for us, but what we bring along with us in ourselves. He that would understand St. Paul right, must understand his terms in the sense he uses them; and not as they are appropriated, by each man's particular philosophy, to conceptions that never entered the mind of the apostle. For example; he that shall bring the philosophy now taught and received, to the explaining of spirit, soul, and body, mentioned 1 Thess. v. 23. will, I fear, hardly reach St. Paul's sense, or represent to himself the notions St. Paul then had in his mind. That is what we should aim at in reading him, or any other author; and till we, from his words, paint his very ideas and thoughts in our minds, we do not understand him. In the divisions I have made, I have endeavoured, the best I could, to govern myself by the diversity of matter. But, in a writer like St. Paul, it is not so easy always to find precisely where one subject ends, and another begins. He is full of the matter he treats, and writes with warmth; which usually neglects method, and those partitions and pauses, which men educated in the schools of rhetoricians usually observe. Those arts of writing St. Paul, as well out of design as temper, wholly laid by the subject he had in hand, and the grounds upon which it stood firm, and by which he enforced it, was what alone he minded; and, without solemnly winding up one argument, and intimating any way that he began another, let his thoughts, which were fully possessed of the matter, run in one continued train, wherein the parts of his discourse were woven one into another. So that it is seldom that the scheme of his discourse makes any gap; and therefore, without breaking in upon the connection of his language, 'tis hardly possible to separate his discourse, and give a distinct view of his sev eral arguments in distinct sections. I am far from pretending infallibility in the sense I have any where given in my paraphrase or notes; that would be to erect myself into an apostle, a presumption of the highest nature in any one that cannot confirm what he says by miracles. I have, for my own information, sought the true meaning, as far as my poor abilities would reach and I have unbiassedly embraced what, upon a fair inquiry, appeared This I thought my duty and so to me. : interest, in a matter of so great concernment to me. If I must believe for myself, it is unavoidable that I must understand for myself: for if I blindly, and with an implicit faith, take the Pope's interpretation of the Sacred Scripture, without examining whether it be Christ's meaning, 'tis the Pope I believe in, and not in Christ; 'tis his authority I rest upon; 'tis what he says I embrace; for what 'tis Christ says, I neither know, nor concern myself. "Tis the same thing when I set up any other man in Christ's place, and make him the authentic interpreter of Sacred Scripture to myself. He may possibly understand the Sacred Scripture as right as any man, but I shall do well to examine myself, whether that which 1 do not know, nay which (in the way I take) I can never know, can justify me in making myself his disciple, instead of Jesus Christ's, who of right is alone, and ought to be, my only Lord and Master; and it will be no less sacrilege in me to substitute to myself any other in his room, to be a prophet to me, than to be my king or priest. The same reasons that put me upon doing what I have in these papers done, will exempt me from all suspicion of imposing my interpretation on others. The reasons that led me into the meaning which prevailed on my mind, are set down with it as far as they carry light and conviction to any other man's understanding, so far I hope my labour may be of some use to him; beyond the evidence it carries with it, I advise him not to follow mine, nor any man's interpretation. We are all men liable to errors, and infected with them; but have this sure way to preserve ourselves, every one, from danger by them, if, laying aside sloth, carelessness, prejudice, party, and a reverence of men, we betake ourselves in earnest to the study of the way to salvation, in those holy writings wherein God has revealed it from heaven, and proposed it to the world; seeking our religion where we are sure it is in truth to be found, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. |