The apostle of the Gentiles teaching us that the whole Scripture, for so I should rather English the Πᾶσα γραφὴ, is θεόπνευστος, ‘divinely inspired, and is profitable for doctrine, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works;’1 and the apostle of the circumcision assuring us that, ‘Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost;’2 we are not to believe that so divine an enditer, by secretaries, most of them conspicuous by the gifts of prophecy or miracles, would solemnly publish to the world and for his church, any thing that ought indeed to be accounted impertinent or useless. And yet of these qualities, some persons, more bold than learned and considerate, are pleased to impeach many passages of Scripture. But truly that God who was so precisely exact in the dimensions, proportions, and all other circumstances of the ancient tabernacle, though it were but a typical and temporary structure, ought to be supposed at least as careful to let nothing superfluous intrude into those volumes, which being consigned to the church for the perpetual use and instruction of it, must contain nothing unconducive to those designs, the least text in it being as contributory to the completing of the Bible, as every loop or pin was to the perfection of the tabernacle. God, by so great a condescension to the weakness of our capacities and memories, as the withholding from the canon so many writings of Solomon, and so many of the oracles and miracles of our Saviour; and by so strangely preserving the whole Scripture, (for the books pretended to be lost, though written by never so holy men, are either in our Bibles extant under other names, or cannot be demonstrated to have ever been canonical; that is, entrusted with the church as the infallible rule of faith and life,) does, methinks, abundantly evince his design of inchasing nothing there that hath no tendency to his people’s instruction. Were not my discourse confined by my occasions and the fear of distressing your patience, to somewhat narrow limits, I could easily by several instances of texts, seemingly useless, show how much men have been mistaken in imagining them such. Many passages that at the first or second reading I could find or guess no uses of, at the third or fourth I have discovered so pregnant in them, that I almost equally admired the richness of those texts, and my not discerning it sooner. A superficial and cursory perusal presents us many things as trivial or superfluous, which a perspicacious reflection discloses to be mysterious. And of so precious a quality is the knowledge of Scripture, that no one part of it ought to be esteemed useless, if it may but facilitate or improve the understanding of any other: divine truths being of that worth, that the knowledge and acquist of a few of them as much outvalues a greater knowledge of other things, as a jeweller’s skill and stock is preferred before a mason’s; And I consider here, that as the Bible was not written for any one particular time or people, but for the whole church militant diffused through all nations and ages; as many passages (as those opposed to the Zabian’s magical rites) have at first been necessary for the Jews, which lose the degree, at least, of that quality for us; so there are many others very useful which will not perhaps be found so these many ages; being possibly reserved, by the prophetic Spirit that endited them, (and whose omniscience comprises and unites in one prospect all times and all events,) to quell some future foreseen heresy, which will not perhaps be born till we be dead, or resolve some yet unformed doubt, or confound some error that hath not yet a name: so that all the parts of Scripture are useful in some ages, and some in all. We read in the gospel, that at the first institution of the eucharist, it was expressly said to the disciples concerning the sacramental wine, ‘Drink ye all of it,’3 whereas upon the exhibition of the bread the particle ‘all’ is omitted.4 This difference, it is like, the primitive Christians marvelled at, and discerning no reason for it, might be tempted to think the passage useless or superfluous; but we that live in an age wherein the cup is denied to much the greater part of the communicants, are invited not only to absolve the recording of this particularity, but to admire it. The ceremonial law, with all its mystic rites, (which, like the manger to the shepherds, holds forth, wrapped in his swathing-clothes, the infant Jesus,5) to many that bestow the reading on it, seems scarce worth it; yet what use the apostles made of it with the Jews, and how necessary the knowledge of it is yet to us, in our controversies with them, he that is any thing versed in them cannot ignore. And let me tell you, Theophilus, that those fundamental controversies are both more necessary and more worthy a wise man’s study, than most of those comparatively trifling ones that at present so miserably (not to say causelessly) distract