching upon the very foundation of the faith ; and 
 that by such vagueness and uncertainty in the in- 
 terpretation of those miracles, we may seem to be 
 treating the substance itself as if it were nothing 
 better than a shadow. 
 
 22 Tracts for the Times, No. 89. p. 145. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 2 TIMOTHY IV. 4. 
 
 AND THEY SHALL TURN AWAY THEIR EARS FROM THE TRUTH, 
 AND SHALL BE TURNED UNTO FABLES. 
 
 I SHALL now endeavour to give a brief sketch of 
 the history of the mystical or allegorical mode 
 of interpreting Holy Writ; tracing the probable 
 causes from which it has sprung, and pointing out 
 the effects which have been produced by it. 
 
 Whether we assign the authorship of it to the 
 Christian school of expositors at Alexandria, in the 
 third century ; or trace it upwards through Philo 
 the Jew, in the Apostolic age, to his Jewish prede- 
 cessors ; we shall find that its origin lay in a sort of 
 unwillingness that Scripture should be supposed to 
 prescribe any thing as of Divine ordinance, without 
 such a cause as would satisfy their own minds of 
 its propriety. Instead of setting themselves to in- 
 quire, whether the precepts and incidents, so hastily 
 
 I 
 
114 LECTURE VII. 
 
 stigmatized as trivial, might not hold, nevertheless, 
 an important place in the great scheme of Divine 
 economy; they chose to affix their own novel and 
 arbitrary interpretation upon all such parts of the 
 Inspired Volume, as to speculative minds might 
 appear unimportant, and unworthy of their author. 
 This learned and fanciful Jew, indeed, was bent 
 upon bringing the word of God into conformity with 
 the prejudices of those heathen philosophers by 
 whom he was surrounded. Separated from the theo- 
 logical writers of his own creed and country; and 
 placed among men, who explained away the mar- 
 vellous traditions of their own national mythology 
 into mere symbols of the Creator's attributes, or of 
 the phenomena of the material universe ; he was 
 tempted to philosophize in like manner. Without 
 entering at large into the metaphysical abstractions 
 with which he has encumbered the truth, we may 
 state, as an instance, that he refers the account of 
 the Creation, not to the formation of this visible 
 universe, but of its pattern or archetype. ^ The face 
 of the material earth is a type of sense; — the herb 
 and the plant thereon are whatsoever is an object of 
 sense ; — the mist rising upwards from its surface, is 
 the symbol of intellect. The garden of Eden was 
 not an earthly but a spiritual Paradise, adorned with 
 the productions and delights of the intellect. The 
 
 1 Lil>. 1, sub initio. 
 
LECTURE vrr. 115 
 
 four rivers are the four cardinal virtues: the cheru- 
 bim vs^hich guarded its entrance, are the starry 
 hemisphere; — forming a barrier between the soul 
 and that heavenly Paradise from which it is banished. 
 The fiery sword is the energy which regulates their 
 movements. Cain is the contentious sophist ; Abel, 
 the humble-minded and contemplative believer : the 
 field in which they walked, is the field of contro- 
 versy. The translation of Enoch, is the conversion of 
 the soul to God by repentance ; a change of heart 
 which is described with much beauty and eloquence. 
 The ark of Noah is the material body ; and the 
 animals within, are its evil passions and affections. 
 The flood is the stormy sea of man's existence, — the 
 " waves of this troublesome world." The egress from 
 the ark, is the delivery of the imprisoned soul into a 
 state of spiritual freedom. In the history of Abra- 
 ham, he sees the progress of the mind from a state 
 of darkness, — from Chaldaea, the region of vain and 
 earthly imaginations,— to the intellectual and spiritual 
 illumination of Canaan. A like interpretation is also 
 affixed to the life of Jacob. The well of Haran is 
 the fountain of science. The vision of the ladder 
 is a representation of intellectual and incorporeal 
 essences, some descending to animate men's bodies, 
 and others returning to their aethereal home ; being 
 destined either to make it henceforward their con- 
 stant abiding place, or to return to be held again in 
 thraldom by the chain of matter, according to their 
 
116 LECTURE VII. 
 
 respective degrees of purity, and elevation in spiritual 
 knowledge. Even the life of Joseph, although so 
 closely connected in its literal sense with the patriotic 
 and early associations of this Egyptian Hebrew, is 
 nevertheless made the subject of allegorical expla- 
 nation. It is represented as the political, in oppo- 
 sition to the natural, life. The many-coloured vest 
 is the versatility of the statesman : and the interpre- 
 tation of dreams is the unravelling of the web, which 
 forms the great waking dream of our existence. 
 The attempts of the sophist and the demagogue, — the 
 magicians of Pharaoh, — to effect this, are in vain. 
 
 Such was the mode of interpretation adopted by 
 the philosophical Hebrews, at the time when Chris- 
 tianity first dawned upon earth : a mode of interpre- 
 tation, which, by the example of this eloquent and 
 devout allegorist, exerted an influence upon the views 
 of the early expositors of the Gospel ; and through 
 them, upon the theory and practice of others, in 
 times nearer to our own. The letter of Scripture 
 was treated as the outward and material body : the 
 latent allegory was the spirit which gave it life. 
 
 In fact, in some of the earliest of the writings 
 which have come down to us from the Apostolic 
 age, we may already discover the effect of this 
 example. In one of those epistles," we find certain 
 events in Jewish history alluded to, as typical of 
 
 2 Clement: ad Cor. Ep. 1. 
 
LECTURE Vir. 117 
 
 Christ and His church; and in a manner so judicious, 
 that not even the most cautious opponent of allegory 
 would venture to find fault. Another,^ however, 
 of those early writers gives us mystical expositions 
 of a character more visionary and questionable ; 
 some of which are applied to the person and suf- 
 ferings of our blessed Saviour. In one of the works 
 ascribed to Clement,* we find an avowed recognition 
 of the principle which we have already mentioned 
 as having actuated Philo ; and which, in fact, may 
 be considered, when applied to Scripture in general, 
 as the root of the evil with which the system of 
 allegorical interpretation has been encumbered; — I 
 mean the notion, that the Scriptures of the Old Tes- 
 tament contain many things, which, if understood in 
 their literal sense, are contrary to the nature, and 
 derogatory to the honour of the Deity. This writer 
 affixes an allegorical meaning, and that with extreme 
 license, to numberless portions of the narrative ; 
 the literal sense, indeed, is in all instances lightly 
 treated, and in some it is entirely discarded. In 
 short, in almost all of these early writers there is a 
 too great proneness to depart from the rules of sober- 
 minded criticism : and although we may acknowledge 
 the beauty of certain of their illustrations, — as that, 
 for instance, in which our Lord, by extending both 
 His arms upon the cross, is said to signify that He 
 
