thou suffered us to err and to harden our heart,” viz. by withdrawing the assistance of thy grace, and abandoning us for our sins. And so in all those passages where God seems to be spoken of as the cause of the evil dispositions of men. But there is no fault in our translation for having in general adopted the form of expression which implies causation, because the language of Scripture proceeding upon the acknowledged truth, that nothing happens but by permission of the Almighty, that form maintains the truth with more spirit. It cannot, if properly understood, lead us to any hurtful conclusion; while those, whose language did not make the distinction, would never have been brought into any difficulty for the want of it". As another part of the same indiscriminate method of speaking just intimated, the Hebrew language is little fitted to express the distinction between the event and the final cause, which it always confounds. Of this we see an instance among others in Jer. xxvii. 10. "For they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land and that I should drive you out and ye should perish.-15. They prophesy a lie in my name, that I might drive you out and that ye might perish; ye and the prophets that prophesy unto you." These sad consequences followed as the event of • Glass. Dathe's edit. Vol. I. Lib. 1. Tract. 3. Can. 11. listening to these prophets; but the design of the prophets in delivering these pretended prophecies was very different. Our Saviour says, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword; for I am come to set a man at variance against his Father"," &c. No one can doubt, that our Saviour's design was to establish peace on earth; and that all which he did and taught, was obviously calculated to promote it; but by the perverseness of many, what he meant for peace, became a source of discord and hatred. This we see to be too much the case even at this day; and we may as well argue from the present fact, that he intended that discord should continue now, as understand his words for an expression of his intent then; and not as a prophetic warning of what would, by the vices of men, in a great degree defeat the benevolent designs of its Great Author. The heathens of old imputed the evils, which they brought upon themselves by their own malice, to the Christians as the cause of them. Historians have turned these dissensions by insinuation against the beneficial effects of the religion itself; and unbelievers of modern days, have imputed a malevolent design to him, whose main purpose in coming upon earth was to put an end to the vices which occasioned all these evils. Matt. x. 34, 35. 9 See Grotius, Notes on Matt. x. 34. and Luke xii. 49. But they all reason equally ill, and shew to what errors men may be led, who mistake the event for the final cause, and confound in their reasonings what is not always distinguished in expression. The Greek language is well able to make the distinction, and has particles adapted for the purpose. Yet in that language, the particles appropriated for expressing the final cause, are sometimes used in simply declaring the event. In the Greek of the New Testament this is often done: to take one example for all 10: "For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad":" not kept secret in order to be made known, but so hid that it shall be made known. Nay, the progress of the mind itself is often to describe the event, as if it were the final cause; particularly if the event produced be a striking consequence following from the conduct of the speaker, however remote it were from his first intention. Of this St. Paul may furnish us with a fit illustration. He had written to the Corinthians to excommunicate an incestuous person, and finding the effect of his letter in producing contrition, and reviving the affection of the church towards him (which he feared had been alienated) so much greater than he expected, he denies all 10 Many other examples might be added. Rom. xi. 11. 31, 32. John x. 17. 11 Mark iv. 22. those things to have been in his intention, which were really the causes why he wrote; and represents that, which was, in a great degree, the unexpected event, as the real cause which prompted him to write: " Wherefore, though I wrote unto you, I did it not for his cause that had done the wrong; nor for his cause that suffered wrong; but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear unto you." He certainly did write for his sake "who did the wrong," for he ordered him to be excommunicated, 1 Cor. v. 5.; and for his sake "that suffered wrong," that he might receive at least the public reparation of a censure, on him who had injured him. While that, for the sake of which he says he wrote, their favourable acceptance of his concern for them, was an event of which, when he wrote, he had too much reason to doubt. So also Abraham, Gen. xviii. 5. when he proposes to the angels to take some refreshment, says, "For therefore are ye come to your servants;" assuming that as their design in coming, that he might the more certainly persuade them, by representing their refusal as a failure of the object for which they came. So our Saviour vindicates the woman who poured the precious ointment on his head, by saying, "she did it for his burial";" excusing her by the prophetic intimation which he gave the act 12 2 Cor. vii. 12. 13 Matt. xxvi. 12. in the event; though she could have no such intention in her mind at the time. This is a figure of speech which we often use for various causes of persuasion, affection, apology, abhorrence, and emphasis; and when the stile of Revelation employs so readily all the other figures of speech, to which the various emotions of the mind give rise, there seems no reason to exclude this; which, if you do not admit, you will often be driven to absurd or contradictory interpreta tions. This syllepsis of expression (if it may be so denominated) by which the moral agency (to use words borrowed from human notions) is confounded with the natural agency of the great Creator and Governor of all, and the event with the final cause, seems the clue for the explanation of all the passages, which ascribe to him doings which, we know by his own declarations, are the most abhorrent from his will and his ways that can be. The Israelites received the great truths of religion with the utmost simplicity of mind, and expressed them with equal simplicity of language. The first Christians, without any philosophical subtilty, both adopted their phraseology, and received and taught in the greatest plainness, the important doctrines which had been revealed to them. But the endless intricacies of disputation into which Christians have since been led, have burdened the language of theology with such a variety of distinctions, and so perplexed religion by |