Secondly, as to the disadvantage the Scripture receives by its not being read by those I now reason with, in their originals; though I have said something to it already, yet I must not resume it into consideration, and represent, that it is no wonder they reverence not the Bible style as they ought, whilst they judge of that of an Hebrew book by their vulgar translation; which (though sometimes causelessly enough censured by divers Protestant divines, that would find it no easy task to make a better, yet) certainly is in many places strangely harsh and barbarous; and by a partial and unlucky affectation of literality, misseth the propriety both of the Hebrew speech and of the Latin: and to adhere to the original’s words commonly injures its eloquence, and oftentimes its sense; rendering excellent expressions in such ungraceful ones as would probably fright readers from it, if it could not very well spare fine language: so that to our present theme we may not ill apply that notable saying of Mirandula, Hebræi bibunt fontes, Græci rivos, Latini paludes. The old French rhyming translation of Virgil, makes not the Æneids much more eloquent than Hopkins and Sternhold have made the Psalms: which sure, being written by a person who (setting aside his inspiration) was both a traveller, a courtier, and a poet, must at least be allowed to contain polished and fashionable expressions in their own language, how coarsely soever they have been misrendered in ours. What opinion the eastern world hath of the sweet singer of Israel, may appear both by other hyperbolical fictions they believe of him, (whom, with Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, they reckon amongst the four great prophets,) and by what Kessæus (the famed Mahometan writer of the Lives of the Fathers) relates concerning him, “that when David sang the praises of God, the hills, and birds, and beasts therein accompanied him.”¹ Which gross literal interpretation of figurative expressions in the Psalms, and of the Psalmist’s pathetical invitations to the inanimate creatures to join with him in celebrating their common Creator, he seems to have borrowed from the Alcoran itself; where Mahomet brings God in, saying, “We reduced the mountains to comply with him, who should join with him in praises morning and evening; the birds also flock to him; all these are obsequious to him.”² And though the New Testament be not written in He-brew, yet its writers being Hebrews, have chiefly conformed themselves to the style of the translators of the Old Testament (which whether or no it constitute what critics of late so dispute of under the name of Lingua or Dialectus Hellenistica, I pretend not to define) and that of the Apocryphal authors and other Jews writing in the same language; who (except, perhaps, Josephus and Philo) wrote rather, if I may so speak, a Hebrew than an Attic Greek; or, at least, in a dialect, which (by reason of their frequent references to the Septuagints version) abounds, if not with Hebraisms, with expressions obvious in Hebrew writings, and unfrequent in Greek ones, and so relishes much of the Hebraic style; of which, as well in the New as the Old Testament, those we reason with, being strangers to that primitive tongue, must be incompetent judges; there being in the idiotisms of all languages, peculiar graces, which (like those most subtle spirits, which exhale in pouring essences out of one vessel into another) are lost in most (especially if literal) translations; and the holy tongue being that which God himself made choice of to dignify with his expressions, having divers whose penetrancy is as little transfusible into any other as the sun’s dazzling brightness, or the water of a diamond can be undetractingly painted: and having divers words and phrases, whose pithiness and copiousness none in derived or other languages can match. Some of the Hebrew conjugations, as chiefly those called hiphil and hithpaël, give significations to verbs, which the want of answerable conjugations in western languages, makes us unable to fill or equal without paraphrases, which are very rarely so comprehensive as the original words; and (to hint this upon the by) the ignorance, or not considering of this one grammatical truth, hath kept men from fully understanding divers passages of the New Testament, wherein the Greek tongue’s want of those conjugations, hath made active or intransitive verbs be used in a transitive or reciprocal signification. How impertinently men’s ignorance of its originals may make them censure the Scripture, I had once occasion to take notice of, by finding a famous commentator note St. Paul of impropriety of speech, in the beginning of that which is commonly thought to be his first epistle to the Thessa-lonians, but by the learned Grotius (in his paradoxes, De Antichristo) not improbably esteemed to be his second: for whereas instead of the Greek words ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν ἐξήχηται ὁ λόγος τοῦ κυρίου, which ours have rightly Englished, ‘From you sounded out the word;’³ he found in his translation, a vobis diffamatus est sermo, not knowing Paul to have written in Greek, he would needs correct him for having written diffamatus est, instead of divulgatus est.

Thirdly, We may yet further consider, that as to many passages of Scripture accused of not appearing eloquent to European judges, it might be justly represented, that the eastern eloquence differs widely from the western. In those purer climates, where learning, that is here but a denizen, was a native, the most cherished and admired composures of their wits, if judged by western rules of oratory, will be judged destitute of it. Their dark and involved sentences, their figurative and parabolical discourses, their abrupt and maimed way of expressing themselves, which often leaves much place to guesses at the sense, and their neglect of connecting transitions, which often leaves us at a loss for the method and coherency of what they write, are qualities that our rhetoricians do not more generally dislike than theirs practise; there being perhaps little less disparity in our opinions than in our ways of writing; for their pens (as if it were a presage of the different changes the Jews and Greeks have made in point of religion) move from the right hand towards the left; ours (therein imitated by those of the Ethiopians) from the left towards the right; so that we think they write backwards, and they, that we do so. Of this difference of the notions, that the eastern and western colonies of the sons of Adam have harboured concerning eloquence, I shall need to mention but one instance, that one is so remarkable; and that is the Alcoran. How much the Mahometan world boasts the eloquence of that book, can scarce be unknown to those that have, though but a little, busied their curiosity in that sort of enquiries. The ablest Arabian expositors and other authors tells us, that all the wit and art of men and demons, would be unable to hinder that book from being matchless.⁴ Mahomet himself was so proud of it, that in some passages in it, he defies its opposers to equal one surat or section of it, and seems to make its peerlessness an argument of its not being of barely human authority;⁵ and the Saracens, pressed with their religion’s being destitute of attesting miracles, will not scruple to reply, that, though there were no other miracle to manifest the excellency of their religion above that taught by the prophets, yet the Alcoran itself were sufficient, as being a lasting miracle that transcends all other miracles.⁶ How charming its eloquence may be in its original I confess myself too unskilful in the Arabic tongue to be a competent judge; my other studies and distractions having made me forget most of the little knowledge I had once acquired of that flourishing language. But though the Alcoran have stolen too much from the Bible not to contain divers excellent things, which is one inducement to me to cite it the oftener, yet certainly, not only the ancient Latin version of it, made by orders of the abbot Pe-trus Cluniacensis, and published in the last age, by the procurement of Bibliander, (and of which this is the grand critic Scaliger’s exclamation, Deum immortalem, quam inepta est vulgaris illa, quam habemus, interpretatio?⁷) would scarce, by our European orators, be thought so much as of kin to eloquent; but the recent translations I have seen of it in French, and, as to divers of it in Latin, elaborated by great scholars, and accurate Arabi-cians, by making it very conformable to its eastern original, have not so rendered it, but that persons that judge of rhetoric by the rules of it current in these western parts of the world, would, instead of extolling it for the superlative, not allow it the positive degree. of eloquence; would think the style as destitute of graces, as the theology of truth; and would possibly as much admire the Saracen’s admiration as they do the book. And not only what I have seen of the eminent East-Indians, is strangely incongruous to our notions of eloquence, but what I have perused of the famous literati (as they call the learned men) of China, though written with great care by the authors, and, as it seems, translated with no less by the knowing interpreters, would, to an ordinary European orator, appear rather ridiculous than eloquent. But to content ourselves with the examples we formerly selected out of the less remote parts of the east; since Mahomet, whose eloquence, almost as prosperous as his sword, was able to bring credit and proselytes even to such a religion as his; since Moses, that so celebrated legislator, bred up in the refining court and all the famed wisdom of the Egyptians; since Solomon, who had such incommunicable advantages to improve himself, and whose wisdom (esteemed capable to have governed more kingdoms than his had subjects) the western world hath for so many ages admired, and the eastern only not idolized; and since the prophet Daniel, whose promising youth was not only cultivated by the instructions of the Chaldean sages, but enjoyed the diviner tutorage of God’s Spirit; and whose matchless abilities preferred him from a captive, to be the chief as well of the Chaldean wise men as the Median princes: since these applauded writers, I say, whom the eastern nations so much and so justly admired, by many of our Latinists are not thought good writers, because of our differing notions of eloquence; nay, if amongst Europeans themselves, Cicero hath found many censurers, and a book hath been published to prove that Tully was not eloquent, may not we rationally enough suppose, that the Gre-cian and Roman style amongst the eastern writers may not be much better relished than theirs is amongst us; and that, consequently, in those parts of the Scripture whose eloquence is not obvious to us Europeans, the pretended want of eloquence may be but a differing and eastern kind of it? Especially if we consider that the ancientest writers in prose now extant amongst us, were scarce contemporary to the latest writers of the Old Tes-tament; and yet that eloquence, the dress of our thoughts, like the dress of our bodies, differs not only in several regions, but in several ages. And oftentimes in that, as in attire, what was lately fashionable is now ridiculous, and what now makes a man look like a courtier, may within these few lustres make him look like an antic: though how purely it is the mode that makes such things appear handsome or deformed, may be readily collected from the vicissitudes observable in modes; men by intervals relapsing into obsolete fashions. That there are great changes in that mode of writing men commonly mistake for eloquence, I shall produce no less illustrious a witness than Seneca, who in his hundred and fourteenth epistle, (to omit other passages in his works,) not only proves it at large, but shows that in some ages, even the faulty ways of expression, conspired in by the wits of those times, have passed for eloquence. The Scripture style, then, though it were not eloquent now, may have excellently suited the genius of those times its several books were written in; and have been very proper for those people it was primarily designed to work upon. And if I would presume to be paradoxical in a thing I so little pretend skill in as eloquence, I might further represent on this occasion, that rhetoric being but an organical or instrumental art, in order chiefly to persuasion, or delight, its rules ought to be estimated by their tendency and commensurateness to its end, and consequently are to be conformed to by a wise man, but so far forth as he judgeth them seasonable and proper to please or to persuade; which, when he sees he can do better by declining them than by practising them, as orators, like hunters, must oftentimes leave the most beaten paths, if they will not lose their game, he should not scruple to prefer the end to the means, the scope of the artist to what the schools are pleased to call the scope of the art, and to think it more eligible to speak powerfully than to speak regularly. And we may hence consider, that it may be somewhat inconsiderate to judge of all eloquence by the rules of it that Cicero’s admirers impose on us, and confound their systems of precepts with the art of rhetoric, as if they were equivalent or of the same extent. For Cicero being reputed, and that deservedly, an eloquent man, and very successful in persuading his thus and thus qualified hearers, divers whose modesty or despair kept them from aspiring to more than imitation, observing that Tully often made use of such and such a contrivance, and such and such figurative forms of speaking, took the pains to reduce those observations into rules, which being highly applauded by their successors, and by them recruited with some resembling rules drawn from the practice of a few other orators, were afterwards compiled into an art, which as I deny not to be a great helptotheimitation of Tully and Demosthenes, or those others from whose structure and fashions of speech such institutions have been drawn, so I shall no more take it fora complete system of rhetoric than any instructions deducible from the journals of Solomon’s Tarshish fleets, and from the Grecian and Romans’ sea-voyages, for the true and entire art of navigation. For if other persons, either by an endowment or improvement of nature, can find other equally or more happy and powerful or moving, though never so differing, ways of expressing themselves, they ought as little to be confined by the prescriptions acquiesced in before them, as Columbus thought himself obliged to be by the rules or practice of ancient navigators, whose methods and voyages, had he not boldly ventured to vary from and pass beyond, how vast and rich a portion of the world had his conformity left undiscovered! And on this occasion, Theophilus, I must mention one thing that I have observed, which perhaps you will not think either despicable or impertinent; and it is, that though the people of China be esteemed the most numerous, the most flourishing, and, very few if any excepted, the most civilized nation in the world, though amongst them the greatest part of preferments be attainable by verbal learning, and though they have books in their language, how well written I know not, having never read any of them, of almost all kind of liberalarts and sciences; yet I find by the late traveller in China that writ the Italian history of that kingdom, and by other authors that mention their literature, that this populous and ingenious nation, that has been so long settled in a flourishing condition, and more than any other people allows encouragements and recompences to learned men, has not cared to receive rhetoric into the number of their arts and sciences; presuming, as one may guess, that the confining men’s expressions to established rules would not be so likely to enable those to express themselves eloquently, that nature has indisposed to do so, as to hinder others from expressing themselves, as well as were they left to their full liberty they would do. I will not say, nevertheless, that our strict Ciceronian rules are crutches that may be helps to weak or lame fancies, but are clogs or burdens to sound and active ones: but this I observe, that these Utopian laws of oratory are seldom rigorously imposed by any that publish other books that may be examined by them: and that wise men, as well in the west as in the east, will not easily lose good thoughts or good expressions, because they are not reducible to them. And this I the rather press, because I have found but too many so blindly servile as to imitate without discretion or reserve, in applauded authors, as well the bad as the good; create such artist’s. errors, rules of art; and make one man’s particular fancies, or perhaps failings, confining laws to others, and convey them as such to their succeeders, who are afterwards bold to missname all unobsequiousness to their incogitancy, presumption; as Seneca tells us of divers imperfections of style, which being familiar to some one who at that time hath the vogue for eloquence, are upon his score copied by his imitators, and by them taught to others;⁸ as, (says he) when Sallust flourished, his style made maimed and abrupt sentences, words surprisingly misplaced, and an obscure brevity pass for ornaments: and indeed, it is not uneasy for any man to observe the very weeds of cried up rhetoricians, cried up for flowers of rhetoric. But having already wandered, perhaps, too far in this digression, I shall now conclude it; though since it is for the Scripture, and with its enemies that I am contending, I shall venture to do it with minding our cardinal, and those that so undervalue the Scripture’s ways of expression in comparison of Tully’s, because his books do so regularly express the rules of eloquence; that it is no marvel they should find Cicero’s writings to be so conformable to their laws of art, whilst they frame those laws of art out of his writings.