 3 Barnabas. * Horn, xviii. ^ 19. 
 
118 LECTURE VJI. 
 
 embraces both Jews and Gentiles in His covenant, — 
 we should hesitate, nevertheless, to urge it as an 
 argument, or insist upon it as a type. Without 
 presuming to pronounce a condemnation where the 
 voice of inspiration is silent, we should scarcely 
 venture, nevertheless, to assent to the notion, that 
 those sinful actions of prophets and patriarchs which 
 are passed over without express censure, are to be 
 understood as merely figurative, and in the real and 
 literal sense were never committed. In following 
 out an analogy which is instituted between Israel of 
 old, and the Church of Christ, in reference to the 
 spoiling of the Egyptians, the conclusion arrived at 
 by Irenaeus is somewhat startling. For he seems to 
 infer, that if the spoil extracted from heathen nations 
 by craft or violence, be dedicated to God^s service, 
 we are justified in carrying it off. In a certain 
 sense — he observes — the heathen are our debtors ; 
 and we have the privilege of enjoying, without the 
 labour of acquisition, that which it cost them much 
 labour to acquire.^ 
 
 And yet it is laid down by the same writer, as a 
 canon of interpretation, that the only sound, and safe, 
 and cautious, and true method of proceeding,'' is to 
 apply figurative and typical language only to those 
 
 * See Conybearc's Bamptoii Loot. p. 104. 
 
 ^ Yyitjg yovQ kcu aKiylvyoii Kai £uXa/3?;e kuI ((>i\a\r)drjc. Lib. ii. 
 cap. 46. 
 
LECTURE VII. 119 
 
 fundamental truths which have been clearly revealed, 
 and generally acceded to by the Church J And since 
 he has adhered, for the most part, with strictness to 
 this rule, we are led to conjecture that such com- 
 ments as those which we have been examining were 
 adopted by him without suspicion, on the sanction of 
 others who had gone before ; and that they did not 
 in reality originate with him, although we find them 
 in his works. 
 
 As we descend to the school of Alexandria, we 
 find symptoms, again, of that mistaken sensitiveness 
 as to the estimation in which Scripture may be held 
 by self-styled philosophers, which has been already 
 animadverted upon : — an unwillingness to allow that 
 any circumstances in the historical detail, of little 
 apparent consequence, have been recorded by inspi- 
 ration : — a disposition to call in the aid of allegory to 
 maintain, as it would seem, its doubtful credit; — and 
 with a great profession of reverence for Scripture, a 
 kind of acknowledgment, that the literal and obvious 
 sense of the narrative requires some external aid to 
 support it. 
 
 A brief reference to the works of that Alexandrian 
 expositor, whose name is associated more closely than 
 any other with the history of allegorical interpreta- 
 tion, will suffice to show the truth of this. A con- 
 
 "^ Oaa (f)ay6pw£ Kal ayafi({)if36\(OQ avToXe^el kv rdig ypa(()aig Xe- 
 XeKTai, Ibid. 
 
120 LECTURE VII. 
 
 siderable section in one part of his writings is occu- 
 pied in an attempt to show, that the allegorical is the 
 onli/ method in which Scripture can be interpreted 
 in a manner worthy of its Divine Author, or even 
 intelligible to the reader.^ And he draws a contrast 
 between the spiritual usefulness of the one interpre- 
 tation, and the literal and carnal sense in which 
 certain passages were received by his ignorant and 
 superstitious contemporaries. 
 
 It is fearful to observe the peril of the position, in 
 which this rash and visionary writer places himself. 
 What can warrant the boldness of such an assertion 
 as this : — that the main object of the Evangelists had' 
 respect to certain mysteries ; and that they were less 
 anxious to relate according to strict historical truth, 
 than to set forth the mysteries which rose out of it:^ 
 — that it was their purpose, whenever circumstances 
 should allow, to speak the truth both literally and 
 figuratively ; but when both could not be, to prefer 
 the spirit to the letter; the spiritual truth being 
 often preserved in what, we may venture, perhaps, 
 to call, the literal and hodWy falsehood ?^^ How can 
 we for one moment listen to his suggestion; that in 
 the apparent discrepancies which occur in the Gospel 
 narrative, — as, for instance, in the account of the pro- 
 
 8 Orig. Philocalia. 
 
 9 In Matt. Comiii. Series, § 77. t. iii. p. 892, 3. 
 
 10 In Joann. Comm. x. ^ 3, 4. 
 
LECTURE VII. 121 
 
 cess which was adopted by our Lord for healing a 
 blind man at the gate of Jericho, — such appearance of 
 disagreement did not come of itself, but was framed 
 with a special design to attract attention to the moral 
 and mystery of the transaction, rather than the mere 
 letter?" 
 
 The effect produced in the mind of the writer 
 himself was confusion, inconsistency, and doubt : 
 and the attempts which have been made to reduce 
 his system of interpretation to any thing like deter- 
 minate and intelligible principles, have been singu- 
 larly unfortunate. At one time he admits, that 
 whenever the letter conduces to edification, it is not 
 advisable to seek for allegory :^^ at another, he affirms 
 that there is not, either in the Law or the prophets, 
 one single iota, which does not admit of a mystic in- 
 terpretation.^^ He asserts, that in the historical parts 
 of Scripture, there are things recorded which never 
 took place according to the letter, and never could 
 have taken place : other things there are which 
 never took place, though it was not impossible that 
 they might take place. ^* And although he undertakes 
 to adduce instances of what he has asserted ; such as 
 the passage in the Book of Genesis, in which God is 
 spoken of as walking in the garden in the cool of the 
 
 " In Matt. Comm. torn. 16, § 12, t. iii. p. 732. 
 
 ^^ Horn, in Num. xi. '^ Horn, in Exod, 
 
 '^ De Principiis, lib. iv. 
 
122 LECTURE VII. 
 
 day, — in the first case; and in the second, the 
 plucking out a right eye, and the cutting off a right 
 hand; — still, as if aware of the dangerous ground 
 upon which he is standing, he requests his readers not 
 to draw from these assertions that conclusion which it 
 seems impossible to avoid, namely, that he would des- 
 troy the credit of the Scripture narrative altogether. 
 At one time he points out the error of those, who, 
 by their allegorical interpretation referred our Lord s 
 miracles to the cure of spiritual diseases alone : at 
 another, he exposes himself to the very same charge, 
 by affixing to those miracles an explanation beyond the 
 strict meaning of the narrative, and tending rather to 
 supersede it. In fact, he has incurred a grave sus- 
 picion of aiming to degrade our blessed Redeemer 
 Himself, to the merely allegorical type of a higher 
 and more exclusively spiritual Saviour, the unseen 
 and eternal Word of God. 
 
