THE SECOND BOOK. 189 



is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the an 

 swers 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 answered 

 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 ac 

 cording to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and re 

 spectively 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, infinite 

 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 the Church hath most 

 use ; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent 

 or light in allusions : but that I do much condemn that inter 

 pretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as 

 men use to interpret a profane book. 



(18) In this part touching the exposition of the Scriptures, I 

 can report no deficiency ; but by way of remembrance this I 

 will add. In perusing books of divinity I find many books of 

 controversies, and many of commonplaces and treatises, a mass 

 of positive divinity, as it is made an art : a number of sermons 

 and lectures, and many prolix commentaries upon the Scrip 

 tures, with harmonies and concordances. But that form of 

 writing in divinity which in my judgment is of all others most 

 rich and precious is positive divinity, collected upon particular 

 texts of Scriptures in brief observations ; not dilated into com 

 monplaces, not chasing after controversies, not reduced into 

 method of art ; a thing abounding in sermons, which will 

 vanish, but defective in books which will remain, and a thing 

 wherein this age excelleth. For I am persuaded, and I may 

 speak it with an absit invidia verbo, and nowise in derogation 

 of antiquity, but as in a good emulation between the vine and 

 the olive, that if the choice and best of those observations upon 

 texts of Scriptures which have been made dispersedly in sermons 

 within this your Majesty s Island of Brittany by the space 

 of these forty years and more (leaving out the largeness of 



