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cannot be imputed to the intellectual habits of the authors , men distinguished for scientific attainments , must excite a suspicion that there is something unsound in the whole foundation of their system . In the opinion of the great majority of Christians , the Bible is distinguished from all or most other books , by the circumstance that its words
have often a double meaning—one , immediate , in reference to the persons and things to which they are applied by those who use them ; another , secondary and remote , to other persons and things ; which being of higher dignity and importance , the secondary meaning is proportionally exalted in importance above the primary . The events of Jewish history , and the illustrious personages whose actions are recorded in the Old Testament , are supposed , besides the relation in whicli they stand to their Countrymen and contemporaries , to bear also a higher relation to the events of the Christian
dispensation , and to its great Founder—a relation expressed by their being types , shadows , adumbrations , &c , of the gospel and its author ; and the prophecies of the Old Testament , besides their fulfilment in events belonging to that dispensation and persons who lived under it , are thought to be , in a higher and more spiritual sense , fulfilled in the life , sufferings , resurrection , and exaltation of Christ . It is evident that the onus probandi rests entirely with those who maintain that the Bible is to be interpreted on principles so different from those by which other books are explained ; and we are now to attend to what the authors under review allege as proofs of their
system . Like most of those who , since Warburton , ( Div . Leg . B . iv . vi ., ) have written on this subject , Mr . Conybeare begins by representing the close affinity that exists between the supposed double sense of Scripture and the method of instruction by allegory , which was so prevalent in early times , and which was itself a natural result of the predominance of sensible imagery in the rude language and imperfect symbols of those ages .
" The wisdom and theology of the Egyptians , to whose customs the Israelites had been so long inured , appear from the remotest antiquity to which we can trace them , to have been involved in figurative and mystical representations . The whole hieroglyphic system must have been little else than a tissue of metaphor and allegory addressed to the eye instead of the ear . These considerations might well lead us to suspect that even they whom we regard as having needlessly and fancifully assumed or exaggerated the mystical sense of many parts of the Mosaic record , are at least not more unphi ' - losophical than they who utterly proscribe every interpretation of the kind . " —P . 15 . We cannot but wonder how the very obvious circumstance has been
overlooked , that the facts here mentioned are wholly defective as analogies to the double sense of Scripture . In regard to figurative language and hieroglyphical symbols , the case is clear ; though their meaning may be difficult to find , it is as strictly one in itself , as that of the simplest phrase or the plainest historical picture . The meaning of an author is not what his words or any other symbols of his ideas may possibl y express , but what he designs they should express , and the obscurest inscription of Egypt has in this view no more a double sense than an ordinary alphabetical sentence .
We may be at a loss to know whether the sun , the globe , apd the beetle , stand for these objects themselves , or certain ideas of which they are the symbolical types ; but if in the same combination they stood for both , instead of a double meaning , there would be none at all . In allegory the case is not
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Review . - ~ The Bdmpton and Huhean Lectures . 35
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1828, page 35, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2556/page/35/
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