 In the course of three centuries, the constant prac- 
 tice of allegorical explanation had produced such a 
 mass of comment and exposition, as to leave an 
 imaginative mind very little scope for the production 
 of any thing original. The field was altogether pre- 
 occupied ; the Old Testament having long ago been 
 exhausted, and but little left untouched in the New. 
 All the marrow and fatness of the grain was said to 
 lie in the mystical sense ; those who were acquainted 
 only with the literal sense, were said to be living 
 
LPXTURE VII. 123 
 
 upon chafF/* The practice of allegorizing even the 
 miracles, which we have before alluded to, had al- 
 ready commenced. The miraculous cures which our 
 Lord wrought, were in general considered as typical 
 of the Spiritual blessings consequent upon His death 
 and passion. The resurrection of Lazarus, is the 
 awakening the soul from the sleep of sin : and the 
 voice which called him forth, is the voice which calls 
 men from dead works to serve the living God.^^ The 
 miracle at Cana, is symbolical of the admission of the 
 more distant inhabitants of Galilee on a like footing 
 with the people of Jerusalem. ^'^ The ship which 
 carried the Apostles, is an emblem of the Church, 
 which carries the faithful over the stormy ocean of 
 the world. ^® In our Lord's walking over the sea, is 
 seen a type of His dominion over the great dragon 
 which inhabits the deeps, even Satan. ^^ So very 
 fanciful is the whole of this system of interpretation, 
 that not only do we find (as has been already stated) 
 different allegories founded upon the same fact by 
 different writers, but even by the same. That woman 
 bound by ^' a spirit of infirmity," upon whom our Lord 
 exercised His miraculous power, is represented in one 
 
 ^* Hieron. Comm. in Esaise, c. ii. p. 49. 
 
 ^^ Epiphan, torn. iii. p. 372. '^ Euseb. Evang. Dem. 
 
 *^ Cyril. Alex. Comm. in Joan. c. ii. 
 
 '^ Euseb. Evang. Dem. 
 
124 LECTURE VII. 
 
 place as a type of the Church ;'^^ and in a second 
 passage of the same author, she is given as a type of 
 all mankind, prone to earthly things, bending down- 
 wards to the earth. ^^ This writer would have done 
 well to profit by his own warning : *' Some people," 
 he says, ** by interpreting those miracles without 
 sufficient carefulness, bring upon themselves destruc- 
 tion instead of salvation, and error instead of a know- 
 ledge of the truth." ^^ 
 
 In watching the progress of this mystical mode of 
 interpretation through the subsequent ages of the 
 Church, we shall find that in proportion as deference 
 has been paid to the opinions and practice of the more 
 visionary among the early expositors, so has a degree 
 of sanction, more or less qualified, been assigned to 
 it. And we shall also find, that it has proved of 
 especial efficacy in supporting the erroneous doctrines 
 and practices of the Church of Rome. 
 
 To assert, however, that the mystical comments of 
 these expositors were not calculated to support the 
 great practical and spiritual truths of religion, would 
 be contrary to all truth. To speak in terms even 
 approaching to disrespect, of their Christian faith and 
 Christian intentions, and to depreciate their learning, 
 their eloquence, or their ingenuity, would be equally 
 
 ^° Augustin. de Trill. 1. 4. ^' Augustin. in Serm. 392. 
 
 " Augustin. de Quoest. divers, ad Qusest. G4, toni. iv. p. 570. 
 
LECTURE VII. 125 
 
 unjustifiable. But it cannot be denied, that the very- 
 first principles of their favourite system were ob- 
 scure ; and that it was founded upon imagination, 
 rather than reason. It may always be modified ac- 
 cording to the religious prejudices of its votaries; 
 and its general operation is injurious to that literal 
 and historical research, without which no one, how- 
 ever spiritually disposed, can be a sound expositor 
 of Holy Writ. To deduce topics of spiritual edi- 
 fication from a passage or narrative, although they 
 do not flow directly from the literal meaning of the 
 words, may be harmless. Not so, when they are 
 set forth as the interpretation which was intended. 
 If once admitted as a legitimate instrument, it may 
 just as easily and as plausibly be employed in the 
 propagation of error, as in the support of truth. 
 And we know, that wild and visionary enthusiasts 
 have frequently found in the mystical sense that 
 countenance for their errors, which, in the literal in- 
 terpretation they have sought for in vain. 
 
 An ingenious mind may discover some favourite 
 dogma in almost every passage which is proposed; 
 and the same text may be made to convey various, 
 and even contradictory, opinions. So that instead of 
 rendering the Gospel accessible to those for whom it 
 is intended, it has a tendency the rather to encumber 
 it with difficulties, and to represent it as perceptible 
 in its full brightness only to a few. It leads to the 
 
126 LECTURE VII. 
 
 notion that Scripture is for the most part a sealed 
 book ; and that to arrive at a full understanding — if 
 indeed such understanding is ever attainable — of its 
 spiritual treasures, is the privilege only of the con- 
 templative and studious, the meditative scholar, and 
 the mystical recluse. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 2 TIMOTHY IV. 4. 
 
 AND THEY SHALL TURN AWAY THEIR EARS FROM THE TRUTH, 
 AND SHALL BE TURNED UNTO FABLES. 
 
 IN pursuance of our discussion of the question, 
 whether it is probable that there lies hid in the 
 miracles of our blessed Saviour any ulterior and 
 mystical meaning, — having insisted upon the neces- 
 sity of extreme caution in the propounding of any 
 such mystical interpretation, and laid dovi^n certain 
 maxims v^rhich have been recommended by judicious 
 divines for our guidance in the matter, — I cannot more 
 forcibly represent the danger that exists, and the 
 necessity of such caution in guarding against it, than 
 by bringing forward an instance recorded in the 
 annals of our own Church, of the effect produced 
 upon the visionary and unstable mind of a member 
 of our own University,^ by a too close and unscrupu- 
 lous devotion to the practice. 
 
 ' Thomas Woolston, B.D. Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. 
 He died in 1732. 
 
128 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 It is fortunate for our purpose, that we have an 
 opportunity of ascertaining, from his own writings, 
 the notions entertained by this person at successive 
 periods of his life ; and of tracing thereby the gradual 
 progress of his descent along the slippery and tortu- 
 ous path of error. 
 
 It appears from his earliest production,^ that he 
 had already been occupied for some time in a dili- 
 gent research into the writings of antiquity ; — that 
 he was an implicit admirer of the allegorical expla- 
 nations which he there discovered ; — and that his 
 admiration was especially assigned to Origen. Al- 
 though speaking not otherwise than with reverence 
 of the miracles in general, he recommends that they 
 be interpreted allegorically : and with respect to the 
 miracles of Moses, he seems to intimate that we have 
 sufficient encouragement to abandon the literal inter- 
 pretation entirely. At a more mature period of his 
 life, when it might have been hoped that a better 
 judgment would have corrected the errors of youth- 
 ful indiscretion, we find him hinting at a design of 
 receding from the letter of Scripture in general ;^ and 
 of rescuing, — as he terms it, — the Apostles, Evan- 
 gelists, Prophets, and Fathers of the Church, out of 
 the hands of those by whom the letter only is ex- 
 
 2 The Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian ReHgion 
 against the Jews and the Gentiles revived. Cambridge, 1705. 
 ^ Sec his Letters to Whitby, and Bennet. 1720. 
 
