chief corner stone of it, in blood. And after it was so laid, did accomplish whatsoever he would have done in this great work by the hands of such workmen as did nothing less than what he would have had them to do. Though Judas, one of the twelve, by Satan's suggestion did betray his Lord; though the high priest and elders became the devil's agents to condemn him; and though Pilate, lastly, turned Satan's deputy to sentence him to death; yet all these did that which the most wise, most righteous, and most merciful God had foredetermined to be done: Those things, saith Peter, Acts iii. 18, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Yet, saith St. Paul, Acts xiii. 27: They that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voice of the prophets, which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. So then God is said to fulfil all things which were written of Christ, because he did order and direct all the counterplots and malicious intentions of his enemies according to the models and inscriptions which had been exhibited in the Old Testament. Judas's treachery against his Lord and Master, with its accursed success, was exactly forepictured by Achitophel's treason against David. The malice of the high priest and elders was foretold and forepictured by the like proceeding of their predecessors against Jeremiah, and other of God's prophets, which were Christ's forerunners, and types and shadows of his persecutions. They then fulfilled the scriptures in doing the same things that their predecessors had done, (but in a worse manner and degree,) albeit they had no intention or aim to work according to those models which their prede-597 cessors had framed; nor to do that unto Christ which

the prophets had foretold should be done unto him; for so St. Peter, Acts iii. 17: Now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.

5. But here I must request all such as read these and the like passages of scriptures, not to make any other inferences or constructions of the Holy Ghost's language or manner of speech than such as they naturally import, and such as are congruous to the rule of faith. If we say no more than this; 'God did order or direct the avarice of Judas, the malice of the high priest, the popularity of Herod, and ambition of Pilate, for accomplishing of that which he had foredetermined concerning Christ,' we shall retain the form of wholesome doctrine. In thus speaking and thinking, we think and speak as the Spirit teacheth us. But if any shall say or think that God did ordain either Judas to be covetous, or the high priest to be malicious, or Herod and Pilate to be popular and ambitious, to this end and purpose, that they might respectively be the betrayers and murderers of the Son of God, this is dangerous. The orthodoxal truth, and wholesome form of expressing it in this and the like point, is acutely set down in that distinction, which (for aught I find) was unanimously embraced by the ancients, and by all at this day that be moderate acknowledged to be true; Deus ordinavit lapsum Adami: non ordinavit ut Adamus laberetur; God did dispose or order Adam's fall, (for, by his all-seeing providence and all-ruling power, he turned his fall into his own. and our greater good,) but he did not decree, ordain, or order, that Adam should fall, or commit that transgression by which he fell. For so he should have been the author both of Adam's first sin, and of all the sins which are necessarily derived to us from him. For no

man, I think, will deny that God is the sole author of all his own ordinances and decrees, or of whatsoever he hath foredecreed or foredetermined us for to do.

CHAP. XII.

Of the several Senses of Scripture, especially of the literal and mystical.

WITHOUT knowledge of scriptures there can be no true knowledge of Christ, and to know the scriptures is all one as to know the true sense and meaning of them intended by the Holy Spirit. I will not here dispute whether every portion of scripture in the Old Testament admit more senses intended by the Holy Spirit than one, or whether in some sense or other every passage in Moses's writings, in the prophets, in the book of Psalms, or sacred histories, do point either immediately or mediately at Christ, or at him that was to come. But that divers places alleged by the evangelist out of the Old Testament, to prove that Jesus whom the Jews did crucify was their expected Messias, admit more senses, I take as granted. The question is, how many senses either the places alleged by the evangelists or apostles, or other passages in the Old Testament, may respectively admit. And in this query I will not be contentious, but only crave that 598 liberty which I willingly grant to others in all like cases, that is, to make mine own division, and to follow mine own expressions of every several sense or branch of this division, that so I may refer the particular explication of every type, of every prophecy or other prenotion of Christ which hath been fulfilled, without perplexity or confusion, to its proper or general head. That sense of scripture, in my expression, may haply be referred unto the literal, which in some other men's language would be accounted figurative or allegorical.

That sense again (according to my division) may be reduced unto the literal, mystical, or moral, which some great divines make a distinct sense from all these, to wit, anagogical. Or admitting all these and more senses of scriptures, I may perhaps sometimes touch upon another sense, which is not (to my apprehension) reducible to any of these.

2. The several senses of scriptures (especially such as more immediately point at Christ) cannot be better notified, or more commodiously reduced to their several heads, than by a review of the several ways by which God from the beginning did intimate or manifest his will, his good will towards mankind, in him and through him which was to come. And the ways by

which God did manifest Christ to come were in the general two; either by words assertive, and express prediction, or by way of picture and representation, or by a concurrence of both: which third way is no way opposite to the two former, but rather a friendly combination of them. The second branch of this division, to wit, prenotions of Christ representative, may (as heretofore it hath been) be subdivided into representations real, as by type, historical event, or other matter of fact; or into representations merely literal, verbal, or nominal. The first general branch of this division, (that is, prenotions of Christ delivered in words expressly assertive,) exhibit to us that which we commonly call the literal or grammatical sense. For that (as best divines agree) is the literal sense or meaning of the Holy Spirit which is immediately signified by words assertive, whether legal, prophetical, or historical, without any intercourse or intervention of any type or matter of fact. Whether the words be logical and proper, allegorical or otherwise figurative, skills not much. The variety of expressions by

words assertive, if so the words immediately express the matter foretold without intervention of type or matter of fact, doth not divide or diversify the literal sense as when God foretold that the wilderness should be planted with pleasant trees, Isa. xli. 19, &c.— that the wolf should dwell with the lamb-that the leopard should lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together-the form of speech is figurative, and (in the language of secular rhetoricians) allegorical and so that other of the vineyard, Isaiah v. is parabolically figurative: and yet the sense of all these places is in the school of divinity as truly literal, as when it is said, The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head, or that in Abraham's seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. For by the trees wherewith the wilderness was to be planted, by the wolf and by the lamb, by the leopard and the kid, &c. divers sorts of men were immediately meant: and to the fulfilling of all or any of the prophecies it was not required that there should be a transformation either of men into trees, leopards, wolves, or lions, &c., or of these or like creatures into men. For however the sense of scripture in all these places be literal, yet it is literally 599 allegorical. And of the literal or verbal allegory that maxim is most true, Sensus allegoricus non est argumentativus; "No firm argument can be drawn from the allegorical, parabolical, or other figurative signification of words:" as we may not infer that the wilderness was to be planted with trees, or that the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, were to consort as well together on dry land as sometimes they did in Noah's ark whilst the deluge lasted, before these prophecies could be fulfilled according to the literal sense, as this sense in the language of the Holy Ghost is