Allied to their objection who find fault with the Scripture for being immethodical, is theirs who would fain persuade us, that it is seldom coherent, and scarce any where discursive. And I have observed with trouble, that even some pious readers are easily tempted to look upon the Bible as barely a repository of sentences and clauses, where divine truths lie huddled, and not ranged, and are too ready to apply to its texts the title Nero gave Seneca’s style, of arena sine calce: “sand without lime.” Whereas an intelligent and attentive peruser may clearly enough discern, both that the prophets and apostles do make frequent deductions and inferences, and that their arguments, though not cast into mood and figure, are oftentimes as cogent as theirs that use to make syllogisms in Barbara. I frequently entertain myself with both those authors, and yet methinks St. Paul reasons as solidly and as acutely as Aristotle: and certainly, according to David’s logic, ‘He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that framed the eye, shall he not see? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?’1—the first and grand Author of reason should as well know how to manage and disclose that faculty, as they that possess it but by participation, and glister so but with some few condescending beams, vouchsafed by that bright sun, who is indeed the ‘Father of lights, from which each good and perfect gift descends.’2 But on this occasion to point at a few particulars, I consider,
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That some ratiocinations of Scriptures remain undiscerned or misunderstood, because of our unacquaintedness with the figurative, and oftentimes, abrupt way of arguing usual amongst the eastern people, who in their arguments used to leave much to the discretion and collection of those they dealt with, and discoursed at a wide distance from the logical forms of our European schools, as to persons versed in their writings cannot but be notorious.
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That the seeming incoherency of many ratiocinations proceeds purely from the misrendering of the original particles, especially of the Hebrew conjunction copulative vau, or vaf, (as it is diversely pronounced by the Jews, of whom I shall here advertise you once for all, that they have confessed to me, they differ in pronouncing Hebrew, not only from the Christians, but exceedingly from one another,) for there is hardly any of those particles that hath not, besides the obvious, various other significations, of which, if that were skilfully and freely in every text taken up that would there afford the best sense, the Scripture would, I am confident, appear much more coherentand argumentative than translations or expositors are wont to make it: and though I did but consider how many thousand times the particle vaf is used in the Scripture, and that it doth not only (though it do primarily) signify “and,” but hath also (I speak within compass) four or five and twenty other significations (as “that,” “but,” “or,” “so,” “when,” “therefore,” “yet,” “then,” “because,” “now,” “as,” “though,” &c. and that the sense only gives it this great diversity of acceptations; I cannot but think that if we always allowed ourselves an equal freedom in rendering it, where the motive (which is the exigency or conveniency of the sense) is the same, the dexterous use and rendering of that one particle, would make no small number of texts both better understood and more esteemed.
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That sometimes, (especially in Solomon’s and St. Paul’s writings,) in many passages so penned as to contain (like Seneca’s) a tacit kind of dialogue, that is unskilfully by readers, and even interpreters, taken for an argument or an assertion which is indeed an objection. And that such a mistake must mightily discompose the contexture of a discourse, even a raw logician need not be told.
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That the omission or misplacing of parentheses (which the Hebrew text altogether wanting, interpreters have supplied and used at their own discretion) makes the Scripture oftentimes appear less discursive, as well as (what we elsewhere complain of) less methodical. And the like may be said of the points of interrogation. For whether it be true or no what the critics esteem, that in the original Greek copies of the New Testament there were no such points, (as indeed I have found them wanting in the ancientest manuscripts I have seen,) it is certain that in our modern copies, both Greek and translated, the authors of several editions have variously placed them as themselves thought fit; and though instead of the interrogative point, the Hebrews make use of their interrogative he; yet that the sense of the words, and a certain supposed modulation, do oftentimes make an interrogation where that he is wanting, an Hebrician can scarcely ignore, no more than a logician, that the interrogation is not always supplied to the best advantage of the Scripture’s logic.
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That the apostles and other inspired discoursers in the Bible, divers times use arguments, not to convince opposers, but to confirm believers: for the persons they reason with being such, oftentimes, as esteem them teachers sent from God, upon whose score all they teach exacts belief, they may without irrationality use arguments to confirm in their doctrine men already acquiescing in the principles of it, and persuaded of their integrity, sufficiency, and authority, that it would be improper to urge against a refractory disbeliever, that is convinced of none of these. And as masters often use in instructing their scholars, arguments they would forbear to insist on against a professed antagonist; so the apostles, dealing with those that thought them inspired teachers, and fully instructed in the mysteries of Scripture and the designed dispensations of God, might justly draw inferences not to be urged against an infidel, from a doctrine first delivered by themselves, or from a text or passage wherein those they reasoned with justly supposed they might know more of the mind and counsel of God than other men, and would teach nothing as such that was not so.
