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in pait to the character of Sender , to its virtues and its faults . He was too impatient to submit to the ts delay and labour of the file ; " too ardent a lover of truth to keep it back from the world , till he could present it in the form best calculated to attract
admiration to himself , and connect his own name with his discoveries . We trust that no one will think that we derogate from the respect due to the talents of Dr . Priestley , when we compare him with Seraier , in this neglect of the polish of his writings and indifference to merely literary reputation . Had he
published fewer works , had his pen been tess prompt , wherever error was to be attacked or truth defended , he would have retained a higher permanent rank as an author , but never could have given that powerful impulse to the public mind in his life-time which his unwearied activity and constant readiness for exertion enabled
him to produce : and no doubt if the option had been formally presented to him , of incurring the charge of incorrectness , or limiting and delaying the usefulness of his works , while he brought their style and arrangement nearer to perfection , he would have chosen the former part of the alternative with a cheerful sacrifice of fame
to duty . We shall now proceed to speak of Sender ' s works under the heads of Exegesis , Criticism , Ecclesiastical History and Dogmatic Theology , abridging what Eichhorn has said on these subjects in the article referred to in a former number .
As an expositor of Scripture , Semler was the first among the Germans who perceived , in its full extent , the importance of interpreting it historically , i . e . according to the sentiments and circumstances in which the authors
were placed , the phraseology current in that age and the ideas attached to it . Before him the New Testament had been expounded , as if its authors had attached the same meanings to words , as we do in the present age . It is not meant , that preceding expositors had been so blind , as not to advert at all to the circumstances
under which the different books of the New Testament had been written ^ but none of them had carried this principle far enough , none had perceived that the dress is often Jewish when
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the ideas are Christian , and that consequently the expression of them must be completely changed ^ in order to convey their real and essential meaning in a modern language . Semler himself only gradually became sensible of the extent to which this principle must
be applied ; in the two first of his paraphrases , that on the Epistle to the Romans ( 1769 ) and the first Epistle to the Corinthians , ( 1770 , ) it is timidly and partially employed—in that on the Gospel of John , ( 1771 . ) it is first
applied in its just extent . It was thus that he gave to aU the language respecting demoniacs in the New Testament , the explanation of a Jewish mode of speaking respecting a natural disorder—an innovation so bold that
even Ernesti , although he favoured many of Semler ' s opinions , wrote against it . It may easily be judged to what important doctrinal results this principle would lead , in the hands of one so acute and ardent as Semler .
Of philological knowledge he possessed an adequate , but not an extraordinary share ; not more of Hebrew than was necessary to understand its influence upon the style of the New Testament ; and the grammatical part of his notes is the least original and least valuable : what relates to history and antiquities
is much more so . He always retained a fondness ( derived from the English expositors ) for the method of paraphrase , which is unfavourable to accurate grammatical interpretation , by the liberty of diffusion and interpolation which it gives . Semler * s style was little calculated for the removal
of those faults which are most inherent in this mode of exposition . In all that Semler has written on the New Testament , we find him bringing forward an hypothesis of his own ,
respecting the early division of the Christian church into two great schools or parties , of which the Apostles Peter and Paul were respectively the heads , and which continued to exist till the
time when the present canon of the New Testament was formed . He thought that the origin of these two schools might be traced to the different modes of preaching which our Saviour
himself adopted , according to the capacity for truth which he found in his hearers ; with the Jews speaking in Jewish phraseology , with the Hellenists using a freer and bolder tone ,
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136 Biographical Sketch o / J . S . Semler .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1821, page 136, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2498/page/8/
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