the collation of a number of such passages, the commentator supposed that he arrived at the second, or hidden, meaning of which the Word is capable, in addition to the primary one which appears on the surface, and which is plain and obvious to any understanding. Thus, they held the Bible to be an occultation,75 as well as a revelation; it was not given merely for the insipid purpose of teaching a few truths, of easy comprehension, to simple and unlearned persons; but also for one much more congenial to the pride of philosophy. Besides these ordinary senses, the words of Holy Writ contained also the mysterious and recondite truths of a sublimer system, wrapt up in them, as in dark sayings and enigmas: and the same text of Scripture, which only confirmed the faith, assured the hope, and kindled the love, of the common Christian, the professor of philosophical Christianism cast into the alembick of his philology, subjected to many a strange and uncouth process, resolved into its primary elements, and at length pointed out, with an air of triumph, amid the dense fumes which enveloped it, the subtle drop of true gnostical wisdom that his art had elicited, often too subtle for perceptions less practised than his own.

We will endeavour to trace the error along one or two of its principal ramifications.

This system of interpreting afforded the facility, which was so eagerly taken advantage of at a very early period, of inoculating Christianity with heathen philosophy. The philosophical enquirer had only to assign to such words as νοὺς, ἔννοια, γνῶσις in the Sacred Writings, the senses in which they were accepted by the sect to which he belonged, and to accommodate the context, which, in a language so copious in meanings as the Greek, was seldom 75 See 5 Strom., § 5.

attended with much difficulty; and then the Bible taught the Platonic, or Aristotelean doctrines, according to the prepossession of the commentator.

We, for the present, pass by this part of the subject; and proceed to another branch of the error which is more pertinent to the matter in hand: the process by which the early fathers extracted these hidden meanings from the text of Scripture, by the aid of the aμpißoxía.

We have already mentioned the epistle of Barnabas, as the probable means of introducing this mode of comment into Christianity. This production has received less attention than the other writings of the apostolical fathers, because its authenticity is now generally doubted. The internal proofs of it are, notwithstanding, to the full as strong in this as in any of them. It was written very shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus,76 and is principally directed against the errors of the Judaising Christians, which that event would have a natural tendency to diffuse and aggravate. Its tone and temper is, I think, more becoming a hearer of the apostles, than any thing that is ascribed to the apostolical fathers, except the epistle of Polycarp. It is conceived in a meek and gentle spirit; in which the writings of Clement and Ignatius are very defective. Nor are the passages which evince the writer's experimental acquaintance with the peculiar doctrines of Christianity inferior, in point of piety, to those which have been collected from the cotemporary fathers, as we shall presently have the opportunity of showing.

As the objections to its authenticity principally hinge upon certain strange and absurd comments that occur in it, concerning which they assume the impossibility, that one so highly privileged and gifted as Barnabas, should

76 Cc. 4, 16., Ed. Ox.

have been their author, I, in the first place, refer to the unanswerable demonstration of Archbishop Wake," that such a mode of comment was in use among the cotemporary Jews. It may then subserve a double purpose, if I so arrange the instances of the außoxía which I propose to lay before the reader, as to demonstrate that the very passages in this epistle on which the objection is founded, are proved to be authentic by the circumstance, that they are quoted by an unbroken series of writers, down to the commencement of the third century; when they are expressly ascribed to St. Barnabas by Clemens Alexandrinus.78

We have before stated that with this father originated the amphibological meanings of the word úλov (Cross, tree, wood): and we have just seen that Ignatius has also copied him.

