_Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire_--Psalm xl. 6, signifies, says our commentator, that David, when a fugitive in the wilderness, offered no sacrifices. In the verse, _Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever_, Psalm xlv. 6, the word _God_, says our exponent, refers to Solomon, who, like Moses and Cyrus, is here styled _Divus_--God. _They gave me gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar as drink_, of Psalm xlix. 22, says Villanovanus, is a passage referring to Nabal’s refusal and churlishness when David asked him for meat and drink. _The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool_, Psalm cx. 1. ‘This refers to David and Solomon, types alike of Christ, when David, having set his son on the throne beside him, addressed him as My Lord, and styled him a priest after the order of Melchizedek.’ Whilst thus in these and in many other instances referring the statements met with in the Psalms to individuals living or dead at the time they were written, and to events then in progress or past, Villanovanus still imagines that everything said, besides its literal and immediate signification, is also typical of personages and events to come--a system of exposition that has been pushed beyond all reasonable lengths by ignorance and superstition since his day. We may indeed be well assured that the writers of the Hebrew Psalms knew no more of what would happen five or six centuries after they were dust than we know of what will be going on in the world five or six hundred years after we are no more. Prophets, Seers, Diviners, Fortune-tellers and the like are ignored by the science of our age, although under the first of these designations they are still acknowledged by pious persons in the history of the past, and in its bearing on the religion of the present. The excuse for this is that the Prophets of Israel were _inspired_, or exceptionally gifted, with the power of seeing into futurity. But God, as we now conceive God, makes no exceptions to his laws. As they are, so have they ever been, and so will they ever continue to be. Said not Servetus himself aright when he declared that out of man there was no Holy Spirit, or Spirit of Inspiration? But it is not on the Psalms that Villanovanus’s exposition, remarkable as it is, appears the most noteworthy. It is when he comes to the writings of the Prophets, as they are styled, that he puts forth his strength and shows his learning. _And it shall come to pass in the last days that Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top of the mountain, and all nations shall flow unto it_, says Isaiah (ii. 2 _et seq._). These words, according to our expositor, refer to the reign of Hezekiah. Literally seen, they speak of the accession of Hezekiah, and the return of the captive Israelites to Jerusalem, the Assyrians having suffered a signal defeat without a battle fought.