Christendom. How many passages of the prophets, by lazy readers, are thought to have no use, which, as the star did the wise men,6 lead the attentive considerers to Christ; and so loudly and harmoniously, together with Moses’s typic shades, utter those words of the Baptist, ‘Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,’7 that I meet with numerous passages in the New Testament, to which I cannot but apply what St. Matthew notes upon his narrative of our Sa-viours apprehension, ‘All this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled;’8 or rather, now all this was so done that they were fulfilled; (for so oftentimes the context commands us to render the ἵνα in these citations;) and which recal to my mind the history of the transfiguration; for as there the apostles at first saw Moses and Elias talking with Jesus, but at the second view (when the cloud was withdrawn, and he had spoken to them) ‘saw none but Jesus only;’9 so such passages as I am speaking of, in the law, the prophets, and the gospel, at first survey appear very distinct things, but upon a second inspection, - and the access of more light from an attentive collation of things, they do all, as it were, vanish into Christ; *of whom (to use an apostle’s terms) Moses in the law, and the prophets did write;’10 and at whom those types and those predictions pointed. Those instances of the Old Testament, of the confused or dislocated mention of known pedigrees and stories, were possibly useless, and even troublesome to the ancient Jews, but serve us extremely to silence the cavils of the modern ones, when they would invalidate the New Testament’s authority; because in St. Stephen’s narrative, and some of the Evangelists genealogies, the Holy Ghost is pleased to employ in the New Testament that obscure strain he had often used in the Old: and sure as insultingly as the Jews use to urge against us objections of that nature, I could readily retaliate and repay them in the same coin, were there no common enemy that might be advantaged by our quarrel, and employ either’s arguments against both. And as there are divers prophetical passages in the Revelation, which we know as little the use as meaning of, which yet doubtlessly our posterity will not find barren, when once the accomplishment shall have proved the expositor of those predictions, whose event will (if it do nothing else) attest the omniscience of their inspirer: so possibly, of many Mosaic constitutions, whereof we Christians find excellent uses, most of the old Jews scarce knew any; at least my conversation with our modern rabbies shows me that they, whilst they obstinately decline referring them to the Messias, can scarce make any more of the inspired and mysterious laws of Moses, (except those that relate to the Zabian superstition; with which, too, most of their doctors are as unacquainted as ours) than the Egyptians or Gymnosophists could of their sacrifices and other ritual devotions,
It is not that I think all the books that constitute the Bible, of equal necessity or equal usefulness, because they are of equal extraction; or that I esteem the church would lose as much in the prophecy of Nahum, as that of Isaiah; or in the Book of Ruth, as in the Epistle to the Romans, or the Gospel of John; as the fixed stars themselves, though of the same heaven, are not all of the same magnitude and lustre: but I esteem all the constituent books of Scripture necessary to the canon of it; as two eyes, two ears, and the rest of the members are all necessary to the body; without divers of which it may be, but not be so perfect, and which are all of great, though not of equal usefulness. And perhaps it might without too much hyperbole be said yet further; that as amongst the stars that shine in the firmament, though there be a disparity of greatness compared to one another, yet they are all of them lucid and celestial bodies, and the least of them far vaster than any thing on earth; so of the two Testaments that compose the Bible, though there may be some disparity in relation to themselves, yet are they both, heavenly and instructive volumes, and inestimably outvaluing any the earth affords, or human pens ever traced. And I must add, that as mineralists observe, that rich mines are wont to lie hid in those grounds whose surface bears no fruit-trees, (too much maligned by the arsenical and resembling fumes,) nor is well stored with useful plants or verdure, as if God would endear those ill-favoured à lands by giving them great portions; so divers passages of Holy Writ, which appear barren and unpromising to our first survey, and hold not obviously forth instructions or promises, being by a sedulous artist searched into, (and the original word ἐρευνᾶν, used in that text of ‘search the Scriptures,’11 does properly enough signify the searching for hid treasure,) afford out of their penetrated bowels, rich and precious mysteries of divinity.
← The Third Objection · Contents · The Fifth Objection →