On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
natural man with the faculty of acquiring it ; while Assyria represents the reasoning powers . * To prove all this , Mr . Noble informs us , would require a separate consideration of all the passages in which these three countries are mentioned . ; and he invites his readers , for their own satisfaction , to enter into this examination . We are very doubtful whether many of them will admit that such a probable case has been made out as will justify him in making so large a demand upon their time and patience .
The following remarks on the important and knotty question , how it happens that there are just four Evangelists , may be taken as no bad specimen of the strange vagaries into which a man may be seduced when he gives the reins to his fancy , under the influence of this analogical system . But we must here allow the author to present his ideas in his own words ; no others can do them justice . " Perhaps , also , in agreement with that unvarying constancy with which all
the divine operations follow fixed laws , there may be some divine law which rendered it necessary that the Gospels should neither be fewer nor more than four : indeed , if inspiration be allowed to them , such must be the fact ; since it were a contradiction in terms to affirm , that Divine Inspiration produced the exact number of four Gospels by chance . It is somewhat remarkable , that we read respecting the ' river which went out of Eden to water the garden / that " ' from thence it was parted , and became into four heads : ' * and it seems possible that the coincidence was not unintentional , which was noticed
b y an ancient father , that * there were / bwr Evangelists , four rivers of Paradise , four corners and four rings to the ark of the covenant ; 'f not that the first of these circumstances was the cause of the others , nor even that the others were provided to form types of the first , but that they all ovyed their origin to the same general principle;—that the same law regulating the descent of divine things into nature , governed the one circumstance as the others . Now , what could the rivers of Paradise represent , but the streams of
truth and wisdom which nourished the mind of man in his paradisiacal state ? And why were there four of them , but because that number expresses fulness and abundance ? for it is a number which is used in reference to the four quarters of the world , —the east , west , north , and south , —in connexion with which it is frequently mentioned in the Scriptures ; J and while each of these , singly , refers to some specific quality , the four together manifestly stand for the whole . So , if the four rivers of Paradise , together , were representative of the truth and wisdom , in all their fulness ana abundance , which , in the
primeval ages , animated and endowed the human mind , each of them must have been the symbol of some general class of these graces . What this is , is discoverable from the import , in the language of analogy , of the four quarters , from which the number four draws its signification of fulness . The east , being considered as the seat of the sun , represents much the same as the sun does , —a state of love , and of the illumination immediately proceeding from love in its highest intensity ; and the west is the same general state in a
lower degree : so the south is expressive of a state of intelligence , with its attendant charity , in the highest brightness ; and the north of the same as verging towards obscurity . Thus the east and west , and the south and north , are to each other , respectively , as the internal and external of one general principle . If the cardinal points did not bear , in the language of analogy which is that of the Word of God , some such meaning , would they be so frequently noticed in that word ; and this even in its prophecies and visions ?§
* Gen . ii . 10 . f Jerome , apud Lardner , Vol . XII . p . 82 , " X st As when John ' saw four angels standing on the four comers of the earth , holding the four winds of the earth , * Rev . vii , 1 . " § " Sec Ezekiel ' s vision of the New Temple , in ' the last nine chapters of ^ book , and John ' s of the New Jerusalem , Rev . xxi . For the general frequency with which the quartern are mentioned , see a Concordance /*
Untitled Article
Review . —Noble on the Inspiration of the Scriptures . 529
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 529, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/57/
-