But, Theophilus, I fear I have detained you too long in a digression whereinto I slipped but occasionally, which is not so necessary to my present argument, but that I am content you should look upon the paradox as any thing rather than an opinion or reasoning whereon I lay any great stress.

In the fourth place then, let me represent to you, that there are very few, if any, books in the world, that are no more voluminous, in which there is greater plenty of figurative expressions than in the Bible. Though this may seem strange, it is no more than may be made good by more than some hundreds of instances; there being few tropes or figures in rhetoric of which numerous examples are not collectible out of the expressions of holy writ. I insist not upon this, because a bare catalogue of the rhetorical passages I could enumerate would too much swell an essay; and I am informed that task hath been already prosperously undertaken by abler pens. Wherefore I shall now only say, that the eloquence of the Scripture hath been highly celebrated by no small number of persons, highly celebrated for eloquence; and that many, who thought themselves as intelligent in oratory as those that censure the Scripture, have suspected their own eloquence of insufficiency worthily to extol that of the prophet Isaiah; and some of them, (amongst whom I cannot but name that excellent prince of Mirandula, whom even the greatest rabbi of this age⁹ styles the phœnix of his age,) who after having unsatisfiedly travelled through all sorts of human volumes, have rested and acquiesced only in these divine ones: which will not a little recommend the Scripture, since we may apply to books what an excellent poet says of mistresses,

“’Tis not that which first we love, But what dying we approve,”¹⁰

that we express the highest value of. And indeed, the best artists making two parts of oratory; the one which consists in the embellishments of our conceptions, and the other that consists in the congruity of them to our design and method, and the suitable accommodation of them to the various circumstances considerable in the matter, the speaker, and the hearers; this latter is peculiarly and inimitably practised in the Scripture; and as much of the former (which is not only less considerable, but is changeable and unagreed of, as we have newly seen) is made use of as is requisite to the author’s purposes, and to manifest that delicacy or smoothness never ceases to be the property of his style, but because in some cases it would be incongruous to his design. And where these verbal ornaments are spared, they are not missed; for as there are some bodies so well shaped and fashioned that any clothes become them much better than the most fine and graceful would do ordinary, much more crooked or mishapen, persons; so there are writings whose matter and structure are such, that the plainest language can scarce misbecome them so as to hinder them from eclipsing a trifling or ill-matched subject, with the sprucest and gaudiest expressions that can be lavished on it. But the truth is, that this florid eloquence is great in many texts, where it is not at all conspicuous, being hidden in the matter, as in roses of diamonds, the jewels often times keep us from minding the flower and the enamel, and appears not great, but because it is not the greatest. Some famous writers have challenged Demosthenes and Cicero to compare with the prophet Isaiah, in whom they have not only admired that lofty strain which artists have termed the sublime character, but even that harmonious disposition and sound of words, I mean in their original, which the French prettily call ‘La cadence des periodes.’

Wherefore, Theophilus, whereas I have formerly acknowledged that there are some witty men that speak very disrespectfully of the Scripture, I hope that if you meet with any such, you will consider, that it has, among the wits, as well celebrators and admirers as disregarders. And that you may think this desire of mine the more reasonable, be pleased to consider with me, that there are divers things which ought to lessen the authority of the disparagers of the Scripture, in the case under consideration.

For first, how few of them, think you, are wont to read it in its originals, and how much less a number is there of those who both know and duly consider all those particulars represented in the past discourse on the behalf of the Scripture’s style! So that in a great many men of parts, their undervaluation of the Scripture proceeds not from their having great wits, but from their not having a competent information of what can be alleged for its justification.

But though we should suppose those we speak of not to want information, yet we may well suppose many of them not to be free from vanity and envy, there scarce being any fault so incident to great wits as the ambition of being thought still more and more so, and the unwillingness that any composures but their own, or those they have a hand in, should be celebrated: as if all praises were injurious to them that are given to any other. It need be no great wonder then if so excellent a book as the Scripture, have as well enviers as admirers; and if there be divers who cavil at it and seem to undervalue it, out of a criminal fondness of the over-ambitioned title of a wit, which they hope to acquire by unherding and keeping out of the road, and owning their being able to slight and disgrace that which so many others reverence and venerate.

But, thirdly, it is sufficiently notorious, that of the opposers of the Scripture, there is a great part whose vanity and envy, though no small faults, are not their greatest crimes; but who live so dissolutely and scandalously that the suspicion cannot but be obvious, that such decry the Scripture for fear of being obliged, at least, for mere shame, to live more conformably to it. And tbat it were no slander to affirm it to be their interest, not their reason, that makes them find fault with a book that finds so much fault with them; and they who are sensible of the truth of that of our Saviour, where he says, ‘That many love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil:’ and that ‘he that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved,’¹¹ will not be much moved to find conscious malefactors find fault with the statute-book, but will rather look upon these sinners’ censures of the Scripture as apologies they judge necessary to palliate their sins, or as acts of revenge, for their being exposed in all their deformity to the eyes of the world, and of their own consciences, in the Bible; and consequently will be inclined to think that their irreligious expressions do rather show what they would have men believe of them, than what they believe of the Scripture, by seeming to slight which they hope to have their vices imputed rather to a superiority of their reason over that of others, than a servitude of their reason to their passions.

relates to the Scripture.