LECTURE VIII. ^ 129 
 
 pounded. After the lapse of a few years more, the 
 terms in which he speaks of the letter of Scripture 
 are scarcely those of common decency; and at length, 
 he breaks out into vehement declamation against the 
 literal interpretation of all prophecy and all miracles 
 whatever."^ The truth of the Resurrection, as usually 
 understood, he positively denies : and he gives a 
 significant intimation of what was passing in his 
 mind relative to the other miracles, by declaring, 
 that although he had, at that moment, no inclination 
 to ea^pose them in fact and circumstance ; he believes, 
 nevertheless, that it will some time be done. The 
 terms in which he alludes to Jesus as a teacher and 
 a moralist, are such as it would be painful to revert 
 to. It is plain, indeed, that he is rapidly advancing 
 in his career of blasphemous impiety. Very soon 
 after this, he assails the narrative and circumstances 
 of many of the miracles with sarcastic and contemp- 
 tuous ridicule.^ He lays it down as one of the 
 articles of his creed, — and that too on the alleged 
 authority of the Fathers, — that when understood in 
 their literal sense, as recorded by the Evangelists, 
 the miracles are of a like character with the '* lying 
 wonders of Antichrist. " Even the Impostor of 
 Arabia acknowledged that our Lord had given sight 
 
 * See a Treatise entitled " The Moderator between an Infidel 
 and an Apostate/' 1725. 
 
 5 Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour, 1727 — 1729. 
 
 K 
 
130 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 to a man born blind, and had cured the leprosy, and 
 had raised out of their sepulchres dead persons to 
 life: and yet by this advocate of mystical Chris- 
 tianity, these, and all the other miracles of Christ, 
 are absolutely denied. By degrading the literal, he 
 thought to exalt the mystical sense. 
 
 The great position v^^hich he labours to establish is 
 thus laid down in his own words: — ''That the history 
 of Jesus's life, as recorded in the Evangelists, is an 
 emblematical representation of His spiritual life in 
 the soul of man ; and His miracles are figurative of 
 His mysterious operations : the four Gospels being 
 in no part a literal story, but a system of mystical 
 philosophy and theology."^ At this climax of mys- 
 ticism he professes to have arrived by a legitimate 
 process of reasoning. He argues, that miracles of 
 healing are no proof of a Divine mission: — that 
 ** lying wonders " will not be distinguishable from 
 wonders wrought in support of the truth. He pre- 
 tends to have the authority of the Fathers for saying, 
 that the miracles of Antichrist will equal those of 
 Jesus; maintaining his assertion by reference to a 
 treatise which bears the name of Augustin,^ but is 
 generally considered to be spurious. He argues, 
 that since we read in the Scriptures of a diversity of 
 gifts, the power of working miracles, being only 0)W 
 
 6 First Discourse on tlie Miracles, }). 61. 
 
 7 De Anticliristo. 
 
LECTURE VII r. 131 
 
 gift, cannot invest the worker of tlieni with the 
 authority of a Divine lawgiver. — If by all this is 
 meant nothing more, than that we ought not to admit 
 the evidence of miracles as sufficient to make us 
 believe that a bad man, or a wicked doctrine, pro- 
 ceeds from God ; we should agree with him at once. 
 For if there be any thing, either in the miracles 
 themselves, or in the character of Him who performs 
 them, at variance with our instinctive perception of 
 what is right, it has already been shown that such 
 miracles cannot be received as a proof of a Divine 
 mission. But it has also been shown, that in this 
 admission there is nothing to invalidate the authority 
 and evidence of the miracles wrought by our blessed 
 Saviour. 
 
 Professing, as he does, to justify his rejection of 
 the literal sense by the testimony of antiquity, he 
 fortifies himself behind a goodly array of quotations. 
 Some of these quotations are taken from writings of 
 questionable, or worse than questionable, authority : — 
 others are most shamefully garbled and distorted to 
 suit his purpose : — and it is scarcely needful to add, 
 that their real value amounts simply to nothing. 
 He disregards the context ; suppresses the mention of 
 a literal sense, while the mystical is given at large ; 
 and quotes objections, without alluding to the an- 
 swers made to those objections by the very writers 
 from whom he has quoted them. 
 
 In reference, for instance, to that argument already 
 
132 LECTURE VII F. 
 
 alluded to, by which it is made to appear that cer- 
 tain prophecies of Isaiah, which in their literal sense 
 foretell the miraculous healing of bodily diseases by 
 the Messiah, foretell also the healing of diseases of 
 the soul, — he goes so far as to assert, that the Fathers 
 understood them in the figurative sense exclusively.^ 
 Numberless passages may be adduced to prove the 
 contrary ; and yet he persists in his assertion. Safely, 
 indeed, may we affirm, that in the instances in which 
 a secondary meaning is given to the prophecies in 
 question, it is not done without applying them, either 
 directly or by implication, to the literal performance 
 of the miracles in the first place. So far from 
 excluding the literal sense, the Fathers are careful, 
 for the most part, not to superadd a mystical sense, 
 except on the foundation of the letter. And yet, 
 whenever this objector was able to light upon any 
 allusion to moral infirmities, or moral blindness, he 
 seems to have taken it for granted that the infirmity 
 and blindness of the body were denied. 
 
 It is only justice to the credit of the ancient 
 writers quoted by him with so much confidence, to 
 observe, that he has ventured upon omissions and 
 misrepresentations of the most shameless character ; 
 and that if he can only succeed in making it appear 
 that they reject the literal narrative of the miracles, 
 truth and reason are altogether disregarded. If one 
 
 " First Discourse, &c. p. 16. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 133 
 
 of them, for instance, in speaking of that single 
 sufferer who was healed at the pool of Bethesda, re- 
 marks,^ — that the power and goodness of the Saviour 
 were capable of healing all the miserable objects 
 assembled there ; and that if we examine the fact 
 according to human reason, we shall find that in 
 comparison with what His power might have effected, 
 there was no mighty act in this single cure; and 
 that it was but a trifle when viewed in reference to 
 His boundless compassion ; and that we may infer 
 from this that men's souls were rather the objects of 
 His regard than their bodies ; — if, I say, we meet 
 with such a passage as this in the writings of Augus- 
 tin, we shall find, on turning to the pages of this 
 objector, that what was thus said in connexion with 
 one particular miracle, arising out of the particular 
 circumstances under which it was wrought, is unfairly 
 applied to the miracles in general. ^° We are led to 
 conclude, in short, that Augustin had rejected the 
 literal sense of the miracles altogether ; on the ground 
 of their being unworthy of the power and goodness 
 of God. — And if, again, the same writer, in another 
 place,^^ comparing the evidence of prophecy with 
 that of miracles, makes the obvious remark, that the 
 former possesses an especial value, inasmuch as it is 
 
