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recoils: " do not faint; for, however severe your "sufferings, you may solace yourself with the "comfortable reflection, that they are as nothing,

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compared with those sufferings which must be

eternally endured, by those, whom God, in "his high sovereignty, hath excluded from his family."

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Why did this learned man go out of his way, to enlist false grammar, and false rhetoric, in the cause of that, which, happily, is not true theology? His notions seem to accord rather with Jewish, than with Christian apprehensions of our " Almighty and most merciful Father." Rabbinical writers were fond of distinguishing between parental and penal inflictions, in no very amiable way; as the reader may see, who chuses to consult Schoettgen on Heb. xii. 6.

ου

But truly, this passage cannot be tortured into a recognition of Calvin's "horribile decretum :" the negative ou is without the support of a single MS., Version, or Father; and it is quite irreconcileable with the bearing of the context: the particle de is not here adversative, but amplificatory; it indicates, not antithesis, but climax: "whom the Lord "merely loveth, he chasteneth, he corrects lightly; but, there is a stricter, yet more gracious process in reserve; God scourgeth, he corrects "with severity, for his greater good, the son whom " he receiveth; the object of his special regard, " and most peculiar care."

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SECTION VII.

IN the last section, we have been considering simple and direct quotations of single passages from the poetical parts of the Old Testament: in the present section, we shall proceed to examine quotations of a more complex kind; wherein fragments are combined, from different parts of the poetical Scriptures; and wrought up into one consistent whole.

The following passage is a short, but satisfactory specimen :

ὁ οικος μου, οικος προσευχης κληθήσεται πασι τοις εθνεσιν· ύμεις δε εποιήσατε αυτον σπηλαιον ληστων.

My house shall be called the house of prayer for all the

nations;

But ye have made it a den of thieves.

S. Mark, xi. 17.

Here is a parallel couplet of the antithetical kind; no less acutely pointed, than if its two contrasted propositions were, at once, and for the first time, conceived and delivered by the divine vindicator of his own holy temple: but they are derived from two passages totally independent of each other, and very remotely connected in their subject-matter. The first line stands in the Septuagint version of Isaiah, lvi. 57. exactly as it does in

S. Mark: the substance of the second line occurs

in the prophet Jeremiah :

μη σπηλαιον ληςων ὁ οικος μου ;

Is my house a den of thieves?

So to bring together such materials, and out of them to construct a sentence thus antithetically pointed, and, as all readers of the Gospel and the Jewish history know, most applicable to the occasion, argues no ordinary familiarity with the characters of men, and with the style of Hebrew poetry.

In the parallel places of S. Matthew and S. Luke, the words tai tois every are omitted; whether the antithetical balance be more complete with them, or without them, the reader may determine. But, on the very reasonable, and, as I think, just hypothesis of Dr. Townson, it may not be difficult to assign a probable motive for the retention of this clause by S. Mark, and for its omission by his brother-evangelists. According to Dr. Townson, "The Gospels were composed in the "order in which they stand: S. Matthew wrote "more immediately for the Jews who had em"braced the faith: S. Mark, for both Jewish and "Gentile converts; S. Luke, particularly for the "latter." Works, Vol. I. p. 4. Now, supposing this to be the true state of the case, had S. Matthew inserted the clause, he might have shocked the prejudices of those converts for whom he wrote, by seeming to equalize the Gentiles with the Jews: and, had S. Luke inserted it, he might,

perhaps, have appeared to inculcate a greater reverence for the sacred localities of Jerusalem, than was consistent with the training and circumstances, of converts exclusively gentile: it would seem, that the first evangelist wrote at a period too early, and the third evangelist at a period too late, for the beneficial introduction of a clause that connected the Gentiles with the Temple. But S. Mark, writing at a middle period, when Jews and Gentiles were beginning to be united in the Christian Church, would seem to have judged well, in putting forward a passage calculated to cement the growing union; as if he had said: "Christians of the circumcision, do not judge "hardly of your Gentile brethren; for your own "sacred temple is, by God's appointment, their "house of prayer: Christians of the nations, do "not despise the Jews; for they were the founders, "the occupants, and the hereditary guardians of "that holy temple, in which the God of Jews and "Gentiles set apart a place of prayer for you."

With respect to the passage at large, as originally proceeding from our Lord, it may not be improper to insert a fine illustration of it, from the Jewish historian: an illustration which has been imperfectly cited by Wetstein and by Krebs, each giving but a portion of it: - The whole is worthy of attention, as the testimony of a witness, whose prejudices must have leaned the other way, to the justice of our Lord's indignant crimination; the abominable and desecrating wickedness here described, was too full grown, to have been the pro

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duction of forty years: Ου τα κρυπτα μεν των άμαρτημα των ηδοξήκατε, κλοπας λεγω, και ενέδρας, και μοιχείας· άρπαγαις δ' ερίζετε και φοναις, και ξενας καινοτομείτε κακιας όδους· εκδοχειον δε παντων το ἱερον γεγονε, και χερσιν εμφυλίοις ο θειος μεμιανται χωρος, ὃν και ρωμαιοι πορρωθεν προσεκύνουν. Joseph. de Bell. Jud. lib. v. cap. ix. § 4.

"You are not ashamed of those crimes, which "ordinarily seek concealment; thefts, I mean, and « circumventions, and adulteries. But, in rapacity " and slaughter, you strive for the mastery; and "task your ingenuity, to invent new ways of sinning: while the Temple itself is become the re" ceptacle of all these abominations; and, with "Jewish hands, you violate that consecrated place, which even the Romans venerated afar "off."

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In the following passage, the quotation is not always so direct as in the last example: but the marks of imitation are unquestionable; the probable sources of imitation are numerous

the continuity of the parallelism is maintained unbroken; and the style, both of thought and of expression, is remarkable alike for elegance, animation, and profundity:

ω βαθος πλούτου, και σοφίας, και γνωσεως Θεου·

ὡς ανεξερεύνητα τα κρίματα αυτου·

και ανεξιχνίασοι ὡς ὁδοι αυτου;

τις γαρ εγνω νουν Κυρίου ;

η τις συμβουλος αυτου εγενετο ;
η τις προεδωκεν αυτώ,

και ανταποδοθήσεται αυτω ;

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