Here I thought to pass on to another argument, but, to express myself in David’s words, ‘while I was musing, the fire burned,’¹² and my zeal for the Scripture, together with the charity it has taught me to exercise even towards its opposers, suffers me not, with either silence or languid resentments, to see how much that incomparable book loses of the opinion of less discerning men, - upon the account of their disrespects, who are, whether deservedly or not, looked upon as wits. And therefore to what I have represented to invalidate the authority of those few persons, otherwise truly witty, that undervalue the Scripture, I am obliged to add, that besides them there is a number of those that slight the Scripture, who are but looked upon as wits, without being such indeed: nay, who many of them would not be so much as mistaken for such, but for the boldness they take to own slighting of the Scripture and to abuse the words of it to irreligious senses, and perhaps passing to the impudence of perverting inspired expressions, to deliver obscene thoughts. But to knowing and serious men, this prevaricating with the Scripture will neither discredit it nor much recommend the profane prevaricator; for a book’s being capable of being so misused, is too unavoidable to be a disparagement to it, Nor will any intelligent reader undervalue the charming poems of Virgil or of Ovid, because by shuffling and disguising the expressions, some French writers have of late been pleased out of rare pieces to compose whole books of what they call vers burlesques, designed by their ridiculousness to make their readers sport; and on the other side, to abuse dismembered words and passages of any author to meanings he never dreamed of, is a thing so easy that almost any man may have the wit to talk at that profane rate, that will but allow himself the sauciness to do so. And indeed experience shows, that if this vice itself do not make its practisers suspected of being necessitous of the quality they put it on to be thought masters of, yet at least persons intelligent and pious, will not be apt to value any discourse as truly witty, that cannot please the fancy without offending the conscience, and will never admire his plenty that cannot make an entertainment, without furnishing out the table with unclean meats; and considering persons will scarce think it a demonstration of a man’s being a wit, that he will venture to be damned to be thought one. And that which aggravates these men’s profaneness, and leaves them excuseless in it, is, that there are few of these fools’ (for so the wise man calls them that make a mock of sin) that ‘have said in their hearts that there is no God;’¹³ or that the Scripture is not his word; their disrespect to the Scripture springing from their vanity, not their incredulity. They affect singularity for want of any thing else that is singular; and finding in themselves strong! desires of conspicuousness with small abilities to attain it, they are resolved, with Erostratus, that fired Diana’s temple to be talked of for having done so, to acquire that considerableness by their sacrilege, which they must despair of from their parts. And indeed there want not many who have so little wit as to cry up all this sort of people for great wits. And as withes, whilst they are sound, grow unregarded trees; but when they once are rotten, shine in the night; so many of these pretenders, whilst they were not very profane, were, and that justly, esteemed very dull; but now that their parts are absolutely corrupted and perverted, they grow conspicuous, only because they are grown depraved. And I shall make bold to continue the comparison a little further, and observe, that as this rotten wood shines but in the night; so many of these pretenders pass for wits but amongst them that are not truly so. For persons really knowing, can easily distinguish betwixt that which exacts the title of wit from our judgments, and that which but appears such to our corruptions. And how often the discourse we censure is of the latter sort, they need not be informed that have observed how many will talk very acceptably in derogation of religion, whom, upon other subjects, their partiallest friends acknowledge very dull; and who are taken notice of for persons that seldom say any thing well but what it is ill to say. And questionless there is no small number of these scorners, whose censures of the Scripture’s style are little less guilty of presumption than profaneness. I have of late years met with divers such vain pretenders, who blush not to talk of rhetoric more magisterially than Aristotle or Tully would; and superciliously to deride, in comparison of their own writings and theirs who write like them, not the Bible only, but the most venerated authors of antiquity; and, to use Asaph’s words, ‘They speak loftily, they set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth;’¹⁴ they speak arrogantly and censoriously both of God and men; whilst themselves oftentimes understand no tongue but their mothers, and are strangers enough to rhetoric, not to know the difference betwixt a trope and a figure, betwixt a prosopopaeia and a metaphor, or betwixt a climax and a metonymy. Nor is our wonder like to cease, to find these transcendent wits (as they are pleased to think themselves) so undervalue the Scripture, by considering the rare composures they despise it for; these being commonly no other than some drunken song or paltry epigram, some fawning love-letter, or some such other flashy trifle, that doth much more argue a depressed soul than an elevated fancy. Some of these gallants, by their tavern-songs, use the muses like anchovies, only to entice men to drink. Another, with more solemnity and applause, makes the muses (what the French call) the confidants of his amours, prostitutes his wit to evince and celebrate the defeat of his reason, and never considering how apt self-love makes us to magnify any thing that magnifies us, is proud to have wit ascribed him by as bribed as incompetent judges of it; and takes it for as high a proof as desirable a fruit of eloquence, to persuade a vain mistress that she is handsome and adored, to whom it were eloquence indeed to be able to persuade the contrary. Divers of the Jews are wont to mention the names of deceased sinners with that brand taken out of the Proverbs, ‘May the name of the wicked rot; but as the filthiest swine after their death are salted, and the gammons made of their flesh are served in, all stuck with bays; so divers that have lived notorious epicures, have too often, after their death, not only their names salted (not to say embalmed) with flattering epitaphs, and, I wish, seldomer, as flattering funeral sermons; but have their drunken or lustful rhymes extolled with such eulogies by their surviving resemblers, that not only good Christians but good poets cannot but grieve and blush, thus to see bays, that should be appropriated to and crown that heavenly gift called poetry, when, mindful of its dignity and extraction, it endears to us by our fancies, truths that should have an influence on our affections, (by clothing excellent thoughts in suitable and winning dresses,) prostituted and degraded to make wreaths for those who have no better title to them than a few sensual rhymes, where the dictates of Horace are as little conformed to as the example of David; and the laws of art little less violated than those of religion. It is pleasant to observe in how many of such copies of verses the themes appear to have been made to the conceits, not the conceits for the themes; how often the words are not so properly the clothes of the matter,as the matter the stuffing of the words; how frequently sublime nonsense passes for sublime wit; and (though, according to my notion of it, that is indeed true wit which it is more easy to understand than it is not to admire it) how commonly confused notions, and abortive or unlicked conceptions are, in exotic language or ambiguous expressions, exposed to the uncertain adoption of the courteous reader; which the writers are emboldened to expect favourable, by finding men once thought (whether deservedly or otherwise) lofty wits, to have so often the luck of parrots and of those that talk in their sleep, who are not seldom understood by others when they do not understand themselves. And very much of kin to their verses is their prose. For though I am far from denying that those that have store of wit, may express some of it in an address to a great man, or in writing to a mistress; yet as for such profane persons I am now speaking of, who rather would be thought wits than are so, it is easy to discern that very many of their almost as much flattered as flattering letters of love and compliment, are but prologues to, and paraphrases of the subscription, “your humble servant.” Though love be universally thought to make the fancy soar, (lovers like sealed pigeons, flying the higher for having been blinded,) and though even the wiser observe, that, like war which is wont as well to raise soldiers of fortune as to ruin men of fortune, love warms and elevates lesser wits, though it too often infatuate the great ones; yet a witty lady did not scruple to say frequently, that give her but leave to bar half a score words, such as she pleased to name; and she would undertake to spoil all the fine letters of our amorous gallants. I applaud not the severity of this lady; and think her challenge relishes as much of vanity as skill; but yet, to express the sense of these few words, “I desire you should think I can write well, am a civil person, and your humble servant,” being the drift and substance of most of these ceremonial papers; these (oftentimes as tedious as servile) amplificators, with all their empty multiplicity of fine words, do but, like market-people, pay a piece in twenty shillings. In wits not blessed with solid reason and learning, (that is, in most readers,) fancy being the predominant faculty, makes them relish those writings most where fancy unrivalled reigns. And therefore, though I dare not say that it requires no great parts for those to write high and acceptable compliments, that think nothing fit to be endeavoured in compliments, but to make them acceptable by making them high enough; (flattery and profaneness seeming in such composures what spots are in leopards, blemishes that make a great part of their beauty;) or for a flatterer to persuade those vain persons that will readily believe a man, even when he doth not believe himself; yet sure it gives much latitude and liberty to a writer, not to be obliged to believe what he says, nor say but what he thinks either will be or ought to be believed. And truly, they that exercise their pens on either sort of themes (I mean those that require only new or pleasing fancies and smooth language; and those that require learning and knowledge pertinently and handsomely expressed) do, I doubt not, find it much less difficult for writers to delight, where they propose themselves no higher end, and scruple at nothing they judge conducive to that inferior one, than to please, where to do so is but a subordinate end, which men allow not themselves even the use of all proper means to attain; nor do I question but such persons find it far more easy to write acceptably on subjects where they are not tied to speak either reason or truth, than to write well on a theme where men are con- ἅ fined to write nothing but what they judge useful, and what they can make good; as considering that they may be called to account by men for what they publish, if not by God, both for their own time and that of their readers. And, indeed, when I compare the most applauded trifles of these undervaluers of the Scripture style, with the celebrating discourses of it extant in the learned writings of St. Austin, St. Jerome, Tertullian, Lactantius, Chrysostom, Mirandula, and others, whose penetrant and powerful arguments defeat not God’s enemies, as Samson did the Philistines with a jawbone of an ass,¹⁵ nor as Shamgar with an ox-goad¹⁶ (I mean with blunt and despicable weapons,) but as Elias did, with fire from heaven;¹⁷ and whose apologetical defences of the spiritual Jerusalem are glittering and solid, as the wall of the heavenly Jerusalem is described to be of jasper, and the foundations of the wall garnished with all manner of precious stones:¹⁸ when I compare, I say, the composures of our frothy censurers with those of the sacred orators; methinks I discern such a difference betwixt them, as I have observed betwixt those justly admired statues I have seen in the Capitol, and the larger sort of babies that we find in the Exchange: for the former, besides their vastness, are so recommended by the worth and permanency of their matter, the excellency of the workmanship, and the nobleness of what they represent, that they are most prized by the best artists, and time is not only unable to consume them, but still increases men’s value of them; whereas the latter are little trifles, scarce welcome to any but children in understanding; and admired only for a gaudy effeminate dress, which will quickly either be sullied or worn out; and a fashionableness which within a short while will perhaps be ridiculous. But, supposing at length that the profane aspirer should be so lucky, or so successful, (for happy I cannot think it,) as to attain the so criminally courted notedness, yet will he have no great cause to boast the purchase, when he seriously considers, that the devil, who seduces other sinners like men with current coin or sparkling jewels, (something that either advantages their interests or delights their senses,) hath inveigled him, like a child, with a whistle; a trifle that only pleases with a transient and empty sound; and, that fame is a blessing only in relation to the qualities and the persons that give it: since otherwise, the tormented prince of devils himself were as happy as he is miserable; and famousness unattended with endearing causes is a quality so undesirable, that even infamy and folly can confer it. As Momus is little less talked of than Homer; the unjust Pilate is more famous than Aristides the Just; and Barabbas’s name is signally recorded in Scripture, whereas the penitent thief is left unmentioned. And sure the highest favours that applause can impart, and the being (though never so loudly) cried up fora wit, will hardly so repair the punishment of profaneness, but that its wretched sufferer will find but small satisfaction in having his name celebrated in other books, whilst it is blotted out of that of life. And as for those (you know whom I mean) that aspiring to posthumous glory, endeavour to acquire it by irreligious writings, destinated not to see the light till their authors be gone to the region of darkness, I cannot but admire to see an ambition that projects beyond the grave, stop short of heaven; and cannot but think those wits the greatest fools, who to tempt praises they shall never hear, provide themselves torments that they shall ever feel. For, though profaneness by those that are guilty of it be too often thought but a small sin, because they look upon it but as a verbal one, yet I could easily represent it under another notion, if I would here repeat what I have discoursed touching indulgence to reputedly small and verbal sins in another paper, from which, though I will not now transcribe any thing, yet I cannot but wish it were well considered how affronting speeches concerning God’s word are like to be looked upon in that great day, when (to borrow St. Jude’s terms) ‘the Lord shall come with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them,’ not only ‘of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed;’ but also ‘of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’¹⁹ And, indeed, these presumed peccadillos, though oftentimes in health and prosperity, they appear not to us to blemish much our consciences, yet, when in our distresses or at the approaches of death, God comes, as the prophet speaks, to ‘search men’s hearts as it were with candles, and punish the men that are settled upon their lees,’²⁰ (which whilst a liquor is, it may look clear, and be taken for defecated, but a little agitation of the vessel strait makes it troubled and muddy,) they appear in a terrifying form. For as paper written upon with juice of lemons may wear white (the livery of innocence) whilst it is kept from the fire, but being held to it, black lines do presently appear; so out of many consciences that seem clear in prosperity, the fire of adversity draws out the latent blacknesses, and makes us read things undiscerned there before. And questionless, if, as the Scripture informs us, there are sins whose cry is able to reach heaven,²¹ so loud a crime as the profaneness I am now speaking of, is likely to do more than whisper there; especially since it is much to be feared, that many of these scoffers (as they seem to be called in the Scripture, which they bear witness to, by cavilling at it) do ‘rebel against the light,’ and ‘kick against the pricks’²² of their own consciences; such a crime, I say, will be so far from whispering in heaven, that it will rather give an alarm that will rouse up provoked justice; whose inflictions, like stones tumbled down from the towers of an assaulted place, the longer they are in falling on men, the more fatally they oppress them; in which regard, perhaps, the feet of our Saviour in the Apocalypse are described to be like unto fine brass, as if they burned or glowed in a furnace;²³ to intimate, that though he be very slow in his march to destroy the wicked, yet he is as sure, when once he pleases to tread them under foot, to crush and consume them. If there be no injury that more exasperates than contempt, and no contempt that more provokes than that which offends directly and immediately, (the affronters thereby proclaiming that they are neither ashamed nor afraid of angering,) how provoking may we think that crime which makes God the subject of our derision; and that with so little circuition, as to abuse that word which he so solemnly declared his mind by to mankind! Plutarch, to manifest how much some idolaters did more incense the Deity than some atheists, tells us, he should esteem himself less injured by the man that should doubt or deny that there was ever any such man as Plutarch; than by him that should affirm that there was such a one indeed, but that he was an old fellow, that used, like the poet’s Saturn, to devour his children; and was guilty of those other crimes imputed by the heathen to their gods. Upon a like account we may esteem God less provoked by their unbelief that doubt or reject the Scripture, than by their profaneness that make so sacrilegiously bold with it; since the latter impute to God the enditing of what they endeavour to make men think fit to have sport made with. This of profaneness is so empty and unprofitable a sin, that it scarce gets the practiser any thing but an ill name amongst good men upon earth, and a worse place amongst bad men in hell; by making his enmity to piety so malicious and so disinterested, that he will endeavour to do religion harm, though it be to do himself no good. He is such a volunteer sinner, that he hath neither the wit nor the excuse of declining his conscience in compliment to his senses; and though he ever makes but an ill bargain that gets in hell to boot; yet those I would reclaim, come far short of the comparative wisdom of their folly, who to gain so considerable (though yet over-purchased) a possession as the whole world, should part with their own souls. And sure a sin that is injurious to God’s glory, and is apt to subvert (what he and good men prize next) the dearly purchased, immortal, and invaluable souls of men; and to ‘destroy them for whom Christ died;’²⁴ will not, by being verbal, be protected from being heinous; and to those that practise it, I shall recommend the latter half of the epistle of Jude; which, though it seem properly to relate to the Gnostics or Carpocratians of his time, will deserve a trembling attention from those that revive the sins there condemned in ours; and who would do well, by seasonably considering the fate there threatened to their predecessors, to tremble at their crime. But for fear of losing it, I shall not spend more time in endeavouring to disabuse our scorners; whom I should have left to the quiet enjoyment of their unenvied self-admiration, had not their despising the Scripture upon a presumption of their own matchless wit, (like Jeroboam that forsook that incomparable structure, the temple, where God did so gloriously and peculiarly manifest himself to men, to worship calves of his own making,²⁵) engaged me, in conformity to the wise man’s counsel in such cases, to ‘answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit:’²⁶ for my reproofs are addressed to those called wits, but as they are traducers or undervaluers of the Scripture; not as they either pretend to, or enjoy a quality which I have the justice to esteem, though not the happiness to possess; and which my value for it, and my charity for men, makes me troubled to see arrogated by many that want it; and by too many that have it, prostituted to gratify other people’s pride, or their own lusts.