 9 Augustin : in Joan. c. v. tract. 17. 
 
 10 First Discourse, &c. p. 10. 
 
 11 Augustin : contra Faust. 1. xii. c. 45. 
 
134 LECTURE VI I r. 
 
 not liable to be imputed to the agency of magic ; we 
 find this objector asserting boldly, and without re- 
 serve, that Augustin has said that it was possible 
 for miracles, such as those of our Saviour, to have 
 been effected by magic. If Augustin simply remarks, 
 that spiritual cures are greater than cures of the 
 body ; we are told that he speaks of the latter with 
 contempt. Even the silence of the Fathers he turns 
 to the support of his own hypothesis. For, in 
 speaking of a certain miracle, he expresses his per- 
 suasion, that if the commentaries of Origen on this 
 part of Scripture had been extant, we should have 
 found that he did not believe a single word of the 
 direct narrative.^^ 
 
 It is unnecessary, however, to spend our time in 
 exposing the unfairness of these detached and solitary 
 quotations, when we remember that in the ancient 
 Apologies, the whole argument is made to rest upon 
 the fact of the miracles having been wrought, accord- 
 ing to the simple and literal tenor of the Gospel 
 history. This is the very groundwork of the whole 
 edifice ; and if, in some cases, it is rather implied 
 than asserted, the position will be rather corroborated 
 thereby, than otherwise. How can any one question 
 the literal interpretation of the miracles, and pretend 
 to do this on the authority of the Fathers, when we 
 
 J2 First Discourse, &c. p. 34. 
 
LECTURE VI 1 1. 135 
 
 find it asserted by one of the Apologists, ^^ that some 
 persons who had been the objects of our Lord's 
 miraculous power, being cured of their diseases by 
 Him, or raised to life from the dead, had survived 
 even to his own times? Out of the innumerable 
 passages of similar import which might be quoted, 
 it may suffice to bring forward an eloquent and 
 spirited remonstrance,^* addressed to the impugners 
 of our blessed Lord's divinity ; and having for its 
 very foundation the literal narrative of the miracles, 
 which are enumerated in detail. — "Was He a mortal, 
 or one of ourselves, — it is asked, — who put to flight 
 fever, and diseases, and tortures of the body, by His 
 simple word; who walked upon the sea, and com- 
 manded the tempest to be still ; Nature herself 
 paying homage to Him as her Lord ? Was He one 
 of us, whose presence the devils that had entered into 
 human bodies being unable to endure, withdrew 
 from their possession ; affrighted by the exercise of a 
 power which they had not hitherto experienced ? 
 Was He one of us, who saw what men were turning 
 over in their most secret thoughts, and understood 
 the meditations of the most reserved?" — And after 
 having thus enumerated all our Lord's wonderful 
 works, he observes, in conclusion, that they were not 
 
 13 Quadratus, as quoted by Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. 1. iv. c. 3. 
 1^ Arnobius, Adv. GcnteSj p. 26. 
 
136 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 wrought to gratify a vain ostentation of power, but 
 to convince unbelievers that what He promised was 
 truth ; and also, that from the compassionate and 
 beneficial tendency of these works, they might under- 
 stand what is the nature of the true God. 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied, that a want of 
 caution in using and speaking of the allegorical 
 mode of interpretation, on the part of some of the 
 ancient expositors, — those being chiefly of the Alex- 
 andrian school, — supplied this unhappy man with 
 some shadow of ground for his theory. Captivated 
 with a sort of spiritual wit which had grown into 
 fashion, and which afforded an agreeable entertain- 
 ment to their popular auditories, they were ever on 
 the look out for some novel connexion of spiritual 
 ideas, — some apt similitudes, striking allusions, and 
 amusing mysteries. Inasmuch, however, as they did 
 not profess to have derived them either from inspira- 
 tion, or from Apostolical tradition, they cannot be 
 regarded in any other light than as mere private 
 thoughts. But their followers, instead of separating 
 these bright and superficial ideas from the narrative 
 of Scripture, applauded the association ; and not- 
 withstanding the remonstrances of the more cautious, 
 this injudicious affectation of allegories prevailed to 
 a very considerable extent. By degrees there sprung 
 out of it an unhappy practice of alluding to tlie 
 literal sense with something like indifference ; and of 
 drawing comparisons between the literal and the 
 
LECTURE VIII. 137 
 
 spiritual sense, which were scarcely to be justified. 
 The mystical sense was made to impugn, and even 
 to exclude, the literal ; although that literal sense 
 was in no respect at variance with the rest of Scrip- 
 ture, or the common principles of truth. Actuated 
 by a desire of repelling the objections of unbelievers ; 
 or led in some cases by a natural fondness for alle- 
 gory, and by the hope of disguising a scantiness of 
 critical knowledge by involving the subject in mys- 
 teries ; they attempted to vitiate the literal narrative 
 of the creation of the world, the fall of man, and 
 other parts of the Sacred History. Unbelievers have 
 not overlooked the advantage which accrues to their 
 cause, from this conversion of the realities of Scrip- 
 ture into fiction and fable ; and they rejoice to see 
 its miracles so mystified by being thus made the 
 vehicles of hidden instruction, that one, who by pro- 
 fession, at least, was a Christian, was brought thereby 
 to an undis2:uised denial of their literal truth. 
 
 To examine in detail the rude and startling reflec- 
 tions cast by him upon the literal narrative of the mi- 
 racles, would be an irksome task. At the time, how- 
 ever, it was thought so important that an antidote 
 should go along with the poison, as to induce several 
 of the most learned divines of the period ^^ to send 
 forth an elaborate refutation of them. His aim was 
 
 15 Smallbrooke, Bishop of St. David's; Pearce, Bishop of 
 Rochester : and others. 
 
138 LECTUUE VIII. 
 
 to place all supporters of the literal sense between 
 the horns of a dilemma. He argues, that such is the 
 improbability of the circumstances attending some of 
 the miracles, as to render it necessary either to with- 
 draw our assent entirely from the Gospel as a Divine 
 revelation, or to conclude that these miracles in their 
 literal sense never took place ; and that the history 
 of them was intended, like the parables, merely to 
 convey some spiritual instruction. And he professes 
 to have discovered such inconsistencies and absurdi- 
 ties in the literal narrative, as will fully bear him out 
 in his assertion. These objections are for the most 
 part so frivolous, that if I proceed to bring any of 
 them out of their dusty oblivion, it will be rather 
 from a desire to show the height of folly to which 
 this unhappy man was carried, than to recapitulate, 
 as needful in this place, the serious refutation of them. 
 His preliminary objection to the miracles of 
 healing, is founded upon an alleged want of accuracy 
 in this part of the Gospel narrative. If they had been 
 intended, he argues, as proofs of a Divine mission, 
 the disease would have been specified more accu- 
 rately and scientifically ; and the mode of operation 
 in healing would have been described so cautiously, 
 as to convince the world that the cure was indeed 
 supernatural. 
 
