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    reall y * though it may be apparently , different . The words employed are confessedly capable of two meanings , and the skill of the author is shewn in keeping up both together ; but of these two meanings , owe , and one onlfi is in every case intended to be understood . An unskilful writer may not distinctly mark which is his real meaning ; a dull reader may misunderstand him , though he has marked it ever so clearly ; but in the sense in which we have

    explained the word , he has no more a double meaning than the algebraist , in whose formula the letters of the alphabet have by chance been arranged into a significant word . When the thistle sends a message to the cedar , or the wolf holds a dialogue with the lamb , the impossibility of literal truth guides us at once to the moral meaning ; where the facts related are possible , we may waver for a while , but we soon decide for the one meaning or the other . When Nathan related to David the outrage of the rich man , the

    king did not at first perceive his drift , and , taking his words literally , was preparing to inflict vengeance on the oppressor ; but no sooner had the prophet disclosed his real meaning by the words , " Thou art the man , " than the purpose of punishment gave way to humiliation and remorse . All thought of literal truth was at an end , the moment the allegorical import was perceived . The fact might have been true , and the prophet , instead of inventing , might only have related it to the king , drawing from it the same lesson as before ; but in this case it would have been an abuse of words to

    have called it an allegory . A matter-of-fact allegory is a combination just as incongruous as Chillingworth ' s secret tradition and silent thunder . The truth is , that those who introduced the notion that the historical parts of Scripture were allegorical , did it to get rid of the literal meaning , and this , though an ignorant and unwarrantable proceeding , furnished at l ^ ast an intelligible result : while our modern theologians , unwilling to give up a

    term which use has consecrated , are obliged to confound things essentially different , in order to maintain the co-existence of the historical and allegorieal meaning . Bishop Marsh , who has treated this subject with a clearness of which we should have been glad to find more in Mr . Conybeare ' s book , ( Lectures XVII . XVIII ., ) might have preserved a successor from falling into an error , sufficiently obvious , even if it had not been pointed out .

    The word aXhv } yopoviA . £ va , does indeed occur in the Epistles of Paul , ( Gal . iv . 24 , ) and it may be worthy the attention of those-who lay so great stress on this mode of interpretation , that the substantive never occurs in the New Testament , the verbal form only in this place , and that in an argument with the zealots for the law : see ver . 21 . Now , we suppose no one Will attribute to the apostle the design of saying , that this part of Scripture does not contain a real narrative , and therefore the word which he has used cannot bear

    the same meaning which its derivative does in our own language . Bishop Marsh , in the work before referred to , ( p . 92 , ) remarks on the inaccuracy of our Common Version , " which things are an allegory , " and says that the apostle means to represent himself as allegorizing the history , or treating it in the same manner as we treat an allegory . This interpretation has been given also by other commentators ; but when the Bishop adds , that " St . Paul ,

    comparing the sons of Abraham with the two covenants , did nothing more than represent the first as types , and the latter as their antitypes , " he affords an example of that propensity of critics to put their own ideas into the words of the sacred writers , which has been one of the greatest obstacles to the correct understanding of Scripture . Whether the words should be rendered , if these things are allegorized , " i . e . by me , or , " these things have an

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    06 Review . —' The Bampton and Hulsean Lectures .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1828, page 36, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2556/page/36/