An Appendix to the former Digression, inviting one sort of witty men to make amends for the profaneness of another.

How much happier were it for persons of choice parts to employ them, as Bezaleel and Aholiab did theirs, in working for the sanctuary; in asserting and embellishing divinity! The structure will not alone deserve the skilfullest hand; but though it reject not goats’ hair, and coloured badgers’ skins, will admit not only purple and fine twined linen, but gold, silver, and precious stones:²⁷ the richest ornaments that learning and eloquence can grace theology with, being not only merited by that heavenly subject, but being applicable to it, as much to their own advantage as to that of their theme. We see how ambitious are men to leave a good name behind them, and appear in the habit of virtue to their own and after times. Witness the artifices and hypocrisy men generally veil or disguise their sins with, and the flattering epitaphs with which so many vicious persons endeavour to convey themselves to the opinion of posterity. Now, they that write piously as well as handsomely, have the advantage of getting themselves the reputation as well of virtuous as of able men; and besides that double recompence, may expect a third, transcending both, in heaven, where they that, in the true Scripture sense, be ‘wise, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.’²⁸ It is the general complaint and grief of persons truly zealous, that there are many more wits and grandees now-a-days, who, by perverting God’s gifts to the service of idols (of pride or pleasure) of their own setting up, resemble the degenerate Jewish church, of whom God complains by Hosea, that ‘she did not know that he gave her the corn and wine and oil, and multiplied her silver and her gold which they prepared for Baal;’²⁹ than that, by an humble dedication of their choicest abilities to God’s service, imitate holy David and his princes; who, having consecrated their gold and silver and precious stones, towards the enriching and embellishing of the temple, perfumed that vast offering with this acknowledgment to God; ‘All things come of thee, and thine own have we given thee.’³⁰ But though now I know divers great persons and great wits amongst us, who, very unmindful of that text, ‘What hast thou that thou didst not receive?’³¹ like those ungrateful clouds that obscure the sun that raised them, oppose the glory of that God who elevated them to that height; yet I do not absolutely despair, that as God hath been pleased to make use of several royal pens for the tracing of his word, and to make a person learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians his first secretary; so he will one day engage both the grandees and the wits to strive to expiate, by their devotion and service to the Scripture, the injuries that irreligious parts and greatness have done it. I will not tell you, Theophilus, that an early study of religion would gain to its party most of those many wits that will be sure to contend for whatever opinion is expressed by the wittiest things they can say. But I will tell you, that a particular consideration that makes me wish to see witty writers more generally employ their pens on the behalf of religion, is, that the services they do it endear it to them; for as Macchiavel smartly observes, and as the love of parents and nurses to children may evince; La natura degli huomini è cosi obligarsi per i benefici che si fanno, come per quelli che si ricevono.³² “It is natural to men to be as well engaged by the kindnesses they do as by those they receive.” And for the encouragement of the possessors of great parts to employ them on religious themes, such as the Holy Scripture, I shall represent to them, that even that immortality of name which worldly writers, for the most part, solely aim at, is not by pious writers less found for being last sought: their theme contracts not their fame by a true diminution, but only by comparison to a greater good: their looking upon their own glory but as an accession to God’s, not hindering others from praising that wit and eloquence they praise God with; as beauty makes itself admirers, though in vestals; and a rare voice may ravish us with a psalm; or as the jewels that adorned it, shone with their wonted lustre on Aaron’s breast-plate. Yes, ‘as godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come;’³³ and as the ‘hundred-fold now in this time,’ is very consistent with the ‘eternal life in the world to come;’³⁴ so is it very possible for the same pious writer to have his name written, at once in both those immortal books of life and fame; and, like the inspired poet, holy David, wear as well here a crown of laurel, as hereafter, τον ἀμαράντινον τῆς δόξης στέφανον, that unfading crown of glory St. Peter speaks of.³⁵ And though we are too generally now-a-days, grown so sinful, that we scarce relish any composure that endeavours to reclaim us from being so; yet less licentious and more discerning times, which may be, perhaps, approaching, will repair the omissions and fastidiousness of the present, by an eminent gratitude to the names of those that have laboured to transmit to others, in the handsomest dress they durst give them, the truths themselves most valued. And I observe, that though Solomon himself delivered so many thousand songs and proverbs, and the nature of beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes, together with the history of plants from the ‘cedar of Lebanon, even to the hysop that springeth out of the wall;’³⁶ yet those three only treatises, designed peculiarly for the instruction of the church, survive their lost companions. And, as anciently the manna which the Israelites gathered to employ in their domestic uses, lasted not unputrefied above a day or two; but that which they laid up in the sanctuary, to perpetuate or secure God’s glory, continued whole ages uncorrupted;³⁷ so the books written to serve our private turns of interest or fame, are oftentimes short-lived; when those consecrated to God’s honour are, for that end’s sake, vouchsafed a lastingness and kept from perishing. And those many dull and uneloquent glosses and expositions 4 of the ancient Jews, that the merit of their theme hath preserved for so many ages, may assure us, that the Scripture doth often make their names and writings that illustrate it, partakers of its own prerogative of immortality. Not to mention that (according to that of the Psalmist, ‘I have more understanding than all my teachers; because thy testimonies are my meditation,’³⁸) such an employment of parts doth oftentimes invite God to increase them; as he that had most talents committed to him, for improving them to his Lord’s service, was trusted with more of them;³⁹ and he who employed some few cups of his wine to entertain our Saviour, had whole vessels of his water turned into better wine.⁴⁰ Certainly, transcendent wits, when once they addict themselves to theological composures, improve and grace most excellently themes so capable of being so improved. They need small time to signalize their pens; for possessing already in a sublime degree all the requisites and appropriates of rate writers, they need but apply that choice knowledge and charming eloquence to divine subjects, to handle them to admiration; as Hiram successfully used the skill he had learned in Tyre, in the building and adorning of God’s temple;⁴¹ and Jephthah victoriously employed the military gallantry and art that had made him considerable in the land of Tob, in defending the cause, and defeating the enemies of God.⁴² Of this truth the primitive times afford us numerous and noble instances; but especially that stupendous wit St. Austin, (whom I dare oppose to any of the wits that have dared to oppose the Scripture,) the production of whose wit in his unregenerate state, and after his conversion to the Catholic faith and piety, oblige me to resemble him to Aaron’s rod, which, supposing the truth of their opinion that think it to be the same that Moses used, whilst it was employed abroad, did indeed for a while work wonders, that made it much admired; but when once it came to be laid up in the tabernacle, unconfined to the usual laws of other plants, it shot forth and afforded permanent fruit in a night.⁴³ But, Theophilus, to recover myself at length from my over-prolix digression, I must remember, that it was objected, that as well divers great princes and great statesmen, as many great wits disesteem, or at least neglect, the Scripture; and, indeed, though I am sorry it cannot, yet it must not be denied, that notwithstanding all the prerogatives of the Bible, there needs not much acquaintance with great men, to show many of them, that though they deny not God to be the author, deny themselves the blessing of being readers of it: some out of laziness, and others out of pride; both which lurk under the pretext of multiplicity of important avocations. But since your quality, Theophilus, and station in the world, may either make you need to be armed against this temptation, or give you opportunities to assist those that are endangered by it, give me leave on this occasion to tell you, that those grandees that pretend want of leisure for their neglect of the reading of the Scripture, must be able to give a rare account of all the portions of their time, to make those pass for a misemployment of it that are laid out towards the purchase of a happy eternity, which it is not over modest for those to expect from God, that grudge him the rent of that time of which they are but his tenants at will. But to manifest how unlikely this pretence is to pass current, I shall represent, that in the self-same chapter where God fashions a king fit to govern his own people; he enjoins concerning the book of the law, that ‘it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life;’⁴⁴ which the next verse intimates shall be thereby prolonged;⁴⁵ and, indeed, it often happens, that as Samuel’s barren mother, for lending one of her children freely unto the Lord, was blessed with many others;⁴⁶ so the days consecrated to God’s service rather improve than impoverish our stock of time. Nay, the king was (in that place of Deuteronomy⁴⁷) not only obliged to read the law, but to write it too: upon which subject, if I misremember not, the learnedest of the rabbies tells us, that the king (as indeed God usually charges eminence of place with eminence of piety) was bound to write it out himself, and that as king; for, though before his ascending the throne, as any other Israelite, he had a transcript of his own writing, yet was there annexed to the acquist of the regal sceptre, a duty of copying with the same hand that swayed it.⁴⁸ To Joshua, both a general and a judge, who was to wield the swords both of Astrea and of Bellona; to govern one numerous people and conquer seven; the words of God are very remarkable: ‘This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.’⁴⁹ David was a shepherd, a conqueror, and a king, and had certainly no unfrequent distractions, both before he came to the crown, (whilst he lived a despised younger brother, an envied courtier, a diffident fugitive, and a distrusted captain,) and after, whilst he wore, lost, and regained it; but how little the time employed in the study of the Scripture prejudiced his secular affairs his story and successes may attest; and how large a portion of his time that study shared, you may be plentifully informed by himself, and save me the transcribing much of the Book of Psalms. He gathered bays both on Parnassus and in the field of honour; and equally victorious in duels and in battles, his exploits and his conquests were such, as (transcending those in romances almost as much in their strangeness as their truth) needed an infallible historian to exact a belief which their greatness and their number would dissuade; he added to his regal crown of gold, two others (of bays and laurel) which his successful sword and numerous pen, making him both a conqueror and a poet, gained him from victory and the muses; and yet for all this greatness and this fame, and that multitude of distractions that still attends them, the (then extant) Scripture was so unseveredly his study, and he so duly matched in his practice what the apostle couples in his precept, ‘diligence in business,’ and ‘fervency in Spirit,’⁵⁰ that it is not easy fitlier to resemble him, than to the winged cherubims in the old tabernacle, whom all the gold and jewels that glittered about them, and all the clouds of incense that fumed before them, could never divert from a fixed posture towards the ark of the testimony that contained the law, and the mercy-seat that represented Christ.⁵¹

