complain of it as an innovation, and a dangerous change in the publishing those holy books. And indeed those who are for maintaining their opinions and the systems of parties by sound of words, with a neglect of the true sense of Scripture, would have reason to make and foment the outcry. They would most of them be immediately disarmed of their great magazine of artillery wherewith they defend themselves, and fall upon others, if the holy Scriptures were but laid before the eyes of Christians in its due connection and consistency: it would not then be so easy to snatch out a few words, as if they were separate from the rest, to serve a purpose, to which they do not at all belong, and with which they have nothing to do. But as the matter now stands, he that has a mind to it may, at a cheap rate, be a notable champion for the truth; that is, for the doctrines of the sect that chance or interest has cast him into. He need but be furnished with verses of sacred Scripture, containing words and expressions that are but flexible, (as all general, obscure, and doubtful ones are,) and his system, that has appropriated them to the orthodoxy of his church, makes them immediately strong and irrefragable arguments for his opinion. This is the benefit of loose sentences, and Scripture crumbled into verses, which quickly turn into independent aphorisms. But if the quotation in the verse produced were considered as a part of a continued coherent discourse, and so its sense were limited by the tenor of the context, most of these forward and warm disputants would be quite stripped of those, which they doubt not now to call spiritual weapons; and they would have often nothing to say that would not show their weakness, and manifestly fly in their faces. I crave leave to set down a saying of the learned and judicious Mr. Selden: "In interpreting the Scripture," says he, "many do as if a man should see one have ten pounds, which he reckoned by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; meaning four was but four units, and five five units, &c. and that he had in all but ten pounds. The other that sees him, takes not the figures together, as he doth, but picks here and there; and thereupon reports that he had five pounds in one bag, and six pounds in another bag, and nine pounds in another bag, &c., when, as in truth, he has but ten pounds in all. So we pick out a text here and there, to make it serve our turn; whereas if we take it altogether, and consider what went before, and what followed after, we should find it meant no such thing." I have heard sober Christians very much admire why ordinary illiterate people, who were professors, that showed a concern for religion, seemed much more conversant in St. Paul's epistles, than in the plainer, and as it seemed to them, much more intelligible parts of the New Testament: they confessed, that though they read St. Paul's epistles with their best attention, yet they generally found them too hard to be mastered; and they labored in vain so far to reach the apostle's meaning all along, in the train of what he said, as to read them with that satisfaction that arises from a feeling that we understand and fully comprehend the force and reasoning of an author; and therefore they could not imagine what those saw in them, whose eyes they thought not much better than their own. But the case was plain these sober, inquisitive readers had a mind to see nothing in St. Paul's epistles but just what he meant whereas those others of a quicker and gayer sight could see in them what they pleased. Nothing is more acceptable to fancy than pliant terms and expressions that are not obstinate; in such it can find its account with delight, and with them be illuminated, orthodox, infallible at pleasure, and in its own way. But where the sense of the author goes visibly in its own train, and the words receiving a determined sense from their companions and adjacents, will not consent to give countenance and color to what is agreed to be right, and must be supported at any rate, there men of established orthodoxy do not so well find their satisfaction. And, perhaps, if it were well examined, it would be no very extravagant paradox to say, that there are fewer that bring their opinions to the sacred Scripture to be tried by that infallible rule, than bring the sacred Scriptures to their opinions, to bend it to them, to make it as they can a cover and guard of them. And to this purpose its being divided into verses, and brought as much as may be into loose and general aphorisms, makes it most useful and serviceable. And in this lies the other great cause of obscurity and perplexedness, which has been cast upon St. Paul's epistles from without. St. Paul's epistles, as they stand translated in our English Bibles, are now by long and constant use, become a part of the English language, and common phraseology, especially in matters of religion. This every one uses familiarly, and thinks he understands; but it must be observed, that if he has a distinct meaning when he uses those words and phrases, and knows himself what he intends by them, it is always according to the sense of his own system, and the articles or interpretations of the society he is engaged in. So that all this knowledge and understanding which he has in the use of these passages of sacred Scripture, reaches no further than this, that he knows (and that is very well) what he himself says, but thereby knows nothing at all what St. Paul said in them. The