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And since you will easily believe that a person so averse from wrangling as I, is not like to make the disputing with these censurers of the Scripture-style any further his design, than as the invalidating their objections conduces to the reputation of that sacred book, I presume you will not think it at all impertinent if oftentimes I intermix with those things that more directly regard such objections, other things that seem to tend rather to celebrate than vindicate the Scripture; for in so doing, I hope I shall not alone considerably, though not perhaps so directly, strengthen my answers, by showing that we justly ascribe to the Scripture qualities quite opposite to the imperfections imputed to it; but I shall perfectly comply with my main design, which I here declare once for all, is but to engage you to study and value the Scripture, and therefore obliges me to answer objections only so far forth as they may look like arguments to dissuade you from prizing and studying it. And because I find not that the objections to be considered have any great coherence with, or dependence on each other, I shall not scruple to mention them, and my reflections on them, in no other order than that wherein they shall chance to occur to my thoughts whilst I am writing.
Of the considerations, then, that I am to lay before you, there are three or four which are of a more general nature, and therefore being such as may each of them be pertinently employed against several of the exceptions taken at the Scripture’s style, it will not be inconvenient to mention them before the rest.
And in the first place, it should be considered, that those cavillers at the style of the Scripture that you and I have hitherto met with, do (for want of skill in the original) especially in the Hebrew, judge of it by the translations wherein alone they read it. Now scarce any but a linguist will imagine how much a book may lose of its elegancy, by being read in another tongue than that it was written in, especially if the languages from which and into which the version is made, be so very differing, as are those of the eastern and these western parts of the world. But of this I foresee an occasion of saying something hereafter; yet at present I must observe to you, that the style of the Scripture is much more disadvantaged than that of other books, by being judged of by translations: for the religious and just veneration that the interpreters of the Bible have had for that sacred book, has made them in most places render the Hebrew and Greek passages so scrupulously word for word, that for fear of not keeping close enough to the sense, they usually care not how much they lose of the eloquence of the passages they translate. So that whereas in those versions of other books that are made by good linguists, the interpreters are wont to take the liberty to recede from the author’s words, and also substitute other phrases instead of his, that they may express his meaning without injuring his reputation; in translating the Old Testament interpreters have not put Hebrew phrases into Latin or English phrases, but only into Latin or English words, and have too often besides, by not sufficiently understanding, or at least considering, the various significations of words, particles and tenses, in the holy tongue, made many things appear less coherent, or less rational, or less considerable, which by a more free and skilful rendering of the original, would not be blemished by any appearance of such imperfection. And though this fault of interpreters be pardonable enough in them, as carrying much of its excuse in its cause, yet it cannot but much derogate from the Scripture to appear with peculiar disadvantages, besides those many that are common to almost all books by being translated.
For whereas the figures of rhetoric are wont by orators to be reduced to two comprehensive sorts, and one of those does so depend upon the sound and placing of the words (whence the Greek rhetoricians call such figures σχήματα λέξεως) that if they be altered, though the sense be retained, the figure may vanish; this sort of figures, I say, which comprises those that orators call epanados, antanaclasis, and a multitude of others, are wont to be lost in such literal translations as are ours of the Bible, as I could easily show by many instances, if I thought it requisite.
Besides, there are in Hebrew, as in other languages, certain appropriated graces and a peculiar emphasis belonging to some expressions, which must necessarily be impaired by any translation, and are but too often quite lost in those that adhere too scrupulously to the words of the original. And as in a lovely face, though a painter may well enough express the cheeks, and the nose, and lips, yet there is often something of splendour and vivacity in the eyes which no pencil can reach to equal: so in some choice composures, though a skilful interpreter may happily enough render into his own language a great part of what he translates, yet there may well be some shining passages, some sparkling and emphatical expressions that he cannot possibly represent to the life. And this consideration is more applicable to the Bible and its translations, than to other books, for two particular reasons.
