strangely reverses the whole matter. The merchant seeking goodly pearls is now Christ himself. The Church of the elect is the pearl of price; which that he might purchase and make his own, he parted with all that he had, emptying himself of his divine glory and taking the form of a servant. Or yet more ingeniously, the pearl, as in the common explanation, is still interpreted as the heavenly blessedness, and Christ the merchant, who that he might secure that blessedness to us and make it ours, though he was so rich, gladly made himself poor, buying that pearl and that treasure,-not indeed for himself, but for us.† * Salmeron (Serm. in Par. Evang., p. 66) applies the same to the parable preceding: Homo qui invenit thesaurum, hoc est, pretiosam Ecclesiam electorum . . . Christus est qui pro comparando tanto sanctorum thesauro omnia bona sua distraxit. Compare the Brief Exposition of Matth. xiii., by J. N. Darby, pp. 30, 31. † So Drexelius (Opp., v. 1, p. 209): Quis verior Christo Domino mercator, qui pretium sui sanguinis infinitum pro pretiosis illis mercibus dedit? Verè abiit, vendiditque omnia, famam, sanguinem, vitam exposuit, ut nobis cœlum emeret. VII. THE DRAW NET. MATTHEW Xiii. 47-50. THIS parable would at first sight seem to say exactly the same thing as that of the Tares. Maldonatus, led away by this apparent identity of purpose in the two, supposes that St. Matthew has not related the parables in the order in which the Lord spoke them, but that this should have immediately followed upon that. Here however he is clearly mistaken; there is this fundamental difference between them, that the central truth of that is the present intermixture of the good and bad; of this, the future separation; of that, that men are not to effect the separation; of this, that the separation will, one day, by God be effected; so that the order in which we have them is evidently the right one, as that is concerning the gradual development,-this, the final consummation of the Church. Olshausen draws a further distinction between the two, that in that, the kingdom of God is represented rather in its idea, as identical with the whole world, which idea it shall ultimately realize; in this, rather in its present imperfect form, as a less contained in a greater, which yet, indeed, has this tendency in itself to spread over and embrace all that greater;-the sea being here the world, and the net, the Church gathering in its members from the world, as the net does its fish from the sea. Much of what has been already said, in considering the Tares, will apply here. The same use has been made of either parable; there is the same continual appeal to this as to that in the Donatist controversy, and the present conveys, to all ages, the same instruction as that,namely, that the Lord did not contemplate his visible Church as a communion in which there should be no intermixture of evil; but as there was a Ham in the ark, and a Judas among the twelve, so there should be a Babylon even within the bosom of the spiritual Israel; Esau shall contend with Jacob even in the Church's womb,* till, like another Rebekah, she shall often have to exclaim, "Why am I thus?" (Gen. xxv. 22.) It conveys, too, the same lesson, that this fact does not justify self-willed departure from the fellowship of the Church, an impatient leaping over, or breaking through, the nets, as it is often called; but the Lord's separation is patiently to be waited for, which shall surely arrive at the end of the present age.† It is worth our while to consider what manner of net it is to which our Lord likens the kingdom of heaven. In the heading of the chapter in our Bibles, it is called a draw net, and the particular kind is distinctly * See Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxxvi. 3. † The following extracts will show the uses, either practical or controversial, to which the parable was turned. Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lxiv. 6): Jam in mari capti per retia fidei, gaudeamus nos ibi natare adhuc intra retia, quia adhuc mare hoc sævit procellis, sed retia quæ nos ceperunt perducentur ad litus. Interim intra ipsa retia, fratres, benè vivamus, non retia rumpentes foras exeamus. Multi enim ruperunt retia et schismata fecerunt, et foras exierunt. Quia malos pisces intra retia captos tolerare se nolle dixerunt, ipsi mali facti sunt potuis, quàm illi quos se non potuisse tolerare dixerunt.-The curious ballad verses which are found at the commencement of his Anti-Donatist Tracts, and which he wrote, as he says, to bring the subject within the comprehension of the most unlearned, begins with a reference to, and exposition of, this parable. Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare; The following quotations from the minutes of the conference at Carthage will show how the Donatists sought to evade the force of the arguments drawn from this parable, and how the Catholics replied. They did not deny that Christ spake in this parable of sinners being found mingled with the righteous in the Church upon earth, yet it was only concealed sinners; they affirmed (Coll. Carth., d. 3.) hoc de reis latentibus dictum, quoniam reticulum in mari positum quid habeat, à piscatoribus, id est à sacerdotibus, ignorantur, donec extractum ad litus ad purgationem boni seu mali prodantur. Ita et latentes et in Ecclesià constitituti, et à sacerdotibus ignorati, in divino judicio proditi, tanquam pisces mali à sanctorum consortio separantur. Augustine answers, with an allusion to Matt. iii. 12 (Ad Don. post Coll., c. 10): Numquid et area sub aquâ vel terrâ trituratur, aut certè nocturnis horis, non in sole, conteritur, aut in eâ rusticus cæcus operatur ?