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 spoke
4792
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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E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
