x.]

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA.

165

and, being quickened, shall live again.

Other passages,

directing to eat bread with a merry heart, &c., plainly refer to the use of the Sacraments.

I take a few other examples from a collection of answers to heathen objections made by a Greek disciple and admirer of Origen, from whom these answers were derived.* The objection is: 'No Christian now has faith, even as much as a grain of mustard seed; for not one is able to say to a mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea.' Answer.'Mountain here does not mean a literal mountain, but a devil, as in Jer. li. 25: "Behold I am against thee, O destroying mountain, which destroyest all the earth." He does not say, if thou shalt say to a mountain, but unto this mountain, namely, the devil, which had been just cast out.' This was one of the Eastern comments imported by Ambrose (in Ps. xxxvi. 35). So, again, the heathen objects to the credibility of Paul's statement that we shall be caught up in the clouds. The apologist explains that clouds' does not mean literal clouds, but angels, as in the texts, 'I will charge the clouds that they rain no rain upon it,' or 'Clouds and darkness are round about Him.' Once more, the heathen objects that the agony in the garden shows our Lord to have been weaker in courage than many men have proved themselves in like circumstances. The apologist answers, that our Lord's display of weakness was made only to lure the devil on to the last assault, in which his power would be broken for ever. The devil had been holding back, suspecting our Lord's divinity. Our Lord, therefore, not really wishing that His cup might pass, but that He might drink it as soon as possible, enticed the devil on, and caught him by baiting the hook of His divinity with the worm of His humanity; and this is the meaning of the verse, Psalm xxii. 6, 'I am a worm, and no man.' This interpretation is certainly Origen's; and I need not give other examples to show why, with every admiration for the ability and ingenuity of Fathers of this school, we think it better to do without, their help in the interpretation of Scripture, believing that, as Lord Bacon

* Macarius Magnes, Apocritica.

says, a lame man on the right road will come to his journey's end sooner than the fleetest runner on a wrong one.' Thus, there are thirty-five books of Gregory the Great's Commentary on Job. They may be very valuable to anyone who cares to know what were the opinions of Gregory upon various subjects, but to a person anxious to know the meaning of the Book of Job they are absolutely worthless. I own, however, I look with some envy on those who can adopt these principles of interpretation; for it is immensely more easy for an ingenious man to write sermons if he uses a principle of interpretation which will enable a preacher to get any doctrine out of any

text.

The founder of a healthier system of interpretation is said to have been Diodorus of Tarsus; but scarcely anything of his remains; and it is Theodore of Mopsuestia whom we have the means of knowing as the initiator of the literal school of interpretation. I do not say he had not predecessors. Besides his master Diodorus, Lucian the Martyr is said to have been one. But Theodore wrote a special treatise against Origen and the Allegorists, and founded a school of interpretation to which belonged some of the greatest ornaments of the Syrian Church. His principle was to look carefully to the context, and to the circumstances of the sacred writer; consequently he interprets passages of David, or Solomon, or Hezekiah, which his predecessors had understood of Christ. You may imagine, therefore, that his system had much violent opposition to encounter; and it may very possibly be true that Theodore, in his reaction against the allegorizers, went into the other extreme, and insisted too mechanically on his rule that, if one part of a passage related to a contemporary person, a spiritual explanation must not be given to any other part; or that, if there was any one verse in a Psalm which was not applicable to Christ, none of it could be so. However this may be, it is the commentators of this school who have produced the only exegetical works which a modern student can read continuously with pleasure and profit. Great part, for instance, of Chrysostom's Homilies have not been superseded as intelligent and successful attempts to bring out the true meaning of the author

x.]

DANGERS OF ALLEGORICAL METHOD.

