The next thing imputed to the Scripture is, that it contains many things trivial or impertinent: and it is not impossible, but that some things may seem so, though they are not: of this sort are disjointed speeches and abrupt transitions observed in many of our Saviour’s discourses; in which also we sometimes read him to have answered, without being asked the question, (though that be otherwise salvable by a critic,) and sometimes to have answered to a quite other question than that he was asked. But this is not to bethought an absurdity, but an excellency in the replies of Christ, who possessing the prerogative of discerning hearts, did preach after that rate: his oratory took a shorter way than ours can follow it in: he prosecuted his designs by altering his discourses, and wisely measured the fitness of his heavenly sermons, by their relation to his end, not his theme, Foras he knew his hearers’ thoughts, he addressed himself to them, and reaching them in their earliest formation, and as it were, their first cradle, before they had leisure to pass into the tongue, he not more convinced his auditory by answering their thoughts, than by thus manifesting that he knew them. Of his so much undervalued parables, some, if not most, do, like those oysters that besides the meat they afford us, contain pearls, not only include excellent moralities, but comprise important prophecies. The parable of the pregnant grain of mustard-seed that so suddenly grew to so large a plant, was a now fulfilled prediction of the admirably swift progress of the Gospel,1 which from despicable beginnings, soon prospered to a height that rendered it almost as fit an object for wonder as for faith. That other parable of the treacherous husbandmen, clearly foretold Christ’s death by the Jews’ malice, and their destruction for it.2 And I despair not to see unheeded prophecies disclosed in others of them, especially being informed that there is a critic, Monsieur A. B. now at work upon a design of manifesting many otherwise interpreted passages of the New Tes-tament to be prophecies, of whom no less than the famousest of the modern rabbies, Menasse Ben-Israel, (one time I made him a visit at his own house in Amsterdam,) gave me this character, that he took him for the ablest person of the Christians. Those historical circumstances quarrelled with in Christ’s parables are like the feathers that wing our arrows, which though they pierce not like the head, but seem slight things, and of a differing matter from the rest, are yet requisite to make the shaft to pierce, and do both convey it to and penetrate the mark. But nothing is thought more impertinent in Scripture than the frequent repetitions. But the learned need not to be told, that many things seem to the ignorant bare repetitions, which yet ever bring along with them some light or some accession: in that comparable to the stars, which as like as they seem to vulgar gazers, are by the skilful astrologer taught to contain, under that colour and figure common to them all, very peculiar and distinct influences. I here also consider, that in all languages there are some customary geminations and expressions, which, though to strangers they appear superfluous, if not absurd; to the natives, and in the propriety of that speech, are not only current but oftentimes emphatical. I find withal, that there is scarce any of these seeming impertinencies, of which a learned and judicious expositor cannot assign a pertinent cause or reason. And I consider, too, that the books of Scripture being endited, not all at once, but at very several and distant times; according to the known saying, that Nunquam satis docetur quod nunquam satis discitur, ‘Nothing can be sufficiently taught which is not sufficiently learned;’ the repetition of the same sins and errors, required that of the same menaces and dissuasions, whose frequent enforcing, serving both to attest and to convince the sinner’s obstinacy, was not a bare repeating, but such a redoubling as we are fain to use to drive in a nail to the head; and the words of the wise are, in the wise man’s words, ‘As nails fastened by the masters of assemblies,’3 where though in all the renewed strokes the busy hammer gives, the act be still the same, yet is no blow superfluous, the number of them serving to complete their operation. They that in perusing books have the learning and skill to strip them of what oratory or stealth hath dressed and disguised them in, will easily discern most of them to be but varied repetitions; which, for my part, I find differing from those of Scripture, but in that the latter do in the same words generally comprise new matter, whereas the former usually present us stale matter in new words. And I consider further, that our own sad experience showing us, that there is no single text of Scripture that subtler heretics’ sophistry cannot plausibly enough elude; the Holy Ghost foreseeing this from the beginning, hath mercifully and wisely provided, that the fundamental truths of faith and manners should be held forth in so many places and in so much variety of expressions, that one or other of them must unavoidably intercept those evasions, and escape those misconstructions, that sophistry may put upon the rest; which providence alone hath preserved many articles from the attempts of heretics, making them both blush to question and despair to disprove a truth attested by more than two or three witnesses, and giving orthodox believers the satisfaction of having their anchor tied to a threefold cord which is not easily broken. Most of the Bible’s repetitions (or inculcations rather) teach us something or other untaught before; and as in Pharaoh’s vision,4 though both the ears and the kine signified the same thing, yet Joseph’s interpretation shows that neither was superfluous, even those few that teach us nothing else, teach us at least the importance, or some other attribute, of those repeated points we were taught before. And I scruple not to compare the expressions of the Scripture to a rose, where though so many leaves nearly resemble each other, there is not one of them but contributes to the beauty and perfection of the flower.
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