I. INTERPRETATION, then, in the largest sense of the term, I take to denote the discovery of the method and meaning of Holy Scripture.--I exclude those critical labours which merely aim at establishing a correct text.--I exclude also the learning which merely investigates the grammatical force of single words. True, that even to translate is often to interpret; but this results only from the imperfection of language,--which can seldom represent the words of one idiom by the words of another, without at the same time parting with the associations which belong to the old words, and importing those which are inseparable from the new.--Moreover, except occasionally, it is presumed that the lore of the Antiquary, Geographer, and so forth, does not aspire to the dignity of Interpretation.--To be brief,--whatever simply puts us on a level with ordinary hearers of ancient days; does no more than inform us what custom, locality, or date is intended by the sacred writer; (things which once were obvious, and which _ought not_ to be any difficulty now;)--all this, I say, seems external to the province of Interpretation; the purpose of which is to discover _the method_ and _the meaning_ of Holy Writ. And I find that every extant specimen of this sacred Science is either (1) what GOD hath Himself revealed; or (2) what the Church hath with authority delivered; or (3) what individuals have thought themselves competent to declare. Of these three authorities concerning the sense of Scripture, it is evident that the last-named is entitled to least notice. So unimportant indeed is it, as scarcely to be of any weight at all. What one individual asserts, on his own unsupported authority, another individual may, with as much or as little authority, deny; and _who_ is to decide? But the authority indicated in the second place, clearly challenges very different attention. When, for example, our own Hooker declares, concerning the 5th verse of the iiird chapter of St. John, that "of all the ancients _there is not one to be named_ that ever did otherwise expound or allege this place than as implying external Baptism[440]," we perceive at once that such consent, on the part of men in whose ears the echoes of the Apostolic Age had not yet quite ceased to vibrate; and who were themselves professors of that Divine Science which takes cognizance of the subject-matter in hand:--such general consent of Antiquity, I say, on a point of Interpretation, must evidently be held to be decisive.