LECT. X.] THE SPIRIT OF PATRISTIC EXPOSITION.

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LECTURE X.

Use of the Fathers in unfolding the meaning of Scripture: I. Their testimony opposed to the Socinian scheme, 1°. In the spirit of their expositions, which is evangelical, not rationalistic. Extent to which the Old Testament is applied by them to Jesus Christ. Concurrence of our Church and of our standard divines in this principle of interpretation. The proof of it from the Fathers independent of the merit of their particular expositions. Actual uncertainty as to the extent of symbolical teaching in Scripture. 2°. On the doctrine of the Trinity. Statement of the Racovian Catechism. The Creed of the early Church shown to have been Trinitarian from the exposition of particular texts; from the opinions of early heretics; from primitive practices and formularies; and from the correspondence of the Athanasian Creed with the writers of the first three centuries. Unguarded language of these writers, especially of Origen, accounted for.

IN the last Lecture we discussed the question of the use of the Fathers in establishing the genuine text of Scripture. We will now consider the value they are of in helping us to unfold its meaning, remembering that they are in a very great degree the depositories of that traditional knowledge in the Church which, descending from the Apostles through a succession of ministers has served to maintain orthodoxy in the interpretation of Scripture on all the great fundamental articles of our faith.1

No doubt this subject was intimately involved in the last, the purport of Scripture being, of course, closely connected with the correctness of our own readings of the Scripture. Still there is a department of exposition, which the Fathers occupy, quite independent of disputed readings, supplying us, as they often do, with important information as to the general spirit which animated the early Church in handling Scripture, with keys to the interpretation of it found in the peculiar circumstances of the early Church, and certainly with many probable expositions of individual texts.

iSee Origen, De Principiis, IV. § 9.

I.

§ 1. On the spirit of Patristic Exposition.

Thus it is a matter of the utmost consequence in the examination of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and particularly of the prophetical parts of it, whether we take for our principle the Evangelical or the rationalistic scheme of interpretation. A tendency to the one or the other has been characteristic of certain theological schools from ancient times to our own. There may be a risk either way in extremes. The one may result in a low, barren, and unworthy view of a most mysterious book-the view, in short of a Socinian; the other in a wild, illogical, and imaginative theory of it, such as may seem to justify any excesses of the fanatic, and enable him to extract from Scripture conclusions of almost any form or fashion. But be the latter danger what it may, the principle of interpretation which the Fathers encourage is certainly the Evangelical principle, the principle of making Jesus Christ the focus, as it were, to which the rays of Scripture almost universally tend. "The Son of God is sown everywhere, all through the writings of Moses," is their dogma'; and again, "The Law as read by the Jews at this very time is but a fable; for they have not the key to the whole, which is the Advent of the Son of God to man; whereas, read by Christians, it is a treasure, hid indeed in the field, but revealed to them."

Their position, it must be admitted, helped to foster in them this spirit. In contending with the Jews they could approach them by no other channel than the Old Testament : this was the only ground they and their antagonists could occupy in common, and accordingly they certainly do discover the Scriptures of the Old Testament to speak of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in season and out of season. For they hoped to arrive at the heart of the Israelite through the word that was

1 Inseminatus est ubique in Scrip- | οὐ γὰρ ἔχουσι τὴν ἐξήγησιν τῶν πάντων, turis ejus (sc. Moysi) Filius Dei.-Ire- ris eoтìv η KAT Ovρavòv napovσía roû næus, IV. c. x. § 1. And again, shortly Yioù TOû Eоû úπò de Xρioτiavov after, Et non est numerum dicere in ἀναγινωσκόμενος, θησαυρός ἐστι, κεquibus a Moyse ostenditur Filius Dei. κρυμμένος μὲν ἐν ἀγρῷ, αὐτοῖς δὲ 2 Ὑπὸ Ἰουδαίων μὲν ἀναγινωσκόμενος ἀποκεκαλυμμένος. — Irenæus, IV. c. ὁ νόμος ἐν τῷ νῦν καιρῷ, μύθῳ ἔοικεν | xxvi. § 1.

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dear to him, and so to persuade him to listen to the Gospel which they had to disclose. Again, in contending with heretics, they had, to a very great extent, to disabuse them of a notion that the God of the Old Testament was not the God of the New; that the one was a God of justice, the other a God of mercy; and accordingly, in showing the harmony of the two Testaments, they certainly do push to the utmost the theory of their approximation. At the same time we probably owe it to the existence of this feeling, that lessons both from the Old and New Testament the new and old things of the instructed scribe'-were appointed to be read in the same Services of the Church from the very first 2; since a practical declaration was by this means made by the Church, that the Law was but the Gospel foreshowed-the Gospel but the Law fulfilled.3

Still, though the character of the sentiments of these several antagonists, with whom the early Fathers had to struggle, might tempt them sometimes to strain the principle of Evangelical interpretation beyond the bounds of discretion, the principle itself was most amply recognised by them, independently of all reference to heretic or Jew, and manifests itself in works of the Fathers which have no peculiar connection with either: the manner in which they used it for the refutation of the Jew and the heretic only falling in with their method of expounding Scripture at all times and under all circumstances. For, indeed, their impression was, that the Scriptures, being the work of the Holy Spirit, are not to be read as ordinary books; and that a mere literal interpretation of them would be derogatory to that Spirit.* "The Spirit of God," says Origen, when succinctly describing the subjects of prophecy," the Spirit of God moved the prophets to foretell some things for their own times; others for future times; but above all (eğαiperŵs) to speak of a certain Saviour of the human race, who was to come and dwell amongst men.' Accordingly (to name a few instances of a style characteristic

1 Irenæus, IV. c. ix. § 1.

2 Compare Justin Martyr, Apol. I. § 67, with Tertullian, De Præscript. Hæret. c. xxxvi.

3 Quest. et Respons. ad Orthodoxos, ci. p. 482. Paris Ed. of Justin Martyr. See Hooker, Eccles. Pol. V. c. xx. § 6.

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Ad quam regulam etiam divinarum literarum intelligentia retinenda est, quo scilicet ea quæ dicuntur, non pro vilitate sermonis, sed pro divinitate sancti Spiritus qui eas conscribi inspiravit, censeantur.-Origen, De Principis, IV. § 27. Contra Celsum, III. § 3.

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