For first, it is more difficult to translate the He-brew of the Old Testament, than if that book were written in Syriac or Arabic, or some such other eastern language. Not that the holy tongue is much more difficult to be learned than others, but because in the other learned tongues we know there are commonly variety of books extant, whereby we may learn the various significations of words and phrases; whereas the pure Hebrew being unhappily lost, except so much of it as remains in the Old Testa-ment, out of whose books alone we can but very imperfectly frame a dictionary and a language, there are many words, especially the Ἅπαξ λεγόμενα, “those which occur but once,” and those that occur but seldom, of which we know but that one signification, or those few acceptations wherein we find it used in those texts that we think we clearly understand: whereas if we consider the nature of the primitive tongue, whose words being not numerous, are most of them equivocal enough, and do many of them abound with strangely-different meanings; and if we consider too how likely itis that the numerous conquests of David, and the wisdom, prosperity, fleets, and various commerces of his son Solomon did both enrich and spread the Hebrew language, it cannot but seem very probable, that the same word or phrase may have had divers other significations than interpreters have taken notice of, or we are now aware of, since we find in the Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and other eastern tongues, that the Hebrew words and phrases (a little varied, according to the nature of those dialects) have other, and oftentimes very differing significations besides those that the modern interpreters of the Bible have ascribed to them. I say the modern, because the ancient versions before, or not long after our Saviour’s time, and especially that which we vulgarly call the Septuagint, do frequently favour our conjecture, by rendering Hebrew words and phrases to senses very distant from those more received significations in our texts, when there appears no other so probable reason of their so rendering them, as their believing them capable of significations differing enough from those to which our later interpreters have thought fit to confine themselves, The use that I would make of this consideration may easily be conjectured, namely, that it is probable that many of those texts whose expressions, as they are rendered in our translations, seem flat, or improper, or incoherent with the context, would appear much otherwise, if we were acquainted with all the significations of words and phrases that were known in the times when the Hebrew language flourished, and the sacred books were written: it being very likely, that among those various significations some one or other would afford a better sense and a more significant and sinewy expression than we meet with in our translations, and perhaps would make such passages as seem flat or uncouth, appear eloquent and emphatical. Whilst I am writing this, our English tongue presents to my thoughts an example which may seem to illustrate much of the foregoing consideration; and it is this: that though, as one would easily believe, there are but a few forms of speaking which relate to the birth of infants, yet there are five or six expressions concerning that one affair, wherein very peculiar and unwonted notions belong to the words and phrases. For if I say that such a woman has looked every hour these ten days—that yesterday she cried outthat she had a quick and easy labour—that last night she was brought a bed—that now she lies in —and that it is fit we should remember the lady in the straw; if, I say, I make use of any or all of these expressions, an Englishman would readily ὁ understand me; butif I should literally and word for word translate them, I say not into Greek or Hebrew, but into the languages of our neighbour nations, French or Italian, men would not understand what I mean: and if a discourse wherein they were employed were translated by an interpreter only acquainted with the genuine and more obvious signification of the English word, it would in such passages appear very disadvantageously, and perhaps be thought impertinent or nonsensical to a French or Italian reader.
But this is not all; for I consider, in the second place, that not only we have lost diverse of the significations of many of the Hebrew words and phrases, but that we have also lost the means of acquainting ourselves with a multitude of particulars relating to the topography, history, rites, opinions, factions, customs, &c. of the ancient Jews and neighbouring nations, without the knowledge of which we cannot, in the perusing of books of such antiquity as those of the Old Testament, and written by and principally for Jews, we cannot, I say, but lose very much of that esteem, delight, and relish with which we should read very many passages, if we discerned the references and allusions that are made in them to those stories, proverbs, opinions, &c. to which such passages may well be supposed to relate. And this conjecture will not I presume appear irrational, if you but consider how many of the handsomest passages in Juvenal, Per-sius, Martial, and divers other Latin writers (not to mention Hesiod, Musæus, or other more ancient Greeks) are lost to such readers as are unacquainted with the Roman customs, government, and stories; nay, or are not sufficiently informed of a great many particular circumstances relating to the condition of those times, and of divers particular persons pointed at in those poems; and therefore it is that the latter critics have been fain to write comments, or at least notes upon every page, and in some pages upon almost every line of those books, to enable the reader to discern the eloquence and relish the wit of the author. And if such dilucidations be necessary to make us value writings that treat of familiar and secular affairs, and were written in an European language, and in times and countries much nearer to ours, how much do you think we must lose of the elegancy of the Book of Job, the Psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, and other sacred composures, which not only treat oftentimes of sublime and supernatural mysteries, but were written in very remote regions so many ages ago, amidst circumstances to most of which we cannot but be great strangers? And thus much for my first general consideration.
