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- We may reasonably suppose, that of the texts, that are now difficult unto us, there are divers that are so, but because they were principally intended for the use of those that shall live in after-times, by whom they will questionless be better understood. To the Jews, that lived in and along after Moses his time, many of those predictions, both verbal and typical, of the Messias, seemed very dark, which to us Christians are abundantly illustrated by the rising of that sun of righteousness, who was aimed at in them. And though the mysterious temple and city described in Ezekiel, as also much of the Apocalypse, and divers other prophetick passages of holy writ, do yet seem abstruse to us; yet they will not appear so to those, to whom their completion (the best expositor of dark prophecies) shall have unfolded them. For I observe, that as some divine predictions are clearly expressed, to the intent that those, that are made acquainted with them, may before-hand know what will happen, so others are proposed, not so much that those, to whom they are first addressed, should know the fore-told events, before they do come to pass, as that, when they do come to pass, the same accomplishment, that expounds them, may evince, that the fore-teller of them was able to foresee them, according to that of our Saviour to his disciples, to whom he prophesied the sufferings they should undergo; ‘These things have I told you, that when the time shall come ye may remember that I told you of them.’2
Fourthly, it was fit that there should be some obscure passages left in the inspired volume, to keep those from the knowledge of some of those divine mysteries, that are both delightful and useful, though not absolutely necessary, who do not think such knowledge worth studying for. As it was also fit (which I partly noted above) that there should be some clouded and mysterious texts to excite and recompense the industry and speculation of elevated wits and religious inquirers.
Lastly, there are divers obscure passages in Scripture, wherein the difficulty lies in the thing itself that is expressed, not in the Scriptures manner of expressing it. For not to mention that obscureness that is wont toattend prophetic raptures, (of which there are many mentioned in Scripture, ) there are divers things that we agree to be knowable by the bare light of nature, without revelation, which yet are so uneasy to be satisfactorily understood by our imperfect intellects, that let them be delivered in the clearest expressions men can devise, the notions themselves will yet appear obscure. Thus in natural philosophy itself, the nature of place and time, the origin of motion, and the manner whereby the human soul performs her functions, are things which no writers delivered so clearly, as not to leave the things somewhat obscure to inquisitive and examining readers. And shall we then wonder, that those texts of Scripture that treat of the nature and decrees of God, and of such sublime mysteries as the trinity, the incarnation, the influence of the Spirit upon the soul of man, and such other abstruse things, which it cannot be reasonably expected that human words should keep from being hard to be comprehended by human understandings, should be obscure to us, especially if we suffer our not understanding their full meaning at first to deter us from endeavouring to find it out by further study? I am sorry I can add on this occasion, that divers texts are made to appear more dark than otherwise they would, by the glosses and interpretations of some that pretend to expound them. Forthereare divers subtle men, who being persuaded upon certain metaphysical notions they are fond of, or by the authority of such either churches or persons as they highly reverence, that such or such niceties are either requisite to the explication of this or that doctrine delivered in Scripture, or at least deducible from it, will make bold so to interpret dark texts (and sometimes even clear ones) that they shall seem to hold forth not only their own sense, but the nice speculations or deductions of him that quotes them: so that divers texts, which to a rational and unprepossessed peruser would appear plain enough, seem to contain inextricable difficulties to those unwary or prejudicate readers, who are not careful to distinguish betwixt the plain sense of a text itself, and those metaphysical subtleties which witty and interested persons would father upon it, though oftentimes those niceties are either so groundless, that though there needs much wit to devise them, there needs but a little reason to despise them; or so unintelligible as to tempt a considering man to suspect that the proposers either mean not what they speak, or understand not what they say. And I could wish these metaphysical quirks, with which several, not only schoolmen but other writers, have perplexed the doctrine of predestination, of the Trinity, of the operation of the Spirit of God upon the will of man, and some other mysteries of Christian religion, did not give advantages against those doctrines to the opposers of them, and perhaps make some men opposers who otherwise would not have been so. And I fear that too great an opportunity has been afforded to atheistical wits by the unintelligible fancies which many have made bold to add to what the Scripture has revealed concerning: the eternity and infiniteness of God; for whilst men indiscreetly and unskilfully twist together as integral parts of the same doctrine a revealed truth, with their own metaphysical speculations about it, though these be too often such as cannot be proved, or perhaps be so much as understood, they tempt such examining readers as are rational enough to discern the groundlessness of one part of the doc- — trine, to reject the whole for its sake. But I fear I have digressed: for my intention was only to intimate, that it is not oftentimes so much what the: Scripture says, as what some men persuade others it says, that makes it seem obscure; and that as to some other passages that are so indeed, since it is the abstruseness of what is taught in them that makes them almost inevitably so; it is little less ] saucy upon such a score to find fault with the style of the Scripture, than to do so with the Author for making us but men.
