languages, an offering for sin; sometimes the punishment of sin; and occasionally such sufferings, as, though they cannot with propriety be called punishment, which always implies consciousness of guilt, are yet the natural consequences of sin. Thus, the virtuous son of a profligate father may be subjected, and daily is subjected, to sufferings in consequence of the sins of his father, though no man would consider the sufferings of the son as the punishment of sins which he did not himself commit. They may be considered, and by every pious son will be considered, as inflicted on him, not as a punishment, but as a warning to flee from the sins under which his father fell," that, denying ungodliness and wordly lusts, he may live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world."

This being the case, when you meet with any doctrine in the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures, which to you appears clearly to contradict a self-evident or demonstrated truth, you ought to suspect that you mistake the sense of the original words; and to ascertain that sense, you should compare the passage with every other passage, both in the Old and in the New Testament, where the same words are used, or where any reference is made to the same fact or the same doctrine; for you will find, as we are taught in the second part of the first Homily of our church, that "there is nothing spoken under dark mysteries in one place, but the self same thing is, in other places, spoken more familiarly and plainly, to the capacity both of learned and unlearned." To as

certain the sense of particular passages by comparing them with one another, you will derive great aid from Gastrel's Christian Institutes, as well as from an anonymous work in 4to, entitled the Christian Code, or a regular Digest of Christ's Dispensation: * and you will find Taylor's Hebrew Concordance of more use to you than any other work with which I am acquainted, in ascertaining the sense of difficult passages in the Old Testament. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Parkhurst's Lexicons. They are both valuable works; but he trusts too much to etymologies, which are often fanciful; whilst Taylor chiefly trusts to the comparison of Scripture with Scripture, which, in a language so ancient and original as the Hebrew, is certainly the safer guide. Of the Hebrew in its original purity nothing now remains, but what is found in the Old Testament; and the consequence is, that many of its radical words are irrecoverably lost, whilst Parkhurst, and other grammarians of the same school, conjecture, from attending to the cognate dialects, what they have been, and then reason from these conjectures, as if they were realities.

* I recommend this work with some hesitation. The author, whose name, I am told, was Williams, was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, for the church, but declined taking orders on account of some singular objections that he had to three or four of the thirty-nine articles. As a work of reference, however, and a collection of texts, the book would be highly useful, had it been correctly printed; but the texts quoted are often referred to places in Scripture where you will not find them.

In studying the Scriptures, you must likewise distinguish between doctrines which we cannot fully comprehend, and such as we clearly perceive to be contradictory to some unquestionable truth of importance. Doctrines of the former description may be true, and are indeed to be expected in a revelation given by the Almighty and Omniscient God to creatures whose intellectual faculties are so very limited as those of men; but doctrines of the latter description must be false, because one truth never can contradict another. Thus it is a first principle in moral science, and a doctrine uniformly taught in Scripture, that no creature, who is not a free agent, can be morally accountable for his conduct. It is likewise taught in Scripture, that God hath from all eternity known all the thoughts, words, and actions of every free agent, such as man, whom he hath created. Our capacity is not of a grasp sufficiently large to comprehend how actions, that are perfectly free or contingent, can be known with certainty before they be performed; but though we cannot comprehend this, a very little reflection may convince us, that, in attributing such knowledge to GOD, we do not affirm what is contradictory or impossible. How God knows what is present, is to us as incomprehensible as how he may know what some free agent will do a thousand years hence; for the elements of all our knowledge—even of that which is most abstract, we acquire through the medium of our senses; but God, being without body, parts, or passions, is likewise without such senses as ours.

Since, then, he knows what is present by a faculty (if I may use such an expression) of which we can form no direct or positive conception, he may, by the same faculty, know contingent future events; and if it be a doctrine of Scripture that he doth know such events, we must believe it, because Scripture has been proved to be a revelation from him.

LETTER VII.

CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE THREE FIRST CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

If you observe the directions which I gave you IF in my last Letter, and pray to God to enlighten your understanding, you may now sit down to the critical study of the Holy Scriptures, with a well assured hope of ascertaining what, in every question of importance, is really a truth, which it is your duty to illustrate, as one of the truths of God, to those who are committed to your pastoral care. In this course of study, you will do well to have the original Scriptures constantly at your hand, as well as the most celebrated translations of them, both ancient and modern; and till you become much better acquainted with the Hebrew language than most men at your age are, you will find the edition of the Hebrew Scriptures by Arias Montanus more useful to you than perhaps any other. His literal translation is indeed very barbarous Latin; but it is generally intelligible, and adheres so closely to the Hebrew