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4. I feel myself growing dizzy
with all this, and wonder whether, in obeying you, I have not been
obeying God, nor walking in the footsteps of the saints, unless it be
that my too great love to you, and my unwillingness to cause you any
pain, has led me astray and caused me to think of all these
excuses. We started from the words of the preacher, where he
says: “My son, beware of making many books.”
With this I compare a saying from the Proverbs of the same
Solomon,4791
“In the
multitude of words thou shalt not escape sin; but in sparing thy lips
thou shalt be wise.” Here I ask whether speaking many words
of whatever kind is a multitude of words (in the sense of the
preacher), even if the many words a man speaks are sacred and connected
with salvation. If this be the case, and if he who makes use of
many salutary words is guilty of “multitude of words,” then
Solomon himself did not escape this sin, for “he spoke4792
three thousand proverbs, and five thousand
songs, and he spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon even
unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, he spoke also of beasts
and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes.” How, I
may ask, can any one give any course of instruction, without a
multitude of words, using the phrase in its simplest sense? Does
not Wisdom herself say to those who are perishing,4793
“I stretched out my words, and ye
heeded not”? Do we not find Paul, too, extending his
discourse from morning to midnight,4794
when Eutychus
was borne down with sleep and fell down, to the dismay of the hearers,
who thought he was killed? If, then, the words are true,
“In much speaking thou wilt not escape sin,” and if Solomon
was yet not guilty of great sin when he discoursed on the subjects
above mentioned, nor Paul when he prolonged his discourse till
midnight, then the question arises, What is that much speaking which is
referred to? and then we may pass on to consider what are the many
books. Now the entire Word of God, who was in the beginning with
God, is not much speaking, is not words; for the Word is one,
being composed of the many speculations (theoremata), each of which is
a part of the Word in its entirety. Whatever words there be
outside of this one, which promise to give any description and
exposition, even though they be words about truth, none of these, to
put it in a somewhat paradoxical way, is Word or Reason, they are all
words or reasons. They are not the monad, far from it; they are
not that which agrees and is one in itself, by their inner divisions
and conflicts unity has departed from them, they have become numbers,
perhaps infinite numbers. We are obliged, therefore, to say that
whoever speaks that which is foreign to religion is using many words,
while he who speaks the words of truth, even should he go over the
whole field and omit nothing, is always speaking the one word.
Nor are the saints guilty of much speaking, since they always have the
aim in view which is connected with the one word. It appears,
then, that the much speaking which is condemned is judged to be so
rather from the nature of the views propounded, than from the number of
the words pronounced. Let us see if we cannot conclude in the
same way that all the sacred books are one book, but that those outside
are the “many books” of the preacher. The proof of
this must be drawn from Holy Scripture, and it will be most
satisfactorily established if I am able to show that it is not only one
book, taking the word now in its commoner meaning, that we find to be
written about Christ. Christ is written about even in the
Pentateuch; He is spoken of in each of the Prophets, and in the Psalms,
and, in a word, as the Saviour Himself says, in all the
Scriptures. He refers us to them all, when He says:4795
“Search the Scriptures, for in
them ye think ye have eternal life, and these are they which testify of
Me.” And if He refers us to the Scriptures as testifying of
Him, it is not to one that He sends us, to the exclusion of another,
but to all that speak of Him, those which, in the Psalms, He calls the
chapter of the book, saying,4796
“In the
chapter of the book it is written of Me.” If any one
proposes to take these words, “In the chapter of the book it is
written of Me,” literally, and to apply them to this or that
special passage where Christ is spoken of, let him tell us on what
principle he warrants his preference for one book over another. If any one supposes
that we are doing something of this kind ourselves, and applying the
words in question to the book of Psalms, we deny that we do so, and we
would urge that in that case the words should have been, “In this
book it is written of Me.” But He speaks of all the books
as one chapter, thus summing up in one all that is spoken of Christ for
our instruction. In fact the book was seen by John,4797
“written within and without, and
sealed; and no one could open it to read it, and to loose the seals
thereof, but the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, who has
the key of David,4798
he that openeth and
none shall shut, and that shutteth and none shall open.”