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That arguments exquisite and (as artists term them) apodictical had been oftentimes less proper in discourses, which being addressed to popular auditories, required rather popular arguments; which the inspired discoursers employ, but as likely to be better understood, and more prevalent than those which are so logical that they require logicians to relish them. Where teaching and persuading is the design, not only the native cogency of a ratiocination is to be considered, but its proportion to their spirits it is addressed to, and its aptitude to work upon them. For as a spider will catch flies better than a hawk can, as a cat is more fit to destroy mice than a greyhound, though this be stronger and swifter; and as the crowing of a cock will (according to famous naturalists) sooner fright a lion than the bellowing of a bull, though the latter be much the more terrifying noise, and proceed from the more formidable animal; so oftentimes weaker and popular arguments succeed better with a resembling auditory than the irrefragablest syllogisms.
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That divers Scripture arguments do not logically and cogently prove the thing they would persuade, merely because they were meant only for what logicians call argumenta ad hominem; (reasonings designed not so properly to demonstrate the opinion they contend for, irrelatively and abstractedly considered, as to convince of the truth of that opinion the persons they are addressed to;) and consequently the inspired discoursers arguing è concessis, from principles conceded and confessed by those they reason with, though the principles should be unsolid, the ratiocination is not. Thus there are divers texts of the Old Testament applied to Christ in the New, which, though they did not now inevi- - tably conclude against the present Jews, were without any illogicalness employed against their ancestors, because then the relation of those passages to the Messias was so acknowledged, that there needed but the pertinent applications made of them in the New Testament; whereas the refractoriness of the succeeding Jews hath taught them to devise so many sophistical evasions to elude the texts we speak of, that they now dispute not only the application of them, but the explication too. St. Jude argues with the rodomonts of his time, out of the story of the archangels’ and the devil’s contest about the body of Moses; and though perhaps that story be (like the Jewish book whence it seems not improbable it was taken) somewhat apocryphal, yet as long as they reverenced it, it was not irrational in him to urge them with it, and employ it to the redargution of their insolence. And as although there be nothing less solid and more fickle than the wind, yet the skilful pilot diligently observes it, and makes it drive on his ship more forcibly than the powerfulest and best contrived engines in the world could: so though there be scarce any thing more groundless and unstable than popular opinions and persuasions, yet a wise teacher neglects them not, and may sometimes make such use of them, as to draw thence arguments more operative than the accuratest syllogisms logic could devise. And indeed the most convincing proofs of assertions being ever afforded by the mediums wherein both parties agree, not only Socrates in Plato’s Dialogues, but dexterous discoursers generally have often elected the drawing of inferences from the opinions and concessions of those they dealt with, as the most persuasive and successful way of arguing, to all which I shall add,
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That another thing which very generally keeps men from discerning the reasonings, and consequently oftentimes the reasonableness and true sense, of Scripture texts is, the shyness of divines to let the context and the speaker’s scope regulate their choice amongst all the various, though not equally obvious, significations of ambiguous words and phrases. It is not that, as far as I have observed, men almost of all religions are not wont to make bold with, and perhaps for a need to strain or wrest, phrases and words of Scrip-ture, when the giving them less usual notions may fit them to serve their turns; but the mischief is, that they decline the commonest acceptations, but to make the texts they quit them in symphonise with their tenets, not with their neighbouring texts. It were, methinks, impartialler, if the frequenter meaning of an expression be to be waved, as oftentimes it must, for one less current, to do this to make the Scripture coherent or discursive: and then, for our opinions, rather to conform them to the sense of the Scripture than wrest the words of Scripture to them. But perhaps this impartiality would silence too many of our clamorous controversies, by showing some to be groundless and others undeterminable, to be likely to take place in the heated spirits of men; some of whom, I fear, whilst their feuds and fierceness last, would be willinger to have the texts of Scripture loose stones, which they may more easily throw at their adversaries, than built up into a structure, wherein they must lose that convenience, (it being difficult to pluck stones out of a building,) though reason herself were the architect.