locks the treasures of the spiritual and future world, and reveals the secrets of time and of eternity to consider the emblems, however, and to investigate the adumbrations of Scripture, except in some very peculiar and important instances, comes not within the limits of the present volume, and is more immediately the business of an index, or dictionary, than of a general survey and examination of the sense and use of prophecy *.

It is of more consequence to observe, and the observation is of frequent use and application, and never to be lost sight of, nor forgotten, that the immediate effect of typical designation, is not merely to produce hesitation and difficulty in deciphering its true sense and completion, but also to make it a question sometimes of no easy solution, and admitting very considerable deliberation and discussion, whether, and how far, the emblems or the objects, the figures or what they prefigure, the signs or the things signified themselves, are used and intended, or, what amounts to the same thing, whether and how far the language employed by the prophet is typical and representative, or plain and literal. The seven mountains for instance, on which the confessedly hieroglyphical character, the whore or the mother of har

*To the commentators, most of whom furnish much information on the subject, together with the old Onirocriticks, may be added the Chaldee Targum on the prophets, Glasii Philologia Sacra, Schoettgen. Mr. Mede, Dr. Moore, Daubuz, Lancaster.

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lots, sitteth in the Apocalypse, is by those who interpret prophecy not so much to defend and to propagate Christianity, and to strengthen and to extend the church, as to correct and to reform it, but in the end, to divide and to weaken it, is supposed to denote the seven small literal and natural hills of old, despised, and almost deserted ROME; whilst reasons, it is hoped sufficiently strong, will be offered in the course of these pages to induce us to concur with the earlier and primitive writers of the church, that they are no more plain and literal hills than she who sat upon them was really and literally a woman, and that both are equally emblematic, and are therefore the prophetic and representative designations of more abstract and general ideas, and of more noble and important objects.

Neither is this ambiguity and perplexity confined to the prophetic Scriptures; but pervades also other portions of Holy Writ, and has given rise to some of the most violent and incurable dissensions, by which the body of Christ has been so much divided, and the peace, unity, and concord of his kingdom so much interrupted. How much disunion and animosity the Sacramentarian controversies have produced is well known; some contending for a symbolical interpretation, others for what may be termed a half literal and half symbolical, whilst others still insist upon a more

rigidly literal and direct interpretation of the important words, "This is my body."

To lay down rules and to quote examples for determining the sense, and for separating the hieroglyphic from the object, the shadow from the substance, and the type from the antitype, might excite much interest and convey much instruction; but perhaps it may be sufficient to observe in general, that, when by some obvious imperfection or inconsistency necessarily attached to, and connected with, the literal object and exposition, the sense is rendered manifestly incongruous and incomplete, we are justified in abandoning the plain and literal import of the words, and in resorting to the typical use and interpretation of them.

Divine truth had been taught and moral improvement had been infused and communicated by our heavenly Father to his young and earthly offspring by the objects of sense, and through the medium of visible signs, and of material representations; which, indeed, constituted no small part of the language and of the religion of the early and the infant world. The frame of universal nature was combined with that of ourselves to render such a mode of enlightening our understandings, and of influencing our hearts, the most suitable and the most effectual. It was precisely that species of intercourse between heaven and

earth, and that degree of approximation of God to man, of which his ignorance and weakness were, at that period, most capable, and to which they were best adapted. It was the most easy and intelligible, as well as the most engaging and impressive method of instructing and of improving him. The body is the vehicle and the vestibule of the soul; it is the mind's antechamber, and the sure road and entrance into it; if it is the soul's organ and agent, it is also, and not unfrequently, its guide, and its master, and never fails to move and to interest it; through it the mind must be first informed and directed, and through it, may be rendered, if not at all times easy and happy, yet at all times uneasy and afflicted. Matter is earlier and easier observed than spirit; the world which is seen must first instruct us in respect of that which is unseen; and we derive the groundwork and the first principles of our ideas and language concerning what is spiritual and invisible, from the material and fleeting objects around us. The temporal with us precedes the eternal, not only in the order of time, but in the order of our knowledge; and is designed and contrived to convey some previous glimpse and foretaste of that which is future and everlasting. "We now," according to the just and philosophical observation of St. Paul," see only through a glass darkly *."

δι' εσόπτρου εν αινιγματι, that is, through the glass of inaterial objects and of emblematic designations.

H