On the Hypocrite. No man's condition is so base as his ; None more accurs'd than he; for man esteems Be added to the hate of God and man?' One might cull innumerable little gems from this interesting cabinet, such as 'We rail at Judas-him that did betray The Lord of life-yet do it day by day.' The mind of Quarles seemed to flow into poetry as naturally as the fountain into streams; yet when he did write in prose, it was with power and pathos. In 1641 he produced a work of didactic morality, of the greatest merit. It is in reality full of practical wisdom, and perhaps merits the eulogium of Mr. Headley, Had this little piece been written at Athens or Rome, its author would have been classed with the wise men of his country.' In point of fact it has acquired much and lasting celebrity, and, although several times reprinted, is now scarce. first edition is in the British Museum; and, as a matter of curiosity, it will not be displeasing to the reader to see the title-page in its original form. ·ENCHYRIDION: The WRITTEN BY FRA. QUARLES. Printed at London by T. COLES, for G. HUTTON, in Turne-stile-Alley in Holbourne, 1641.' One or two extracts may suffice to show the nature of the work: 'When the humours of the people are stirred by discontent or popular grief, it is wisdom in a prince to give them moderate liberty to evaporate. He that turns the humour back too hastily makes the wound bleed inwardly, and fills the body with malignity.'-Cap. 67. 'So long as thou art ignorant, be not ashamed to learn. He that is so fondly modest, not to acknowledge his own defects of knowledge, k Lect. on Early Eng. Poetry. shall, shall, in time, be so foully impudent to justify his own ignorance. Ignorance is the greatest of all infirmities; and justified, the chiefest of all follies.'-Cap. 92. 'Let the end of thy argument be rather to discover a doubtful truth than a commanding wit. In the one thou shalt gain substance; in the other froth. That flint strikes the steel in vain that propagates no sparkles. Covet to be Truth's champion; at least to hold her colours. He that pleads against the truth, takes pains to be overthrown; or, if a conqueror, gains but false glory by the conquest.'-Cap. 22 (Cent. 2). 'If thou hide thy treasure upon the earth, how canst thou expect to find it in heaven? Canst thou hope to be a sharer where thou hast reposed no stock? What thou givest to God's glory, and thy soul's health, is laid up in heaven, and is only thine; that alone which thou exchangest, or hidest upon earth, is lost.'-Cap. 29. It must not be concealed that Quarles wrote some absurd pieces. Let them be assigned to a merited oblivion, but let not his name be scoffed at on their account. There are many precious stones, as has been shown, among the pebbles; and they had better be gathered than thrown away. Whether his writings be, in connection with others of a similar cast, regarded as indicative or creative of the spirit of the age in which they were produced, they possess alike an intrinsic and historical interest. In a word, if just and pious sentiment disgust, because clothed in an antiquated dress or tinged with a religious enthusiasm-if it be not deemed worth while to traverse a region of rude rhymes and curious, perchance monstrous analogies, even though abundantly variegated with the lilies and roses of a beautiful fancy, let Quarles be laid aside and forgotten; but if the service he has rendered to sacred literature ought to be remembered,-if entertainment and instruction be desired for forthcoming generations calculated, however oddly expressed, to awaken their attention to important truths; and if honour should be given to whom honour is due, then let Quarles (in a well-selected edition of his writings) never want a defender, nor a shelf to stand upon in our choicest libraries. ON ON THE APPLICATION AND MISAPPLICATION OF SCRIPTURE. By the Rev. BADEN POWELL, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford. THE great principle of all Protestantism, the sufficiency of Scripture, or that it alone contains all things necessary to salvation, while it has been by some undervalued or rejected, by others has been stretched beyond all reasonable bounds; and, while one party would reduce the office of Scripture to a mere confirmation of viously-framed dogmas, another has been prone to find in it a species of literal authority which overrules all rational considerations. pre In venturing to think for themselves in opposition to the prescriptive authority of the body calling itself the Church, the appeal of the Reformers necessarily was to the written Word alone as the sole authoritative or authentic depository of doctrines and precepts. Its decisions were to be received as final, and nothing insisted on as necessary truth but what was directly and distinctly delivered in the Divine Word according to its right sense and reasonable construction. But this would of course imply some discriminating study of the sacred volume, and might involve considerable labour and be encompassed with many obstacles requiring much perseverance to surmount, and, after all, must (from the very nature of the principle) admit of endless diversity in the interpretation of Scripture doctrine. To have no other resource than an authority surrounded by so many difficulties, would obviously but ill supply the loss of that comfortable certainty and undisturbed repose which the minds and consciences of men had been accustomed to enjoy in the bosom of an infallible church. And accordingly teachers were not long wanting professing to remedy this deficiency, and prepared with methods of religious assurance not less oracular in their pretensions, and even more easy of application. The actual text of the Bible, it was contended, was wholly and entirely the very dictation of the Holy Spirit-every sentenceevery expression-every word—the very breathing of inspiration : the entire volume one systematic complete scheme of truth, religious, civil, and social-nay, even political, historical, and scientific-delivered into the hands of the faithful, who, at the same time endowed with supernatural illumination, were enabled at once to see and to understand the whole compass and meaning of its contents: every part of which had its direct and immediate application, for nothing was to be supposed written by inspiration, but what was addressed alike to readers in all ages and under all circumstances—not a sentence, not a word was to be overlooked— not a passage, however apparently barren of instruction, which was not to be made fruitful-not an expression, however apparently trivial, which had not its hidden and mystical meaning discoverable at once by the gifted reader. Discrepancies were not to be regarded, for each part must needs harmonize with every other part; and the notion of drawing any distinction as to the different object, design, or application of different parts of Scripture—of regarding any diversities of time, place, or circumstances, was accounted little less than profane; to question the rigidly literal sense of every passage or its immediate application in all particulars to men in all times, was looked upon as equivalent to little less than questioning its divine character altogether. If a doctrine was to be maintained, it sufficed to find anywhere within the limits of the sacred volume, any passage, the words of which, abstractedly taken, might apparently contain or imply it: to think of connection with the context, or of any other considerations which might limit or elucidate the meaning, was unnecessary, and in fact little less than impious. If a duty was to be enforced, a precept anywhere extracted from the sacred writings was held equally applicable to all persons under all circumstances, and in all ages. That such should be the view taken by illiterate fanatics is no more than might be expected; but that a mode of proceeding, little different from this in principle, has been common even among the superior class of divines, will hardly be disputed by any one at all versed in theological writings. And that it prevails widely, even at the present day, is as little questionable by any one who canvasses with but common precision the language and argument of hundreds of ordinary religious discourses and publications. But it will not be surprising that such notions should find ready acceptance with a large portion of mankind; for, without going the lengths of fanaticism, even for the individual to have open before him an unerring oracle, every word and sentence of which he may take without further examination or consideration, as propounded immediately to himself from above, is an easy resource, which relieves him at once from all labour and perplexity in searching the Scriptures; an object of all things the most desirable to human infirmity. And in thus adopting without inquiry the first sense which appears on the surface, or which his imagination sees there, the reader reader comforts himself with the reflection that he is discharging a duty of reverence to the divine word, and claims ground of selfcommendation for the exercise of much spiritual humility in thus placing his trust in the inspired text, and not presuming to be wise above that which is written: and assures himself that he is at least adopting a safe mode of interpretation. It would seem as if the theologian, in entering upon the field of sacred research, thought it not only allowable, but necessary, to discard all those principles of interpretation which he would in common reason have adopted in the exposition of any secular writings: and that the distinctions which in other cases are forced upon the attention, between fact and metaphor-between history and poetry-between local and national allusions, and truths of universal application, were all to be laid aside when the volume of Scripture was opened: that its contents were to be examined by some other rule: peculiarities and allusions, allegory and matter of fact, the connection of argument, and the reference to times, places, persons, and circumstances, were all to be lost sight of in one undistinguishing blind adherence to the mere letter of texts: that the divine will was to be recognised in the mere letter of any single passage taken promiscuously anywhere out of the multifarious writings contained in the volume of the Scriptures, new or old, Jewish or Christian, and applied with equal disregard of the context from which it was wrested, or the conditions of the case to which it was to be tortured. A mass of heterogeneous testimonies were thus strangely brought together to mix in a dogmatic system; or, as an eminent writer has expressed it, 'They made an anagram of Scripture.' Instead of the rational, humble, and patient endeavour to discover the meaning probably designed in the mind of the writer,' it seemed to be supposed that the sense of the text was rather to be disclosed by some mystical power in its mere letter, acting on the mind of the privileged reader. The belief in the inspired character of Scripture may of course impose peculiar restrictions on the course to be pursued in examining its contents; but allowing for considerable difference of opinion as to the meaning and extent of inspiration, it yet by no means follows that this consideration should make a difference so entire in kind, as that often supposed, in the way by which we are to seek to arrive at the meaning, or make our applications of the contents of the sacred books, whose instructions were all conveyed in human language and addressed through the medium of human ideas. The extreme doctrine of the enthusiast who rests in the mere letter of every detached text, as a direct message from on high to himself, extravagant as it may appear when broadly avowed, is no more |