apostle wrote not by that man's system, and so his meaning cannot be known by it. This being the ordinary way of understanding the epistles, and every sect being perfectly orthodox in its own judgment, what a great and invincible darkness must this cast upon St. Paul's meaning to all those of that way, in all those places where his thoughts and sense run counter to what any party has espoused for orthodox; as it must unavoidably to all but one of the different systems, in all those passages that any way relate to the points in controversy between them? This is a mischief which, however frequent and almost natural, reaches so far, that it would justly make all those who depend upon them, wholly dif fident of commentators, and let them see how little help was to be expected from them, in relying on them for the true sense of the sacred Scripture, did they not take care to help to cozen themselves, by choosing to use and pin their faith on such expositors as explain the sacred Scripture in favor of those opinions that they beforehand have voted orthodox, and bring to the sacred Scripture, not for trial, but confirmation. Nobody can think that any text of St. Paul's epistles has two contrary meanings; and yet so it must have to two differ ent men, who taking two commentators of different sects for their respective guides into the sense of any one of the epistles, shall build upon their respective expositions. We need go no further for a proof of it, than the notes of the two celebrated commentators on the New Testament, Dr. Hammond and Beza, both men of parts and learning, and both thought, by their followers, men mighty in the sacred Scriptures. So that here we see the hopes of great benefit and light from expositors and commentators is, in a great part, abated; and those who have most need of their help can receive but little from them, and can have very little assurance of reaching the apostle's sense by what they find in them, whilst matters remain in the same state they are in at present. For those who find they need help, and would borrow light from expositors, either consult only those who have the good luck to be thought sound and orthodox, avoiding those of different sentiments from themselves in the great and approved points of their systems, as dangerous, and not fit to be meddled with; or else with indifferency look into the notes of all commentators promiscuously. The first of these take pains only to confirm themselves in the opinions and tenets they have already, which, whether it be the way to get the true meaning of what St. Paul delivered is easy to determine. The others, with much more fairness to themselves, though with reaping little more advantage, (unless they have something else to guide them into the apostle's meaning than the comments themselves,) seek help on all hands, and refuse not to be taught by any one, who offers to enlighten them in any of the dark passages. But here though they avoid the mischief which the others fall into, of being confined in their sense, and seeing nothing but that in St. Paul's writings, be it right or wrong, yet they run into as great on the other side, and instead of being confirmed in the meaning that they thought they saw in the text, are distracted with an hundred, suggested by those they advised with; and so, instead of that one sense of the Scripture, which they carried with them to their commentators, return from them with none at all. This indeed seems to make the case desperate; for, if the comments and expositions of pious and learned men cannot be depended on, whither shall we go for help? To which I answer, I would not be mistaken, as if I thought the labors of the learned in this case wholly lost, and fruitless. There is great use and benefit to be made of them, when we have once got a rule to know which of their expositions, in the great variety there is of them, explains the words and phrases according to the apostle's meaning. Till then it is evident, from what is above said, they serve for the most part to no other use, but either to make us find our own sense, and not his, in St. Paul's words, or else to find in them no settled sense at all. the apostle's text; but this I will own, that till I took this way, St. Paul's epistles to me, in the ordinary way of reading and studying them, were very obscure parts of Scripture, that left me almost every where at a loss: and I was at a great uncertainty in which of the contrary senses, that were to be found in his commentators, he was to be taken. Whether what I have done has made it any clearer and more visible now, I must leave others to judge. This I beg leave to say for myself, that if some very sober judicious Christians, no strangers to the sacred Scriptures; nay, learned divines of the church of England, had not professed that by the perusal of these following papers they understood the epistles better much than they did before, and had not, with repeated instances, pressed me to publish them, I should not have consented they should have gone beyond my own private use, for which they were at first designed, and where they made me not repent my pains. If any one be so far pleased with my endeavors, as to think it worth while to be informed what was the clue I guided myself by through all the dark passages of these epistles, I shall minutely tell him the steps by which I was brought into this way, that he may judge whether I proceeded rationally, upon right grounds or no, if so be, any thing in so mean an example as mine may be worth his notice. After I had found, by long experience, that the reading of the text and comments in the ordinary way, proved not so successful as I wished to the end proposed, I began to suspect that in reading a chapter, as was usual, and thereupon sometimes consulting expositors upon some hard places of it, which at that time most affected me, as relating to points then under consideration in my own mind, or in debate amongst others, was not a right method to get into the true sense of these epistles. I saw plainly, after I began once to reflect on it, that if any one now should write me a letter, as long at St. Paul's to the Romans, concerning such a matter as that is, in a style as foreign, and expressions as dubious as his seem to be, if I should divide it into fifteen or sixteen chapters, and read of them one to-day, and another to-morrow, &c., it was ten to one I should never come to a full and clear comprehension of it. The way to understand the mind of him that wrote it, every one would agree, was to read the whole letter through, from one end to the other, all at once, to see what was the main subject and tendency of it: or if it had several views and purposes in it, not dependent one of another, nor in a subordination to one chicf aim and end, to discover what those different matters were, and where the author concluded one and began another: and if there were any necessity of dividing the epistle into parts, to make the boundaries of them. In prosecution of this thought, I concluded it Here it will be asked, how shall we come by necessary, for the understanding of any one of St. this rule you mention? Where is that touchstone Paul's epistles, to read it all through at one sitting, to be had, that will show us whether the meaning and to observe, as well as I could, the drift and we ourselves put, or take as put by others upon design of his writing it. If the first reading gave St Paul's words in his epistles, be truly his mean- me some light, the second gave me more; and so ing or no? I will not say the way which I pro-I persisted on reading, constantly, the whole epispose, and have in the following paraphrase follow- tle over at once, till I came to have a good general ed, will make us infallible in our interpetations of view of the apostle's main purpose in writing the epistle, the chief branches of his discourse wherein | How then came it that the like was thought much he prosecuted it, the arguments he used, and the disposition of the whole. This, I confess, is not to be obtained by one or two hasty readings; it must be repeated again and again, with a close attention to the tenor of the discourse, and a perfect neglect of the divisions into chapters and verses. On the contrary, the safest way is to suppose that the epistle has but one business, and one aim; till, by a frequent perusal of it, you are forced to see there are distinct independent matters in it, which will forwardly enough show themselves. It requires so much more pains, judgment, and application to find the coherence of obscure and abstruse writings, and makes them so much the more unfit to serve prejudice and pre-occupation when found, that it is not to be wondered that St. Paul's epistles have, with many, passed rather for disjointed, loose, pious discourses, full of warmth and zeal and overflows of light, rather than for calm, strong, coherent reasonings, that carried a thread of argument and consistency all through them. wanting in his epistles? and of this there appeared to me this plain reason: the particularities of the history in which these speeches are inserted, show St. Paul's end in speaking; which being seen, casts a light on the whole, and shows the pertinency of all that he says. But his epistles not being so circumstantiated, there being no concurring history that plainly declares the disposition St. Paul was in, what the actions, expectations, or demands of those to whom he wrote required him to speak to, we are nowhere told. All this, and a great deal more, necessary to guide us into the true meaning of the epistles, is to be had only from the epistles themselves, and to be gathered from thence with stubborn attention, and more than common application. The This being the only safe guide (under the Spirit of God, that dictated these sacred writings) that can be relied on, I hope I may be excused, if I venture to say, that the utmost ought to be done to observe and trace out St. Paul's reasonings; to follow the thread of his discourse in each of his epistles; to show how it goes on still directed with But this muttering of lazy or ill-disposed read- the same view, and pertinently drawing the several ers, hindered me not from persisting in the course incidents towards the same point. To understand I had begun 1 continued to read the same epistle him right, his inferences should be strictly observover and over, and over again, till I came to dis-ed, and it should be carefully examined from what cover, as appeared to me, what was the drift they are drawn, and what they tend to. He is and aim of it; and by what steps and arguments certainly a coherent, argumentative, pertinent St. Paul prosecuted his purpose. I remembered writer; and care, I think, should be taken, in exthat St. Paul was miraculously called to the minis-pounding of him, to show that he is so. But though try of the gospel, and declared to be a chosen I say he has weighty aims in his epistles, which vessel; that he had the whole doctrine