to bear testimony to the Saviour of the world; that sense, which is styled, by divines, the PROPHETICAL, EVANGELICAL, MYSTICAL, or SPIRITUAL sense. As it is one great design of the following work to investigate that sense in many of the Psalms, this is the proper place to lay before the reader those grounds and reasons upon which such investigation has been made.

That the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture, like all other good things, is liable to abuse, and that it hath been actually abused, both in ancient and modern days, cannot be denied. He who shall go about to apply, in this way, any passage, before he hath attained its literal meaning, may say what in itself is pious and true, but foreign to the text from which he endeavoured to deduce it. St. Jerome, it is well known, when grown older and wiser, lamented, that, in the fervours of a youthful fancy, he had spiritualized the prophecy of Obadiah, before he understood it. And it must be allowed, that a due attention to the occasion and scope of the Psalms, would have pared off many unseemly excrescences, which now deform the commentaries of St. Augustin, and other Fathers, upon them, But these, and other concessions of the same kind being made, as they are made very freely, "men of sense will consider, that a principle is not therefore to be rejected, because it has been abused';" since human errors can never invalidate the truths of God.

1 Bishop HURD's Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies,

p. 64.

It may not be amiss, therefore, to run through the Psalter, and point out some of the more remarkable passages, which are cited from thence by our Lord and his Apostles, and applied to matters evangelical.

No sooner have we opened the book, than the second Psalm presenteth itself, to all appearance, as an inauguration hymn, composed by David, the anointed of Jehovah, when by Him crowned with victory, and placed triumphant on the sacred hill of Zion. But let us turn to Acts iv. 25, and there we find the Apostles, with one voice, declaring the Psalm to be descriptive of the exaltation of Jesus Christ, and of the opposition raised against his Gospel, both by Jew and Gentile.

In the eighth Psalm we imagine the writer to be setting forth the pre-eminence of man in general, above the rest of the creation; but by Heb. ii. 6, we are informed, that the supremacy conferred on the second Adam, the man Christ Jesus, over all things in heaven and earth, is the subject there treated of.

St. Peter stands up, Acts ii. 25, and preaches the resurrection of Jesus from the latter part of the sixteenth Psalm; and, lo! three thousand souls are converted by the sermon.

Of the eighteenth Psalm we are told, in the course of the sacred history, 2 Sam. xxii., that "David spake before the Lord the words of that song, in the day that the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul." Yet in Rom. xv. 9, the 49th verse

of that Psalm is adduced as a proof, that "the Gentiles should glorify God for his mercy in Jesus Christ, as it is written, For this cause will I confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name."

In the nineteenth Psalm, David seems to be speaking of the material heavens, and their operations only, when he says, "their sound is gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." But St. Paul, Rom. x. 18, quotes the passage to show, that the Gospel had been universally published by the Apostles.

The twenty-second Psalm Christ appropriated to Himself, by beginning it in the midst of his sufferings on the cross; "My God, my God," &c. Three other verses of it are, in the New Testament, applied to Him; and the words of the 8th verse were actually used by the chief priests, when they reviled Him; "He trusted in God," &c. Matt. xxvii. 43.

When David saith, in the fortieth Psalm, "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire-Lo, I come to do thy will:" we might suppose him only to declare in his own person, that obedience is better than sacrifice. But from Heb. x. 5, we learn, that Messiah, in that place, speaketh of his advent in the flesh, to abolish the legal sacrifices, and to do away sin, by the oblation of Himself, once for all.

That tender and pathetic complaint, in the forty-first Psalm, "Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath

lift up his heel against me," undoubtedly might be, and probably was, originally uttered by David, upon the revolt of his old friend and counsellor, Ahithophel, to the party of his rebellious son, Absalom. But we are certain, from John xiii. 18, that this Scripture was fulfilled, when Christ was betrayed by his apostate disciple-"I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scriptures may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lift up his heel against

The forty-fourth Psalm we must suppose to have been written on occasion of a persecution under which the Church at that time laboured; but a verse of it is cited, Rom. viii. 36, as expressive of what Christians were to suffer on their blessed Master's account; "as it is written, For thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep appointed to be slain."

A quotation from the forty-fifth Psalm, in Heb. i. 8, certifies us, that the whole is addressed to the Son of God, and therefore celebrates his spiritual union with the Church, and the happy fruits of it.

The sixty-eighth Psalm, though apparently conversant about Israelitish victories, the translation of the ark to Zion, and the services of the tabernacle, yet does, under those figures, treat of Christ's resurrection, his going up on high, leading captivity captive, pouring out the gifts of the Spirit, erecting his Church in the world, and enlarging it by the accession of the nations to the

faith; as will be evident to any one, who considers the force and consequence of the Apostle's citation from it, Ephes. iv. 7, 8, "Unto every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men."

The sixty-ninth Psalm is five times referred to in the Gospels, as being uttered by the prophet, in the person of Messiah. The imprecations, or rather predictions, at the latter end of it, are applied, Rom. xi. 9, 10, to the Jews; and to Judas, Acts i. 20, where the hundred and ninth Psalm is also cited, as prophetical of the sore judgments which should befal that arch traitor, and the wretched nation of which he was an epitome.

St. Matthew, informing us, chap. xiii. 34, that Jesus spake to the multitude in parables, gives it as one reason why He did so, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, Psal. lxxviii. 2, I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world."

The ninety-first Psalm was applied, by the tempter, to Messiah: nor did our Lord object to the application, but only to the false inference, which his adversary suggested from it. Matt. iv. 6, 7.

The ninety-fifth Psalm is explained at large in Heb. iii. and iv., as relative to the state and trial of Christians in the world, and to their attainment of the heavenly rest.