Unlike the fixed and imperative rules which governed the use of the Masoretic points, this figurative system was subject to no conditions or restraints other than such as might exist in the imaginations of individuals. It furnished no just discrimination or definition of the different figures of speech, of their object, or of their legitimate use, nor pretended to give a reason why any word was in any given case said to be used figuratively, or to have a figurative instead of a literal import. It neither descended to such particulars, nor was in any way dependent on them. The fact that every word in a given sentence was employed by the writer in the most strictly literal sense, was no sign that it must of course be construed literally, nor hindrance of Origen or his followers, orthodox or Swedenborgian, down to the present day, from giving the whole or any portion of it a figurative meaning, and, maugre its obvious literal import, making it refer to something or any thing, past, present, or future, which the fancy of the expositor might suggest. Under this system, it is easy to see how the literal designations and literal statements of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah, the visible appearances, special interpositions, and various acts ascribed to him; and the literal announcements of the prophecies concerning his yet future manifestations, the descendants of his ancient covenant people, Jerusalem, the millennium, &c., &c., may be obscured, mystified, misconstrued, or wholly explained away.