Exegesis

“ When the believer's right to interpret the sacred books is acknowledged, a place is left open for exegesis, but that exegesis still remains the slave of particular texts or dogmas that limit and consequently trammel it. ”

“ The rabbinical method of referring theoretical or practical truths, even by the oddest exegesis, to passages in the Holy Scriptures or any other book in general esteem, as if they were truths brought out of such passages by a rational exegesis,—this method, besides procuring an introduction for the truths among common men, who are not capable of grasping them on their own merits, and accept them merely on authority, is also to be regarded as an excellent aid to the memory ”

“ Some have gone so far as to see in the greatest of the gospel miracles nothing but types. [005] Such a system of exegesis easily leads to a kind of mystic rationalism: the forms of religion tend to gain more consistency than the essence, and public worship to be placed above doctrine. ”

“ The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away, but the subtlety with which the Rev. ”

“ Who sifts for us the speeches of Job, and enables us to treasure up as divine truth what he utters in one verse, while we reject the next as Satanic ravings? Who gives the preacher authority and accuracy of aim to pounce on a sound text in Ecclesiastes, while wisdom and folly toss and roll over one another in confusingly rapid and inextricable contortions? ”

“ Thou who enlightenest all men that come into this world, send into my poor soul a ray of the holy light of lore and contrition, that I may know, detest, and confess the sins which I have committed against thee. I desire to see my sins in all their enormity, and just as they are in thy sight: I wish to detest them for the love of thee, and to confess them with the same sincerity as I should wish to do at the moment of my death. Jesus, my God and Saviour, I offer to thee the examination which I am going to make, and I look to thee with confidence for the grace to do it well. ”

“ How many shifts did mine use to elude the design of all those strivings of the Spirit of the Lord with me? I have told many, but the one half is not told. And all these respect but one point in religion. If a single man were to recount but the more remarkable deceits, with respect to the whole of his behaviour, how many volumes must he write? And if so many be seen, how many secret, undiscernable, or at least undiscerned deceits must still remain! So much truth is there couched in that short scripture, The heart is deceitful above all things: who can know it? ”

“ Yet there are few pages in the history of humanity more touching, few records of self-sacrifice more inspiring, few examples more instructive of the height to which the soul can rise above the weaknesses of the flesh, than those which we may glean from the fragmentary documents of the Inquisition and the scanty references of the chroniclers to the abhorred heretics so industriously tracked and so pitilessly despatched. ”

“ When God [228] makes inquisition for the blood of souls, and when the under-shepherds stand, with their flocks, around the “great white throne,” to have each motive, thought, word, act, and deed, brought out to light, before a gazing world, and tried by that unerring rule, “the word.” I ask you, scorner, jester, scoffer, how will you appear? Stop, stop, and think, before you take a fatal leap, and jest away your soul!’
“In closing a discourse on the text, ‘We shall reign on the earth,’ he thus proceeds:—
“‘We shall reign on the earth, says our text. ”

“ Surely it knows by this time that a good life is of more importance than creeds or beliefs. Surely in this year of our Lord, 1867, the days of the Inquisition are past both for editors and writers, and the watchword of to-day—and, thank God, for to-morrow, and the day after—is progress, not paralysis. ”

“ Hence was the different effect that Christ’s miracles had to convince the disciples from what they had to convince the Scribes and Pharisees. Not that they had a stronger reason, or had their reason more improved; but their reason was sanctified, and those blinding prejudices, that the Scribes and Pharisees were under, were removed by the sense they had of the excellency of Christ and his doctrine.
2. It not only removes the hinderances of reason, but positively helps reason. It makes even the speculative notions the more lively. ”

“ Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men; being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh. ”

“ But that it is the true one the scriptures abundantly testify.
But when God speaks powerfully to the heart, the sentiments and words of men, be they flattering or threatning, make but little impression. He was therefore so far from being moved by this treatment, that it became to him, rather a confirmation of the doctrine of the Son of God, who says, expressly, Wo unto you, when all men shall speak well of you; and blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil of you falsely for my name-sake. ”

“ In every way you have offended Heaven; a whole life will be scarce sufficient for the task of repentance, laying aside the enormous crime of sacrilege, which, in justice, ought to be referred to the Inquisition. Excommunication is more fitting in your case than absolution. ”

“ The Authority of my Betters is enough for me that am but a Lad and a private Person. This is certainly the principal Confession; nor is it an easy Matter to confess to Christ; no Body confesses to him, but he that is angry with his Sin. If I have committed any great Offence, I lay it open, and bewail it to him, and implore his Mercy; I cry out, weep and lament, nor do I give over before I feel the Love of Sin throughly purged from the Bottom of my Heart, and some Tranquility and Chearfulness of Mind follow upon it, which is an Argument of the Sin being pardoned. ”

“ III. Here is a penitent confession of sin, their own sins, and the sins of their fathers. The mention of these is interwoven with the memorials of God's favours, that God's goodness, notwithstanding their provocations, might appear the more illustrious, and their sins, notwithstanding his favours, might appear the more heinous. Many passages in this acknowledgment of sins and mercies are taken from Ezek. xx. 5-26, as will appear by comparing those verses with these; for the word of God is of use to direct us in prayer, and by what he says to us we may learn what to say to him. ”

“ A confession, which they intend should include all mortal sin, and a few vocal prayers, comprise the whole of their preparation for the most solemn of all duties. The God of all sanctity is then introduced into a soul defiled with innumerable stains. ”