of the gos-he steadily keeps in his eye, and drives at it in all pel from God by immediate revelation, and was that he says; yet I do not say that he puts his appointed to be the apostle of the Gentiles, for the discourses into an artificial method, or leads his propagating of it in the heathen world. This was reader into a distinction of his arguments, or gives enough to persuade me that he was not a man of them notice of new matter by rhetorical or studied loose and shattered parts, incapable to argue, and transitions. He has no ornaments borrowed from unfit to convince those he had to deal with. God the Greek eloquence; no notions of their philosoknows how to choose fit instruments for the busi-phy mixed with his doctrine to set it off. ness he employs them in. A large stock of Jew- enticing words of man's wisdom,' whereby he ish learning he had taken in at the feet of Ga- means all the studied rules of the Grecian schools, maliel; and for his information in Christian know-which made them such masters in the art of speakledge, and the mysteries and depths of the dis- ing, he, as he says himself, 1 Cor. 2. iv., wholly pensation of grace by Jesus Christ, God himself neglected. The reason whereof he gives in the had condescended to be his instructor and teacher. next verse, and in other places; but the politeness The light of the gospel he had received from the of language, delicacy of style, fineness of expres Fountain and Father of Light himself, who, I con- sion, labored periods, artificial transitions, and a very cluded, had not furnished him, in this extraordinary methodical ranging of the parts with such other if all this plentiful stock of learning and embellishments as make a discourse enter the illumination had been in danger to have been lost, mind smoothly, and strike the fancy at first hearor proved useless, in a jumbled and confused head; ing, have little or no place in his style; yet conor have laid up such a store of admirable and herence of discourse, and a direct tendency of all useful knowledge in a man who, for want of method the parts of it to the argument in hand, are most and order, clearness of conception, or pertinency eminently to be found in him. This I take to be in discourse, could not draw it out into use with his character, and doubt not but he will be found the greatest advantages of force and coherence. to be so upon diligent examination. And in this, That he knew how to prosecute his purpose with if it be so, we have a clue, if we will take the pains strength of argument and close reasoning, without to find it, that will conduct us with surety through incoherent sallies, or the intermixing of things those seemingly dark places and imagined intriforeign to his business, was evident to me from cacies, in which Christians have wandered so far several speeches of his recorded in the Acts: and one from another as to find quite contrary senses. it was hard to think that a man who could talk Whether a superficial reading, accompanied with so much consistency and clearness of convic-with the common opinion of his invincible obscurition, should not be able to write without confusion, ty, has kept off some from seeking in him the coinextricable obscurity, and perpetual rambling. herence of a discourse, tending, with close, strong The force, order, and perspicuity of those dis- reasoning, to a point; or a seemingly more honorcourses could not be denied to be very visible. I able opinion of one that had been rapt up into the manner, third heaven, as if from a man so warmed and illuminated as he had been, nothing could be expect ed but flashes of light, and raptures of zeal, hindered others to look for a train of reasoning, proceeding on regular and cogent argumentation, from a man raised above the ordinary pitch of humanity to a higher and brighter way of illumina-one well-contracted harmonious body: so that he tion; or else whether others were loath to beat their heads about the tenor and coherence in St. Paul's discourses, which, if found out, possibly might set him at a manifest and irreconcilable difference with their systems; it is certain that whatever hath been the cause, this way of getting the true sense of St. Paul's epistles seems not to have been much made use of, or at least so thoroughly pursued as I am apt to think it deserves. For, granting that he was full-stored with the knowledge of the things he treated of, for he had light from heaven, it was God himself furnished him, and he could not want: allowing also that he had ability to make use of the knowledge given him, for the end for which it was given him, viz., the information, conviction, and conversion of others; and accordingly that he knew how to direct his discourse to the point in hand, we cannot widely mistake the parts of his discourse employed about it, when we have any where found out the point he drives at: wherever we have got a view of his design, and the aim he proposed to himself in writing, we may be sure that such or such an interpretation does not give us his genuine sense, it being nothing at all to his present purpose. Nay, among various meanings given a text, it fails not to direct us to the best, and very often to assure us of the true. For it is no presumption, when one sees a man arguing for this or that proposition, if he be a sober man, master of reason or common sense, and takes any care of what he says, to pronounce with confidence, in several cases, that he could not talk thus or thus. I do not yet so