Md : : 
XXV. 16.] THE SECOND BOOK. 263 
the matter thereof positively to be true. To conclude 
therefore these two interpretations, the one by reduction 
or enigmatical, the other philosophical or physical, which 
have been received and pursued in imitation of the rab- 
‘bins and cabalists, are to be confined with a nolz alfum= 
sapere, sed time. 
17. But the two latter points, known to God and un- 
known to man, touching the secrets of the heart and the 
successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference 
between the manner of the exposition of the scriptures 
and all other books. For it is an excellent observation 
which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour 
Christ to many of the questions which were propounded 
to him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the 
question demanded; the reason whereof is, because not 
being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, 
but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, he never an- 
swered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like 
manner it is with the scriptures, which being written to 
the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, 
with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing 
estates of the church, yea and particularly of the elect, 
are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude 
of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards 
that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, 
or in precise congruity or contexture with the words 
before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope 
of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or 
collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, in- 
finite springs and streams of doctrine to water the church 
in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it 
were, the main stream or river; so the moral sense chiefly, 
and sometimes the allegorical. or typical, are they whereof 
