vidences, God moves in a mysterious way to perform his will. But upon the lives of those, who were ordained and declared to be types. of the glories which should hereafter be revealed, it has pleased his unsearchable wisdom to stamp the visible impress of his sovereign power. They are so manifestly led by His hand through those passages of their lives, in which they were made the living models of His future designs, that the most inconsiderate cannot fail to acknowledge the existence. of a controlling power, regulating the complicated events and conflicting interests of the world.

4. The types of Scripture shew also the unity which pervades all the ways of God in his dealings with mankind.

From the very instant, in which Adam by transgression fell, the same scheme of salvation was faintly discovered. The redemption of fallen man by the death of Christ, the place, the time, the manner of his birth; the nation, the tribe, the family whence he should spring; the very persons who should first come forward as the representatives of the Gentiles, to hail the new-born King, and to offer gifts:' the circumstances which should accompany his ministry, his death, his burial, his resurrection,

! Psal. Ixxii. 10.

his ascension, were all revealed to the world, at sundry times, and in divers manners, by prophecy and by type. But the coming into the world of a suffering and yet a triumphant Messiah, in whom all the prophecies and types received their final completion, is the one object to which these magnificent preparations had respect.

While then we attempt, with humility yet with earnestness, to search the Scriptures in order to discover the prefigurations of Christ which are contained in them, we may reasonably hope to add somewhat to our confidence in the faith which we profess, to perceive the wisdom which has directed the minutest incidents recorded in Scripture; and to discern infallible marks of the continued Providence of God, and of the unity of his eternal counsels.

III. Still we must remember that, in investigating the traces of designed coincidence in the several histories of Holy Writ, we are treading upon dangerous ground. The figurative interpretation of Scripture, which we thus approach, is peculiarly liable to abuse.

Some have suffered their imaginations to lead them so far astray, as even to consider the historical parts of Scripture as nothing more than an allegorical recital.

It is not perhaps so much to be wondered at, that they who could find no other weapons, with which to attack the Christian faith, should have had recourse to this extravagant fiction. If one adversary" could thus set aside the recorded history of the fall of man, upon the reality of which all our knowledge of the origin of evil is to be obtained-if another" could, in like manner, destroy that testimony of Jesus, which the spirit of prophecy affordsif the sober narrative, which sets forth the splendid miracles of the Gospel, could be reduced to the emptiness of mere allegorical fables-and the history of Christ and his Apostles be treated as a mystical representation of the great phænomena of the natural world;" the very foundations of our religion must sustain a grievous shock. And they who believe it to be their present interest, that the doctrines of Christianity should not be true, nor

m

Blount, in the Oracles of Reason, adopted this strange hypothesis, proposed by Dr. Burnet of the Charter-house; Archæolog. Lib. II. Chap. vii. It is even used by Origen against Celsus. Bp. Marsh, Lect. XVIII. See Jenkins' Reasonableness of Christianity, Vol. II. A similar principle of mythical interpretation is favoured by many of the modern German divines.

n Collins.

。 Woolston.

P Volney. See Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatry, Book VI. Chap. vi. Sect. III. 1. Sir W. Drummond in his Edipus Judaicus, endeavours to support a fancy of the same kind.

its threatenings a real subject of alarm, act, at least, a consistent part, when they endeavour to subvert it by such misrepresentations,

But, at an early period in the history of the Christian Church, the very persons who undertook the defence of our faith against its adversaries, unadvisedly replied to their objections, not only by sober argument and by an appeal to the solid grounds of evidence, but also by introducing the unsound principles of mystical interpretation, already familiar to the fanciful Jews, and to the subtle expounders of the heathen mythology.

In later ages the same unwarrantable licence has been used by injudicious men. Visionary expositions of Holy Writ have been given by those whose imaginations were misled by a too great desire to penetrate into the high things of God; and its clearest narratives explained away, from the vanity of those who are wise in their own conceits, and would measure the wisdom and the power of God by the standard of human reason.

The sober interpretation of the historical types in Scripture, has nothing in common with errors such as these. The type is indeed compared to the shadow, of which the antitype is the substance: but the comparison is made solely with respect to the degree of

perfection in which the Divine will is displayed, in two distinct series of real events.

Others have erred, without running into the extreme of denying the reality of history, by endeavouring to establish doctrines upon fanciful types, unauthorized by Scripture.

The church of Rome, having first proposed, as a principle of interpretation, that Scripture may have, in the same passage, more than one historical meaning, and any number of mystical senses which her ingenuity can discover, and her authority establish, has made ample use of the unlimited powers which she has thus usurped.

If some of her members,' led away by a sincere desire to do honour to the Sacred Writings, have injudiciously applied illustrations, and assumed a connection between events, for which Scripture offers little, if any, authority; their error is to be lamented, and, if possible, to be avoided.

But other interpretations have been advanced, upon principles utterly subversive of all sober use of the Holy Scriptures.

The creation of two great lights, the one

a See Waterland, Preface to Scripture Vindicated. Glassius Philologia Sacra, Lib. II. Part 1. Tract I. Sect. 2. Aug. Pfeiffer Hermenentica Sacra, Cap. iv. Sect. 1-10.

Pascal is not always exempt from errors of this kind. See his Pensées; seconde partie, Art. IX.

s Gen. i. 16.

D