My second is this, that we should carefully distinguish betwixt what the Scripture itself says, and what is only said in the Scripture. For we must not look upon the Bible as an oration of God to men, or as a body of laws, like our English statute-book, wherein it is the legislator that all the way speaks to the people, but as a collection of composures of very differing sorts, and written at very distant times; and of such composures, that though the holy men of God (as St. Peter calls them) were acted by the Holy Spirit, who both excited and assisted them in penning the Scrip-ture, yet there are many others besides the author and the penmen introduced speaking there. For besides the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, the four Evangelists, the Acts of the Apostles, and other parts of Scripture, that are evidently historical, and wont to be so called, there are in the other books many passages that deserve the same name, and many others wherein, though they be not mere narratives of things done, many sayings and expressions are recorded that either belong not to the Author of the Scripture, or must be looked upon as such wherein his secretaries personate others, So that in a considerable part of the Scripture, not only prophets and kings and priests being introduced speaking; but soldiers, shepherds, and women, and such other sorts of persons from whom witty or eloquent things are not (especially when they speak extempore) to be expected, it would be very injurious to impute to the Scripture any want of eloquence that may be noted in the expressions of others than its Author. For though not only in romances, but in many of those that pass for true histories, the supposed speakers may be observed to talk as well as the historian; yet that is but either because the men so introduced were ambassadors, orators, generals, or other eminent men for parts as well as employments, or because the historian does, as it often happens, give himself the liberty to make speeches for them, and does not set down what indeed they said, but what he thought fit that such persons on such occasions should have said; whereas the penmen of the Scripture, as one of them truly professes, having not followed cunningly-devised fables in what they have written, have faithfully set down the sayings as well as actions they record, without making them rather congruous to the conditions of the speakers than to the laws of truth.
Nor is it only the style of very many passages of Scripture that may be justified by our second consideration, but with the same distinction well applied, we may silence some of their malicious cavils, who accuse the Scripture of teaching vice by the ungodly sayings and examples that are here and there to be met with init. But as the apostle said, that ‘they are not all Israel that are of Israel;’2 so may we say, that all is not Scripture that is in the Scripture: for many wicked persons and their perveter, Satan, are there introduced, whose sayings the Holy Ghost does not adopt, but barely registers; nor does the Scripture affirm that what they said was true, but that it is true they said it. And if I had not reduced some of these cavillers to confess that they never did themselves read those pieces of the Bible at some of whose passages they cavil, I should much more admire than I do to find them father, as confidently as they do, all they hear cited from it upon the enditer of it; as if the devil’s speeches were not recorded there, and as if it were requisite to make a history divinely inspired, that all the blasphemies and crimes it registers should be so too. As for the ills recorded in the Scripture, besides that wicked persons were necessary to exercise God’s children, and illustrate his providence; and besides the allegations commonly made on that subject, we may consider that there being many things to be declined as well as practised, it was fit we should be taught as well what to avoid as what to imitate; and the known rocks and shelves do as well guide the seamen as the pole-star. Now, as we could not be armed against the tempter’s methods, if we ignored them; so could we never safelier nor better learn them than in his book, who can alone discover the wiles, and fathom the ‘depths of Satan,’3 and track him through all his windings and otherwise untraceable labyrinths, and in that book where the antidote is exhibited with the poison, and either men’s defeat or victory may teach us at others’ costs, and without our hazard, the true art of that warfare we are all so highly concerned in. And as chemists observe in the book of nature, that those simples that wear the figure or resemblance (by them termed signature) of a distempered part, are medicinal for that infirmity of that part whose ἰ signature they bear; so in God’s other book, the vicious persons there mentioned still prove, under some notion or upon some score or other, antidotal against the vices notorious in them; being, to present it you also in a Scripture simile, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, set up to cure the poison infused by those they resemble. ‘Whatsoever things were written aforetimes,’ says the apostle, ‘were written for our instruction.’4 And to make further use of our former comparison,those to whom the Scripture gives the names of lions, wolves, foxes, and other brutes, by God’s assistance, prove to his saints as instructive beasts as doth the northern bear unto the wandering pilot; and as anciently, God fed his servant Elias sometimes by an angel, sometimes by a woman, and sometimes too by ravens; so doth he make all persons in the Bible, whether good or bad or indifferent, supply his servants with that instruction which is the aliment of virtue and of souls, and makes them and their examples contribute to the verification of that passage of St. Paul, wherein he says that ‘all things co-operate for good to them that love God.’5
