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In the commencement of his third Lecture Mr ; Conybean ? touches very briefly on the use of secondary interpretation by our Lord and his apostles . As the whole authority of the practice must be derived from the use of it , we should have been glad to have found something more satisfactory than an assertion , that only the " most determined prejudice can doubt that they 60 affix a secondary and spiritual meaning to the Scriptures of the Old
Testament . " P . 78 . The truth is , that the phrases secondary interpretation 9 double sense , &c , are wholly unknown to the writers of the New Testament , and though the spirit and the letter are opposed to one another , it is not necessary for us to shew that these expressions have no reference to what theologians call the spiritual sense of the Old Testament , The writers of the New Testament , when they quote passages from the Old , applying them in a manner very remote from the sense which their original
Connexion indicates to belong to them , never intimate that they supposed them to have a double , a primary , and a secondary meaning ; they allege them as if the meaning which they attribute to them were the only one which they bore ; and it is only an hypothesis of theologians that they knew of the existence of any other . Our Lord himself makes a very rare use of the argument from prophecy in support of his own claims , resting the proofs of his mission on the works which the power of the Father enabled
him to do ; he refers in general terms to the testimony which Moses , David , and the prophets bore to the Messiah ( Luke xxiv . 27 , 44 ) ; but we do not recollect a single passage in which he appeals , in proof of his divine authority , to a prophecy of the Old Testament , which , when examined with its context , appears to have no reference , or only a supposed secondary one , to the Messiah . In regard to the Evangelists the case is different , and the wide diversity of the sense in which they apply passages in the Old
Testament , especially in the Psalms and Prophets , to Christ , from that which they evidently bear , in their original connexion , has long since led critics to suppose either a double meaning in the original , or an accommodation , resembling that of modern quotations of the classics , and not implying the belief of any real prophecy in the words . The bolder criticism of a still later period has suggested , that the Evangelists themselves understood ajid
applied the Old Testament , like their contemporaries , according to the sound of detached passages , rather than the real meaning , and were equally remote from the knowledge of a double sense , and an intention to accom ^ modate Scripture to any purpose to which they did not believe it originally applicable . Mr . Conybeare is unable to dispense entirely with the system of accommodation , but he admits it reluctantly , and even thinks it the part
of Christian humility and sober criticism rather to suspend the judgment , as to the passages which present difficulties , than to attempt to reconcile or account for them by this hypothesis . P « 80 . Passing to the apostolical fathers , Mr . Conybeare observes , that in the first Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians , there is little of mystical applircation of Scripture , while the Epistle of Barnabas abounds in them , and the author of the Clementine homilies adopts the principle of Philo , that many things in the Old Testament are derogatory to the power of God if literally
wnderslond . and therefore must receive an anWorical iateraretation . Justin understood , and therefore must receive an allegorical interpretation . Justin is both careless in his quotations and fanciful in his ^ xpoeifcions , but . does not indulge in that bold denial of 4 he literal meaning which cbaraaterieed ihe jMexafu&rian school ) . Irenseus , too , luxuriates in typical expositions , in which an instructed Christian of the present < day * ill hardly follow him , and in one passage , where he applies the sppiliflgof the Egyptians asan anmio-
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114 Reqiew . L —The Bwwton and Hvlsean ectures :
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 114, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/42/
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