of interpretation, and that there are not many passages of equal length throughout the dialogue, which contain a smaller number of such perversions, I need scarcely add, that the conference between Justin and Trypho ended in the interchange of polite expressions; and that the former was not successful in convincing the latter of his

Irenæus, though in my judgment, superior to Justin both in talent and learning, was equally misled in his rule of interpretation, by the example of the apostolical fathers. The following instances will sufficiently show that his comments upon Scripture are often vague and unsatisfactory. He wishes to prove that the second person of the Trinity administered the Mosaic dispensation. "In that

33 371 B. C. There are one or two points regarding this dialogue, upon which considerable difference of opinion exists. It is doubted by many that such a conference took place at all; while among those that maintain its reality, an equally difficult question arises as to the city in which it occurred the latter does not deserve discussion: as to the other point, without presuming in any way to decide upon it, I think the suggestion of the Bishop of Lincoln is fully borne out by the evidence contained in the work itself. A discussion certainly took place between Justin and a Jew named Trypho somewhere: but the "dialogue" is by no means an exact account of it: that was committed to writing, probably long afterwards, by the former, at the suggestion of a friend; and is an attempt to embody the whole question between Judaism and Christianity. The bishop has pointed out the very suspicious circumstance of the close resemblance between the commencement of it, and those of the philosophical dialogues of Plato and Cicero ; and there is a similar resemblance between his account of his own conversion to Christianity by a mysterious old man, whom he met on the sea-shore, after he had tried all the various sects of philosophy in vain, (220 A., &c.), and the passage in the introduction to the Stromates of Clement, of which we have already given some account, (See above, p. 21, note 8.) The suspicion is certainly raised, that these are merely the fictitious embellishments of which the teachers of new philosophical doctrines so frequently availed themselves; and as they then deceived no one, the use of them scarcely amounted to the sin of falsehood.

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our Lord says, 'Henceforth, I call you not servants," he plainly indicates that he himself bound men to the servitude of the law, as well as delivered them unto the liberty of the gospel."35 The text contains no allusion to the doctrine in question; our Saviour is speaking upon a subject altogether distinct from it. He is comforting his disciples in the prospect of his immediate departure, by informing them that, after that event, they will stand in a closer and more endeared relation to him. During his sojourn upon earth, he constantly called them his servants; but he tells them that "henceforth," that is, after his death and resurrection, "I call you not servants but friends." We, therefore, complain, that though the doctrine of Irenæus is perfectly true, his quotation affords no proof of it.

He thus confutes the assertion that there were certain traditional sayings of Christ which contradicted the gospels. "Our Lord Jesus Christ is truth,37 and there is no lie in him. David prophecied of him who was born of a virgin, and who is the resurrection of the dead, when he said,38 Truth hath sprung out of the earth.""39 This has, at first sight, the air of a somewhat ingenious and pretty comment; but it is equally objectionable with the former. If we admit that the interpretation is correct, it is an instance of the bad practice which greatly prevailed with the early fathers, of resorting for their scripture authorities to obscure passages, in preference to plain ones. But the place in question does not admit of the meaning which Irenæus assigns to it. The expression quoted neither alludes to the human nature of Christ, nor

34 John xv. 14. 36 See Matt. x. 24, 25.;

38 Psa. lxxxv. 12.

35 Adv. Hær., lib. 4. c. 27. John xii. 26., &c.

37 John xiv. 6.

39 Adv. Hær., lib. 3. c. 5.

to his resurrection from the dead, nor to any quality whatever inherent in the person of our Saviour: but, as the context shows, is a prophetic description of the happy effects of his sacrifice and death; whereby the mercy and the truth, the righteousness and the benevolence of God towards fallen man are once more harmonized, so that he can "be just, and yet justify the believer." Here also, then, our author fails in producing satisfactory Scripture authority for his doctrine; even when that doctrine is one so easy of proof, as our Lord's veracity.