And indeed, it is a saying equally ancient and true, that none should know things better and better things than princes. For their virtues and their vices participate the eminence and authority of their condition; and by an influential exemplariness, so generally fashion and sway their subjects, that as we find in sacred story that the Jews served God or Baal as their kings did; so profane history tells us, that Rome was warlike under Romulus, superstitious under Numa, and so successively moulded into the dispositions of her several princes. Subjects, all the world over, being apt to think imitation a part of the duty of obedience; and being generally but too sensible of the requisiteness of their being like their prince to the being liked by him; a state, like Nebuchadnezzar’s mysterious image, should have the head of gold, and the inferior members of a value proportionate to their vicinity to that noblest part.⁵² When once I shall see such monarchies and commonwealths no rarities, and see the addictedness of princes to the study of the Scripture, furthering the ulterior accomplishment of that part of it which once promised God’s people, ‘that kings should be its nursing fathers, and their queens its nursing mothers;’⁵³ I shall expect to see the golden age elsewhere than in poets’ dreams. For I take not absoluteness to be like a plague, whose almost boundless power is confined to do mischief; but I esteem sovereignty little less applicable and effectual to good than ill. Trajan and Constantine were as great and public blessings, as Nero or Caligula were mischiefs; and virtue on a throne hath not a much less imperious influence than crowned vice. And accordingly I shall permit my good wishes for mankind to turn to expectations, when I shall generally see sovereigns nobly contend for as great a superiority over each other by their virtues, as they possess over their subjects by their fortune; when I shall see potentates make use of Mars’ sword but to restrain others from abusing it; and kings affect their resemblance to God less in his unlimitedness of power than his employment of it. But, to step back into my way, and leaving princes to fitter monitors, say something to men of either great titles or employments. There is none of these pragmatical persons that will suffer himself to be so enslaved to his business, but he will allow himself set times, and can daily find leisure for eating, drinking, and other corporeal refections, and frequently for recreations; and certainly, if we valued not our bodies above our souls, we would, in spite of the urgency of secular affairs and employments, reserve and set apart some time to feed our souls with their true food, God’s word; else we shall never be able to say of God with holy Job, ‘I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.’⁵⁴ I will not urge that Daniel, whose vast abilities had a resembling theatre, and who surpassed other statesmen as much in the number and weight of the affairs he had to manage, as in the excellent spirit and dexterity wherewith he managed them, amidst transactions that busied six score princes, who loaded him with a weight of business capable to have crushed Atlas, could yet find leisure to study the prophet Jeremiah:⁵⁵ because it will be perhaps more proper to mention, that even Macchiavel himself, that secretary and reputed oracle of state, could find time not only to read but to write plays, (some of which I have seen in Italian,) such as I would not think excellent, though a person from whom so much might be expected had not written them. Let us not then think our business or our recreations a sufficient dispensation frora an employment, for which, were they inconsistent, they ought both to be declined; since it is both more concerning than the first, and more satisfying than the latter. But that which is often the true, though seldom the avowed cause of these men’s neglect of the Scripture, is not their unleisuredness, but their pride; which makes them think it too mean and trivial an employment for one that is great and wise enough to counsel and converse with princes, and have a vote or hand in those great enterprises and transactions that make such a noise in the world, and are the loud themes of the people’s talk and wonder, to amuse themselves to examine the significations of words and phrases. For my part I am no enemy to the calling of statesmen; I think their profession as requisite as others in a commonwealth; and should think it very injurious to deny them any part of a purchase they pay their care and time for: nor perhaps have I so little studied the improvements of quiet, as to think myself less obliged than others are, to those whose watchings or protection affords it or secures it me, But after all this is said, I love to look upon the world with his eyes that is justly said to ‘humble himself (when he vouchsafes) to behold the things that are done in heaven and in earth;’⁵⁶ and to take measure of the dimensions of things by the scale his word holds forth. Now in the esteem of him tbat hath made all things for himself, and of whom his Spirit by his prophet truly says, that the ‘nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance;’ nay, that ‘all nations before him (are) as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing and vanity;’⁵⁷ the importantest employments are the study and the glory of God. He created this vast fabric of the world to manifest his wisdom, power, and goodness; and in it created man, that it may have an intelligent spectator, and a resident whose rational admiration of so divine a structure may accrue to the glory of the omniscient and almighty Architect. And as he created the world to manifest some of his attributes, so doth he uphold and govern it to disclose others of them. The revolution of monarchies, the fates of princes, and destinies of nations, are but illustrious instances and proclamations of his providence. The whole earth once perished by water to signalise his justice on his enemies; and the whole world shall one day perish by fire to exercise that former attribute and evidence his goodness to his children; for whom his faithfulness to his promises will oblige him to build a gloriouser mansion for such glorified residents. The angels, some of whom the visions of Daniel represent as at the helm of kingdoms and of empires,⁵⁸ and whose power is so great, that one of them could in one night destroy a force capable, if divided, to have made half a dozen formidable armies:⁵⁹ these glorious spirits, I say, whose nature so transcends ours, that the very devil can, without the assistance of virtue, despise the objects of our ambition by a superiority of nature only; for all their high prerogatives and employments think the mysteries unfolded in Scripture worthy their bowing as well as desire to look into,⁶⁰ think not themselves too eminent to be messengers and heralds, of what fond mortals think themselves too eminent to read: and, ‘being all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation,’⁶¹ disdain not to think our instruction worth their concern, whilst we disdain a concern for our own instruction; nay, the very Messias, whose style is ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’⁶² though he be not recorded to have ever read but once,⁶³ did yet read the Scripture; and think it worthy his expositions and recommending; and well may any think that book worth the reading that God himself thought worth the enditing. When Moses and Elias left their (local not real) heaven, and appeared in glory to converse with our transfigured Saviour on the Mount, their discourse was not of the government of kingdoms, or the raising of armies for the subversion of empires, or of those other solemn trifles, which heaven places as much beneath men’s thoughts as residence; but of (the inspired book’s chief theme) ‘his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.’⁶⁴ And after that St. Paul had been caught up to the third heaven,⁶⁵ and had been blest and refined with his ineffable entertainment there, I wonder not to find him profess so resolutely, that he ‘counteth all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord;’⁶⁶ in whom ‘faith cometh by hearing, and that hearing of the Word of God;’⁶⁷ and who addresses men to the Scriptures, as those which testify of him. And perhaps our Saviour used so frequently to conclude his divine discourses, with that just epiphonema, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,’⁶⁸ but to teach us that there is no employment of our faculties that more deserve their utmost attention, than the scrutiny of divine truths. That which is pretended to by this discourse, is to impress this truth, that where God is allowed to be an intelligent and equal valuer of things, a man cannot have so great an employment as to give him cause to think the study of the Scripture a mean one: since, thus saith the Lord, ‘Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me.’⁶⁹ For sure, if the knowledge of God be so glorious a thing, the study of that book whence that knowledge is extracted, and where it it is most refulgent, is not a despicable employment: which sure (to add that upon the by) it is somewhat injuriously thought by those who are so industrious and proud in profane histories and other political books, to discover, or even guess at, those intrigues which commonly but tell us by what crafty arts a knave cozened a fool. Nor (to mention this by the by) even in relation to his own profession, is the Scripture unable to recompense the study of a Christian statesman; for to omit the (perhaps too) extolling mention Machiavel himself makes of Moses amongst the famousest legislators, the historical part of the Bible being endited by an omniscient and unerring Spirit, lays clearly open the true and genuine causes of the establishment, flourishing, and vicissitudes of the princes and commonwealths it relates the story of; whereas other histories (for reasons insisted on in other papers) are liable to great suspicions in the judgment of those that duly ponder the several narratives made often of the same transaction or event by several eye-witnesses: and that the true secret of counsels is so closely locked up, or so artificially disguised, that to have interest enough to discern (what statesmen mind and build on) the truth and mystery of affairs, one must be biased and engaged enough to be shrewdly tempted to be a partial relater of them. But Theo-philus, I perceive I have slipped into too long a digression, which yet I hope you will pardon as the effect of an indiscreet, perhaps, but however a great concern for a person, to whom nature, education, and fortune have been so indulgent, that I cannot but look upon his condition as liable to the temptations which either parts or employments singly, and much more both together, are wont to expose men to. But to return.