magnify this method of studying St. Paul's epistles, as well as other parts of sacred Scripture, as to think it will perfectly clear every hard place, and leave no doubt unresolved. I know expressions now out of use, opinions of those times not heard of in our days, allusions to customs lost to us, and various circumstances and particularities of the parties, which we cannot come at, &c., must needs continue several passages in the dark, now to us at this distance, which shone with full light to those they were directed to. But for all that, the studying of St. Paul's epistles in the way I have proposed, will, I humbly conceive, carry us a great length in the right understanding of them, and make us rejoice in the light we receive from those most useful parts of divine revelation, by furnishing us with visible grounds that we are not mistaken, whilst the consistency of the discourse and the pertinency of it to the design he is upon, vouches it worthy of our great apostle. At least I hope it may be my excuse for having endeavored to make St. Paul an interpreter to me of his own epistles. To this may be added another help, which St. Paul himself affords us, towards the attaining the true meaning contained in his epistles. He that reads him with the attention I propose, will easily observe, that as he was full of the doctrine of the gospel, so it lay all clear and in order open to his view. When he gave his thoughts utterance upon any point, the matter flowed like a torrent, but it is plain, it was a matter he was perfectly master of: he fully possessed the entire revelation he had received from God, had thoroughly digested it, all the parts were formed together in his mind into was no way at an uncertainty, nor ever in the least at a loss concerning any branch of it. One may see his thoughts were all of a piece in all his epistles; his notions were at all times uniform, and constantly the same, though his expressions very various. In them he seems to take great liberty. This at least is certain, that no one seems less tied up to a form of words. If then, having by the method before proposed got into the sense of the several epistles, we will but compare what he says in the places where he treats of the same subject, we can hardly be mistaken in his sense, nor doubt what it was that he believed and taught concerning those points of the Christian religion. I know it is not unusual to find a multitude of texts heaped up for the maintaining of an espoused proposition, but in a sense often so remote from their true meaning, that one can hardly avoid thinking that those who so used them either sought not or valued not the sense; and were satisfied with the sound, where they could but get that to favor them. But a verbal concordance leads not always to texts of the same meaning: trusting too much thereto, will furnish us but with slight proofs in many cases; and any one may observe how apt that is to jumble together passages of Scripture not relating to the same matter, and thereby to disturb and unsettle the true meaning of Holy Scripture. I have therefore said that we should compare together places of Scripture treating of the same point. Thus, indeed, one part of the sacred text could not fail to give light unto another. And since the providence of God hath so ordered it, that St. Paul has written a great number of epistles, which though upon different occasions, and to several purposes, yet are all confined within the business of his apostleship, and so contain nothing but points of Christian instruction, amongst which he seldom fails to drop in, and often to enlarge on the great and distinguishing doctrines of our holy religion; which, if quitting our own infallability in that analogy of faith which we have made to ourselves, or have implicitly adopted from some other, we would carefully lay together, and diligently compare and study, I am apt to think would give us St. Paul's system in a clear and indisputable sense; which every one must acknowledge to be a better standard to interpret his meaning by, in any obscure and doubtful parts of his epistles, if any such should still remain, than the system, confession, or articles of any church or society of Christians yet known, which, however pretended to be founded on Scripture, are visibly the contrivances of men, (fallible both in their opinions and interpretations,) and, as is visible in most of them, made with partial views, and adapted to what the occasions of that time, and the present circumstances they were then in, were thought to require, for the support or justification of themselves. Their philosophy also has its part in misleading men from the true sense of the sacred Scripture. He that shall attentively grounds upon which it stood firm, and by which he enforced it, was what alone he minded; and without solemnly winding up one argument, and intimating any way that he began another, let his thoughts, which were fully possessed of the matter, run in one continued train, wherein the parts of his discourse were wove one into another. So that it is seldom that the scheme of his discourse makes any gap; and, therefore, without breaking read the Christian writers after the ages of the apostles, will easily find how much the philosophy they were tinctured with influenced them in their understanding of the books of the Old and New Testament. In the ages wherein Platonism prevailed, the converts to Christianity of that school, on all occasions, interpreted Holy Writ according