tles not being so circumstantiated; there being no concurring history that plainly declares the disposition St. Paul was in; what the actions, expectations, or demands of those to whom he writ, required him to speak to, we are no where told. All this, and a great deal more, necessary to guide us into the true meaning of the epistles, is to be had only from the epistles themselves, and to be gathered from thence with stubborn attention, and more than common application.

This being the only safe guide (under the Spirit of God, that dictated these sacred writings) that can be relied on, I hope I may be excused, if I venture to say, that the utmost ought to be done to observe and trace out St. Paul's reasonings; to follow the thread of his discourse in each of his epistles; to shew how it goes on still directed with the same view, and pertinently drawing the several incidents towards the same point. To understand him right, his inferences should be strictly observed; and it should be carefully examined from what they are drawn, and what they tend to. He is certainly a coherent, argumentative, pertinent writer; and

care, I think, should be taken in expounding of him, to shew that he is so. But though I say he has weighty aims in his epistles, which he steadily keeps in his eye, and drives at in all that he says; yet I do not say that he puts his discourses into an artificial method, or leads his reader into a distinction of his arguments, or gives them notice of new matter by rhetorical, or studied transitions. He has no ornaments borrowed from the Greek eloquence; no notions of their philosophy mixed with his doctrine, to set it off. The enticing words of man's wisdom, whereby he means all the studied rules of the Grecian schools, which made them such masters in the art of speaking, he, as he says himself, 1 Cor. ii. 4. wholly neglected: the reason whereof he gives in the next verse, and in other places. But the politeness of language, delicacy of style, fineness of expression, laboured periods, artificial transitions, and a very methodical ranging of the parts, with such other embellishments as make a discourse enter the mind smoothly, and strike the fancy at first hearing, have little or no place in his style; yet coherence of discourse, and direct tendency of all the parts of it, to the argument in hand, are most emi

nently to be found in him. This I take to be his character, and doubt not but he will be found to be so upon diligent examination. And in this, if it be so, we have a clue, if we will take the pains to find it, that will conduct us with surety through those seemingly dark places, and imagined intricacies, in which Christians have wandered so far one from another, as to find quite contrary senses.

Whether a superficial reading, accompanied with the common opinion of his invincible obscurity, has kept off some from seeking in him the coherence of a discourse, tending with close, strong reasoning to a point; or a seemingly more honourable opinion of one that had been wrapped up into the third heaven, as if from a man so warmed and illuminated as he had been, nothing could be expected but flashes of light, and raptures of zeal, hindered others to look for a train of reasoning, proceeding on regular and cogent argumentation, from a man raised above the ordinary pitch of humanity to an higher and brighter way of illumination; or else, whether others were loth to beat their heads above the tenor and coherence in St. Paul's discourses,

which if found out, possibly might set him at a manifest and irreconcileable difference with their systems; 'tis certain, that whatever hath been the cause, this way of getting the true sense of St. Paul's epistles, seems not to have been much made use of, or at least so thoroughly pursued as I am apt to think it deserves.

For, granting that he was full stored with knowledge of the things he treated of, for he had light from heaven, it was God himself furnished him, and he could not want; allowing also that he had ability to make use of the knowledge had been given him, for the end for which it was given him viz. the information, conviction, and conversion of others; and, accordingly, that he knew how to direct his discourse to the point in hand, we cannot widely mistake the parts of his discourse employed about it, when we have any where found out the point he drives at: wherever we have got a view of his design, and the aim he proposed to himself in writing, we may be sure that such or such an interpretation does not give us his genuine sense, it being nothing at all to his present purpose. Nay, among various meanings given a text, it

fails not to direct us to the best, and very often to assure us of the true: for it is no presumption, when one sees a man arguing for this or that proposition, if he be a sober man, master of reason or common sense, and takes any care of what he says, to pronounce, with confidence in several cases, that he could not talk thus or thus.

I do not yet so magnify this method of studying St. Paul's epistles, as well as other parts of sacred scripture, as to think it will perfectly clear every hard place, and leave no doubt unresolved. I know expressions now out of use, opinions of those times, not heard of in our days, allusions to customs lost to us, and various circum. stances and particularities of the parties, which we cannot come at, &c. must needs continue several passages in the dark now to us at this distance, which shone with full light to those they were directed to. But for all that, the studying of St. Paul's epistles in the way I have proposed, will, I humbly conceive, carry us a great length in the right understanding of them, and make us rejoice in the light we receive from those most useful parts of divine revelation, by furnishing us with visible