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chapter of the same book he supposes to be a prediction of Cyrus . These notes gave great offence both to Protestants and Catholics , and the work was condemned in the Expurgatory Indexes of Quiroga and Sottomaior . Yet Protestants and Catholics of great eminence have since adppted the very same principles of interpretation . Grotius " maintained that the predictions even of the Evangelical Prophet Isaiah , related , in their primary and literal sense , to the times and circumstances of the Jewish people , but that they respected the Messiah in a secondary and allegorical sense . " Simon advocated the same opinion : but Father Ballus , the Jesuit , in his " IieTense des Proph&ies de la Religion Chr £ tienne , " denounces this as " a Socinian mode of expounding the prophecies , " We are nevertheless indebted to Dr . Benson , a learned Unitarian writer of the last century , for one of the ablest treatises ever published on the other side of the question . After replying to all the arguments alleged in favour of a double sense , Dr . B . conies to the
conclusion , that ** no text of Scripture has more than one meaning ; " and , what is perhaps still more remarkable , Dr . J . P . Smith , the highest authority among
the English Calvinists of the present day , adopts that very principle of interpretation which Calvin himself alleged as one of the greatest aggravations of Servetus ' s offence against orthodoxy . ' Notum est , Calvinum in accusando Serveto hsec quoque Biblia , imprimis ad notation em ad caput quinquagesimum tertium Esaiae , crinoini ipsi dedisse . " ( AJlwoerden Historia Mich . Serveti , p . 167 . ) The following is the passage to which allusion is here made . " Quis credidit auditui nostro * &c . Incredibilis res de Cyro , et
magnum etiam mysterium , quod sub humilibus historiae typis lateant Christi arcana sublimia . Ibidem . Vulneratus est propter prevaricationes nostras Quasi exigentibus populi peccatis interfectum Cyrum deflet Propheta , eo quod postea sub Cambyse multo detenus habuerint , impedita tune et dtruta Templi sedificatione jam inchoata , Daniel ix . Fuitqtie hcec a Deo data oceasio prsedicandi passionem Chbisti cui soli convenit riorum -verborum sublimitas et veritas . " Calvin is said to have uttered the most bitter reproaches against Servetus , when on his trial , for having been the author of these
annotations ; but whether the disposition to honour the Saviour is not quite as conspicuous here , as in the following remarks of Dr . J . P . Smith , upon
another passage , ( Is . vii . 14 , ) in the writings of the same prophet , let the candid reader judge : *• It appears to me that the passage can be proved to be a prophecy of the Messiah iu no other than a remote or typical sense , and that no argument can be drawn from the words or context , capable of determining whether Emmanuel was designed to be a descriptive title , and therefore declaratory of the union of the divine nature with the human , or a commemorative name to express and celebrate the fact of the divine interposition for the salvation of mankind . " " It seems to be as clear as words can make
it , that the son promised was bom within a year after the giving of tbe prediction ; that his being so born at the assigned period was the * sign or pledge that the political deliverance announced to Ahaz should certainly take place ; and that such deliverance would arrive before this child sh ould have reached the age in which children are commonly able to discriminate the kinds of food . " " This passage comes under the class of prophetic testimonies which had a primary but inferior and partial reference to some proximate person or event , but had another and a designed reference to some tempter circumstance , which , when it occurred , would be the real fulfilment , answering every feature , aad filling up the entire extent of the original d £ - lmeation . " ;
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Biographical Notices of Eminent Continental Unitarians . 331
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 331, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/43/
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