Here we have a plain historical narration, from which it is evident that the sick was healed to convince an unbelieving people, by an act of supernatural power perceptible to their senses, that Jesus was clothed with authority to forgive sins. You however say it was a figure or shadow, and as these terms are often in your mouth, it may be proper to enquire whether you understand their true meaning, and whether by any possible construction of language they can be considered as illustrative of your view of the subject. They are here used as synonymous, and mean _the expression of an idea by resemblances_: if I speak of persons in the morning of life, I am understood to mean youth; and if I say, the king of day is rising in the east, every body understands it to mean the sun; and there are other figurative resemblances more obscure, but no one can, without violating every principle of reason, attempt to adduce as authority for, and illustrative of his opinions, expressions which so far from resembling are in direct opposition to them, merely because he chooses to call them figurative. If indeed there are any individuals who believe they can perceive any resemblance between your inferences and the facts; and that when Jesus said he healed the sick, in order that the Pharisees might know that he had power on earth to forgive sins, he meant it only as a figure, and that he claimed authority only as to the cure of outward diseases; their conclusion must be arrived at by a process which the uninitiated do not understand: and if your argument is according to the _analogy of reason_, it cannot be of that reason which arrives at the truth by observation and deduction, but the reason of your new school of metaphysics, which discerns _without reflection_ all things at first sight.[40] Footnote 40: Sermons, p. 207. Were you reading a letter informing you that a friend had departed on a journey, riding on a black horse, and was told by one of your auditors that the expression was figurative and that he meant a white cow, you would probably laugh; and yet the incongruity is not greater than some of your own discoveries. For instance, Paul said "let your women keep silence in your churches;" and you observe that all who _are truly enlightened_ will understand that the woman means the selfish spirit which ought not to be permitted to speak in churches; but you have forgot to tell us how to apply the succeeding observation that "if they will learn any thing they must consult their husbands at home." Nor is it probable that Paul, (although a bachelor,) was so uncharitable as to believe the selfish spirit so identified with woman, as to render her a proper emblem of it.