and so to be connected by an indissoluble tie with the Great Author of both, the Creator and Preserver of all things. As, at the same time, religion will be cleared of its corruptions, and the Bible, understood by the aid of this science, will no longer be represented as sanctioning doctrines which reason condemns; that enlargement of mind which knowledge produces will cease to become an obstacle in the way of the most cordial faith. The Science of Analogies, by unfolding the interior contents of the Sacred Volume, and explaining, as we shall see in the sequel, all those appearances that seem either trifling or contradictory, will reconcile the jarrings, so long thought irreconcilable, between Reason and Revelation; just as, by shewing the origin and spiritual relation of all objects in nature, it will conciliate knowledge with piety. Every friend, then to Revelation and to Piety,-yea, every admirer of Reason and of Knowledge, is deeply interested in the restoration of this Science; and both should unite, to bring on the time, when, as among the ancients, the highest wisdom shall be that which is conversant with spiritual subjects, and the first of sciences that which teaches the Relation between spiritual subjects and the appearances in nature. LECTURE IV. PROOFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS, EVINCING THAT THE SCRIPTURES ARE WRITTEN ACCORDING TO THE LAW OR RULE DEVELOPED IN THE LAST LECTURE. I. Of the Style proper to a Divine Composition. Such a Style afforded by the Relation of Analogy between natural things and spiritual, as explained in the last Lecture. II. That if the Scriptures are written by a Plenary Divine Inspiration, they must be composed in this Style. 1. That when the Divine Speech, or the Divine Word, which is the same thing as the Divine Truth, emanates from the bosom of Deity into the circumference of creation, or into the world of nature, it there clothes itself with images taken from that world, and that it cannot otherwise be presented to mankind. 2. Variety of Phraseology in the different Inspired Penmen consistent with Verbal Inspiration. 3. Plenary Inspiration necessarily occasional, and not permanently attendant on certain Persons. III. That the Holy Scriptures are the Divine Truth thus brought into a natural essences. form; and that therefore their interior meaning can only be understood by an application to them of the Law which governs the Relation between natural objects and spiritual and divine IV. Applicability of the Rule to the Prophecies of the Divine Word. 1. Sentiments of Biblical Critics on the Double Sense of Prophecy. 2. Rule of Analogical Interpretation adopted by Sir Isaac Newton and Bishop Warburton. 3. Defects of their Rule, and the necessity of extending it further. V. Examples of the light which results from the application of the Rule of Analogy between natural things and spiritual to the Prophetic Writings.-Instances selected; 1. Ezekiel's prophecy of a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, (Ezek. xxxix. 17 to 20;) 2. The Lord's prophecy of his Second Coming in the clouds of heaven, (Matt. xxiv. 29, 30;) 3. John's vision of spiritual Babylon, (Rev. xvii. 3 to 6.) more 1. THERE cannot, certainly, be interesting and momentous exercise proposed to the reflecting mind, than to investigate the nature of that speech or language which God uses, or might be expected to use, in communicating a divinely inspired code of knowledge on heavenly subjects. Nothing can be more agreeable to reason than to pre-suppose, that the style of language in which God speaks to man, must be very different from that in which men generally speak to each other; and that its beauties and excellences, though necessarily of the most transcendant description, must, nevertheless, be quite different in their kind, from those which adorn the best human compositions. That is a dictate of reason as well as of revelation which declares, that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways*; and also, that the things most highly esteemed among men, the wisdom of this world,—may be mere foolishness in the sight of God. Some have been disgusted with the Scriptures of Divine Truth, and have thought it an argument against their divine origin, because they are not written in the style of the orations of Demosthenes,-or of the philosophical disquisitions of Plato and Aristotle,-or of the legal pandects of Justinian ;-because they do not display the tinsel rhetoric of the orator, the artificial subtlety of the dialectician, or the systematic arrangement of the digester of a code of laws, or of a body of divinity. Had the Scriptures, however, been composed in any of these styles, I suspect that they would not have been deemed, even by the same parties, a whit more worthy of reception. We should † 1 Cor. iii. 19. * Isa. lv. 8. then have been told, (and with more reason than accompanies any of the objections made to them as they are,) that they savoured too much of art and contrivance ;-that it were unworthy of the Divine Majesty to compete with man the palm of elegance or ornament of style, or to be bound to that kind of order which is necessary to the feebleness of human intellect; -that a divine composition might naturally be expected to disregard these trifles, and to possess a style peculiar to itself. And this would be a just statement of the case. If the thoughts and ways of God differ from ours, it undoubtedly must be, by their infinite superiority. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts."* Now it is the chief object of these Lectures to shew, that this is the character of the books called the Holy Scriptures or Word of God; that they are distinguished from all other compositions by the profoundness of their matter, and by the depth of wisdom with which they are inwardly replete; but that the divine style of writing consists in conveying this wisdom with the utmost fulness, and in the most uninterruptedly coherent series, under the veil of a continued chain of natural images, -in an outwardly simple style of language, borrowed * Isa. lv. 9. G G |