 In reply to this, it is to be observed, that in cer- 
 tain instances the manner of our Lord's operation is 
 described with much preciscncss : and that it con- 
 
LECTURE VIII. 139 
 
 sisted merely of some outward act, apparently in- 
 tended to call the attention of the bystanders to the 
 miracle which He was about to perform. Of this 
 character, (as we have already observed,) was the 
 taking of the dead person by the hand, and the 
 touching the eyes of the blind. In other instances, 
 as if to make known that it was by Himself that the 
 miracle was wrought, and that He publicly assumed 
 the power of working it, the cure was effected by a 
 word. And, after all, if the disease be actually 
 removed, it is of little consequence to know whether 
 it was done by means which are not naturally com- 
 petent to such an effect, or without any outward and 
 ostensible means at all. 
 
 In short, the facts, as they are recorded, seem to 
 be precisely such as to render the whole narrative 
 in this respect least liable to objection. No process 
 of operation having being employed, no process of 
 operation is mentioned. Any other course that 
 might have been adopted, would probably have left 
 it less clear that the cure was miraculous ; and would 
 certainly have afforded the caviller a larger field to 
 expatiate upon. 
 
 And in like manner, supposing that one of the 
 Evangelists, — Luke, for instance, the physician, as 
 has been suggested, — had described in technical 
 language, according to the degree of medical know- 
 ledge at the time, the symptoms of some particular 
 disease, with elaborate dissertations upon its cha- 
 
140 LECTURE VJII. 
 
 racter ; should we have been one whit better con- 
 vinced that it was a disease difficult or impossible to 
 cure, than we are now by their simple statement, 
 that the object of the miracle was a leper, a para- 
 lytic, or one curtailed of his natural proportions? 
 And would not their technical phraseology, in the 
 present improved state of science, be made by the 
 scoffer a subject of ridicule ? The imparting of scien- 
 tific knowledge came not within the scope of reve- 
 lation : and any incidental allusions to science in the 
 Scripture are founded upon, and assimilated to, the 
 degree of knowledge in the age in which they were 
 written. Suffice it to observe, that although this 
 caviller of after times professes to doubt whether the 
 cures were miraculous, no such doubt was entertained 
 by our Lord's contemporaries, whether friends or 
 enemies. They differed certainly in one point; but 
 that was on the mode o^ accounting for this miracu- 
 lous power; the one ascribing it to the agency of 
 God, and the other to Satan. 
 
 Out of the number of those miracles, against the 
 literal narrative of which this caviller has directed 
 his attacks, we will select one, against which he has 
 argued with the greatest degree of plausibility; — 
 one, in which the latent existence of a spiritual 
 meaning cannot be doubted : — I mean the destruction 
 of the unfruitful fig-tree. A miracle it is, in the cir- 
 cumstances of wliich, unlike the tenor of our Lord's 
 miracles in general, thei'c is some appearance of seve- 
 
LECTURE Vlir. 141 
 
 rity : so that it is only by regarding its tendency to 
 warn a guilty nation of impending ruin, that we 
 arrive at its true character and object. 
 
 Some of the cavils which he raises are so trifling, 
 as never to be likely to be brought again into notice 
 from the oblivion into which they have descended. It 
 will be allowed, however, that there is some plausi- 
 bility in his question: — " How could Jesus expect 
 to find figs upon the tree, when it is stated by one of 
 the Evangelists, that the time of figs had not yet 
 arrived?" This question, however, plausible though 
 it be, could not be asked seriously by any one ac- 
 quainted with the nature and cultivation of the tree 
 itself, and with the critical interpretation of the pas- 
 sage in which the miracle is recorded. When we 
 find, both from the Scriptures and from Josephus,^^ 
 that the early fruits were ripe at the time of the 
 Passover, which was only three days after this : — 
 when we find, also, that in Palestine the fig makes its 
 appearance before the leaf; so that the very fact of 
 there being leaves afforded a fair presumption that 
 there was fruit also : — when we find again, that some 
 fig-trees bore two or even three crops in the year; 
 and that it was usual for the fruit to hang upon the 
 tree for a considerable length of time ; so that the 
 figs of the preceding year might still be hanging 
 upon the tree ; — with all these established facts, any 
 
 16 De Bell. Jud. I iv. c. 7. 
 
142 LECTURE VII f. 
 
 one of which would account for the expectation, that 
 there might be figs upon the tree at the time when 
 our Lord sought for them, we cannot agree with him 
 in designating that expectation as unreasonable. 
 
 And a very little critical knowledge would have 
 shown him, that the " time of figs," spoken of by St. 
 Mark, may be rendered also ^' the time o^ gathering 
 figs :" — and if the time of gathering figs had not yet 
 arrived, was it not an additional reason for expecting 
 to find the figs upon the tree ? The first-fruits of the 
 gathering were not offered, until the morrow of the 
 Sabbath which followed the Passover : therefore the 
 time of gathering had not yet arrived ; but it was 
 near at hand. Having started, however, with the 
 determination to discover what he terms absurdities 
 in the letter of the narrative, the objector is fully 
 satisfied that he has effected his purpose here. 
 Sheltering himself under the authority of an un- 
 guarded assertion made by Augustin,^' that the fact 
 of this miracle, unless it be understood in a figurative 
 sense, is without meaning ; he rushes at once to the 
 conclusion, that the literal sense of the narrative 
 ought to be rejected altogether. 
 
 Another of his arguments in justification of his 
 rejection of the historical fact, is as follows: — that 
 supposing Jesus had found the fruit which He 
 
 " Hoc factum, nisi figuratum accipialur, stultuni invenitur. 
 Augustin : toin. x. p. 748. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 143 
 
 sought upon the tree, He had no right to take that 
 which was the property of another ; and that the 
 blasting of the tree was an act of injury done to some 
 imaginary person, whom he designates its proprietor. 
 And yet the tree is expressly described as growing 
 by the wayside, — an uncultivated tree, — of common 
 right, and in the common field. And even if this 
 had not been the case, there was a merciful indul- 
 gence granted by the law ^^ to every traveller, in 
 respect to the grapes in his neighbour's vineyard, 
 and the corn in his neighbour's field ; which indul- 
 gence, by parity of reason, they were accustomed to 
 extend (as we have express evidence) to all common 
 fruits ; and in particular to the olive, the date, and 
 the fig. Of the grapes he might eat his fill, pro- 
 vided that he carried them not away in a vessel ; — 
 and of the corn he might pluck the ears with his 
 hand, provided that he moved not unto it a sickle. 
 By virtue of this law, the wayfaring man, whether 
 he were a Hebrew or an alien, was deemed to have 
 a right to eat of any fruit which thus fell in his way, 
 as freely as if it were his own property. 
 
