ESSAY III.

ON ELECTION.

WE learn, from the most undeniable authority, that the writings of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, contain some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as well as the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Now as it is evidently of the highest importance to guard against such a danger, so it is not less evident (as has been formerly remarked) that this is not to be done by keeping in the back-ground St. Paul's Epistles, and withdrawing, or encouraging Christians to withhold, attention from them; not only because it is neither wise nor pious to neglect the instructions of one who " received not his doctrine from men, but by inspiration of Jesus Christ;" but also, because the very errors in question will be the

more easily propagated by such as appeal to St. Paul in support of them, in proportion as they are allowed to make this appeal uncontradicted; if, while we admit the divine authority of these works, we leave them chiefly in the hands of extravagant fanatics, to put their own interpretation on passages, of which their hearers shall have been taught no better explanation. The christian instruction, in short, to be derived from a right interpretation of St. Paul's works, and the mischief resulting from a misinterpretation of them, furnish, each, a most powerful reason for the attentive study of them.

I propose, accordingly, to suggest some principles which should be kept in mind by one who would rightly understand this portion of Scripture; principles, the neglect of which has given occasion to most of the errors into which " the unlearned and unstable" have fallen.

§ 1. It is evident that, in order to understand any author thoroughly, it is highly desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to be acquainted, in some degree, with his character; the circumstances in which he was placed; and his habitual

modes of thought thence resulting. Nor will this be sufficient, unless we have something of the same knowledge respecting the persons to whom he wrote; and the more remote any work is, in point of time or of place, from ourselves, the more diligent attention will be required in the reader, not only to ascertain these circumstances, but to keep them steadily and constantly in view. Many things have an obvious reference to particular persons, times, and places, and cannot be at all understood without taking these into consideration. When Moses; for instance, or the other sacred writers, speak of places beyond Jordan," or "on this side of Jordan," every one perceives the necessity of considering the local situation of the author; but many other circumstances, not at all less essential to the right understanding of what is said, are apt to escape the notice of one whose attention is not steadily directed to the application of the principle laid down.

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Now no one is ignorant that St. Paul was not only a Jew, but one strictly educated in the principles of the most learned and most rigid sect among the Jews; but this circumstance is

not always practically kept in mind so much as it ought to be. No one who reads his works ought to lose sight of it for a moment, but constantly to bear in mind what habits of thought and modes of expression would be natural to a Jew, and to a Jew of that description.

Inspired, indeed, he was, with the knowledge of the Gospel; Jewish errors and prejudices were corrected in him by the Spirit of Truth; but we have no reason to suppose that this inspiration would go any further than was requisite to qualify him for his ministry; that any thing besides errors and prejudices would be altered.

If any one should imagine, that because one and the same Spirit taught one and the same Gospel to all its appointed ministers, therefore distinction between them was done away, every all traces of individual character necessarily swallowed up in one common revelation, an attentive study of the Sacred Writers will soon convince him of his mistake. Even of the Apostles, who were all of them Jews, no two write precisely alike; the variations of individual character are perceptible, even when in national character they all agree.

St. Paul's writings, then, must be studied as those of a man, not only acquainted with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, but familiar with them from a child; full of an earlyimplanted and habitual reverence for them; and disposed to refer to them for argument and for illustration, on every possible occasion. He was likely, in short, to write as a learned and zealous Jew, in every point except those in which the teaching of the Spirit led him to correct his former notions. And this divine monitor, it should be recollected, was so far from instructing christian ministers to keep the Old Testament out of sight, that there is no point more strenuously and uniformly insisted on, than the connexion of the old and new dispensations. Christianity is invariably represented, not as a new religion, but as the completion of a scheme long before begun; it was plainly meant to be engrafted, not on natural religion, but on Judaism. If this circumstance had been duly attended to, many of the heresies which have corrupted our religion would have been avoided.

But what were the character and situation of St. Paul's hearers? He was, indeed, more