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where considers them lx > th as existing , one for the unrefined multitude , the other for those whose minds had been purified and exalted by philosophy . The spirit of his interpretation of the'Mosaic history will be befct urideTrsfood by an extract from this part of Mr , Gonybeare ' s work * " While he allows that the history of Abraham exhibits in its literal acceptation the example of a man wise and dear to his Creator , he sees in the outward circumstances of that history the progress of the human mind from a state of darkness and error to one of intellectual and spiritual illumination .
Chaldea is the region of vain and earthly imaginations , of astrology , idolatry , and false philosophy . Haran is the type of the sensible and material universe , of the creature with whose elements alone the unenlightened man is conversant . , The handmaid Agar shadows out that discipline of the iniud in the study of the liberal arts and sciences which is a prerequisite for the attainment of the highest and onl y true wisdom . She is termed an Egyptian , because the body ( of which Egypt is the symbol ) is needful for the acquisition of this elementary knowledge ; and , lastly , she is subordinate to , and in time to be supplanted by , the real and legitimate partner of such a mind , the perception of things purelv intellectual , and of their eternal author ,
figured in the person of Sarah , whose name he interprets to signify , my superior , or ruling principle ( d pxn pov ) . In Isaac , Philo discerns the type of a mind ranking yet more highly in the scale of spiritual and intellectual excellence ; a mind possessing intuitively , as it were , and by the immediate gift of its author , the supreme wisdom ; not a denizen of the fleshly Egypt , not seeking for previous instruction from the handmaid and the slave , from human erudition and accomplishments , but choosing one virgin partner , the
heavenly and spiritual Rebecca , a patient continuance m the truth ( wtto / xojoji /) . In like manner the wives of the other patriarchs are declared to be severally typical of some good quality of the heart or understanding . The life of the patriarch Jacob , like that of Abraham , is regarded as symbolical of the progress of human intellect from the earthly andvisible things to the heavenly and invisible . The well of Haran is the fountain of science . To the vision
of the ascending and descending angels a yet more remarkable interpretation is affixed . The ladder is the region of the air interposed between our own globe and the lunar sphere ; a region peopled through all its extent by intellectual and incorporeal essences , some of whom are continually descending for the purpose of animating the bodies of men , others , having quitted those bodies , are returning to their aerial mansion , destined either to make this their sole and endless dwelling-place , or to return to the prison of the
body , according to their respective degrees of purity and advancement in the love and knowledge of spiritual things . It is needless to add , that this is precisel y the doctrine of the Platonic school as to the pre-existence and descent of the human soul . ' ?—Pp . 56—69 . Mr . Conybeare very candidly admits that the passages of Philo's writings , to which some ( especially the late Jacob Bryant ) have appealed , to prove that he had attained to some notion of the mediatorial office of Christ , are too obscure to warrant such a conclusion , and that Philo ' s notion of a Messiah
was like that of his countrymen generally , the notion of an earthly and temporal deliverer . We have , therefore , reached the sera of the gospel , without having found , either in the Scriptures of the Old Testament themselves , or in the Apocryphal books , or in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews , a single example of a typical or secondary application , in the sense in which those phrases are commonly used ; that is , any example of words understood as primarily referring to subordinate events and persons , and at the same time to the Messiah and the events of his kingdom , and only among the Platonizing philosophers have we found a doubnk sense of any kind attributed to the words of Scripture ,
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Review . - * - The Bampton and Huhean Lecturer . 113
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 113, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/41/
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