free in all acts of favour, that she would not stay to hear herself thanked, as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needful or an obliged person, should ever return to her again. She was an excellent friend, and hugely dear to very many, especially to the best and most discerning perto all that conversed with her, and could understand her great worth and sweetness. She was of an honourable, a nice, and tender reputation ; and of the pleasures of this world, which were laid before her in heaps, she took a very small and inconsiderable share, as not loving to glut herself. with vanity, or take her portion of good things here below.

sons;

If we look on her as a wife, she was chaste and loving, fruitful, and discreet, humble and pleasant, witty and compliant, rich and fair: and wanted · nothing to the making her a principal and precedent to the best wives of the world, but a long life and a full age.

If we remember her as a mother, she was kind and severe, careful and prudent, very tender, and not at all fond; a greater lover of her children's souls than of their bodies, and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth, than by their relation to herself.

Her servants found her prudent and fit to govern, and yet open-handed and apt to reward; a just exactor of their duty, and a great rewarder of their diligence.

She was in her house a comfort to her dearest lord, a guide to her children, a rule to her servants, an example to all.

But as she related to God in the offices of religion, she was even and constant, silent and devout, prudent and material; she loved what she now enjoys, and she feared what she never felt, and God did for her what she never did expect her fears went beyond all her evil; and yet the good which she hath received, was, and is, and ever shall be, beyond all her hopes.

She lived as we all should live, and she died as I fain would die.

THE LITERAL AND SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE.

In all the interpretations of Scripture, the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen, unless there be evident cause to the contrary. The reasons are plain; because the literal sense is natural, and it is first, and it is most agreeable to some things, in their whole kind; not indeed to prophecies, nor to the teachings of the learned, nor those cryptic ways of institution by which the ancients did hide a light, and keep it in a dark lantern from the temeration of ruder handlings, and popular preachers: but the literal sense is agreeable to laws, to the publication of commands, to the revelation of the Divine will, to the concerns of the vulgar, to the foundations of faith, and to all the notice of things, in which the idiot (i. e. the private person) is as much concerned as the greatest clerks. From which proposition, these three corollaries will properly follow, 1. That God hath plainly and literally described all his will, both in belief and practice, in which our essential duty, the duty of all men, is concerned. 2. That, in plain expressions, we are to look for our duty, and not in the more secret places and darker corners of the Scripture. 3. That you may regularly, certainly, and easily do your duty to the people, if you read and literally expound the

plain sayings, and easily expressed commandments, and promises, and threatenings of the Gospel, and the Psalms, and the prophets.

3. But then remember this also; that not only the grammatical or prime signification of the word is the literal sense; but whatsoever in the prime intention of the speaker, that is the literal sense; though the word be to be taken metaphorically, or by translation signify more things than one. "The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous;" this is literally true; and yet it is as true, that God hath no eyes properly; but by eyes' are meant, God's Providence ;' and though this be not the first literal sense of the word eyes,' the signification at first imposed and contingently; it is that signification, which was secondarily imposed, and by reason and proportion. Thus, when we say, 'God cares for the righteous,' it will not suppose that God can have any anxiety or afflictive thoughts; but 'he cares' does as truly and properly signify provision, as caution; beneficence, as fear; and therefore the literal sense of it is, that God provides good things for the righteous.' For in this case the rule of Abulensis is very true; "the literal sense is always true;" that is, all that is true, which the Spirit of God intended to signify by the words, whether he intended the first or second signification; whether that of voluntary and contingent, or that of analogical and rational institution. "Other sheep have I," said Christ, "which are not of this fold:" that he did not mean this of the wool-bearing flock is notorious; but of the Gentiles to be gathered into the privileges and fold of Israel: for in many cases, the first literal sense is the hardest, and sometimes impossible, and sometimes inconvenient: and when it is in any of these, although we are not to recede from the literal sense; yet we are to take the second signification, the tropological or figurative. "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out," said Christ: and yet no man digs his eyes out; because the very letter or intention of this command bids us only to throw away that, which if we keep, we cannot avoid sin for sometimes the letter tells the intention, and sometimes the intention declares the letter; and that is properly the literal sense, which is the first meaning of the command in the whole complexion: and in this, common sense, and a vulgar reason will be a sufficient guide, because there is always some other thing spoken by God, or some principle naturally implanted in us, by which we are secured in the understanding of the Divine command. "He that does not hate father and mother for my sake, is not worthy of me:" the literal sense of hating' used in Scripture is not always malice,' but sometimes a 'less loving;' and so Christ also hath expounded it: "He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."-But I shall not insist longer on this; he that understands nothing but his grammar, and hath not conversed with men and books, and can see no farther than his finger's ends, and makes no use of his reason, but for ever will be a child; he may be deceived in the literal sense of Scripture; but then he is not fit to teach others but he that knows, words signify rhetorically, as well as grammatically, and have various proper significations, and which of these is the first is not always of itself easy to be told; and remembers also that God hath given him reason, and observation, and experience, and conversation with wise men, and the proportion of things, and the end of the command, and parallel places of Scripture, in other words to the same purpose ;-will conclude, that, since in plain places, all the duty of man is contained, and that the literal sense is always true, and, unless men be wilful

