Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

write in the fame language. But it will be impoffible to prove, that the order and conftruction of those words, and the general turn of the periods, which conftitute what we call the ftile, is not truly barbarous and corrupt, and wholly remote from the ease and sweetness of the claffical compofitions.' Such is the heavy charge brought by our author against the apoftolic language; a charge, which it would be very difficult to support.

The fourth tract contains fome short remarks on a ftory told by the ancients, concerning St. John the evangelist, and Cerinthus the heretic; and on the ufe, which is made of it by the moderns, to enforce the duty of fhunning heretics. The ftory is told by Irenæus, in the following manner : That there were fome who had heard Polycarp relate, how St. John, the difciple of our Lord, going one day to the public bath in Ephefus, and finding the heretic Cerinthus in it, ftarted back inftantly without bathing, crying out, Let us run away, left the bath should fall upon us, while Cerinthus the enemy of truth is in it.

Dr. Berriman has applied this ftory, in one of his fermons, to enforce the duty of fhunning infidels and hereticks; and dr. Waterland, to recommend a practice, which he warmly preffes upon all chriftians, of rejecting from their fociety and communion, all the impugners of fundamentals : and it is fure, fays our author, to be thrown in our way, either from the pulpit or the prefs, by all angry divines, as oft as they find occafion, to inflame the people against an antagonist, whom, thro' zeal and heat of controversy, they are difpofed to treat as an adverfary to the chriftian faith.

As this story naturally tends to excite prejudices, and uncharitable averfions in the minds of men, and is confidered generally, by zealots, as an apoftolic rule and precedent, for the exercise of all kinds of rudeness towards those who differ from them in matters of religion, our author thinks it of use to the public quiet, to enquire into the real ftate of it, and not to fuffer it to have any other credit or influence, than what is ftrictly due to it: for in that great uncharitableness, fays he, which reigns among all the fects of chriftians in these days, there is no occafion to ranfac antiquity, for any additional motives of ftrife and mutual hatred.

The doctor fhews very clearly. that this hear-fay story, as he calls it, is, at the beft, of fo uncertain and doubtful a credit, that we cannot reasonably lay any ftrefs, or ground any point of duty upon it; and that, if we should

grant

[ocr errors]

grant it even to be true, it would be abfurd and dangerous to the peace of the church, in its present circumstances, to establish it as a rule of conduct, to private and ordinary christians.

In his fhort effay on the allegorical and literal interpretation of the creation and fall of man, he compares the feveral merits of the two principal and rival kinds of interpretation; the one according to the letter, the other to allegory; which have each of them been approved and preferred in their turns, in different ages of the church. By the letter he means the hiftorical acceptation of the text, as a plain narrative of facts, fupposed to have been transacted in the very manner and order in which they are there related: by allegory, that latent and more refined way of delivering truth, under the dress of fiction, or fable, which was practifed chiefly in antient times, and by the fages of the eastern world.

There is not a fingle article, he observes, of the narrative given us of the creation, which, in its literal fense, has not puzzled all the expofitors, and furnished the sceptics with perpetual topics of ridicule. In answer to whom, fays he, I have never met with one advocate of the letter, either antient or modern, who has ventured to affirm the whole to be rational and natural; or has not been forced to take fhelter, under allegory, in one part of it, or the other. He tells us, that St. Austin, tho' he profeffes to explain things according to to their hiftorical truth, in his twelve books concerning the literal interpretation of the three first chapters of Genefis, is yet frequently obliged to have recourse to allegory, being unable to accommodate the text to a proper and literal sense.

But, fays he, this double way of interpreting, which Auftin approves, and the moderns generally follow, by confidering one fentence as literal, the next as allegorical; one part as a fact, the next as fable, feems to be abfurd and irrational; tending rather to confound than enlighten the understandings of men; and was contrived, without doubt, for no other purpose, but the support of fyftems and prejudices, which plain fcripture would not justify, till it was dreffed up and feasoned, as it were, by a mixture of senses which did not belong to it. Fables indeed may be grounded on things real and true; and a general notion of fuch truths may be artfully conveyed, under the veil of fiction or allegory: but historical and allegorical narrations are compofitions of quite different kinds, and ferving to dif

ferent

ferent ends: the one to represent by a literal description, the true and natural ftate of things; the other, to inculcate fome hidden truth, quite different from what it literally reprefents. It seems impoffible therefore, that two fuch oppofite characters, which naturally deftroy each other, can belong to the fame fubject; or that one and the fame defcription can, by any art or mixture of fenfes, be rendered both truly hiftorical and allegorical at the same time.

I have ever been inclined to confider the particular story of the fall of man, as a moral fable or allegory; such as we frequently meet with in other parts, both of the old and new teftament, in which certain religious duties and doctrines, with the genuine nature and effects of them, are reprefented as it were to ourselves, by a fiction of perfons and facts, which had no real exiftence. And I am the more readily induced to espouse this sense of it, from a perfuafion, that it is not only the most probable and rational, but the moft useful alfo to the defence of our religion, by clearing it of those difficulties, which are apt to fhock and make us ftumble, as it were, at the very threshold.

