which imputes to the Scriptures Contradictions to Reason and Science.

Rightly to estimate the chief of these objections, it is necessary to be acquainted with the peculiarity of style belonging to that part of the Word of God in which they occur; which is, the first portion of the book of Genesis. We have endeavoured to draw the line of distinction, in our fourth Lecture*, between some of the books contained in the collection denominated the Bible, and others, and to shew, that while the greater part are written by the plenary inspiration for which we contend, and thus contain a spiritual sense within that of the letter, which is the criterion for distinguishing the proper Word of God; the remainder are the offspring of the illuminated intellect of the writers, possess no regular sense beside that of the letter, and cannot claim any higher inspiration than that lax and partial one, which is now all that is usually allowed to the whole of the Sacred Writings. But among those books which are written by the plenary and immediate inspiration, there are also some specific differences of style, though they are all composed in the general divine style. Thus the prophetic style is evidently different from the historical. There also are two species of that which assumes the his*Page 240; but more particularly in the Appendix, No. II.

torical form; and which must be distinctly seen, before we can meet effectually that class of infidel objections which is founded on imputed contradictions to reason and science.

(1.) We have seen in the fifth Lecture*, that the Israelites were selected by Divine Providence, to be made the instruments of representing things of a divine and spiritual nature; hence, though the particulars of their history recorded in the Scriptures are all typical, exhibiting spiritual and divine things under symbolic actions and descriptions, they still are histories of real occurrences, which took place, in general, as they are related. But it is easy to see, that this combination of symbolic meaning with actual facts could not exist, till the nation, thus invested by divine appointment with a representative character, existed this species of Divine Writing, therefore, can only commence with the origin of the Israelitish nation. What style, then, might we expect would be employed in that portion of the Word of God, which relates to the affairs of the inhabitants of the earth before the birth of Abraham, the great founder of the Israelitish nation? What could be so proper, as the style of writing which prevailed among the natives of the globe at the period it describes ? And this was the style of pure allegory, in which the things meant are so entirely inde

* Page 409 to 444; &c.

pendent on the things mentioned, that the latter are invented to serve merely as a vehicle for the conveyance of the former.

If such be the fact, there cannot be a greater mistake than to imagine, that the first chapter of Genesis is intended to be an exact description of the process of the Creation of the world. It can answer to it no further, than as the real order of that creation answered to the order in which the endowments necessary for rendering man a purely intelligent and heavenly-minded being were successively implanted in him; and which was an order similar to that, in which the child now advances from the ignorance in which he comes into the world, to the understanding of a man. All the objections then which scepticism has advanced against the divine inspiration of the Word of God, founded on the inconsistency of some of the facts related in the early part of Genesis with the known principles of reason and science, fall to the ground at once, when it is seen, that this is not intended to be the record of a natural but of a spiritual creation; and that the events which follow to the time of Abraham, are not intended to give the history of mankind as to their outward transactions, but a history of mankind as to the state of their minds, and their reception or perversion of divine gifts and graces. To affirm, as is now the fashion, that the narration is to be literally un

derstood, that the ordinary date of human life was then about a thousand years,-that serpents could talk, and that the woman was literally made of her husband's rib,-is to exact of the believer a blind faith indeed. In the early ages of Christianity, her teachers knew better: they did not thus " bind heavy burthens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders." Clemens of Alexandria, one of the most learned of the early Fathers, declares, that such was the style customary in the ages to which this history belongs; observing "that all who have treated of divine subjects, whether Greeks or Barbarians, industriously involved the beginnings of things, and have delivered the truth in enigmas, signs, and symbols, in allegories and metaphors, and other such figures."* Origen, when the shrewd enemy of Christianity, Celsus, ridiculed the stories of the rib, the serpent, &c. as childish fables, reproaches him for want of candour, in purposely keeping out of sight, what was so evident upon the face of the narrative, that the whole is a pure allegory.t Indeed, so universal was this sentiment, that De la Bigue, in his Bibliotheca Patrum, after quoting a number of testimonies to this effect, says, "For these reasons, the Interpreters whom we have mentioned, understanding all that is * Strom. 1. v. p. 658, Ed. Ox. + Cont. Cels. 1. iv. p. 187, Ed. Sp.

said of Paradise in a spiritual manner, affirmed, that divers heresies had arisen, because certain persons had understood what is said of God and Paradise after a carnal manner*:" so that although orthodoxy, as the prevailing opinion is always called, has since gone over to the other side, it is certain that, in the primitive days, the heretics were those who interpreted this part of Scripture according to the letter.

However, there is an evident prospect, that Reason and Truth will, in this respect, again resume their sway; for just sentiments in regard to the bearing of Revelation on physical science, are now frequently promulgated from high authority: Indeed, the sentiment which I have advanced, that Divine Revelation is not intended to communicate to mankind natural knowledge, but moral and spiritual, seems likely soon to be generally admitted. Thus the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, in his admirable Introduction to "Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales," by himself and Mr. Phillips, delivers his views on this question thus: "Before we examine the bearings of physical science on Revelation, our ideas should first be settled as to what may reasonably be expected from Revelation in this respect. Both its opponents and some of its defendants often seem to argue, as if it should have included the discovery of a system of phy

"Propter has causas," &c. tom. i. p. 270. (Par. 1589.)