In considering the merits of a theologian and interpreter of God's Holy Word, we naturally inquire first, what were his moral qualifications for the work which he undertook; for if goodness be so essential even to the orator, that one of old defined him as Vir bonus, dicendi peritus, and few I think will quarrel with that bonus, or count it superfluous in the definition, how much more essentially must it belong, and in its highest form of love towards God and to all which truly witnesses of God, to the great theologian. That old maxim, Pectus facit theologum, will always continue true, and, other things being equal or nearly equal, he will best explain Scripture, who most loves Scripture. We may therefore very fairly open this subject by gathering from Augustine's own lips a few testimonies of the love with which he regarded it, and the labour which he counted well bestowed upon its study: for herein lay the pledge and promise that it should yield up to him the hid treasures which it contained. And certainly no one came to the study of Scripture with a more entire confidence that in it were laid up all treasures of wisdom and knowledge, that in the investigation of it truer joys were to be found than anywhere besides.* Perhaps in no Christian writer of any age do we meet more, or more varied, expressions of a rapturous delight in the Word of God; no one laid himself down in its green pastures with a deeper and a fuller joy; no one more entirely felt

*Enarr. in Ps. xxxviii. 1.

that he might evermore draw water from these "wells of salvation" without fear of drawing them dry.*

Availing himself here of his own experience, he loved to compare the Scriptures of truth not merely with the Manichæan falsehoods and figments, the "husks," with which he had once sought to fill himself, but even with the noblest and loftiest productions of the uninspired intellect of man. Thus in many places, and especially in an eloquent and affecting passage in his Confessions, he compares Scripture with the books which he had studied in the time of his addiction to the philosophy of Plato, and tells us what he finds in it, which he did not find in them.† And as he had proved in his own case that love, and love only, had "the key of knowledge," so he con

* Ep. 137. c. 1: Tanta est enim Christianarum profunditas litterarum, ut in eis quotidie proficerem, si eas solas ab ineunte pueritiâ usque ad decrepitam senectutem maximo otio, summo studio, meliore ingenio conarer addiscere: non quod ad ea quæ necessaria sunt saluti, tantâ in eis perveniatur difficultate: sed cum quisque ibi fidem tenuerit, sine quâ pie recteque non vivitur, tam multa, tamque multiplicibus mysteriorum umbraculis opacata, intelligenda proficientibus restant, tantaque non solum in verbis quibus ista dicta sunt, verum etiam in rebus quæ intelligendæ sunt, latet altitudo sapientiæ, ut annosissimis, acutissimis, flagrantissimis cupiditate discendi hoc contingat, quod eadem Scriptura quodam loco habet, Cum consummaverit homo, tunc incipit.

Conf. 1. 7. c. 20, 21: He concludes: Hoc illæ litteræ non habent. Non habent illæ paginæ vultum pietatis hujus, lacrymas confessionis, sacrificium tuum, spiritum contribulatum, cor contritum et humiliatum, populi salutem, sponsam, civitatem, arrham Spiritûs Sancti, poculum pretii nostri: nemo ibi cantat: Nonne Deo subdita erit anima mea? nemo ibi audit vocantem: Venite ad me, qui laboratis.

For

tinually pressed this same truth upon all others. indeed this was a fundamental principle with him, that Scripture to be rightly understood must be contemplated from within and not from without; so that in more than one place he has excellent remarks, of which the application has not now passed away, on the absurdity of taking the account of it—and not of it alone, but of any book which had won a place in the world-not from its friends and admirers, but from its professed foes, from them who start with declaring their hostility to it, or their indifference about it.*

An especial glory which Holy Scripture had in his eyes was this, that it was not a book for the few learned, but quite as much for the many simple. He delighted to trace in its construction all which marked it out as such, which, in regard of it as of so many other arrangements of God's

*De Util. Cred. c. 6: Nihil est profecto temeritatis plenius, quam quorumque librorum expositores deserere, qui eos se tenere ac discipulis tradere posse profitentur, et eorum sententiam requirere ab his qui conditoribus illorum atque auctoribus acerbissimum, nescio quâ cogente caussâ, bellum indixerunt. Quis enim sibi unquam libros Aristotelis reconditos et obscuros ab ejus inimico exponendos putavit? ut de his loquar disciplinis, in quibus lector fortasse sine sacrilegio labi potest. Quis denique geometricas litteras Archimedis legere, magistro Epicuro, aut discere voluit? contra quas ille multum pertinaciter, nihil earum, quantum arbitror, intelligens, disserebat. And again, De Mor. Eccles. c. 1: Quis enim mediocriter sanus non facile intelligat, Scripturarum expositionem ab iis petendam esse, qui earum doctores se esse profitentur; fierique posse, immo id semper accidere, ut multa indoctis videantur absurda, quæ cum a doctioribus exponuntur, eo laudanda videantur, et eo accipiantur aperta dulcius, quo clausa difficilius aperiebantur ?

