“In vain do we search the Scriptures for their testimony concerning Christ, if, independently of these Scriptures, we have received a testimony from another quarter, and are determined to admit nothing as the testimony of Scripture which will not perfectly quadrate with that formerly received. This was the very source of the blindness of the Jews in our Saviour’s time. They searched the Scriptures as much as we do; but, in the disposition they were in, they would never have discovered what that sacred volume testifies of Christ. Why? because their great rule of interpretation was _the analogy of the faith_; or, in other words, the system of the Pharisean scribes, the doctrine then in vogue, and in the profound veneration of which they had been educated. This is that veil by which the understandings of that people were darkened, even in reading the law, and of which the Apostle observed, that it remained unremoved in his day, and of which we ourselves have occasion to observe, that it remains unremoved in ours. And is it not precisely in the same way that the phrase is used by every sect of Christians, for the particular system or digest of tenets for which they themselves have the greatest reverence? The Latin church, and even the Greek, are explicit in their declarations on this article. With each, _the analogy of the faith_ is their own system alone. And that different parties of Protestants, though more reserved in their manner of speaking, aim at the same thing, is undeniable; the same, I mean, considered relatively to the speakers; for, absolutely considered, every party means a different thing. ‘But,’ say some, ‘is not this mode of interpretation warranted by Apostolical authority? Does not Paul, Rom. xii, 6, in speaking of the exercise of the spiritual gifts, enjoin the prophets to prophesy κατὰ τὴν ἀναλογίαν τῆς ϖίϛεως, _according to the proportion of faith_, as our translators render it, but as some critics explain it, _according to the analogy of the faith_?’ Though this exposition has been admitted into some versions, and adopted by Hammond and other commentators, and may be called literal, it is suited neither to the ordinary meaning of the words, nor to the tenor of the context. The word ἀναλογία strictly denotes proportion, measure, rate, but by no means that complex notion conveyed in the aforesaid phrase by the term _analogy_, which has been well observed by Whitby to be particularly unsuitable in this place, where the Apostle treats of those who speak by inspiration, not of those who explain what has been thus spoken by others. The context manifestly leads us to understand ἀναλογία ϖίϛεως, verse 6, as equivalent to μέτρον ϖίστεως, verse 3. And for the better understanding of this phrase, _the measure of faith_, it may be proper to observe, 1. That a strong conviction of any tenet, from whatever cause it arises, is in Scripture sometimes termed _faith_. Thus in the same epistle, Rom.