THE CONTINUOUS SENSE

OF THE

SPEECHES AND EPISTLES OF S. PAUL.

INTRODUCTION.

§ I.

ual senses

Scripture.

and matter

§ I. HOLY SCRIPTURE has been the special gift of God from age to age for the guidance and edification of His people, The Literal to whom He has made known by His Spirit its hidden and Spiritwisdom, its manifold uses, its heavenly power. To the world of Holy also it has presented its solemn intelligible unfaltering warnings, whether men would hear or forbear.' Both as to its outward form and its inner significance the Divine volume stands apart, and is unlike all human literature. It has pleased God to preserve for the material of this The form Sacred Word the outlines of the carly traditions and gene- of Holy alogies of the world; to use extracts from the history of one Scripture. people, and the law which He gave them; to take psalms and songs and proverbs which had historical place in human life of old; and further, to inspire one nation's prophets, while speaking of the national prospects and hopes, with words reaching far beyond their own thoughts. By the Bible thus gradually given and marvellously preserved He Divinely teaches to all time, how the life of faith has been lived and must be lived by the righteous.

aspect.

But the Book which He thus condescends to seal Divinely Its primary for our perpetual use, is found, when we come to its pages, to have a natural structure of its own which no one can deny. Thus the language, the archæology, the textual sense, the

§ I.

The Divine use of human

representations of truth for human apprehension, all call for careful attention and examination. No part of Scripture can ever without irreverence be treated by us irrationally, or indeed without the most truthful and thoughtful use of all our powers. If it be but a genealogy, we must think as we read it, that it has consistency and dependence—that is, that it is true. If it be a psalm, it will be right to suppose for it an individual purpose, a meaning, a structure. If it assert itself as history, we must think that it has a real place in the life of mankind. If it appear as an epistle connected with persons and events, we shall not err in attributing to it some object intelligible to those who, at the time, received it.

Without question the natural sense of each portion of Scripture is as imperative, as the natural signification of materials. each sentence as a sentence, and each word as a word. The Divine wonder of the whole is that God has been pleased thus to take documents so various, and words so undefined, and make them the vehicles of His sure truth. Must we not say of this, as of the gift to the apostles, we have the treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us'?

ture is

given for

all men.

S. John

XX. 31.

If we are not on our guard, indeed, we may easily exaggerate and mis-state the importance of the natural and exegetical (and often difficult) reading of Scripture as a whole : How Scrip- for the Divine word is for all men who can have access to it; and this frequently implies in the nature of the case a fragmentary use of it, such as no human book would at all bear. Just as one evangelist tells us that the portion which he had written had a sufficiency in itself; so many an isolated passage may be, to some who read it, gifted by the Divine Spirit with moral life and power. If we open any part of the Ordinary Gloss, in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, or the Prophets, we thus see how saintly men have everywhere found doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.' But then we must remember that 'spiritual things are spiritually discerned.' They only who have the mind of

§ I.

iii. 16.

the Spirit' can thus read to profit; and the many must follow them, otherwise they will but wrest Scripture;' not having 2 S. Peter its natural sense which requires much attention and care, and missing its spiritual meaning by departing from the communion of the saints.

natural

Not unfrequently the two lines of meaning, the spiritual How the and the natural, are parallel and illustrate each other. Every and one for example who has read, in S. Jerome, first the literal spiritual meanings and then the spiritual interpretation of a Hebrew prophet, illustrate must have felt this. It is also apparent that the ascertainment of the natural and primary sense must check secondary interpretations when erroneous, by depriving them of all ground for authority.

It is the object of the following pages to attempt in some degree to do for S. Paul that which S. Jerome did for Isaiah and other prophets; and render the apostle's literal meaning, throughout, in the idiom if possible of our own times. Not without a deep sense of the difficulty as well. as the importance of the task, is this now undertaken. It may seem to many persons to be scarcely consistent with reverence to transfer into common words the stately sentences of so large a part of our New Testament: but every student of Scripture is aware that the phraseology of the English version of S. Paul has been so identified with teaching wholly foreign to the mind of the apostle, that, if we would really understand his meaning as a whole, we are all in our own way obliged to transpose his sentences from that which has become a dialect into the more usual language of human life.