The impropriety and absurdity of the following, need no exposure. He interprets Matt. xxiv. 28., "Where the carcass is, there will the eagles (aquila) be gathered together," of the multitude of believers coming to Christ t; and supposes it to be a parallel prophecy to Isa. xliii. 6., "I will say to the North (Aquiloni) give up :" alluding, as it appears to me, to the resemblance between the two Latin words in the version he made use of.40

"Hosea the prophet took a wife of fornication;41 prophecying thereby that the Land,' that is, the inhabitants thereof, 'had departed by fornication from the Lord.' But of such persons it pleased God to take himself a church, to be sanctified by communication with his Son; even as was the sinful woman by communication with the prophet: and, therefore, St. Paul says,42 The unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband." "43

"Moses married an Ethiopic woman, whom he made

40 Lib. 4. c. 28., p. 316. The Greek of this portion of Irenæus is not extant; but the allusion is very apparent in the Latin version, and I see no reason to doubt that the translator found it in the original.

41 Hos. i. 2, 3., &c.

42 1 Cor. vii. 14.

43 Lib. 4. c. 37.

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an Israelite, to show that the wild olive would be grafted into the olive tree, and partake of its fatness.245 For since he who was born Christ was enquired after by his own people, that they might slay him, and was saved in Egypt, that is, among the Gentiles; and there he sanctified the infants, whereof he afterwards composed his church, (for Egypt was Gentile from the beginning, like the Ethiopic woman) so by the marriage of Moses, the nuptials of Christ are shown forth: and the Gentile church is typified by the Ethiopic bride. It was on this account that they who derided and slandered her46 were struck with leprosy and cast forth of the camp."47

Similar instances of misapplication abound throughout the works of this father.

The same remark is also true of Tertullian; of whose mode of interpretation several examples are already before the reader. In order to show that the error of quoting texts of Scripture in proof of doctrines to which they make no allusion, prevailed universally in the second century, we give a few additional instances from his tract against the Jews: a point of controversy depending altogether upon the mode of interpreting the Old Testament, and, therefore, necessarily giving occasion for the appearance of this error. He informs us at the outset48 that God hath called the Gentiles in these latter days, lest the Jews should be too much lifted upon by the expression in Isaiah, “Behold the Gentiles are accounted as a drop of a bucket, and as the dust of the threshing-floor."49 And in the same passage, in expounding the account of the birth of Jacob and Esau, with a particular reference to the

expression "the elder shall serve the younger, "950 he interprets Jacob, the progenitor of the Jews, as a type of the Gentiles, and Esau, the father of a Gentile nation, as the representative of the Jews! Shortly afterwards (cc. 2, 5.) he finds the same truth prefigured in the rejected sacrifice of Cain and the accepted one of Abel; (Cain was of course the Jews, and Abel the Gentiles :) and mars an admirable train of reasoning, showing that a divine law existed previous to the Mosaic one, by endeavouring to demonstrate that the inhibition on our first parents in Paradise from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, includes in itself the whole Decalogue! He often refers to those interpretations in the course of his book, and even expounds other places by them. As for instance, after having interpreted the desolations described in the first chapter of Isaiah, of the dispersion of the Jews by the Romans, he thus comments upon the passage at the commencement of the following chapter:-"Come ye, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.' The prophet here predicts that a new law would come forth, not from Esau, the elder people, (that is, the Jews,) but from from us, the Gentiles,

Jacob, the younger people, that is, whose mountain is Christ; the stone of whom Daniel prophesied,51 that it should become a great mountain, and fill the whole earth."52

The commentator here has not touched upon a single point on which he is not mistaken. The introduction to Isaiah's prophesies is a description of the Jews and Judea at the time they were written; and so many allusions in it limit the predictive parts to periods immediately succeeding, that with no shadow of propriety can it be interpreted of any other. The promise also, with which it

50 Gen. xxv. 23.

51 Dan. ii. 35., &c.

52 C. 3.