2i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



is more telling (ii. 6), because &quot; facile investigata plerum- 

 que vilescunt,&quot; and &quot; nemo ambigit per similitudinem 

 libentius quaeque cognosci.&quot; And lastly, it is manifest 

 that on Augustin s principles the richness of Scripture is 

 entirely lost. Wherever any ambiguity occurs, recourse 

 is at once to be had to the praescriptum fideli. It is only 

 in the second instance that an appeal is made to the 

 original language or other such helps (iii. 3). In tropical 

 passages interpretation is a sheer system of guessing 

 which of the truths comprised in the rule of faith can be 

 got out of the words (iii. 24). Perhaps several good 

 senses are possible. If so, the inspired author (who 

 was always spiritually illuminated (iii. 39), though his 

 first readers might not get beyond the letter) probably 

 saw both senses, and certainly the Holy Spirit foresaw 

 both. Can anything be more fatal to a true appreciation 

 of Scripture than this artificial confinement of every 

 thought it contains within the narrow compass of a crude 

 theological system, a truly Procrustean bed, of which 

 not even the earliest thoughts of the Old Testament 

 must fall short, and which the ideal completeness of the 

 New Testament must not transcend ? Yet, amidst all 

 these false notions, the purely rational part of Augustin s 

 hermeneutics is, on the whole, admirable. He fully 

 apprehends that the function of the interpreter is simply 

 the reproduction of the thoughts of the writer. The 

 error lies far deeper than the formal principles of exegesis. 

 It lies in a conception of the essentials of Christianity, 

 a theory of the things that inspired men must wish to 

 speak about, that is utterly discordant with facts. 



The great interpreter of the Western Church, through 

 all the middle ages, was Augustin s contemporary, 

 Jerome. As inferior to the former in original power, 

 as superior to him in learning, Jerome exhibits in his 

 exegesis a closer adherence to the methods of Origen. All 

 Scripture, he grants, shines even in the bark, but it is 

 sweeter in the pith, &quot; fulget etiam in cortice, sed dulcius 