Yon may remember, Theophilus, that among the answers which I told you might be made to those that objected against the Scripture, “That it is so unadorned, and so ill-furnished with eloquent expressions, that it is wont to prove inefficacious, especially upon intelligent readers.” The fifth and last was this, “That it is very far from being agreeable to experience, that the style of the Scripture does make it unoperative upon the generality of its readers, if they be not faultily indisposed to receive impressions from it.”

To make good this reply, I must take notice to you, that that part of the objection which intimates that intelligent readers are not wont to be wrought upon by the Scripture, has been in great part answered already; for I have lately observed to you, that as it may be granted that some witty men who have read the Scripture, have, instead of admiring it, quarrelled with it; so it cannot be denied that many persons as eminent for wit as they, have upon reading it entertained a high veneration for it. So that I see not why the celebrations of those wits that admire it, may not counterbalance the disrespects of those that cavil at it. Especially if we consider, that as to most of those that are looked upon as the witty disregarders of the Scripture, scarce any thing so much as the vanity and boldness of owning that they disregard it, makes them (but undeservedly) be looked upon as wits,

But to this, I shall now add, that whereas the objection speaks of intelligent readers, the greatest part of such have not that quickness which is wont to make men pass for wits, though they may have other abilities more solid and desirable. And yet that the Bible has a great influence upon this latter sort of intelligent readers, I presume you will easily believe, if you consider how many great scholars, not only professed divines, but others, have, by their learned comments and other writings, endeavoured either to illustrate or recommend the Scripture; and how much a greater number of understanding and sober men, that never published books, have evinced the Scripture’s power over them, partly by their sermons and other discourses, public and private, and partly by endeavouring to conform their lives to the dictates of it: which last clause I add, because you can scarce make a better estimate of what power the Scripture has upon men, than by looking at what it is able to make them part with. For not to anticipate what we shall ere long have occasion to mention, let us but consider what numbers of intelligent persons almost every age, without excepting our own, (as degenerate as it is,) has produced who have been taught and prevailed with by the Scripture, and considerations drawn thence, to renounce all the greatest sinful pleasures, and embrace a course of life that oftentimes exposes them to the greatest dangers, and very frequently to no small hardships.