providence and grace, set a seal to that word of the Psalmist: "Thou, O God, hast of thy goodness prepared for the poor;" (Ps. Lxviii. 10 ;) and in this respect to trace the glorious prerogative which at once differenced this Book from, and exalted it above, all other books, even the greatest to which man's wisdom had given birth. These last oftentimes repelled all but a few; while this Book of a wisdom far exceeding theirs, invited, welcomed, spread a table for all.*

Nor did the manifold difficulties and obscurities in the Bible in the least deprive it in his sight of this its

* Thus making spiritual application of the words, "All beasts of the field drink thereof," (Ps. civ. 11,) to the streams of Holy Scripture, as those from which all may thus quench their thirst, he exclaims (Enarr. in Ps. ciii): Non dicit aqua, Lepori sufficio et repellit onagrum; neque hoc dicit, Onager accedat, lepus si accesserit, rapietur. Tam fideliter et temperate fluit, ut sic onagrum satiet ne leporem terreat. Sonat strepitus vocis Tullianæ, Cicero legitur, aliquis liber est, dialogus ejus est, sive ipsius, sive Platonis, seu cujuscumque talium; audiunt imperiti, infirmi minoris cordis, quis audet illuc aspirare? Strepitus aquæ, et forte turbatæ, certe tamen tam rapaciter fluentis, ut animal timidum non audeat accedere et bibere. Cui sonuit, In principio fecit Deus cœlum et terram, et non ausus est bibere? Cui sonat Psalmus, et dicat, Multum est ad me? Augustine's comparison here may remind us of the beautiful, but now somewhat overworn image, of Scripture as a river with depths where the elephant may swim, and shallows which the lamb may ford; an image belonging, I believe, originally to Gregory the Great. At least I have never met with it earlier than in the prefatory epistle to his Commentary on Job: Divinus etenim sermo sicut mysteriis prudentes exercet, sic plerumque superficie simplices refovet. . . . Quasi quidam quippe est fluvius, ut ita dixerim, planus et altus, in quo et agnus ambulet, et elephas natet.

distinctive glory and character.* For in the first place, as he is strong to urge, there was nothing hard in one passage of Scripture, but, if it nearly concerned the salvation of men, the same was set down more plainly in another; or if not so, then it was assuredly something of which simple men, those to whom the gift of an especial insight into mysteries was not granted, might safely remain ignorant; while these obscurer and more difficult passages, which only after often knocking yielded up their meaning, or, it may be, would not yield it up at all, served many important moral purposes, and could not have been absent from a Book intended to serve such ends

* Ep. 137. c. 5 (ad Volus.): Modus autem ipse dicendi quo sancta Scriptura contexitur, quam omnibus accessibilis, quamvis paucissimis penetrabilis. Ea quæ aperta continet, quasi amicus familiaris, sine fuco ad cor loquitur indoctorum atque doctorum. Ea vero quæ in mysteriis occultat, nec ipsa eloquio superbo erigit, quo non audeat accedere mens tardiuscula et inerudita, quasi pauper ad divitem; sed invitat omnes humili sermone, quos non solum manifestâ pascat, sed etiam secretâ exerceat veritate, hoc in promtis quod in reconditis habens. Sed ne aperta fastidirentur, eadem rursus operta desiderantur, desiderata quodam modo renovantur, renovata suaviter intimantur. His salubriter et prava corriguntur, et parva nutriuntur, et magna oblectantur ingenia.

De Doctr. Christ. 1. 2. c. 14: In iis quæ aperte in Scripturis posita sunt, inveniuntur omnia quæ continent fidem, moresque vivendi, spem scilicet atque caritatem. Conf. 1. 6. c. 5: Excipiens omnes populari sinu. The Reformers, who affirmed the perspicuitas Scripturæ against the Romish exaggerations of its extreme obscurity, had, and were forward to urge that they had, Augustine on their side. (See REISER, Augustinus Veritatis Evangelico-Catholica Testis et Confessor, Frankfort, 1678, pp. 37-41.