167

on whom he comments. This is far indeed from being Cardinal Newman's opinion, and the language in which he expresses his aversion to the Syrian school of exegesis is strong enough to meet the demerits of any heresy.* He traces Arianism to the influence of the methods of Lucian, already mentioned, though it is certain that Diodorus was free from any Arian taint. But it cannot be denied that the leading Nestorians were disciples of Theodore. It will be useful for you to bear in memory that Nestorianism is a Syrian, as Eutychianism is an Alexandrian heresy. The rationalizing tendencies of the Syrian school harmonize with the Nestorian accentuation of the human nature of our Lord. Independently of this, from the nature of the case, the Syrian interpreters, being obliged to reject a multitude of explanations that had been long current and had the support of venerable names, were on the side of human reason against traditional authority; and so we can understand Newman's antipathy to those who were the Protestants of their day.

It is not my purpose to trace at length the history of mediæval interpretation. Origen had counted three senses of Scripture the literal, the moral, and the mystical-which he compared to the trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit in the nature of man. In the middle ages these three had increased to four-the literal, the moral, the allegorical, and the anagogical-this last being appropriated to those allegorical explanations which relate to the future state. Thus, according to an example commonly given, the Sabbath, according to the moral sense, would mean a resting from sin; according to the allegorical, the rest of our Lord in the grave; and, according to the anagogical, the future rest in the kingdom of God. These were summed up in the memorial lines

'Littera gesta docet; quid credas allegoria;

Moralis quid agas; quo tendis anagogia.'

In truth, the latter three senses are but subdivisions of what we should simply describe as allegorical, without feeling any need of subdivision.

See the passage in the essay On Development, already referred to; and Arians of the Fourth Century, chap. i., and Appendix.

But my main object now is to point out the necessity of extreme caution in the use of the allegorical method. If this be relied on as singly sufficient to prove a doctrine of which no other valid proof can be found, then tradition really becomes the mistress of Scripture; for then, though we profess to deduce our doctrine from Scripture, we really bring it into it first, according to the lines

Hic liber est in quo quærit sua dogmata quisque,

Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua.'

Roman Catholic controversialists have called the Bible a nose of wax, which any man can twist as he pleases. This is true if you adopt the allegorical method of interpretation; or rather then, if it had been a nose of iron, it would make no difference, so powerful is the wrenching instrument employed. Origen's Commentary on St. John contains copious extracts from the previous commentary by the Valentinian Heracleon; for it is curious that the earliest known continuous commentary on a New Testament book is by this heretic. And Heracleon, who was evidently a disciple of the same school of allegorical interpretation, has no difficulty in finding Valentinianism in St. John's Gospel, by interpretations which seem to me not a whit more forced or unnatural than many which are used by Origen himself to deduce orthodox doctrine.

I am not now lecturing on the interpretation of Scripture, and therefore cannot enter into some discussions which would properly come before us if this were my main subject. But I have thought it necessary to say something about different schools of interpretation, because the question we have been discussing between Scripture and tradition becomes practically unimportant if allegorical interpretation be freely employed. When this method is used, a proof may pretend to be derived from Scripture alone; but, in real truth, tradition is the foundation of the fabric.

DOES THE CHURCH OF ROME BELIEVE IN

I

HER OWN INFALLIBILITY?

HAVE, in previous Lectures, sufficiently discussed the abstract question, whether God has provided for us any infallible guidance; and I consider that I have shown that there is not the least reason to think that with respect to religious truth God has dealt with us in a manner contrary to all His other dealings with us, by giving us such secure, never-failing means of arriving at knowledge as shall relieve us from the trouble of search and inquiry, and shall make error impossible. I propose now to lay before you such evidence as will show that, whether there be anywhere an infallible Church or not, the Church of Rome certainly is not.

You may, perhaps, think that this is a little waste of time; for, if no Church be infallible, it follows at once that the Church of Rome is not. It is true that, in the present controversy, I constantly feel tempted to give points to our opponents. In the attempt to establish their case, they make so many false assumptions, that, if we make them a present of one, they are under no less difficulty when they come to the next step in the argument. But it is not as a mere matter of generosity that I refrain from pressing to the utmost the victory we have gained on the abstract question. Men are not influenced by mere logic: they will easily believe what they wish to believe, whether there be logical proof of it or not.

Accordingly, you will seldom find in Romish books of controversy any of that discussion which has occupied us so long, and which really concerns the fundamental point in the