And, indeed, there is scarce any sort of men on which the Scripture has not had a notable influence, as to the reforming and improving many particular persons belonging to it; and to the giving them an affectionate veneration for the book whereunto they owed their instruction. The accounts ecclesiastical history gives us of the rate at which devout persons, both in former and latter ages, would purchase the Bible, when it was dangerous, and perhaps capital, to be found possessed of it, would, if I should here repeat them, much confirm what I say, and might equally create our wonder and our blushes. Those sorts of professed Christians that seem the most evidently to be liable to temptations to neglect or disregard the Scripture, are either those that do, or would pass for wits, or those that live in courts. The former oftentimes thinking themselves too wise to be taught, especially by a book they think not eloquent; and among the latter there being but too many whose pleasures are so bewitching, or so dear to them, that they like nothing that would divert, much less divorce them from their pursuit, or else whose business is so much and perhaps so important, that they have not leisure enough to learn, or have too much pride to think they need do it; but yet even among those that have worn crowns either of gold or bays, or (what perhaps some value above both) of myrtle, the Bible has not wanted votaries; for not to repeat the names of those whom I have formerly mentioned to have been as well lovers of the Scripture as favourites of the muses, among the other sort of men, ‘those that’ (to speak in our Saviour’s terms) ‘are gorgeously apparelled, lived delicately, and are in kings’ courts,’⁷⁰ there have been divers persons, upon whom the power of the Scripture has been almost as conspicuous as their station among men. I will not mention that devout treasurer of the Æthiopian queen, who even upon the highway (whose length neither deterred nor tired his devotion) could not forbear to read the prophet Isaiah, and inquire even of a mere stranger that passed by alone, and on foot, the meaning of a passage of whose sense he doubted. Nor will I urge any other instances of great men’s studiousness of the Scripture, afforded us by sacred story. And therefore I shall not press the example of that great and wise Daniel, whose matchless parts not only cast upon him the highest employment of the world’s monarchy, and disengaged him from the ruins of it; but (what has scarce a precedent amongst the very wisest statesmen) continued him in as much greatness as ever he possessed under the predecessor, under the successor; and such a successor too as made his predecessor’s carcass the ascent to his throne; I will not, I say, at present, urge the examples extant in the sacred records of great men’s studiousness of them, because even secular and more recent histories may inform us, that even in courts all men’s eyes have not been so dazzled by the glittering vanities that are wont to abound there, but that some of them have discerned, and practically acknowledged the prerogatives of the Scripture. Though I cannot say that many kings have been of this number, because there have been but few kings in all, in respect of the numbers tbat compose the inferior conditions of men: yet, even among these, and in degenerate ages, some have been signally studious of the Bible; such was that Sixth. Edward, who imitated the early active piety of Joash, without imitating his defection from it, and whose short heavenly life manifests how soon, even amidst the temptations of courts, grace can ripen men for glory; and such was that learned king,⁷¹ whose having more than perfunctorily studied the Scripture, his solid defence of divers of its truths against its misinterpreters, have sufficiently proclaimed to the world. Nay, even in those darker times that preceded the Reformation, that excellent Aragonian king, Alphonsus, the honour both of his title and his times, in spite of his contemplations and his wars, could, (as himself used to glory) spare time from studies and his distractions, to read the Bible forty times with comments and glosses on it: being not, for all his astronomy, so taken up with the contemplation of heaven, as to deny himself leisure to study in his book that made it the ways of getting thither. Nor shall I forbear to mention here the last pope, (Urban the Eighth,) who, when being cardinal, he wanted not the hopes of becoming both temporal and ecclesiastical lord of that proud city, which (as if she were designed to be still, one way or other, the world’s mistress,) doth still rule little less of the world upon the score of religion, than . she did before upon that of arms; in the midst of affairs perhaps more distracting than busied most potentates, and honours almost as great as are paid to monarchs, could find room in a bead crowded with affairs enough to have distressed Machiavel, for reflections upon the Scripture; some of whose portions I bave delighted to read in the handsome paraphrases of his pious muse. Which I scruple not to acknowledge, because that though I did, which I do not, look upon every one that dissents from me, as an enemy; yet I should be apt to think that they can scarce love virtue enough, that love it not in their very enemies; congruously to which we find that Hannibal had statues erected in Rome itself: and, though I were so uncharitable and so unexperienced as to think a man that holds an error can scarce have any good qualities, yet, upon such a kind of score as that which made David so angry with him that took away the poor man’s single lamb, the fewer commendable qualities I see in my adversaries, the more scruple I would make to rob them of any way of them. Nor hath that very sex that so often makes divertisements its employments, been altogether barren in titled votaries to the Scripture. Not to mention that Grecian princess,⁷² whose proselyted muse made Homer turn evangelist, how conversant that excellent mother and resembling daughter, Paula and Eustochium, were in the sacred rolls, is scarce unknown to any that are not strangers to the writings of St. Jerome; for some of whose learned comments on the Scripture we are indebted to the charitable importunity of their requests. And even in our times, that so much degenerate from the primitive ones, how eminent a student and happy a proficient in the study of the Bible, that glory of princesses, and the envy of the princes of her time, Queen Elizabeth was, her life and reign sufficiently declare. Her sister’s predecessor, that matchless lady Jane, who had all the qualities the best patriots could desire in a queen, but an unquestionable title, and in whose sad fate, besides her sex and the graces that enamour ours of it, her country, philosophy, virtue, and religion, did all sustain a loss, was a conspicuous studier of the inspired books; wherein her prospered sedulousness gave her an understanding much above her age and sex, though not above her virtue. And besides Eudoxia, there have been divers other persons of the highest quality of that sex, and even some of those on whom nature or fortune, or rather beauty or providence, had conferred a sovereignty, whom the splendour, the pleasures, and the avocations of courts could not keep from searching in God’s word preservatives against the contagion of their condition, and partly history, and partly even conversation have sometimes with delight made me observe, how some of those celebrated ladies, whose fatal beauties have made so many idolaters, have devoutly turned those fair eyes, that were, and did such wonders, upon those severe writings that depreciate all but the beauty of the soul, from those flattering ascriptions that deified that of the body. And it is not to be marvelled at, that such readers as are not infidels, by reading the Bible once should be prevailed with to read it oftener, not only because of the inviting excellency of what it teaches, but because its author does so earnestly in it enjoin the study of it, that scarce any can think the neglect of it no fault, save those that are guilty of it Nor is their so assiduous perusal of the Scripture so much to be marvelled at, as commended, in persons of that softer sex, which is perhaps more susceptible than ours of strong impressions of devotion. For sure, if we loved God, I do not say as we ought to love Him, but as we can and do love inferior things, it would hugely endear the Scripture to us, that the object of our devotion is the author of that book. When a true flame, though but for a fading object, doth once possess a fervent lover’s breast; what a fondness doth his passion for his mistress give him for all things related to her. Her residences, her walks, her colours, and the least trifles that have belonged to her, exact a kindness that is not due to trifles, though it be but for presenting to his memory its almost only object, and refreshing him with an ideal in the absence of an immediater presence of her. But if the favoured amourist be blest with any lines dignified by that fair hand (give me leave to talk of lovers in their own language) especially if they be kind as well as hers, how assiduously, and with what raptures do his greedy eyes peruse them, tasting each several expression with its own transport, and finding in each line at each new reading some new delight or excellency: this welcome letter grows sooner old than stale; and although his two frequent kisses have worn it to tatters, (in which he preserves it, if not worships it too, as a relic,) with fresh and still insatiate avidities doth the unwearied lover prize that, too often, either deluding or insignificant writing, above the noblest raptures of princes, and liberallest patents of poets; and (not to urge the superstitious devotion of our worshippers of relics) certainly if we bad for God but half as much love as we ought, or even pretend to have, we could not but frequently, if not transportedly, entertain ourselves with his leaves, which (as parhelions to the sun) are at once his writings and his picture, both expressing his vast and unmerited love to us, and exhibiting the most approaching or least unresembling idea of our beloved, that the Deity hath framed for mortals to apprehend. It was the devout quarrel of a devout father to some of the choicest composures antiquity hath left us, that he could not find Christ named there; and if, as it is not to be doubted, divers of the devout ladies I was lately speaking of, were of his mind, sure at that rate they were not ordinarily kind to the Scripture; where the prophets and the apostles, those darker and more clear evangelists, do so unanimously and assiduously celebrate the Messiah, that when I read and confer them, I sometimes fancy myself present at our Saviours triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, where both ‘those that went before him, and those that followed after him, sung Hosannah to the Son of David.’⁷³

Wherefore, since even great wits, great princes, and great beauties, have not still, by all those temptations to which these attributes exposed them, been kept from being also great votaries to the Scripture, it cannot charitably be doubted, but that in most ages some pious persons have been able to say truly to God, in Jeremiah’s terms, ‘Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was to me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart:’⁷⁴ and if the persons I mention have been but few, I can attribute that fewness but to the paucity of wise and good men; and as for persons of other ranks in ecclesiastical stories, the instances are not so rare of the addictedness of God’s children to his word, but that we might thence produce them al- à most in throngs, if we had not nobler inducements i to the reading of the inspired volume than example: and if it were not less to be venerated, because so many saints have studied it, as because the study of it made many of those men saints, (I mean not nominal but real ones,) which we need not much wonder at, whilst such a saint as Saint Paul was, assures us, that it is all of it divinely inspired and improveable to all the uses requisite to the entire accomplishment of God’s servants.⁷⁵ But, Theophilus, to return to what I was formerly discoursing of, the transforming power the Scripture has upon many of its readers, I must subjoin, that though through the goodness of God, these be far more numerous than the professed adversaries and contemners of the Scripture, yet these make not so great a part of those that acknowledge the Bible, as it were well they did; because both experience and our Saviours parable have sufficiently taught us, that good seed does not always fall into good ground, and that many intervening accidents may, after it has been sown, make it miscarry and prove fruitless; but when you find (as I fear you may but too often) that the Scripture has not upon its readers, and especially upon those that are profane, that power which I seemed to ascribe to it, and which it ought to have, you may be pleased to remember, that I plainly suppose in my fifth answer, that those to whom the Scripture is addressed must not be culpably indisposed to be wrought upon by it; which that profane persons are, I presume you will easily grant; for when our Saviour said, that ‘If any man will do the will of him that sent him, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or no:’⁷⁶ he clearly intimates that there is required a disposition as well in the eye of his soul (if I may so speak) as in the object proposed, to make a man discern the excellency and origination of what is taught, how valuable soever. Saint Paul, speaking of himself and other penmen and teachers of the Scriptures, affirms, that they ‘speak wisdom among them that are perfect;’ and though not this world’s wisdom, yet, ‘the wisdom of God in a mystery, even that hidden one which God ordained before the world, unto our glory.’⁷⁷ But for these scorners, it is no wonder they so fruitlessly read the Scripture, without descrying any of this mysterious wisdom, it being a sentence of the Scripture itself, ‘that a scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not,’⁷⁸ (the expression is odd in the original, but I must not stay to descant upon it,) as the Sodomites could not find the angels, when once they sought them to prostitute and defile them.⁷⁹

But besides profane wits, there are too many other readers who are, more or less, guilty of opposing the reforming and improving influence of the Scripture, upon their own hearts; either upon the score of their not sufficiently believing the truths contained in the Scripture, or upon that of their not duly pondering them. That unbelief is the fruitful mother of more sins than are wont to be imputed to it, and that many baptized persons are not free from greater degrees of it than they are suspected of by others, or even by themselves, discoursed of that subject in another place. And I could here easily manifest, if I had not professedly indeed, there needs but a comparing of most men’s lives with the promises and threats held forth in the Scripture of no less than everlasting joys and endless torments, to make us believe that there are multitudes of professed Christians, to whom may be applied what the writer to the Hebrews says of the perverse Jews of Old, ‘That what they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it,’⁸⁰ or (as the Greek will bear) because they were not united by faith to the things they heard. But this is not all; for oftentimes the doctrines of the Scripture lose much of their efficacy, even where they are cordially believed, because they are not sufficiently laid to heart. The disparity of the influences of the bare belief and the due perpension of a truth, is, methinks, conspicuous enough in men’s thoughts of death. For though that they shall die is so truly believed that it cannot seriously be doubted, yet how doth men’s inadvertency make them live here as if they were to do so always! whereas, when once grace, sickness, the sight of a dying friend, or some other tragic spectacle, hath seriously minded them of death, it is amazing to observe how strange an alteration is produced in their lives by the active and permanent impression of that one obvious and unquestioned truth, that those lives must have a period; and to see how much the sober thoughts of death contribute to fit men for it: it being so imperious an inducement to deny ungodly and worldly lusts, and to live σωφρόνως και δικαίως δὲ ἐυσεβῶς ἐν τῳ νῦν αἰῶνι, ‘soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,’⁸¹ that we must one day leave it; that I admire not much that father’s celebrated strictness and austerity, who tells us, that he fancied always sounding in his inward ears, that dreadful alarum of, Surgite mortui et venite ad judicium, ‘Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.’