We will now give instances of the same interpretation from the fathers of the second century. Justin Martyr thus addresses Trypho the Jew:-" The tree (Eúxov) of the cross, after he had been crucified upon it, of whose glorious advent the prophets foretold, became a symbol of the tree (úλov) of life, which is planted in the paradise of God. Moses by a rod (páßdos shoot of a tree) accom

77 Ubi supra. Prelim. Disser. pp. 81-86.

78 Tertullian also mentions St. Barnabas as the author of an epistle; but the quotation he ascribes to him occurs in St. Paul's to the Hebrews. As there is, however, no other evidence to connect it with Barnabas, and as its author is satisfactorily demonstrated to have been St. Paul, it seems probable that this fiery and impetuous writer has confounded St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, or Jewish converts, with that of St. Barnabas to the Judaising Christians,—a mistake which this similarity would easily occasion. The probability is heightened by the circumstance that the quotation occurs in the tractate de Pudicitiâ, which is one of his most frenzied productions, written under the influence of a fierce exacerbation of the madness of Montanism.

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plished the deliverance of the children of Israel; with that rod he divided the Red Sea, and caused the water to flow from the rock. Casting a tree (úλov) into the bitter waters of Mara, he made them sweet.79 Jacob made his uncle's sheep conceive by casting rods (páßdor) into the water.00 The same Jacob boasts that with his rod he passed the river.81 He also anointed the stone in Luz with oil, to signify that Christ was anointed a king. The rod of Aaron, that budded, proclaimed Christ to be a priest : for he was the rod that was to spring out of the stem of Jesse, as Esaias says:83 and David speaks of him as the tree úλov planted by the rivers of water, which beareth its fruit in its season. 984 God appeared to Abraham from the tree (8); as it is written, from the oak in Mamre."85 The children of Israel, in passing through the wilderness, found seventy-two palm trees and twelve wells.86 David said that he was comforted by the rod and staff of God. Elisha cast wood (¿uλov) into the river Jordan, and raised the head of the axe, wherewith the children of the prophets were about to fell trees (λa) to build a house, that they might therein meditate on the law of God;88 and we also, sinking and being submersed in the waters of baptism, through the weight of our most heavy transgressions, are delivered by one Christ crucified upon the tree, (Euλs) who purifies us by water, and makes us a house of prayer and worship." It is impossible to withhold our admiration, at the familiarity of acquaintance with the sacred text which

84 Psa. i. 3. Barnabas makes the same comment on this passage, c. 11.

85 πρὸς τῇ δρυὶ τη Μαμβρῇ. Gen. xviii. 1. LXX.

86 Exod. xv. 27.

87 Psa. xxiii. 4.

88 2 Kings vi. 6.

89 Justini Opera, p. 312 D. et seq.

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this passage displays, however deeply we may regret the use to which the writer applies it.

That the obstinacy of the Jew was proof against such an appeal, will be matter of no surprise to us: but it was very differently estimated by his cotemporaries. Irenæus has deemed it worthy of introduction into an argument to prove, against the Marcionites, that the Creator of the world sent Jesus Christ. As he has made many variations and additions, we will also give his version of it :-" Christ destroyed the hand-writing that was against us and nailed it to his cross, that as by a tree we became debtors to God, by a tree also, our debt might be cancelled. This is plainly shown in many parts of Scripture, and especially by Elisha the prophet. When the prophets who were with him were felling wood to build a tabernacle, and the head of their awe fell into the river, and they could not find it, Elisha came to the place. And when he learnt what had happened, he threw a stick into the water, and the iron swam, and they took it from the surface. The prophet showed, by this miracle, that the word of God was sure: and that what we had lost by the tree of knowledge, nor could find, we should recover by the dispensation of the tree of the cross. For the word of God is like a hatchet. John Baptist says of it, and now the axe is laid to the root of the tree:' and Jeremiah in like manner, 'the word of God is as a hatchet that cutteth a rock."91 This, even the dispensation of the cross, hath manifested to us that which before was hidden: since, as we have already said, we lost by the tree that which by the tree is

.

90 It must, of course, be borne in mind, that the apparatus of indexes, concordances, lexicons, &c., which afford such incalculable advantages to the biblical student now, had no existence in Justin's time.

91 ὡς πέλυξ κόπλων πέτραν. Jer. xxiii. 29. LXX.