much harder to be understood, less easy and less pleasant to be read, by much, than now they are.

How plain soever this abuse is, and what prejudice soever it does to the understanding of the sacred scripture; yet if a bible was printed as it should be, and as the several parts of it were writ, in continued discourses where the argument is continued, I doubt not but the several parties would complain of it, as an innovation, and a dangerous change in the publishing those holy books. And indeed, those who are for maintaining their opinions, and the systems of parties, by sound of words, with a neglect of the true sense of scripture, would have reason to make and foment the outcry they would most of them be immediately disarmed of their great magazine of artillery wherewith they defend themselves, and fall upon others. If the Holy Scripture were but laid before the eyes of Christians in its due connexion and consistency, it would not then be so easy to snatch out a few words, as if they were separate from the rest, to serve a purpose, to which they do not at all belong, and with which they have nothing to do. But

as the matter now stands, he that has a mind to it, may at a cheap rate be a notable champion for the truth; that is, for the doctrines of the sect, that chance or interest has cast him into. He need but be furnished with verses of sacred scripture, containing words and expressions that are but flexible (as all general, obscure and doubtful ones are) and his system that has appropriated them to the orthodoxy of his church, makes them immediately strong and irrefragable arguments for his opinion. This is the benefit of loose sentences, and scripture crumbled into verses, which quickly turn into independent aphorisms. But if the quotation in the verse produced, were considered as a part of a continued, coherent discourse, and so its sense were limited by the tenour of the context, most of these forward and warm disputants would be quite stripped of those, which they doubt not now to call spiritual weapons; and they would have often nothing to say that would not shew their weakness, and manifestly fly in their faces. I crave leave to set down a saying of the learned and judicious Mr. Selden: "In interpreting the "scripture," says he, "many do as if a man "should see one have ten pounds, which

"he reckoned by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. meaning four was but four units, and five "five units, &c. and that he had in all but "ten pounds: the other that sees him, takes "not the figures together, as he doth, but "picks here and there; and thereupon "reports, that he had five pounds in one "bag, and six pounds in another bag, and "nine pounds in another bag, &c. when as, "in truth, he has but ten pounds in all. "So we pick out a text, here and there, to "make it serve our turn; whereas if we "take it all together, and consider what "went before, and what followed after, we "should find it meant no such thing." I have heard sober Christians very much admire why ordinary, illiterate people, who were professors, that shewed a concern for religion, seemed much more conversant in St. Paul's Epistles, than in the plainer, and, as it seemed to them, much more intelligible parts of the New Testament: they confessed, that though they read St. Paul's Epistles with their best attention, yet they generally found them too hard to be mastered; and they laboured in vain so far to reach the apostle's meaning all along in the train of what he said, as to read them with that satisfaction that arises from

a feeling that we understand and fully comprehend the force and reasoning of an author; and therefore they could not imagine what those saw in them, whose eyes they thought not much better than their own. But the case was plain these sober, inquisitive readers, had a mind to see nothing in St. Paul's epistles but just what he meant; whereas those others of a quicker and gayer sight, could see in them what they pleased. Nothing is more acceptable to fancy than pliant terms and expressions, that are not obstinate; in such it can find its account with delight, and with them be illuminated, orthodox, infallible at pleasure, and in its own way. But where the sense of the author goes visibly in its own train, and the words, receiving a determined sense from their companions and adjacents, will not consent to give countenance and colour to what is agreed to be right, and must be supported at any rate, there men of established orthodoxy do not so well find their satisfaction. And perhaps, if it were well examined, it would be no very extravagant paradox to say, that there are fewer that bring their opinions to the Sacred Scripture to be tried by that infallible rule, than bring the Sacred Scripture to their

opinions, to bend it to them, to make it, as they can, a cover and guard of them. And to this purpose, its being divided into verses, and brought as much as may be into loose and general aphorisms, makes it most useful and serviceable. And in this lies the other great cause of obscurity and perplexedness, which has been cast upon St. Paul's epistles from without.

St. Paul's epistles, as they stand translated in our English bibles, are now, by long and constant use, become a part of the English language, and common phraseology, especially in matters of religion: this every one uses familiarly, and thinks he understands; but it must be observed, that if he has a distinct meaning when he uses those words and phrases, and knows himself what he intends by them, it is always according to the sense of his own system, and the articles or interpretations of the society he is engaged in. So that all this knowledge and understanding, which he has in the use of these passages of Sacred Scripture, reaches no farther than this, that he knows (and that is very well) what he himself says, but thereby knows nothing at all what St. Paul said in them.