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    allegorical application , " * is of little importance to the present inquiry ; the question is , did St . Paul impute to the author of the history a design that his words should express the relation between Judaism and Christianity , or did he merely avail himself of the resemblance to argue on their own principles with those who extolled the law and depreciated the gospel ? It is difficult , we think , to read together the history and the application of it , and

    to believe that the author of the book of Genesis meant any thing more than to declare an historical fact , or the apostle to attribute to him a meaning , of which his narrative affords not the remotest hint . To modern readers it may seem that there would be no force or propriety in the mention of this passage of the Old Testament , unless the author were supposed distinctly to have intended the use to which it is applied ; but the whole practice of quotation and allusion to Scripture in this age shews , that a felicitous application carried with it its own evidence , and that strict adherence to the

    connexion and primary meaning was by no means considered as an essential circumstance . Both Mr . Conybeare and Mr . Chevallier insist upon the symbolical actions used by the prophets as presumptions in favour of the secondary sense of Scripture . " Few will be disposed to question the fact , that the use of figurative expression and action pervades nearly the whole of the prophetic writings . Doubts may indeed , in some cases , be raised , as to the precise objects

    shadowed out under such mystical imagery , but all must be convinced that the marriage of Hosea , the walking naked and barefoot of Isaiah , the linen girdle , the potter ' s vessel , the good and evil iigs , and the bond and yoke of Jeremiah , and the splendid and lengthened visions of Ezekiel and Daniel , were all in their several kinds symbolical and typical , and that the frequency of these representations shews them to have been addressed to a people habituated to and readily capable of apprehending such vehicles of instruction and warning . "—Bampton Lectures , p . 20 .

    To the . same purport Mr . Chevallier , pp . 25—31 , who alleges from the New Testament Agabus binding his hands with Paul ' s girdle , and the vision of Peter , But here again the reader will easity perceive a complete failure in the analogy , rendering all these instances irrelevant . These are not part of the ordinary actions of the prophet's life , at once connected with the other events of it , as cause and effect , and also in a spiritual and secondary sense conveying moral instruction or warning ; they are actions expressly

    commanded for the avowed purpose of instruction , such as the prophet would never have performed , except with such a view , and which , indeed , if not announced as symbolical , might reasonably have subjected him to the imputation of an unsound mind . What analogy is there between such actions and the events in which interpreters of the Old Testament find adumbrations

    of the Messiah ' s kingdom ; events neither brought about by any command to g ive a symbolical exhibition , nor declared by those who engaged in them to have any such signification , but standing in a simple and natural relation to their feelings , motives , and circumstances ? It is said , however , that we have the authority of the writers of the Old Testament themselves for the existence of a secondary sense .

    * The passages quoted by Wetstein , on Gal . iv . 24 , shew that uXXqyopeTo-drai may equally mean to be applied in an allegorical sense , and to be employed in such a sense . Thus the hieroglyphic characters are said by Porphyry to be d ^ rjyopovfA . £ ya , kotoL rtv < x <; dmy [ ju > v <; , " used in a figurative or symbolical sense . " Luther ' s rcu-r tiering is curious : Diese bedenten etwas , " These things have a meaning . "

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    Reomv . — llie Bampton and Hulsean Lecturek . 37

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1828, page 37, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2556/page/37/