To proceed now to the second objection against the style of Scripture: the seemingly disjointed method of that book is by many much cavilled at; to which, were the supposal a truth, I might reply, that the book of grace doth but therein resemble the book of nature, wherein the stars (however astronomers have been pleased to form their constellations) are not more nicely or methodically placed than the passages of Scripture: that where there is nothing but choice flowers, in what order soever you find them, they will make a good posy: that it became not the majesty of God to suffer himself to be fettered to human laws of method, which, devised only for our own narrow and low conceptions, would sometimes be improper for and injurious to his, who may well say, as he doth in the prophet, that his thoughts are so far from being ours, that ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his thoughts higher than our thoughts:’1 that as a mixture of ambergris and musk is more redolent than the single ingredients; and as in compound medicines, (as mithridate and treacle,) the mixture gives the electuary a higher virtue than the severed drugs possessed; so oftentimes in morality and divinity, a complication of precept and example, of rhetoric and mystery, may operate better than their distinction would. And sure we should judge that man a very captious creature, that should take exception at a proffered sum, only because the half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences were not sorted in distinct heaps, but huddled into one. This, I say, with much more, might be represented, were the Scripture series as destitute of method, as is pretended: but the truth is, that the method though it be not pedantically nice, is proper and excellent; if the goodness of a method be to be judged less by the order of the sections than its being in order to the author’s end, and never swerved from but upon sufficient ground, or for some mysterious purpose: the laws of order in the Scripture being rarely declined, but as the laws of nature are in the world, for man’s instruction. The historical dislocations have their particular reasons, and, for the most part are accounted for by judicious expositors: and as for the frequent, and sometimes long, digressions, excepted against in the Epistles of St, Paul, were he a bare human writer, I should possibly attribute his frequent excursions to his fulness upon all subjects, not his want of skill to prosecute any one, and compare his pen to those generous horses, who, though never so well managed, will ever be jetting out on this or that side of the path, not out of undisciplinedness, but purely out of mettle: but looking upon St. Paul under another notion, I shall rather choose to tell you, that as rivers are said to run to the sea, though oftentimes the interposition of hard or rising grounds or other obstacles, force them to such winding meanders, that they seem to retreat from the ocean they tend to; which nevertheless with increased streams they afterwards bend again their intermitted course to, having watered and fertilized by their passage the grounds through which they seemed to wander; so our apostle, though he direct his discourse to his main scope, may not only without declining it, but in order to it, for in some cases the wisdom of the proverb will inform us, that the longest way about is the nearest way home, seem for awhile to abandon it, by fetching a compass to answer some obvious or anticipate some tacit objection, and afterwards more prosperously resume his former considerations, now strengthened by the defeat of the interposing scruples, having, by the by, happily illustrated and enriched those subjects which his incidental excursions led him occasionally to handle. I must add, that in St. Pauls, as in the rest of the inspired writings, the mere want of heeding the Holy Ghosts way of writing, makes the method appear to us at a very great disadvantage. For in the historical part of Scripture, when the order of time is interrupted, those προθύστερα, προλήψεις and επάνοδοι, and such dislocations, are used oftentimes only to.comply with the connexion of the matter; and either dispatch all that belongs to the same long narrative at once, or else to join passages allied in some other circumstance, though severed in that of time; and sometimes too, things are inserted which do not readily seem pertinent to the series of the discourse, but are extremely so to some scope of the author, and afford much light and excellent hints to the reader. Sometimes the coherence, where it appears defective, may be very well made out by rendering Hebrew verbs (and some Greek aorists) in a preterpluperfect sense instead of a perfect; or by some such other grammatical variation of the words, as all that understand Hebrew well know to be allowed by the propriety of that tongue, which ignores divers moods and tenses, &c. of our western languages. Some-times that which seems incoherent to a discourse, serves really to prevent a foreseen (though perhaps not always obvious) probability of misapplication of it; and so must not be judged impertinent to a doctrine which it hinders from being either scrupled at or abused. Sometimes the prophets, in the midst of the mention of particular mercies promised to, or judgments denounced against the people of God, sally out into pathetical excursions relating to the Messias, which seem extremely abrupt and incoherent with the rest, to them that consider not how seasonable the mention of Christ may be, both in the mention of the mercies of God, of which he is the foundation and pinnacle,the ground and consummation, (and the promise made of him, taught the faithful to reason thus with his apostle: ‘He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?’2) and amidst the threats of the judgments of God, in which he was his people’s grand consolation. Sometimes ὁ διδάσκαλος, the teacher, that bishop of our souls,3 who was in the supreme degree of perfection, which St. Paul required of a bishop, διδακτικὸς, both fit and forward to teach,4 takes a rise from any invitation, either of a word, expression, or theme, though belonging to his own first subject, to give further instructions, by digressing a little to that occasional and intervening theme; which however it related to his matter, suited very well with his merciful inclinations to instruct dim mortals. Sometimes, nay oftentimes, the inspired discoursers seem to say things, not only incoherent, but contradictory; (as is very remarkable in divers of St. Paul’s epistles, where he seems to praise and dispraise the same persons;) whereas addressing themselves to mixed assemblies, wherein (as Noah and Ham in the ark, and the tares and the wheat in agro dominico) there were both good and bad men, heretics, especially Gnostics, and orthodox Christians, they only so wisely dispensed and tempered their discourse, that both these sorts of persons might find something in what was in general terms delivered, to appropriate to themselves in particular, which application was necessarily left to their own consciences to make. Sometimes the order is in Scripture much disturbed or injured by the omission or misplacing of a parenthesis. For there not being any in the Hebrew copies, nor (as it is thought) in the original Greek ones, the publishers of the several editions of the Bible, have placed parentheses as they have judged most convenient; some including in them what others leave out of them; and some making long ones where others make none at all; and perhaps none of them have been so happy as to leave no room for alterations that may deserve the title of corrections and amendments. And sometimes too, the seeming immethodicalness of the New Testament, (not to determine any thing of the antiquity, which is certainly great, and the authority of the accents and partition of the Old Testament, because amongst very able critics adhuc sub judice lis est) is due to the inconvenient distinction of chapters and verses now in use; which though it be a very great help to the memory, and be some other ways serviceable, yet being of no greater antiquity than its contriver, Stephanus, and being (though now of general use) but of private authority, and by him drawn up in haste, it will be perhaps no slander to that industrious promoter of heavenly learning, to say, he hath sometimes severed matters that should have been left united, and united others which more conveniently he might have severed, and that his lucky attempt ought not to lay any restraint upon other learned men, from making use of the same liberty be took in altering the former partitions (for of them I speak, not of the punctuation) of the New Testament, in altering his alterations to the best advantage of the sense or method. The analytical works of some (I wish I could say many) judicious expositors and divines upon the Scrip-ture, may sufficiently manifest its being generally reducible enough to a perspicuous order; and that it conforms to the known laws of method, where its diviner one doth not transcend them. And it were not impossible for me to give divers instances to manifest, that as the north star, though it be less luminous than many others, yet, by reason of its position, doth better guide the pilot than even the moon herself: so are there some texts in Scripture which, though less conspicuous in themselves, are, by reason of their relation to a context, more instructive than other more radiant passages, to which these would be much inferior, if they were not as well considerable for their being there as such.
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