For the book here spoken of means the whole of Scripture; and it is
written within (lit. in front), on account of the meaning which is
obvious, and on the back, on account of its remoter and spiritual
sense. Observe, in addition to this, if a proof that the sacred
writings are one book, and those of an opposite character many, may not
be found in the fact that there is one book of the living from which
those who have proved unworthy to be in it are blotted out, as it is
written:4799
“Let
them be blotted out of the book of the living,” while of those
who are to undergo the judgment, there are books in the plural, as
Daniel says:4800
“The
judgment was set, and the books were opened.” But Moses
also bears witness to the unity of the sacred book, when he
says:4801
“If Thou forgive the people
their sins, forgive, but if not, then wipe me out of the book which
Thou hast written.” The passage in Isaiah,4802
too, I read in the same way. It is not
peculiar to his prophecy that the words of the book should be sealed,
and should neither be read by him who does not know letters, because he
is ignorant of letters, nor by him who is learned, because the book is
sealed. This is true of every writing, for every written work
needs the reason (Logos) which closed it to open it. “He
shall shut, and none shall open,”4803
and when He opens no one can cast doubt on the interpretation He
brings. Hence it is said that He shall open and no man shall
shut. I infer a similar lesson from the book spoken of in
Ezekiel,4804
in which was
written lamentation, and a song, and woe. For the whole book is
full of the woe of the lost, and the song of the saved, and the
lamentation of those between these two. And John, too, when he
speaks of his eating the one roll,4805
in which both
front and back were written on, means the whole of Scripture, one book
which is, at first, most sweet when one begins, as it were, to chew it,
but bitter in the revelation of himself which it makes to the
conscience of each one who knows it. I will add to the proof of
this an apostolic saying which has been quite misunderstood by the
disciples of Marcion, who, therefore, set the Gospels at naught.
The Apostle says:4806
“According to my Gospel in Christ Jesus;” he does not speak
of Gospels in the plural, and, hence, they argue that as the Apostle
only speaks of one Gospel in the singular, there was only one in
existence. But they fail to see that, as He is one of whom all
the evangelists write, so the Gospel, though written by several hands,
is, in effect, one. And, in fact, the Gospel, though written by
four, is one. From these considerations, then, we learn what the
one book is, and what the many books, and what I am now concerned about
is, not the quantity I may write, but the effect of what I say, lest,
if I fail in this point, and set forth anything against the truth
itself, even in one of my writings, I should prove to have transgressed
the commandment, and to be a writer of “many books.”
Yet I see the heterodox assailing the holy Church of God in these days,
under the pretence of higher wisdom, and bringing forward works in many
volumes in which they offer expositions of the evangelical and
apostolic writings, and I fear that if I should be silent and should
not put before our members the saving and true doctrines, these
teachers might get a hold of curious souls, which, in the absence of
wholesome nourishment, might go after food that is forbidden, and, in
fact, unclean and horrible. It appears to me, therefore, to be
necessary that one who is able to represent in a genuine manner the
doctrine of the Church, and to refute those dealers in knowledge,
falsely so-called, should take his stand against historical fictions,
and oppose to them the true and lofty evangelical message in which the
agreement of the doctrines, found both in the so-called Old Testament
and in the so-called New, appears so plainly and fully. You
yourself felt at one time the lack of good representatives of the
better cause, and were impatient of a faith which was at issue with
reason and absurd, and you then, for the love you bore to the Lord,
gave yourself to composition from which, however, in the exercise of the judgment with which you are
endowed, you afterwards desisted. This is the defence which I
think admits of being made for those who have the faculty of speaking
and writing. But I am also pleading my own cause, as I now devote
myself with what boldness I may to the work of exposition; for it may
be that I am not endowed with that habit and disposition which he ought
to have who is fitted by God to be a minister of the New Covenant, not
of the letter but of the spirit.
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