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    the writers of the New Testament , and our Lord himself , cite passages from the Jewish-Scriptures , they are not to be considered as intending to represent them as prophecies of the events to which they are applied , but merely as using language which is very suitable and . appropriate to these events , or which might have been employed in predicting them ; yet the cases are

    perhaps not less numerous which cannot readily be explained in this manner . And to suppose , with respect to such instances as these , that they are not in fact predictions of the approaching advent of the Messiah , arid the introduction of a new and better dispensation , is to suppose that the apostles and evangelists , and even the Saviour himself , actually misunderstood the true grounds of the doctrine which they preached , and supported

    it in their controversies with the unbelieving Jews by false and inconclusive arguments . It is scarcely necessary to say , that such a supposition as this cannot be admitted . But , on the other hand , the difficulty is , that many of these passages occur in such close connexion with others , which undeniably relate to the state of the Jews at that period , that it is by no

    means easy to separate them , or to admit the application of the prophecies which they appear to have been supposed to contain by the writers of the New Testament , without having recourse to some principle of interpretation which it is thought cannot be allowed . Such a principle is that of what are called double senses ; proceeding on the supposition that the prophet had not simply one event in his view , but that his predictions were

    really meant to refer to two distinct cases ; first , to an event near at hand in the history of the Jewish nation ; and then , to the appearance , death , or resurrection of our Saviour , or perhaps to the rapid spread and diffusion of his religion , or to some other comparatively remote circumstance in the history of the Jewish or Christian dispensation , to which the first subject of prophecy bore in some respects an analogy . Others , again , have thought

    that the prophecies related in the first instance to circumstances shortly afterwards occurring in the history of those times , and that these circumstances themselves were to be regarded as the type or representative of other more distant events ; nay , they have sometimes gone so far as to consider the whole history of the Jews as having a sort of figurative or mystical reference to the gospel dispensation ; as being , if I may say so , the image or shadow of greater and more glorious things to come .

    It is difficult to give a very distinct account of a doctrine which is perhaps to be ascribed rather to a lively fancy than to serious and sober inquiry . At least there can be little doubt that many who have given into this scheme have been led astray by an overheated or too lively imagination to such a

    degree as to derive from the prophetical writings a variety of mystical notions , and strange , absurd doctrines , of which the writers themselves , it is more than probable , never heard . And yet there seems to be a certain modified form in which the notion of double senses can scarcely be rejected as altogether irrational . It is universally admitted that the successive die-

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    Hemarks on the Citations from the Old T&tametit . 701

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    VOL . V . 3 E

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 701, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/49/