 And with respect to the destruction of the tree, — 
 the loss of a barren fig-tree, — an object so worthless 
 and contemptible, as to have passed into a pro- 
 verb, — what was it, but an anticipation of the sen- 
 tence which even its owner, (if indeed it had an 
 
 Deut. xxiii. 24, 25. 
 
144 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 owner,) would have been the first to pass upon it ; — 
 " Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground!" Our 
 blessed Saviour could not have selected an object of 
 less value ; nor could He have exhibited an act of 
 destruction, in which the destructive power would 
 have been employed with less severity. — How could 
 He have given a more forcible warning against un- 
 productiveness, than by smiting a tree, which, while 
 others in that fruitful soil and genial climate were 
 producing two, or even three, crops of fruit within 
 the year, in spite of all its show of leaves, had pro- 
 duced nothing? How could He with more gentle- 
 ness have exhibited that chastising power, which He 
 will one day exercise, in its full rigour, against all 
 who bring not forth the fruits of righteousness ; than 
 by choosing an object, which, although containing 
 within it the principle of life, was insensible of pain? — 
 Consider the storm of hail, which at Moses' bidding 
 smote every herb and broke every tree in the land of 
 Egypt, at the time when barley was in the ear, and 
 flax approaching to maturity ; then look at this sin- 
 gle fig-tree, — barren, valueless, and cumbering the 
 ground, — which, at Jesus' bidding, withered away, 
 and made room for another better than itself. In 
 how marvellous a manner was justice tempered with 
 mercy ! — After having shown His tenderness by in- 
 numerable acts of healing, wrought upon all that 
 came to Him for relief; He wrought one miracle as 
 an emblem of severity to the unfruitful : — and that, 
 
LECTURE VIII. 145 
 
 not upon a man, but upon a fig-tree. How reckless 
 the impiety of him who has left upon record such 
 an observation as the following; — that if, according 
 to the literal narrative, our blessed Lord had thus 
 trespassed (as he terms it) upon the property of 
 others, there would have been no occasion to bring 
 forward false witnesses against him at his trial ! ^^ 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the right over this 
 tree, and over its fruit, wdiich Jesus would have pos- 
 sessed by the common law of the land, had He been 
 neither the Christ, nor a Prophet, nor even an Is- 
 raelite, — but merely a stranger, a wayfaring man, 
 journeying through the country. We have descended 
 to this low ground, in order to meet the rude assail- 
 ant upon his own terms. But, according to the 
 scheme of the Gospel, — as a Prophet sent from God, 
 acting by the Spirit of God, even the Son of Him 
 who had so often, in the days of old, declared that 
 He would lay the land waste, and destroy the trees 
 with their fruits, " because of the iniquity of the 
 inhabitants thereof;" — in the performance of this 
 miracle the Saviour exercised a right which requires 
 not our arguments for its justification. 
 
 It has already been observed, that the similarity 
 of circumstances between this miracle and a certain 
 parable, related by the Evangelists, is so striking, 
 as to afford a strong presumption that the miracle, 
 
 19 First Discourse, &c. p. 33. 
 L 
 
146 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 like the parable, was intended to be a lesson against 
 all unproductive uselessness. If we refer to the 
 tenor of our Lord's observations at the time, and of 
 the parables which He delivered in immediate con- 
 nexion with it, this interpretation will be confirmed. 
 The perverse unprofitableness of that son, who, when 
 sent by his father to work in the vineyard, said, '' I 
 go. Sir," and yet went not : — and the miserable fate 
 of the husbandmen, who despitefully treated the ser- 
 vants sent by their lord to receive the fruits of the 
 vineyard, and slew his son : — and the denunciation 
 with which our Lord wound up His discourses, — 
 " Therefore I say unto you, the kingdom of God 
 shall be taken away from you, and given to a nation 
 bringing forth the fruits thereof :"^° (which is a key, 
 as it were, to the whole ;) — all this conspires to 
 teach us, that the fig-tree was intended to represent 
 the nation of the Jews ; and that in consequence of 
 their rejection of the Gospel, they were already 
 consigned over to destruction ; to wither away as a 
 nation, and to be dried up by the roots. A sentence, 
 which has been signally verified by their continuance 
 in the same state of barrenness, under the moral of 
 the curse pronounced upon the fig-tree. The literal 
 narrative, then, of this miracle, will endure the test 
 of the severest examination ; and with respect to its 
 actual performance, in the plain meaning of the 
 
 20 Matt. xxi. 43. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 147 
 
 words, there can be no ground for doubt or cavil. 
 And it conveys, also, a spiritual meaning which could 
 not fail to be suggested at the time. All spiritual 
 barrenness, whether in individuals in particular, or in 
 nations in the aggregate, cannot escape the warning- 
 given, — by ^figurative history in the parable, and 
 in the miracle by an instant and striking example. 
 
 It has been very wisely remarked, that many of 
 the pernicious errors by which the faith at various 
 times has been obscured, have originated in the 
 attempt to carry out a legitimate principle too far, — 
 in the injudicious application of a doctrine, which? 
 in itself, is not otherwise than accordant with the 
 truth. Of this we have a striking instance in the 
 case before us. That a spiritual interpretation of 
 the Scriptures, and in some respects even of the 
 miracles of Scripture, is to a certain extent author- 
 ized by the inspired writers themselves, cannot be 
 questioned, without in some measure questioning the 
 fact of their inspiration : nor can any faithful expo- 
 sitor, in the face of such authority, argue against 
 its reception. And yet we see whither it may carry 
 an unstable and visionary mind, if applied indis- 
 criminately and without extreme caution. By how 
 much the more strange and monstrous this man's 
 conclusions may appear, by so much the more need 
 is there of circumspection in those, who find them- 
 selves travelling along the path by which he arrived 
 at them. 
 
148 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 At the same time, we are not forbidden to hope 
 that all such things may work together for good. 
 Listen to the wise and apposite observations which 
 have descended to us from one of the master-spirits of 
 an age gone by : — '' It has pleased the Divine Wis- 
 dom never yet to leave Christianity wholly at leisure," 
 — that is, from such as would pervert or deny the 
 truth : — " but to give its professors that perpetual 
 exercise of their industry and zeal. And who can 
 tell, if without these adversaries to rouse and quicken 
 them, they might not, in long tract of time, have 
 grown remiss in the duties, and ignorant in the doc- 
 trines of religion ?"^^ — The second century is now 
 far advancing since these words were uttered in this 
 place ; and each successive century seems to add its 
 confirmation to their truth. 
 
 21 Bentley's Commencement Sermon, 1696. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 c. wnmiNOHAM, tookes cour.r, cuANCKfiY i ane. 
 