or unfortunate, they may, with a small proportion of learning, find out the literal sense of an easy moral proposition ;-will, I say, conclude, that if we be deceived, the fault is our own; but the fault is so great, the man so supine, the negligence so inexcusable, that the very consideration of human infirmity is not sufficient to excuse such teachers of others, who hallucinate or prevaricate in this. The Anthropomorphites fell foully in this matter, and supposed God to have a face, and arms, and passions, as we have; but they prevailed not but the church of Rome hath erred greatly in pertinacious adhering, not to the letter, but to the grammar; nor to that, but in one line or signification of it: and this is my body' must signify nothing but grammatically; and though it be not, by their own confessions, to be understood without divers figures, in the whole complexion, yet peevishly and perversely, they will take it by the wrong handle; and this they have passed into a doctrine, that is against sense and reason, and experience, and Scripture, and tradition, and the common interpretation of things, and public peace and utility, and every thing by which mankind ought to be governed and determined.

4. I am to add this one thing more: that we admit in the interpretation of Scripture but one literal sense; I say, but one prime literal sense; for the simplicity and purity of the Spirit, and the philanthropy of God will not admit that there should, in one single proposition, be many intricate meanings, or that his sense should not certainly be understood, or that the people be abused by equivocal and doubtful senses; this was the way of Jupiter in the sands, and Apollo Pythius, and the devil's oracles: but be it far from the wisdom of the Spirit of God.

5. But then take in this caution to it; that although there be but one principal literal sense; yet others that are subordinate, may be intended subordinately; and others that are true by proportion, or that first intention, may be true for many reasons, and every reason applicable to a special instance; and all these may be intended as they signify, that is, one only by prime design, and the other by collateral consequence. Thus we are the sons of God, by adoption, by creation, by favour, by participation of the Spirit, by the laver of regeneration: and every man, for one or other of these reasons, can say, “Our Father which art in heaven;" and these are all parts of the literal sense, not different, but subordinate and by participation: but more than one prime literal sense must not be admitted.

The sum is this; he that with this moderation and these measures, construes the plain meaning of the Spirit of God, and expounds the articles of faith and the precepts of life, according to the intention of God, signified by his own words, in their first or second signification, cannot easily be cozened into any heretical doctrine; but his doctrine will be the pure word and mind of God.

2. There is another sense or interpretation of Scripture, and that is mystical or spiritual; and this relates principally to the Old Testament: thus the waters of the deluge did signify the waters of baptism; Sarah and Agar, the law and the Gospel; the brazen serpent, the passion of Christ; the conjunction of Adam and Eve, the communion of Christ and his church; and this is called the spiritual sense, St Paul being our warrant; "Our fa thers ate of the same spiritual meat, and drank of that same spiritual rock;" now that rock was not spiritual, but of solid stone; but it signified spiritually; for "that rock was Christ."This sense the doctors divide into tropological, allegorical, and anagogical,—for method's sake, and either to dis

tinguish the things, or to amuse the persons: for these relate but to the several spiritual things, signified by divers places; as matters of faith, precepts of manners, and celestial joys: you may make more if you please, and yet these are too many to trouble men's heads, and to make theology an art and craft, to no purpose. This spiritual sense is that which the Greeks call 'the sense that lies under the cover of words:' concerning this I shall give you these short rules, that your doctrine be pure and without heretical mixtures, and the leaven of false doctrines; for, above all things, this is to be taken care of. 1. Although every place of Scripture hath a literal sense, either proper or figurative, yet every one hath not a spiritual and mystical interpretation; and, therefore, Origen was blamed by the ancients for forming all into spirit and mystery one place was reserved to punish that folly. Thus the followers of the family of love, and the quakers, expound all the articles of our faith, all the hopes of a Christian, all the stories of Christ, into such a clancular and retired sense, as if they had no meaning by the letter, but were only an hieroglyphic or a Pythagorean scheme, and not to be opened but by a private key, which every man pretends to be borrowed from the Spirit of God, though made in the forges here below. In this case men do as Jerome said of Origen, 66 every man believes God meant as he intended, and so he will obtrude his own dreams instead of sacraments." Therefore, 2. Whoever will draw spiritual senses from any history of the Old or New Testament, must first allow the literal sense, or else he will soon deny an article of necessary belief. A story is never the less true, because it is intended to profit as well as to please; and the narrative may well establish or insinuate a precept, and instruct with pleasure; but if, because there is a jewel in the golden cabinet, you will throw away the enclosure, and deny the story that you may look out a mystical sense, we shall leave it arbitrary for any man to believe or disbelieve what story he please; and Eve shall not be made of the rib of Adam, and the garden of Eden shall be no more than the Hesperides, and the story of Jonas a well-dressed fable: and I have seen all the Revelation of St John turned into a moral commentary, in which every person can signify any proposition, or any virtue, according as his fancy chimes. This is too much, and, therefore, comes not from a good principle.