My third consideration is this, that the several books of the Bible were written chiefly and primarily to those to whom they were first addressed, and to their contemporaries, and that yet the Bible, not being written for one age or people only, but for the whole people of God, consisting of persons of all ages, nations, sexes, complexions, and conditions, it was fit it should be written in such a way as that none of all these might be quite excluded from the advantages designed them in it. Therefore were these sacred books so wisely as well as graciously tempered, that their variety so comprehends the several abilities and dispositions of men, that, as some pictures seem to have their eyes directly fixed on every one that looks on them from what part soever of the room he eyes them, there is scarce any frame of spirit a man can be of, or any condition he can be in, to which some passage of Scripture is not as patly applicable as if it were meant for him, or said to him, as Nathan once did to David, ‘Thou art the man.’6 What has been thus observed touching God’s design in the contrivance of the Scripture, may assist us to defend the style of a great multitude of its texts, and particularly of divers of those which belong to the five following kinds.
And first, the several books that make up the canon the Scripture, being primarily designed for their use that lived in the times wherein they were divulged, it need be no wonder if each of them contain many things that principally concern the persons that then lived, and be accordingly written in such a way, that many of its passages allude and otherwise relate to particular times, places, persons, customs, opinions, stories, &c. which, by our formerly-mentioned want of a good account of such remote ages and regions, cannot afford us that instruction and satisfaction that those to whom such books were immediately addressed might easily derive from the perusal of them.
Next, as some portions of Scripture were principally designed for ages very long since past, so some other parts of it, especially those that are yet prophetic, may probably respect future times much more than ours; and our posterity may ad- mire what we cannot now relish, because we do not yet understand it. Moreover, there being many portions of Scripture, as almost the whole four last books of Moses, wherein God is introduced as either immediately or mediately giving laws to his people or his worshippers, I suppose it will not be thought necessary that such parts of Scripture should be eloquently written, and that the supreme Legislator of the world, who reckons the greatest kings amongst his subjects, should in giving laws tie himself to those of rhetoric, the scrupulous observation of which would much derogate from those two qualities so considerable in laws, clearness and majesty.
Besides, there being a sort of men, of which I hope the number will daily increase, who have such a desire as St. Peter tells us the angels themselves: cherish, to look into the mysteries of religion,7 and are qualified with elevated and comprehensive in- tellects to apprehend them in some measure, it is: not unfit that to exercise such men’s abilities, and to reward their industry, there should be some abstruse texts of Scripture fitted to the capacities of such speculative wits, and above the reach of vulgar apprehensions.
And on the other side, the omniscient Author of the Scripture, foreseeing that it would follow, from the condition of mankind, that the greatest part of the members of the church would be no great clerks, and many of them very weak or illiterate, it was but suitable to his goodness that a great many other passages of the books designed for them as well as others, should be written in such a plain and familiar way as may befit such readers, and let them see that they were not forgotten or overlooked by him who says, by the prophet, that all souls are his.8 And yet in many even of these texts which seem chiefly to have been designed to teach the simple, scholars themselves may find much to learn. For not only there are some passages that contain milk for babes, and others that exhibit strong meat for riper stomachs, but oftentimes (as cows afford both milk and beef) the same texts that babes may suck milk from, strong men may find strong meat in. The Scripture itself, in some sense fulfilling the promise made us in it, that habenti dabitur ‘to him that hath shall be given,’ and being like a fire that serves most men but to warm and dry themselves, and dress their meat, but serves the skilful chemist to draw quintessences and make extracts.