-It is evident that their reply was a mere evasion; that they took refuge in an accidental circumstance in the parable, namely, that so long as the nets are under water their contents cannot be seen, so as to avoid being plainly convinced of schism. specified by the word in the original. It is a net of the largest size, suffering nothing to escape from it; and this, its all embracing nature, is certainly not to be left out of sight, as an accidental or unimportant circumstance, but contains in fact a prophecy of the wide reach and potent operation of the Gospel. The kingdom of heaven should henceforward be a net, not cast into a single stream as hitherto, but into the broad sea of the whole world, and gathering or drawing together (John xi. 52) some out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. Or when it is said, that it "gathered of every kind," we may understand both good and bad. As the servants who were sent to invite guests to the marriage supper (Matt. xxii. 10), "gathered together all, as many as they found, both bad and good;" so here the fishers take fish of all kinds within the folds of the net;-men of every diversity of moral character have the Gospel preached to them, and find themselves within the limits of the visible Church.† Σαγήνη (not as some derive it, from ἔσω ἄγειν, but from σάττω, onero), a hauling net, as distinguished from the aμpíßλŋσтpov or casting net (Matt. iv. 18); in Latin, tragum, tragula, verriculum. It was of immense length. On the coast of Cornwall, where it is now used, and bears the same name, seine or sean, a corruption of the Greek, which has come to us through the Vulgate and the AngloSaxon, it is sometimes half a mile in length; and scarcely could have been much smaller among the ancients, since it is spoken of as nearly taking in the compass of an entire bay (vasta sagena, Manilius). It is leaded below, that it may sweep the bottom of the sea, and supported with corks above, and having been carried out so as to inclose a large space of sea, the ends are then brought together, and it is drawn up upon the beach with all that it contains. Cicero calls Verres, with a play upon his name, everriculum in provinciâ, in that he swept all before him; and in the Greek Fathers we have θανάτου σαγήνη, κατακλυσμοῦ σαγήνη (see SurCER's Thes., s. v.); in each case with allusion to the all-embracing nature of this net, which allowed no escape. See Hab. i. 15-17, LXX., where the mighty reach of the Chaldæan conquests is set forth under this image, and by this word. In this view of it, as an ἀπέραντον δίκτυον ̓́Ατης, how grand is the comparison in Hom mer (Odyss., 22. 384) of the slaughtered suitors, whom Ulysses saw, ὥστ ̓ ἰχθύας, οὕσθ ̓ ἁλιξεις κοῖλον ἐς αἰγιαλὸν πολιῆς ἔκτοσθε θαλάσσης There are curious notices in Herodotus (iii. 149: vi. 31) of the manner in which the Persians swept away the conquered population from some of the Greek islands; a chain of men, holding hand in hand and stretching across the whole island, advanced over its whole length-thus taking, as it were, the entire population in a draw net and to this process the technical name σaynveúew was applied. Cf. PLATO'S Menexenus (p. 42, Stallbaum's ed.) where the process is described; De Legg., 1. 3, p. 698; and PLUTARCH, De Solert. Animal., c. 26. There is a good account of the σayhun in the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Rete, p. 823. : † Beza, indeed, translates ek warròs yévous, ex omni rerum genere, as mud, But as all do not use the advantages which the communion of the Church has afforded them, an ultimate separation is necessary; and this is next described; the net, "when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away." When the number of God's elect is accomplished, then the separation of the precious from the vile shall follow, of the just from sinners. It is most likely that from some image like that which our parable supplies, the leaving and taking of Matt. xxiv. 41, 42, is to be explained,-"the one shall be taken, and the other left." Probably there as here the taking is for blessedness, the selecting of the precious; the leaving for destruction, the rejecting of the vile; though the terms have sometimes been understood in exactly the opposite sense. Yet hardly with justice; for what is the "left" but the refused, and the refused but the refuse?* Whether these "bad" are dead putrid fish, such as sometimes are shells, sea-weed, and whatever else of worthless would be gathered together within the folds of a net; these things would then be understood by the σanpά, which are described in the next verse as cast away; and so it is in the Geneva version, "of all kinds of things." But the plain sense of the parable would seem to determine that it is fish of all kinds as the Vulgate (ex omni genere piscium), and not things of all kinds, which are spoken of; in the words of H. de Sto Victore (Annott, in Matth.): Congregat ex omnibus qui minoribus vel majoribus peccatis sunt à Deo divisi, et per multas iniquitates dispersi. Another name of the net, wávaypov, is exactly derived from this collecting of all sorts of prey within its folds. *The nature of this separation-that it will be with entire consideration-no hasty work confusedly huddled over-may be indicated in the sitting down of the fishers for the task of sorting the good from the bad. Thus Bengel, who to this Kadiσavтes appends, Studiosè; cf. Luke xiv. 28, 31; xvi. 6. At the same time it completes the natural picture: † Zampd, scil. ixúdia. Grotius: Sunt nugamenta et quisquiliæ piscium, quod genus ut servatu indignum, videmus à piscatoribus abjici: (äßpwτa kaì ătiμa, Lucian; pisces frivolos, Apuleius.) Yet Vitringa, in an instructive note (Erklär. d. Parab., p. 344, seq.), refers to Athenæus as using σampol ixdues in opposition to Tрóopaтo. As the latter are the fresh, the first must signify stale, or here yet more strongly, putrid (σampòs, & σeσпws, Etým. Mag.), and he denies that we should depart from this, the primary signification of the word, to take up with the secondary. But on the other hand, to find dead fish in a net, though it will sometimes happen, must be of rare occurrence, and of the list of fishes, which, for instance, Ovid gives in his fragment of the Halieuticon, how many, though perfectly fresh, would be flung aside as not edible, as worthless or noxious, the immunda chromis, meritò vilissima salpa . . . Et nigrum niveo portans in corpore virus Loligo, durique sues: or again,-Et capitis duro nociturus scorpius ictu,— all which might well have been gathered in this σayhon. We have proof that at times some of them were, from a proverb in the Param. Græci (Oxf. 1836, p. 14), which is explained as containing allusion to a fisherman, who had got such a sea |