For whether we interpret the ftory literally or allegorically, I take it to be exactly the fame, with regard to its effects and influence on chriftianity; which requires nothing more from it, than what is taught by both the kinds of interpretation, that this world had a beginning and creation from God; and that its principal inhabitant man, was originally formed to a ftate of happiness and perfection which he loft and forfeited, by following his lufts and passions, in oppofition to the will of his creator. For there could not be any religion at all, without the belief of fuch a creator, nor any need of a revealed religion, but upon the fuppofition of man's fall. These two points then, as the antients obferved, are all, that Mofes propofed to deliver to us; and they are delivered with equal truth and efficacy, either in the literal or the allegorical way, nor do I find any reference to them in the facred fcriptures, which appears to be inconfiftent with the allegorical acceptation of them.

"Have you not read, fays our Saviour to the Pharifees, that he, who made them at the beginning, made them male and female? And for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. He takes no notice of the particular manner of Eve's formation, from the rib of Adam; but intimates only in general the fact of their creation, and the moral of it, which is equally deducible from the literal and the allegorical sense. St. Paul feems to allude indeed to the circumftance of the

rib, where he says, that the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man: and that Adam was first formed, and then Eve: whence he infers the fubordination of the female fex. But his argument, whether it be drawn from the letter or the allegory, would have the fame force, fince it is fuppofed, that the allegory itself was contrived for the purpose of fuggesting the fame inference. Again I fear, fays Paul to the Corinthians, left, as the ferpent beguiled Eve through his fubtilty, fo your minds fhould be corrupted from the fimplicity, that is in Chrift. Where he feems to unfold the true meaning and hidden sense of the Mofaic parable, and to fignify, that Eve was beguiled and feduced from her native fimplicity, by the carnality of her lufts and affections. For as that was certainly the cafe of the Corinthians, fo the apoftle's fimile would not be pertinent, unless we take the ferpent, as many of the learned have done, to be the fymbol of luft and fenfual pleasure.

To conclude, fince 'tis allowed to have been the practice of all the fages of the ancient world, in treating of the origin of things, and the fublime doctrines of theology, to wrap up what they delivered, under the veil of ænigmas, fymbols and allegories; and fince this was more peculiarly the cuftom of the Egyptians, among whom Mofes was born, and diligently train'd in all the mysterious parts of their learning and wifdom; it is reasonable to imagine, that on the fubject of the creation, and the origin of man, he should use a manner of writing, which all other nations then used, and which the Ægyptians his mafters had particularly taught him. This, I fay, is what we fhould previously expect from such a writer, on such a subject; and this is what we find him to have actually performed; as it is evident, as well from the turn and manner of his writing, as from the testimony of those very people, for whofe inftruction he wrote; who generally treat these first chapters of Genefis as allegorical, and are faid to have reftrained their youth from reading them on account of the difficulties of the literal fenfe, and the wrong notions, which it might imprint of God, till they had reached a maturity of age and judgment, which might qualify them to comprehend its more recondite meaning. The chriftians, alfo, when they received thefe books from the Jews, received from them at the fame time, this fame method of expounding, which they univerfally followed in the primitive ages: and on the authority of fuch guides, it cannot furely be thought rash, or give any juft fcandal, to adhere to the fame interpretation; especially, fince it will be found, as I have said above, the

moft

moft effectual of all others, to clear our religion from those objections, which in all ages have shocked the faith of many, on their very entrance into it.'

Befides dr. Middleton's pofthumous pieces, which make only about a third of this volume, there are contained in it, his letter to dr. Waterland; the feveral defences of it; and his remarks, paragraph by paragraph, on Bentley's propofals for a new edition of the Greek Teftament and Latin verfion.

ART. XLIV. Philofophical obfervations on the analogy between the propagation of animals and that of vegetables: In which are anfwered fome objections against the indivifibility of the foul, which have been inadvertently drawn from the late curious and useful experiments upon the polypus and other animals. With an explanation of the manner in which each piece of a divided polypus becomes another perfect animal of the fame fpecies. By James Parfons, M.D. F. R. S. &c. 8vo. 4s. Davis.

ENQUIRIES into the works of nature, when car

ried on, not in the method of hypothefis and vain conjecture, but in the only juft and fatisfactory method of experiment and obfervation, and with a view to illustrate the wifdem and goodness of the great parent of the universe, at the fame time that they are extremely ufeful, cannot fail of being highly entertaining to every mind that is formed for contemplation, and has a taste for rational pleasure, and manly amusement. Such is the view, and fuch the method, wherein the learned and ingenious dr. Parfons has, in the performance now before us, purfued his enquiries into the animal and vegetable creation: and we are perfuaded, that every curious obferver of the wonders of nature, every one who has attended to thofe amazing signatures of skill and contrivance, which the ALMIGHTY ARTIFICER has difplayed in every plant and animal that presents itself to our view, will be inclined to thank him for the light he has thrown. on a curious fubject, which has hitherto, in a great measure, been involved in obfcurity. He begins with facts that are plain and obvious to every one's fenfes; and rifing gradually in his enquiries, fhews, in a chain of argumentation, the astonishing similarity between the manner of the propagation of animals and that of vegetables, and the fimplicity of thofe means by which nature purfues the fame plan in the production and progrefs of both.

The

4

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »