(ii.) Our SAVIOUR is repeatedly declared to have interpreted the Old Testament to His Disciples. For instance, to the two going to Emmaus, "beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, _He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself_[195]." Moreover, before He left the world, He solemnly promised His Apostles that the HOLY GHOST, whom the FATHER should send in His Name, "should _teach them all things_, and _bring to their remembrance all things which He had spoken to them_[196]." Shall we believe that the Treasury of _Divine Inspiration_ thus opened by CHRIST Himself was straightway closed up by its human guardians, and at once forgotten? Shall we not rather believe that Cleopas and his companion, (for instance,) forthwith repeated their LORD'S words to every member of the Apostolic body, and to others also; that they were questioned again and again by adoring listeners, even to their extremest age; aye, and that they taxed their memories to the utmost in order to recal every little word, every particular of our SAVIOUR'S Divine utterance? It must be so! And the echo, the remote echo of that exposition, depend upon it! descended to a second, aye and to a third generation; yea, and has come down, faintly, and feebly it may be, but yet essentially and truly, even to ourselves! (iii.) And yet,--(for we would not willingly incur the charge of being fanciful in so solemn and important a matter,)--the great fact to be borne in mind, (and it is the great fact which nothing can ever set aside or weaken,) is, that for the first century at least of our æra, there existed within the Christian Church _the gift of Prophecy_; that is, of _Inspired Interpretation_[197]. The minds of the Apostles, CHRIST Himself "opened, _to understand the Scriptures_[198]." Can it be any matter of surprise that men so enlightened, when they had been miraculously endowed with the gift of tongues[199], and scattered over the face of the ancient civilized World, should have disseminated the same principles of Catholic Interpretation, as well as the same elements of Saving Truth? When this miraculous _gift_ ceased, its _results_ did not also come to an end. The fountain dried up, but the streams which it had sent forth yet "made glad the City of GOD." And by what possible logic can the teaching of the early Church be severed from its source? It cannot be supposed for an instant that such a severance ever took place. The teaching of the Apostolic age was the immediate parent of the teaching of the earliest of the Fathers,--in whose Schools it is matter of history that those Patristic writers with whom we are most familiar, studied and became famous. Accordingly, we discover a method of Interpreting Holy Scripture strictly resembling that employed by our SAVIOUR and His Apostles, _in all the earliest Patristic writings_. As documents increase, the evidence is multiplied; and at the end of two or three centuries after the death of St.