Accommodations of elder Scriptural phrases--that favourite
ornament and garnish of Jewish eloquence; incidental allusions to
popular notions, traditions, apologues (for example, the dispute
between the Devil and the archangel Michael about the body of Moses,
Jude 9); fancies and anachronisms imported from the synagogue of
Alexandria into Palestine, by or together with the Septuagint
version, and applied as mere argumenta ad homines (for example, the
delivery of the Law by the disposition of angels, Acts vii. 53, Gal.
iii. 19, Heb. ii. 2),--these, detached from their context, and,
contrary to the intention of the sacred writer, first raised into
independent theses, and then brought together to produce or sanction
some new credendum for which neither separately could have furnished
a pretence! By this strange mosaic, Scripture texts have been worked
up into passable likenesses of purgatory, Popery, the Inquisition,
and other monstrous abuses. But would you have a Protestant instance
of the superstitious use of Scripture arising out of this dogma?
Passing by the Cabbala of the Hutchinsonian School as the dotage of a
few weak-minded individuals, I refer you to Bishop Hacket's sermons
on the Incarnation.
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