§ II. The plan however, as well as the object, of the following pages may here need explanation.

Aiming to substitute ideas for mere words, in a part of Holy Scripture where our English words have often been disastrously perverted, we may excite in some the fear that the verbal inspiration of that which has been given by the Holy Spirit may be interfered with. Yet no one seriously

each other.

Object of the present continuous sense' of

S. Paul.

§ II.

The inspi

ration of Scripture

maintains among us the infallibility of translations. If, when the true scope of any passage is known, it becomes easier at once to use aright its original words, the present ascertainis not inter- ment of the real sense of S. Paul will assist and cannot fered with. impede a true appreciation of his language.

Nor its

spiritual reading.

Objections to the

plan of

Nor ought there to be any fear that the mystical, spiritual, and devotional uses will be in any way diminished to those who plainly understand any Scripture. The fathers of the Church while interpreting in various ways have not, like the Jewish Midrash, denied the fixed historical meaning. The philosophy of spiritual interpretation seems to be simply this; that the heavenly Truth itself lives in the heart of the saints, by the grace of the Holy Spirit; the letter of Scripture, as God has ordered it, infolding truth within itself, the saints read this through the veil.' To know the letter with certainty will bring however this further relief to faithful hearts; they will be delivered from much vexatious Scripture-quoting which is not Scripture,' and so be left to undisturbed meditations on Divine things, as led by the Spirit.

But it may still be anxiously and naturally enquired by some, whether the end now proposed may not be sufficiently continuous attained without adopting a method which to many will considered. appear to give a secular air to Holy Scripture? whether we

sense,' to be

No Retranslation

the object

desired.

cannot secure the sense without re-casting those sentences of St. Paul to which our ear is so accustomed? Could it not be effected by giving a purer text and closer translation, or, at most, by a remoulding of some phrases? This needs a reply.

First, then, to any who are acquainted with our sacred could effet literature, it seems impossible to hope for future discoveries, or quoad hoc any more exact scholarship, which might affect in a material or noticeable degree the Text of the New Testament. Let any one look at what has been done, from the Critici Sacri (especially Grotius) and Bengel, down to the critics of our own day, represented in such works as the

Bishop of Lincoln's, and the Bishop of Gloucester's, or those of the Dean of Westminster, the Master of the Temple, the Regius Professor of Greek, Professor Lightfoot, and others: and he cannot be sanguine either as to much further elucidation of the Text itself, or exacter English rendering of the words.

§ II.

remain in

To speak plainly, there is really little place in any respect for new translation. For pious uses, the present has been commonly sufficient; for further historical significance, all mere word-rendering seems to have become hopeless; the evil to be remedied being so wide and so deeply seated. It And to is even humiliating to state our case. We possess the our present authentic words of St. Paul, we know their grammatical position force, and we cannot agree as to his sense. Every one feels creditable. how eminently unsatisfactory this is. It is depressing to the theologian and a scoff for the infidel, to see different sects go on quoting verses, for or against supposed dogmas, without any hope of a conclusion. The method itself must be changed, if any certainty is to be reached.

is not

for-word

And let us ask, whether it was ever quite reasonable to suppose that mere word-for-word translation of epistlesseparate documents written 1800 years ago-could make the generality understand or feel what the writer of them wished to convey? The truth is, that it would often be nearly useless, unless accompanied by some tradition. Would people in this age and country, by a word-for-word rendering, get the original spirit and sense of any writing of remote days? And Inadequacy what if a hundred of the words and phrases of any such of wordwork had been appropriated by various ardent parties, and rendering. been the recognized bulwarks of cherished opinions? And what, still further, if the original to be verbally construed were that of an inspired oriental, with which the nineteenth century in England was expected to sympathize? Surely word-for-word,' in its very exactness, would be then at times as misleading as the work of a mere copyist of some unknown ancient characters, who should give with precision every flourish of a letter, or the mark of every erasure, or after-touch.