I doubt not but you are acquainted as well as I with divers querulous readers, who very boldly find fault with this variety wherein God hath thought fit to exhibit his truth and declare his will in Holy Writ, and presume to censure some texts as too mysterious, very many as too plain. But these exceptions at the economy of the Scrip-ture do commonly proceed from their pride that make them; for that vice inclining them to fancy that the Bible either was or ought to have been written purposely for them, prompts them to make exceptions suitable to such a presumption; and whilst they look upon their own abilities as the measure of all discourses, to call all that transcends their apprehensions dark, and all that equals it not, trivial. They will be always finding fault with the Holy Ghost’s expressions, both where his condescensions make them clear, and where the sub- . limity of the matter leaves them obscure; like bats, whose tender eyes love neither day nor night, and are only pleased with (what is alone proportioned to their weak sight) a twilight, that is both or neither. But as a skilful fowler, (and the comparison will be excused by those that remember that God, in Scripture, is said to be pressed ‘as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves,’9 and the Son of man to be as ‘a thief in the night,’) according to the differing natures of his game, so contrives and appropriates his stratagems, that some he catches with light, as larks with day-nets; some with baits, as pigeons with peas; some with frights, as blackbirds with a sparrow-hawk or a low-bell; and some he draws in with company, as ducks and such like sociable birds with decoyfowl: so God, knowing that some persons must be wrought upon by reason, others allured by interest; some driven in by terror, and others again brought in by imitation, hath, by a rare and merciful, if I may so call it, suppleness of wisdom, so varied the heavenly doctrine into ratiocinations, mysteries, promises, threats, and examples, that there is not any sort of people that in the Scripture may not find religion represented in that form they are most disposed to receive impressions from; God therein graciously dealing with his children not unlike the prophet that shrunk himself into the proportion of the child he meant to revive.10 The geniuses, the capacities, and the dispositions of men, are so distinct, and oftentimes so extravagant, that there is scarce a passage of Scripture that is not suitable or appropriate to some of those numberless differences of humour the Bible was designed for, and in that unimaginable variety of occurrences shared amongst such vast multitudes finds not a proper object. And therefore God who, having created them, best knows the frame of men’s spirits, having been pleased to match them with proper texts, I shall not quarrel with his vouchsafing to lisp mysteries to those that would be deterred by any other way of expressing them, and to qualify his instruments according to the natures he designs them to work upon, lest he should say to me, with the householder in the gospel, ‘Is thine eye evil, because I am good?’ And sure it must extremely misbecome us to repine at the greatness of God’s condescensions, only upon the score of a knowledge or attainments that we owe to it.
By reflecting upon the three foregoing general considerations, you will, I presume, easily perceive what it is that is pretended to in what I represent to you in the behalf of the style of the Scripture. For you will easily guess by what I have hitherto told you, I pretend not to prove or assert that every text of Scripture, especially in translations, is embellished with the ornaments of rhetoric, but only to show these two things:—the one, that as: there may be drawn from divers things in the Scripture itself (without excluding the style) con- ) siderable arguments of its having been written or approved by men peculiarly assisted by the Spirit: of God; so, if a man be persuaded either by these intrinsic arguments (which I may in another paper evince to be no slight ones) or by any others, of the heavenly origination of the Scripture, if, I say, a man be persuaded of this, he ought not in reason by the style of these books to be kept from dili- gently studying of them, and highly valuing them; the other (which I add as one evincement of the: former) is, that not only the Scripture is every; where written with as much eloquence as the chief ἢ author (whose omniscience qualified him to judge: best in the case) thought fit and expedient for his wise ends in publishing it, but that, as we now have the sacred books, especially in their originals, very many passages of them are so far from being destitute of what even our western nations count eloquence, that they deserve to be admired for it. And, Theophilus, if you please to keep in your eye what I have now told you concerning my scope in writing, and to bear in your memory the three general considerations I have premised, I shall need hereafter, as often as I have occasion to mention them, only to point at them, and thereby shall excuse you and myself from the unwelcome trouble of many times repeating the same things.
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