“ I look into the Book which all Christendom venerates, and the Book tells me that the sin of the father shall be visited on the child. I look out into the world, and I see the living witnesses round me to that terrible truth. ”

“ How canst thou in confession cover some sins through shame, if thy faith tells thee of this confusion thou shalt suffer for concealing them? Eemember what thy Redeemer saith, " Nihil opertum quod non reveletur, neque occultum quod non sciatur " There is nothing covered which shall not be revealed, nor hidden which shall not be known." ”

“ To the same purpose is that saying of his in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Again, it is confessed by the same preacher in the seventh chapter of the same book, That the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. ”

“ Read what I have written upon the epistle to the Ephesians, read my other works, particularly my commentary upon Ecclesiastes, and you will clearly see that from my youth up I have never been terrified by any man’s influence into acquiescence in heretical pravity. ”

“ My Confessions, in thirteen books, praise the righteous and good God as they speak either of my evil or good, and they are meant to excite men’s minds and affections toward him. At least as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me when they were being written and they still do this when read. ”

“ As for us, we carry with us irrefutable witnesses for that which we teach, — namely Scripture, which is the word of God, and which cannot falsify. Scripture does not change like the speech of men, which is a deceiver almost by nature. ”

“ We judges, having Christ before our eyes and also the honour of the true faith, in order that our judgment may proceed from the Lord himself, do say and decree that thou hast been a liar, an inventor of revelations and apparitions said to be divine; a deceiver, pernicious, presumptuous, light of faith, rash, superstitious, a soothsayer, a blasphemer against God and his saints. ”

“ They explain to their own satisfaction the most hidden mysteries: how the universe was constructed and arranged—through what channels the stain of original sin descends to posterity—how the miraculous birth of Christ was effected—how in the Eucharistic wafer the accidents can exist without a substance, and so forth. And they think themselves equal to the solution of such questions as these:—Whether ... God could have taken upon himself the nature of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or a stone? ”

“ To establish this absurd doctrine they pervert the Scriptures, and bring forward that expression in the Psalms, wherein is said of Christ, 'Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.' (Psalm xiv. 7.) ”

“ Mystics and prophets, as Seely well says in Ecce Homo, seem to themselves to "discover truth not so much by a process of reasoning as by an intense gaze, and they announce their conclusions with the voice of a herald, using the name of God and giving no reasons." ”

“ Now all those things are confirmed by the faith that is in Christ. ‘Come, ye children,’ says the Lord, ‘hearken to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man that desireth life, that loveth to see good days?’ [609] Then He subjoins the gnostic mystery of the numbers seven and eight. ‘Stop thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good. Seek peace, and pursue it.’ [610] For in these words He alludes to knowledge (gnosis) , with abstinence from evil and the doing of what is good, teaching that it is to be perfected by word and deed. ”

“ But the first preachers of the Gospel did not need a succedaneum to that inward conscious persuasion. And what is the end of eloquence, even when it extends no further than to those more general principles, but to stifle reason and inflame the passions? But the propagation of Christian truths indispensably requires the aid of reason, and requires no other human aid [153] .’
Here, again, you are quite scandalized at the Bishop’s paradoxical assertions concerning the nature and end of eloquence ”

“ There was after this the passage from the Gospel, where the Saviour said, that for this reason did He speak to those without in parables, that “seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand; lest they should be converted, and their sins be forgiven them.” ”

“ There is a very popular bit of what I venture to think a partly false philosophy which comes up again and again in magazines and story books in the shape of satirical contrasts between the words of the General Confession, or the Litany, and the particular materials in which the worshippers, the intercessors, and the confessing sinners happen to be clothed. ”

“ How much more rational is such an interpretation than the exposition which makes one verse contradict the other, and represents the apostle as first assuring us that we may be cleansed from all sin, and then declaring in effect. ”

“ But you have shown me how far better it is that I should recommend him to the love of Christ, than to the wrath of the Inquisition. It appears that you agree with me, that in religion there cannot be any law contrary to nature. ”

“ In fact, our exegetists are mostly pitiful schoolmasters—word-anatomists—and one could as little learn the true spirit of an old classic poet from our pedantic philologists, as the true sense of holy Scripture from our scholastic theologians. ”

“ Note, He that sins errs and is simple; he mistakes, he goes out of the way, and shows himself to be foolish and unwise. But here it is spoken of those sins which are committed through ignorance, mistake, or inadvertency, whether by any of the priests, or of the Levites, or of the people. Sacrifices were appointed to atone for such sins as men were surprised into, or did before they were aware, which they would not have done if they had known and remembered aright, which they were overtaken in, and for which, afterwards, they condemn themselves. ”

“ If you turn to the Lord in truth, he will answer you through the prophet Ezechiel: ‘In whatsoever hour the sinner repents of his sins and forsakes them, and is turned from his unrighteousness, I will remember his sins no more, saith the Lord. ”

“ And it honestly recognises that we're mortal; inheritors of original sin as the spark flies upward. Yet if we go and confess our sins and try to feel sorry for 'em, we receive the grace of the Sacrament of Penance and Absolution,—and we can then receive the Blessed Sacrament. ”

“ Be not godless in your hearts, and lie not and alter not the words of uprightness, nor charge with lying the words of the Holy Great One, nor take account of your idols; for all your lying and all your godlessness issue not in righteousness but in great sin. 10. And now I know this mystery, that sinners will alter and pervert the words of righteousness in many ways, and will speak wicked words, and lie, and practise great deceits, and write books concerning their words. ”