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INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Albert Durer's Passion 13 
 
 Aldine Edition of the British Poets . . 7 
 
 Andrew's Private Devotions 10 
 
 Anglo-Saxon & Anglo-Norman Works 19 
 
 Apostolic Age in Britain 9 
 
 Aristophanes' Plays, translated 14 
 
 Bacon's Works, by Basil Montagu ... 15 
 
 Essays, by Ditto 13 
 
 Advancement of Learning .. 13 
 
 Novum Organum 13 
 
 Beesley's History of Banbury 18 
 
 Beltz's Order of the Garter 16 
 
 Berners, of Fysshinge with an Angle. . 14 
 
 Boone's Man's True Interest 9 
 
 Bourne's ( V incent) Poems, Lat. & Eng. 1 1 
 
 Bowles's (W. Lisle) Poems U 
 
 Bridgewater Treatises 6 
 
 Brovvne's (Sir T.) Works, by Wilkin 9 
 
 Burbidge's Poems 11 
 
 Burge's Temple Church 18 
 
 Byres's Etrurian Antiquities 17 
 
 Caledonia Romana 15 
 
 Catharine Douglas, a Tragedy 8 
 
 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 12 
 
 Claims of Labour 8 
 
 Coleridge's (Samuel Taylor) Works . . 8 
 
 (Sara) Phantasmion 8 
 
 Common Prayer, Books of 1 and 2 
 
 Cory (Isaac Preston) Works by 16 
 
 Courtenay's Future States 6 
 
 Coxe's Hymns from the German 11 
 
 Crabbe's Natural Theology 6 
 
 Cynosure, by the Editor of theCarcanet 13 
 
 Dance of Death, by Douce 13 
 
 Daniel's Modern Dunciad, &c 11 
 
 Dasent's Norse Grammar 16 
 
 Edda the Younger 16 
 
 De Vere's (Sir A.) Song of Faith, &c. 12 
 
 Diamond Classics 18 
 
 Donne's (Dr.) Devotions 10 
 
 Drummond's Noble British Families. . 5 
 Durer's (Albert) Passion of Christ .... 13 
 Dyce's Specimen of English Sonnets . . 12 
 Early English Dramatists, by Dyce .. 12 
 Early English Poetry, edited by Wright 12 
 Early Prose Romances, edited by Thoms 13 
 Essays in the Intervals of Business . . 8 
 
 Fclltham's Resolves 9 
 
 Festus, by Bailey 13 
 
 Fisher's (R. T.) Three Poems 11 
 
 Fitchett'^ (John) King Alfred 11 
 
 French's History of England 17 
 
 Fuller's Holy and Profane State 9 
 
 Holy War 9 
 
 Good Thoughts, &c 9 
 
 Memorials of 9 
 
 Gabell's Accordance of Religion, &c. . 6 
 
 Gods of the North, by Frye 16 
 
 Goethe's Faust, Part II 11 
 
 Gray's Works, edited by Mitford 10 
 
 Green's Hunterian Oration 14 
 
 Grinficld's Greek Testament 4 
 
 Guest's English Rhythms 8 
 
 Haweis on the Reformation 9 
 
 Henry's Events of a IVlilitary Life 11 
 
 Henry II. an Historical Drama 8 
 
 Herbert's (George) Poems and Remains 9 
 
 Holbein's Illustrations of the Bible 13 
 
 Homeri liias Grav^. Brandreth 18 
 
 HorapoUo N ilous, by A. P. Cory 16 
 
 Household Books 17 
 
 Page 
 
 Howard's Science of Drawing 14 
 
 Huber's English Universities 7 
 
 Humphreys Electro-Physiology of Man 18 
 
 Italian Classics 16 
 
 Johnson and Walker's Dictionary 16 
 
 Juvenal et Persius ". 18 
 
 Kant's Critick of Pure Reason 15 
 
 King's (Bp.) Poems - 12 
 
 Early Ballad Poetry 10 
 
 Lathbury's Nonjurors 9 
 
 Liturgical and Biblical Works . . 3 and 4 
 
 Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual 9 
 
 Lucretius a Creech 18 
 
 Macray's British Historians 15 
 
 Malthus on Political Economy 9 
 
 Marsden's Hulsean Lectures 14 
 
 Merivale's Poems 11 
 
 Translations from Schiller. 11 
 
 Metcalfe on Caloric 14 
 
 Methuen's Poems 12 
 
 Millers's Ely Cathedral 16 
 
 Montagu's (Basil) Selections, &c 13 
 
 Montagu's (J. A.) Heraldry 16 
 
 Moultrie's Poems 11 
 
 Dream of Life 11 
 
 Nicolas (Sir Harris), Works by 17 
 
 O'Brien (Edward) The Lawy^er 10 
 
 Outlines of the Laws of Thought 13 
 
 Oxford University Statutes 7 
 
 Phillips on Angling 14 
 
 Philomorus 14 
 
 Physical Theory of Another Life 9 
 
 Piers Ploughman, edited by Wright. . 10 
 
 Piscatorial Reminiscences 14 
 
 Poems, edited by the Dean of Exeter . 10 
 
 Ramsay on Human Happiness 6 
 
 Richardson's Dictionary 5 
 
 abridged 5 
 
 Roberts's History of Letter-Writing . . 6 
 
 Roberts's Spiritual Creation 12 
 
 Robinson's Scripture Characters 13 
 
 St. Aubyn's (Mary) Poems 11 
 
 Sanctse Vigilice 10 
 
 Sandbach's (Mrs. H. R.) Poems 11 
 
 Giuliano deMedicis II 
 
 Shakespeare's Plays, 1 Vol. 12mo 12 
 
 Shaw's Illuminated Works 17 
 
 Sibbes's Soul's Conflict & Bruised Reed 10 
 Skurray's ^'ersion of the Psalms, &c. . 12 
 
 Small Books on Great Subjects 15 
 
 Smyth's Evidences of Christianity 5 
 
 '- Lectures 5 
 
 Solari's Letters 15 
 
 Surrey and Wyatt's Poems 12 
 
 Table" Talker, "from the Morning Post 15 
 
 Tatham's Bampton Lectures 6 
 
 Taylor's Holy Living and Dying 10 
 
 Temple Window .' 12 
 
 Testament, The New, by a Layman.. 14 
 Thomson's Season & Castle of Indolence 13 
 
 Virgilius, foolscap 8vo 18 
 
 Waller's Brasses 19 
 
 Walton's Angler, by Sir H. Nicolas .. 6 
 
 Watkin's Pleasure of the Mind 14 
 
 Watson's (J. S.) Geology 12 
 
 White's Fragments of Italy, &c 6 
 
 W hite Lady and Und ine . ". 10 
 
 Whole Duty of Man 10 
 
 Willcment's Heraldic Works 18 
 
 Wotton's (Sir H.) Poems 13 
 
 Zareefa, and other Poems 10 
 
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