Every reader of your discourses, must be surprised at the extent to which you have carried the practice of allegorising the Scriptures: you declare your assent to them, and yet in practice, you seem to consider each part as a fable from which you can draw a moral to suit the purpose of the moment; and the belief which you profess in their divine origin, does not restrain you from indulging in all the licentiousness of fiction. "Sacred History, (says an eminent writer,) has always been read with submissive reverence, and an imagination over-awed and controlled. We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentic narrative, and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence, as suppresses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion, seems not only useless, but is in some degree profane. Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of divine power, are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of Creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion of language: _He spake the word and they were made._"[12] Footnote 12: Life of Cowley. That an argument may sometimes be illustrated by a moral drawn from the events recorded in Scripture, I do not deny; but I think a pious mind must always indulge in the practice with great caution, and be careful not to make an allegory of the fact itself. Nor do I think that the passage of Scripture "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life"[13] which you so often quote, is at variance with this view of the subject, or can furnish any argument in excuse for the spirit of mysticism by which you involve every part of them in obscurity. It is true that this passage is in the figurative language generally used in the East, but the meaning appears so plain, that only those can mistake it, whose minds have been perverted by the habit of speculating in the airy regions of the imagination. The New Testament is a code of moral law and spiritual instruction, teaching man his duty to his neighbour, and the true way in which he can render acceptable worship to God. For the outward order of this worship, and the government of religious society, certain rules and ordinances must be necessary, and were found to be so, even in the days of the apostles; but as under the old covenant many had been led to consider the outward observance of the law as their _only_ duty, and that "if they paid their tithe of mint and anise and cummin, they might omit the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith; although _both_ ought to have been observed;"[14] so this exhortation is intended to caution the flock, not against the observance of the rules of discipline which had been established, but that they might not sink down into the belief that such