to the notions they had imbibed from that philosophy. Aristotle's doctrine had the same effect in its turn, and when it degenerated into the Peripa-in upon the connection of his language, it is hardteticism of the schools, that too brought its notions ly possible to separate his discourse, and give a and distinctions into divinity, and affixed them to distinct view of his several arguments in distinct the terms of the sacred Scripture. And we may sections. see still how at this day every one's philosophy regulates every one's interpretation of the word of God. Those who are possessed with the doctrine of aërial and aëtherial vehicles, have thence borrowed an interpretation of the four first verses of 2 Cor. v., without having any ground to think that St. Paul had the least notion of any such vehicles. It is plain that the teaching of men philosophy was no part of the design of divine revelation; but that the expressions of Scripture are commonly suited in those matters to the vulgar apprehensions and conceptions of the place and people where they were delivered. And as to the doctrine therein directly taught by the apostles, that tends wholly to the setting up the kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world, and the salvation of men's souls; and in this it is plain their expressions were conformed to the ideas and notions which they had received from revelation, or were consequent from it. We shall therefore in vain go about to interpret their words by the notions of our philosophy, and the doctrines of men delivered in our schools. This is to explain the apostles' meaning by what they never thought of whilst they were writing; which is not the way to find their sense in what they delivered, but our own, and to take up from their writings not what they left there for us, but what we bring along with us in ourselves. He that would understand St. Paul right, must understand his terms in the sense he uses them, and not as they are appropriated by each man's particular philosophy, to conceptions that never entered the mind of the apostle. For example, he that shall bring the philosophy now taught and received to the explaining of spirit, soul, and body, mentioned 1 Thess. v. 23, will, I fear, hardly reach St. Paul's sense, or represent to himself the notions St. Paul then had in his mind. That is what we should aim at in reading him, or any other author; and until we from his words paint his very ideas and thoughts in our minds, we do not understand him. In the divisions I have made, I have endeavored the best I could to govern myself by the diversity of matter. But in a writer like St. Paul, it is not so easy always to find precisely where one subject ends and another begins. He is full of the matter, he treats and writes with warmth, which usually neglects method, and those partitions and pauses, which men, educated in the schools of rhetoricians usually observe. Those arts of writing St. Paul, as well out of design as temper, wholly laid by the subject he had in hand, and the I am far from pretending infallibility in the sense I have any where given in my Paraphrase or Notes; that would be to erect myself into an apostle, a presumption of the highest nature in any one that cannot confirm what he says by miracles. I have, for my own information, sought the true meaning as far as my poor abilities would reach: and I have unbiassedly embraced what, upon a fair inquiry, appeared so to me. This I thought my duty and interest in a matter of so great concernment to me. If I must believe for myself, it is unavoidable that I must understand for myself. For if I blindly and with an implicit faith, take the pope's interpretation of the sacred Scripture, without examining whether it be Christ's meaning, it is the pope I believe in, and not in Christ; it is his authority I rest upon; it is what he says I embrace: for what it is Christ says I neither know nor concern myself. It is the same thing when I set up any other man in Christ's place, and make him the authentic interpreter of sacred Scripture to myself. He may possibly understand the sacred Scripture as right as any man; but I shall do well to examine myself whether that which I do not know, nay (which in the way I take) I can never know, can justify me in making myself his disciple, instead of Jesus Christ's, who of right is alone and ought to be my only Lord and master, and it will be no less sacrilege in me to substitute to myself any other in his room, to be a prophet to me, than to be my king or priest. We The same reasons that put me upon doing what I have in these papers done, will exempt me from all suspicion of imposing my interpretation on others. The reasons that led me into the meaning which prevailed on my mind, are set down with it: as far as they carry light and conviction to any other man's understanding, so far I hope my labors may be of some use to him; beyond the evidence it carries with it, I advise him not to follow mine, nor any man's interpretation. are all men, liable to errors, and infected with them; but have this sure way to preserve ourselves every one from danger by them, if, laying aside sloth, carelessness, prejudice, party, and a reverence of men, we betake ourselves in earnest to the study of the way to salvation, in those holy writings wherein God has revealed it from heaven, and proposed it to the world, seeking our religion where we are sure it is in truth to be found, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. |