THE SECOND BOOK 385 



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 collec- 

 tively, 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 interpretation of the Scripture which is 

 only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book. 

 In this part touching the exposition of the Scriptures, I 

 can report no deficience ; but by way of remembrance this 

 I will add : In perusing books of divinity, I find many 

 books of controversies ; and many of common places 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 Scriptures, 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 

 common places, not chasing after controversies, not re- 

 duced into method of art ; a thing abounding in sermons, 

 which will vanish, but defective in books, which will re- 

 main ; and a thing wherein this age excelleth. For I am 

 persuaded, and I may speak it with an Absit invidia verbo, 

 and no ways 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 Scrip- 

 tures which have been made dispersedly in sermons within 

 this your Majesty's island of Britain by the space of these 

 forty years and more (leaving out the largeness 

 of exhortations and applications thereupon) had 

 been set down in a continuance, it had been the 

 best work in divinity which had been written since the 

 apostles' times. 



2B 