Yet, notwithstanding the indisposition of many readers to reverence and obey the Scripture, and notwithstanding that in divers passages of it, the ornaments of language are, for reasons above specified, purposely declined; yet we find not but that the Scripture for all these disadvantages, is by the generality of its readers both esteemed and obeyed at another guess rate than any other book of ethics or devotion. And multitudes, even of those whose passions or interests will not suffer them to be in some points guided by it, are notwithstanding swayed by it, to forbear or practise divers things in cases wherein other books would not prevail with them. As Herod, though the Baptist could not persuade him to quit his Herodias, did yet, upon John’s preaching, do many other things, and ‘heard him gladly.’⁸² … … . I was going to say, that we may not unfitly apply to the word of God what divines have observed of God the word; for as those accidents that loudliest proclaimed our Saviour’s having assumed our human nature and infirmities, were attended with some circumstances that conspicuously attested his divinity; so in those passages in which the majesty of the author’s style is most veiled and disguised, there is yet some peculiarity that discloses it. But I shall less scruple to tell you, that in divers of those passages in which the Holy Ghost (who in the Greek father’s wonted expression, does often συγκατα- βαίνειν ἡμῖν, stoop to our capacity, and, as it were, sink himself down to our level) seems most to have vouchsafed a condescension to the style of men; and to have commanded his secretaries, as he once did the prophet Isaiah, to write, בחרט אנוש be-chæret enosh, ‘with a man’s pen;’⁸³ in divers of those very places, I say, there is something so awful, and so peculiarly his, that the sun, even when he descends into the west, remains still lucider than any of the stars; so the Divine Inspirer of the Scriptures, even when his style seems most to stoop to our capacities, doth yet retain a prerogative above merely human writings. ‘Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world,’⁸⁴ says an apostle; and God, whose attribute is to be καρδιογνώστης, ‘the knower of hearts,’ and whose prerogative it is to ‘form the spirit of man within him, understandeth our thoughts afar off.’⁸⁵ Certainly, then, if we consider God as the creator of our souls, and so likeliest to know the frame and springs, and nature of his own workmanship, we shall make but little difficulty to believe, that in the book written for and addressed to men, he hath employed very powerful and appropriated means to work upon them. And in effect, there is a strange movingness, and, if the epithet be not too bold, a kind of heavenly magic is to be found in some passages of the Scripture which is to be found no where else; and will not easily be better expressed than in the proper terms of the Scripture; ‘For the word of God,’ says it, ‘is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-eged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart:’⁸⁶ wherefore, that Junius (as himself relates) was converted from a kind of atheist to a believer, upon the reading of the first chapter of John; that a rabbi, by his own confession, was converted from a Jew to a Christian, by the reading of the fifty-third of Isaiah; that St. Austin was changed from a debauchee into a saint, by that passage of the thirteenth to the Romans and the thirteenth verse; and that another father, whose fear had made him disclaim his faith, burst out publicly into a shower of tears, opon the occasional reading of the sixteenth verse of the fiftieth Psalm, are effects that I do not so much admire, as I do that such are produced no oftener. And truly, for my own part, the reading of the Scripture hath moved me more, and swayed me more powerfully to all the passions it would infuse, than the wittiest and eloquentest composures that are extant in our own and some other languages. Nay, so winning is the majesty of the Scripture, that many (like those that fall in love in earnest with the ladies they first courted but out of what the French call gallantry) who began to read it out of curiosity, have found themselves engaged to continue that exercise out of conscience; and not a few of those that did at first read the New Testament only to learn some unknown language it is translated into, or for some such trivial purpose, have been, by the means that they elected, carried beyond the end that they designed, and met a destiny not ill resembling that of Zacheus, who, climbing up into a sycamore growing in our Saviour’s way, only to look upon him, passed thence to be his proselyte and convert, and to entertain him joyfully, both in his house and heart.⁸⁷ And though it be true that the church’s testimony be commonly our first, yet it is not always our chief inducement to believe the divinity of holy writ; its own native prerogatives heightening that into faith which the church’s authority left but opinion. To which purpose I remember a handsome observation of some of the ancients; that the Samaritans that first believed in Christ upon the woman’s report, when afterwards they were blessed with an immediate conversation with himself, they exultingly told the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world:’⁸⁸ for so divers that first believed the Scripture but upon the church’s score, are afterwards by acquaintedness brought to believe the Scripture upon its own score, that is, by the discovery of those intrinsic excellencies and prerogatives that manifest its heavenly origination… . . This sacred book, even where it hath not embellishments of language, doth not want them; being so much recommended by its imperious persuasiveness without them, that it is more ennobled by their needlessness, than it would be by their affluence. And, if to some passages of Scripture we must apply that of St. Paul, (whereby yet he thought to recommend his ministry to the Corinthians,) ‘that his speech and his preaching was not with the enticing words of man’s wisdom, but’ ἐν αποδείξει πνέυματος κ̓ δυνάμεως, ‘in demonstration of the spirit of power;’⁸⁹ we may also remember, that he subjoins as the reason that moved him to use this plain and unadorned way of teaching his Corinthians, ‘that their faith might not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.’⁹⁰ And truly, the efficacy and operations of the Bible, in comparison of those of all other books, duly considered, we may esteem, that as God oftentimes doth in the Scripture, what in the Scripture he is said to do, ‘draw us with the cords of a man,’ (passages wreathed with flowers of rhetoric,) so is it not unfit, that he should sometimes employ expressions that, carrying away our obedience, our reverence, and our assent in spite of our indispositions to them, might manifest their derivation from him, who is not tied to such means as men would think necessary, but can compass his ends as well by as without any: nor can I often consider the instances experience affords us of the efficacy of many texts, (which some that pretend to eloquence accuse of having none,) without sometimes calling to mind, how in the book of nature God has veiled in an obscure and homely stone an attractiveness (unvouchsafed to diamonds and rubies) which the stubbornest of metals does obsequiously acknowledge. And, as the loadstone not only draws what the sparklingest jewels cannot move, but draws stronglier, where armed with iron than crowned with silver, so the Scripture, not only is movinger than the glitteringest human styles, but hath oftentimes a potenter influence on men in those passages that seem quite destitute of ornaments, than in those where rhetoric is conspicuous.

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← The Seventh Objection · Contents · The Conclusion of One Part of the Discourse →

Footnotes

1. Kessæus, page 99. See Psalm cxiv. 4; xix. ↩

2. Surat. iii. vide H. Hottin. 62, and 63. ↩

3. 2 Thes. i. 8. ↩

4. Beidavi, Ahmedibn, Edris, and others. ↩

5. S. Surat. x. S. 11, and S. 17. ↩

6. —— Etsi nihil præter solum Alkoranum (adduxisset) satis hoc foret ad eximiam excellentiam supra reliqua, quæ prophetæ adduxcrunt: nam ille miraculum est, quod in secula durat præ omnibus aliis miraculis. H. Hotting. Hist. Orient. pagina circiter 300. ↩

7. J. Scaliger Epist. 362; apud Theod. Hackspan in libro cui Titulus, Fides et Leges Mohamædis, p. 2. ↩

8. —— Hæc vitia unus aliquis inducit, sub quo tunc eloquentia est: cæteri imitantur, et alter alteri tradunt. Sic Sallustio vigente, amputatæ sententiæ, et verba ante exspectatum cadentia, et obscura brevitas, fuere procultu. Seneca. Epist. cxiv. ↩

9. Menasse Ben-Israel. ↩

10. Waller. ↩

11. John, 19, 20. ↩

12. Psal. xxxix. 3. ↩

13. Psal. xiv. 1. ↩

14. Psalm lxxiii. 8, 9. ↩

15. Judges, xv. 15. ↩

16. Ibid. iii. 31. ↩

17. 2 Kings, i. 10. ↩

18. Rev. xxi. 10, 18, 19. ↩

19. Jude, ver. 14, 15. ↩

20. Zeph. i. 12. ↩

21. Gen. xviii. 21. ↩

22. 2 Pet. iii. 3; Jude, ver. 17, 18. ↩

23. Rev. i. 15. ↩

24. 1 Romans, xv. 15. ↩

25. 1 Kings, xii. 28, 32. ↩

26. Proverbs, xxvi. 5. ↩

27. Exod. xxiii. 3, 4, 5, &c. ↩

28. Dan. xii. 3. ↩

29. Hosea, ii. 8. ↩

30. 1 Chron. xxix. 14. ↩

31. 1 Cor. iv. 7. ↩

32. Nicholo Macchiavelli, nel libro del principe, c. 10. ↩

33. 1 Tim. iv. 8. ↩

34. Mark, x. 30. ↩

35. Pet. v. 4. ↩

36. 1 Kings, iv. 31, 32, 33. ↩

37. Exod. xvi. 20, 33, 34. ↩

38. Psalm cxix. 99. ↩

39. Matt. xxv. 28. ↩

40. John, ii. 1—10. ↩

41. 1 Kings, vii. 13, 14, &c. ↩

42. Judges, xi. ↩

43. Numb. xvii. 4, 8. ↩

44. Deut. xvii. 18, 19. ↩

45. Verse 20. ↩

46. 1 Sam. ii. 20, 21. ↩

47. Verse 18. ↩

48. Rambam, or, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon. ↩

49. Josh, i. 8. ↩

50. Rom. xii. ↩

51. Deut. xxv. 18—21. ↩

52. Dan. ii. 31, 32, &c. ↩

53. Isaiah, xlix. 23. ↩

54. Job, xxiii. 12. ↩

55. Dan. vi. 3; ix. 2. ↩

56. Psalm cxiii. 6. ↩

57. Isaiah, xl. 13, 17. ↩

58. Dan. x. 13. ↩

59. 2 Kings, xix. 35. ↩

60. παρακύψαι, 1 Pet. i. 12. ↩

61. Heb. i. 14. ↩

62. Rev. xvii. 14. ↩

63. Luke, iv. 17, &c. ↩

64. Luke, ix. 31. ↩

65. 2 Cor. xii. 2. ↩

66. Phil. iii. 8. ↩

67. Rom x. 17. ↩

68. John, v. 39. ↩

69. Jer. xix. 23, 24. ↩

70. Luke, vii. 25. ↩

71. King James. ↩

72. Eudoxia, wife to the emperor Theodosius. ↩

73. Mark, xxi. 9; xi. 9. ↩

74. Jerem. xv. 16. ↩

75. 2 Tim. iii. 16. ↩

76. John, vii. 17. ↩

77. 1 Cor. ii. 7. ↩

78. Prov. xiv. 6. ↩

79. Gen. xix. 5, 11. ↩

80. Heb. iv. 2. ↩

81. Tit. ii. 12. ↩

82. Mark, xii. 37. ↩

83. Isaiah, viii. 1. ↩

84. Acts, xv. 18. ↩

85. Acts, i. 24; Zech. i. 1; Psalm xiii. 2. ↩

86. Heb. iv. 12. ↩

87. Luke, xix. à v. 1, ad. 10; Matt. xiii. 19, 20, &c. ↩

88. John, iv. 39—42. ↩

89. 1 Cor. ii. 1—4. ↩

90. 1 Cor. ii. 5. ↩