3. In moral precepts, in rules of polity and economy, there is no other sense to be inquired after but what they bear upon the face; for he that thinks it necessary to turn them into some farther spiritual meaning supposes that it is a disparagement to the Spirit of God to take care of governments, or that the duties of princes and masters are no great concerns, or not operative to eternal felicity, or that God does not provide for temporal advantages; for if these things be worthy concerns, and if God hath taken care of all our good, and if "godliness be profitable to all things, and hath the promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come," there is no necessity to pass on to more abstruse senses, when the literal and proper hath also in it instrumentality enough towards very great spiritual purposes. "God takes care" for servants, yea "for oxen" and all the beasts of the field; and the letter of the command enjoining us to use them with mercy, hath in it an advantage even upon the spirit and whole frame of a man's soul; and, therefore, let no man tear those Scriptures to other meanings beyond their own intentions and provisions. In these cases a spiritual sense is not to be inquired after.

4. If the letter of the story infers any indecency or contradiction, then it

is necessary that a spiritual or mystical sense be thought of; but never else is it necessary. It may in other cases be useful, when it does advantage to holiness; and may be safely used, if used modestly; but because this spiritual or mystical interpretation, when it is not necessary, cannot be certainly proved, but relies upon fancy, or at most some light inducement, no such interpretation can be used as an argument to prove an article of faith, nor relied upon in matters of necessary concern. The "three measures of meal," in the Gospel, are but an ill argument to prove the blessed and eternal Trinity : and it may be, the three angels that came to Abraham, will signify no more than the two that came to Lot, or the single one to Manoah or St John. This divine mystery relies upon a more sure foundation; and he makes it unsure, that causes it to lean upon an unexpounded vision, that was sent to other purposes. Searching for articles of faith in the by-paths and corners of secret places, leads not to faith but to infidelity, and by making the foundations unsure, causes the articles to be questioned.

I remember that Agricola, in his book "De Animalibus Subterraneis," tells of a certain kind of spirits that use to converse in mines, and trouble the poor labourers: they dig metals, they cleanse, they cast, they melt, they separate, they join the ore; but when they are gone, the men find just nothing done, not one step of their work set forward. So it is in the books and expositions of many men: they study, they argue, they expound, they confute, they reprove, they open secrets, and make new discoveries; and when you turn the bottom upwards, up starts nothing; no man is the wiser, no man is instructed, no truth discovered, no proposition cleared, nothing is altered, but that much labour and much time is lost and this is manifest in nothing more than in books of controversy, and in mystical expositions of ScripLike Isidore, who in contemplation of a pen, observed, that the nib of it was divided into two, but yet the whole body remained one: he found a knack in it, and thought it was a mystery. Concerning which I shall need to say no more but that they are safe, when they are necessary, and they are useful when they teach better, and they are good when they do good; but this is so seldom, and so by chance, that oftentimes if a man be taught truth he is taught it by a lying master; it is like being cured by a good witch, an evil spirit hath a hand in it; and if there be not error and illusion in such interpretations, there is very seldom any certainty.

ture:

"What shall I do to my vineyard," " said God? "I will take away the hedge: that is, saith the gloss, the custody of their angel guardians.' And God says, "Manasseh hath devoured his own shoulders ;" that is, say the doctors, hath removed his governors,' his princes, and his priests. It is a sad complaint 'tis true, but what it means is the question. But although these senses are pious, and may be used for illustration and the prettiness of discourse, yet there is no further certainty in them than what the one fancies and the other is pleased to allow. But if the spiritual sense be proved evident and certain, then it is of the same efficacy as the literal; for it is according to that letter by which God's Holy Spirit was pleased to signify his meaning, and it matters not how he is pleased to speak, so we understand his meaning. And, in this sense, that is true which is affirmed by St Gregory 'sometimes our faith is built up by the mystical words of the Spirit of God.' But because it seldom happens that they can be proved,

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* Is..iah, v.