opposed to the reception of Christianity by candid sceptics were the constant theme of Dr. Priestley and of his sect. Their periodical publications teem with misrepresentations and insinuations drawn from this subject to the disadvantage of every form of orthodoxy, indiscriminately, from the extremes of predestinarianism to the moderate system of Tillotson, Paley, Jortin and Butler. The simplifying of truth is the philosophical idea which lies at the foundation of their system. They would have it appear that their design is to render Christianity an intellectual religion, and to disentangle it from the mass of critical objections under which it labors.

In the course of this attempt they exclude the notion of types from their theology, and vindicate their conduct by the alleged silence of the Pentateuch, and of the prophets under the law, upon the subject of a spiritual and typical meaning being connected with the law. They exaggerate the fact of the partial notice of this topic in the Old Testament, and deduce more than even that fact so exaggerated will warrant, namely, the total absence of a typical interpretation of the law from the religious systems of Moses and Christ.

2. By the insensible but certain force of prejudice which raises many weak arguments in a better cause, and hides many reasonable ones from the abettors of an erroneous cause, they hastily reject an elucidation of scripture-doctrine coming from individuals who rank under the banners of orthodoxy. They repeatedly ask

What is that which you would have us receive? Orthodoxy is Proteus-like as error26, and is never the same. This may justly be retorted on a system which has no standard but the reason of the individual who embraces it, independently of the authority of the Apostles, frequently without regard to the epistolary part of the New Testament, and with very little besides the resurrection of Christ to distinguish it from the Deism of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. It is evidently a prejudice unworthy of a patient, or of an impartial mind. They argue ' They argue either God did forgive sin freely, or he did not. Either the doctrine of a literal satisfaction is true, or it is not. We are persuaded that it is false, and by consequence, so also is the typical interpretation of the law. Paul calls thanksgiving a sacrifice, and in the same manner, he calls Christ a sacrifice, and that is sufficient for our purpose.'

They are reminded that there is a middle way; that without a literal satisfaction it is scriptural to attribute a meritorious efficacy to the death of Christ in order to the pardon of sins, which belonged to the death of no other

person.

But these representations are called heterodoxy in disguise, and so are dismissed.

3. Typical analogy is partly conjectural, and is not an essential point, or one in which we are interested. What if the Apostles did accommo

26 Mr. Wellbeloved's Letters to Archdeacon Wrangham,

p. 23.

date their expressions to the sacrificial institutions of the Jews, it is not requisite that we should imitate them in the adoption of such language",

6

4. The doctrine of types is capable of great abuse. The extent to which it may be carried, cannot be defined. Whence it cannot but be dangerous to lay any stress upon it as illustrating, and thereby describing an essential doctrine.'

5. It has been admitted by individuals of great celebrity and understanding, that the Apostles might possibly labor in many respects under disadvantages in common with their countrymen, in their interpretation and application of Scripture. In such cases we may reject them (and the case of types is such an one), without rejecting Christianity, or any doctrine of Christianity.'

With regard to the nature of typical analogies, it is of a piece with the divine system of instruction we observe both in the moral and sensible world. All our ideas respecting abstract and invisible things are introduced into the understanding by the door of the senses. The tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the visions of the patriarchs, (perhaps the miracles of Moses), the symbolical actions of the prophets, circumcision, and the purifications of the Jews, all had regard to something beyond their material part. So also might the types of the Old Testament, that have been adduced in the course of this enquiry.

27 Mr. Lindsey's Sequel, p. 88.

Are the analogies themselves so slight, so artificial, so familiar to us, as as that we may attribute them to the chance of things, or the ingenuity of men?

A reference of the works of God in nature, of the ceremonies of religion, and of many things in the mythology and parables of the heathen nations, to various moral ends, render it not improbable that some moral was conveyed in the rites and institutions of Moses, and that God, by the analogy of the law with the Gospel, would teach mankind that the law and the Gospel were derived from the same author.

Typical and allegorical instruction entered into the constitution of Christianity, and began under Christianity with our Lord himself.

"The miracles of Christ were prophecies at the same time. They were such miracles as in a particular manner suited his character; they were significant emblems of his designs, and figures aptly representing the benefits to be conferred by him upon mankind, and they had in them, if we may so speak, a spiritual

sense."

"The miracles by which St. Paul was instructed and converted, have been thought by some to be of the emblematic and prophetic kind, and to indicate the future calling of the Jews: so that Paul the persecutor, and Paul the Apostle, was a type of his own nation 28" In defence of typical analogies, it has been 28 Jortin's Ecclesiastical History, II. pp. 16-32.

asked, whether the Apostles instead of gaining converts and esteem, as they daily did, must not, quite contrary, have given their enemies the greatest advantage over them, and drawn upon themselves universal indignation and scorn, had this method of interpreting the old law been then as much exploded, as it hath been by late and modern Jews: nay, whether men, who in all other cases discourse rationally and consistently, could ever be guilty of an absurdity so great as that of disputing with their subtilest and bitterest adversaries upon a medium altogether new, and sure to be disclaimed as soon as heard by them? So that, setting aside the authority of divine inspiration, let it be but allowed that the first preachers of Christianity were men of ordinary reason and prudence, and that their first converts were not utterly forsaken of both, we need ask no more to justify this presumption, that the explications of the ritual law in the New Testament, were by no means contradictory to the stated maxims whereby those of that age judged of the true importance and design of the Old 29."

The ignorance of the majority among the Jews is no more an argument against the typical design of the law, than against the truth of the prophecies which related to the Messiah. "It is improbable," it is said, "that the nation of the Jews should so entirely have for

29 Dean Stanhope's Boyle's Lectures. See also those by Dr. R. Burnet and Berryman, and references on types in Law's Theory of Religion.