Thus much being said by way of answer to the first sort of objectors of darkness against the Scrip-! ture, it is easy to foresee that the second sort of them may endeavour to pervert what has been delivered, to apologise for their neglect of the Scripture, by alleging, that albeit what has been represented may serve to show that the obscurity of the Scripture is justifiable, yet the very proving it needful or fit that it should be obscure, is a plain confession that it is so. Wherefore it is requisite that I now say something to this sort of objectors also, who are so unfavourable to the Scripture and themselves, as that, because they cannot understand all of it, they will not endeavour to learn any thing from it. I have already acknowledged it, and shall not now deny that (as heaven itself is not all stars) there may be parts of Scripture whose clear expositions shall ennoble and bless the remotest of succeeding ages, and that perhaps some mysteries are so obscure, that they are reserved to the illumination and blaze of the last and universal fire.
But here it would be considered in the first place, that those texts that are so difficult to be understood, are not necessary to be so. In points fundamental and indispensably necessary, the darkness of Scripture is no less partial than of Egypt, which benighted only the enemies, but involved not the people of God: in such articles as these, ‘If the gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds;’3 at least, in relation to such truths as these, we may justly apply that of Moses, where he tells Israel, ‘This commandment which I command thee this day, is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.’——‘But the word is very near unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.’4 And surely the Bible’s appropriate office being, as itself tells us, ‘to enlighten the eyes, and make wise the simple;’5 and it being written for the use of the whole people of God, whereof the greater number are no clerks, things are there expressed with an evidence proportionable to the degree of assent that they exact, and are as far forth intelligible to pious and industrious readers as they are necessary to be understood by them; and we may not unfitly say of the understanding of those cloudy passages of Scripture, what I remember a father said of the sacrament, Non privatio sed contemptus damnat, “That not the wanting it, but the slighting it shall condemn men.” It is our duty to study them, but it is not, always, to understand them.
And as the knowledge of those texts that are obscure is not necessary, so those others whose sense is necessary to be understood are easy enough to be so; and those are as much more numerous than the others, as more clear. Yes, there are shining passages enough in Scripture to light us the way to heaven, though some unobvious stars of that bright sphere cannot be discerned without the help of a telescope. Since God then has been pleased to provide sufficiently for our instruction,: what reason have we to repine, if we have in a: book, not designed for us alone, things provided also for those who are fitted for higher attainments; especially since, if we be not wanting to ourselves, those passages that are so obscure as to teach us nothing else, may at least teach us humility?
Nor does it misbecome God’s goodness any more than his wisdom, to have so tempered the canonical books, as therein to leave all sorts of readers an exercise for their industry, and give even the greatest doctors continual inducements to implore his instructions, and depend on him for his irradiations, by leaving amongst many passages that stoop unto our weakness, some that may make us sensible of it. It should, methinks, be looked upon as the prerogative, not the disparagement of the Scrip-tures, that the revelation of his truth vouchsafed us by God in them is like a river, wherein a lamb may quench his thirst, and which an elephant cannot exhaust. I should think him but an ill-natured child who should be angry to see strong meat provided for his elder brothers, because he himself can yet digest nothing but milk; and as the same child, being grown up to riper years, would be then troubled, that according to his first envious wish there were no stronger aliment provided in the family than milk; so, when by the attentive and repeated perusal of the Scripture, a child in knowledge shall attain to some higher measure of skill in the Scriptures, he will then be well pleased to have his understanding exercised by those most mysterious texts, of which he formerly complained that they surpassed it. However, since there are so many plain passages of Scripture . that clearly hold forth, not only all that is necessary for us to know, but I fear much more than we are careful to learn and practise, the zealous Christian would no more decline feeding on this heavenly food, though all the hard places should still remain such to him, than the Jews would forbear to eat the paschal lamb, ‘though not a bone of it were to be broken.’6 And, in earnest, would not he merit unrelieved beggary, that should refuse the profit of a rich mine, because all those of the world are not yet discovered, nor those of the Indies exhausted?
Moreover, the pretended obscureness of the Bible is a mistaken discouragement from reading it; for the frequency of reading it still lessens that obscurity, which, like a mist, seems thicker at a distance than when one enters it, and attempts a passage through it, which in our case many pious students have done so prosperously, as to find, by welcome experience, that what at a distance deterred them, was not intended to frustrate industry, but punish laziness.
Besides that the Scripture being avowedly the best expositor of itself, our ignorance of those places whose sense we seek for, makes us often occasionally much knowinger, and more perfect in the meaning of all the rest; and makes us too so much more ready in the uses of them, that I cannot but apply to this subject the fable of that dying husbandman, who, by telling his sons of a hidden mass of wealth he had buried in a nameless place of his vineyard, occasioned their so sedulous delving all the ground, and turning up the earth about the roots of the vines, that they found indeed a treasure, though not in gold, in wine: for thus out of hope, by the light of understood Scriptures to penetrate the sense of the obscurer ones, we occasionally so improve our knowledge and readiness in the clearer passages, that our by-acquists do richly recompense our frustrated, or rather unsucceeding, pains; since our particular disappointments hinder not the promotion of our general design, which is a greater proficiency in spiritual knowledge, and therefore ought not to deter us from the duty of those searches, in which not only to discover is happy, but even the unsucceeding attempts are gainful, whatever the event be; the pains being seldom fruitless, but reaching either their end or recompence. And this prompts me to represent to you further, that not only the Scripture is instructive upon the same account with other theological writings, but that we may hope to improve our understandings by it upon this score, that it is also the instituted means, as well of knowledge as of grace, and appointed for our instruction by him who, as sin came into the world by man’s listening to the words of the devil, is pleased to make restoring grace operate chiefly by our listening to the word of God, whether heard or read. Wherefore those whom the intuition of this encouragement invites to be diligent perusers of the Scripture, do to their infirm understandings, as the inhabitants of Gennesareth did to their sick and weak countrymen, lay them in Jesus’s way, and consequently in that of recovery.7 It is of, at least one of the darkest books of the Scripture, that it is said, ‘Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy.’8 The eunuch, in the Acts, would, though upon the high- way, needs read the prophet Isaiah; and though, as appears by his question to Philip, as then he understood not what he read, yet did the Spirit take thence (perhaps a rise as well as) opportunity to reveal Christ unto him, and both satisfy him of the meaning of that prediction, and acquaint him with the fresh and happy accomplishment of it. And surely this consideration of the Bible’s being one of the conduit-pipes through which God hath appointed to convey his truth as well as graces to his children, should methinks both hugely animate us to the searching of the Scriptures, and equally refresh us in it; for, as no instrument is weak in an omnipotent hand, so ought no means to be looked upon as more promising than that which is like to be prospered by grace, as it is devised by Omniscience. We may confidently expect God’s blessing upon his own institutions, since we know, ‘that whatsoever we ask according to the will of God, he will give it us;’9 and we can scarce ask any thing more agreeable to the will of God, than the competent understanding of that book wherein his will is contained.
The difficulty ought not to deter us from the duty of searching the Scriptures, the difficultest commands of God being a warrant to a believer’s confidence of being enabled acceptably, though not exactly, to obey them; which St. Peter seems to have known well in the theory, though he failed in the practice, when to be enabled to walk upon the sea, he desires only that our Saviour would please to command him to come to him upon the water.10 The Bible is, indeed, amongst books what the diamond is amongst stones, the preciousest, and the sparklingest, the most apt to scatter light, and yet the solidest, and the most proper to make impressions; but were it as unsuitable to its end as it isthe contrary, I should remember, that our Saviour could successively employ even clay and spittle to illuminate blind eyes:11 and though I thought the Bible to be on other accounts no more than equal to other books of morality and devotion, God’s designation would make me study it more hopefully, by minding me of that of the Syrian leper, when he would needs have Abana and Parphar, rivers of Damascus, likely to be as medicinal for his disease as Jordan, and vainly fancied that God’s appointment could not put a difference betwixt things that knew no other.12
I know, that because of the intermixture of some obscurer texts of Scripture with the clear ones, there are divers well-meaning, and even devout persons that leave the study of it for that of other books of religion, which, by leaving out all such difficulter matters seem to promise more of instruction: but notwithstanding this, I shall not much scruple to affirm, that as the moon, for all those darker parts we call her spots, gives us a much greater light than the stars that seem all luminous; so will the Scripture, for all its obscure passages, afford the Christian and divine more light than the brightest human authors.
To dispatch, since the Scripture is both a naturally proper, and an instituted instrument to convey revealed knowledge to the studiers of it; and in it many clear passages may instruct ordinary capacities, and its darker ones may either recompense more inquisitive wits or humble them; I see not, why the obscureness of a small part of it should deter any sort of pious persons from the perusal of the whole. And as the Word of God is termed a light,13 so hath it this property of what it is called, that both the plainest rustics may, if they will not wilfully shut their eyes, by the benefit of its light direct their steps, and the deepest philosophers may be exercised, if not posed and dazzled with its abstruser mysteries. For thus in the Scripture the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.
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