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]

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 observance was all that was required; and that they ought always to remember that "God is a Spirit;" and they that "worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth."

Now let us see the use you have made of this passage of Scripture, and to how many purposes your inventive fancy has applied it. In your discourse at the meeting house in Germantown,^[15] you enter largely into this subject, but as the passage is too long to be transcribed, I shall endeavour to give the different inferences you draw from it.

First, That from the letter of the Scriptures, every thing suitable to deceive the people can be taken.

Secondly, That as every thing we read in the Scriptures must necessarily be received through our outward senses, they are only fit for the outward creature.

Thirdly, That it was the letter of the Scriptures that led men to the apostacy.

Fourthly, That all that has ever been written, is nothing but that which the wisdom of man has devised.

Fifthly, In your discourse at Middletown^[16], you say, It is but a shadow which may do for young beginners; and may point them to the right thing.

Had the commentators who have preceded you, possessed such fertility of imagination, their works, voluminous as they are, must have been multiplied to an extent which it is difficult to conceive. Yet after all, you appear at some moments to have a view of the true use of Scripture, and of the meaning of that passage which you have perverted to so many purposes, although you conclude by one of those strange involutions of ideas with which your attempts at illustration so often abound.

You say, "All letter written under the influence of God, points us back to the place from whence it came, and this is all; because as the letter never could be written without the spirit which stands above it, the great first cause of all wisdom and knowledge; therefore, unless by the letter we are gathered to the spirit, we cannot see the letter aright, for it is the effect; and when we face the letter we turn our backs upon the cause, just as a man turns his back upon the sun to see his own shadow."^[17]

Here the sentiment is in itself correct, although the conclusion attempted to be drawn by the puerile conceit with which the sentence ends, is in direct opposition to it. The needle points to the pole, and the careful mariner does not turn his back upon it, but with a steady eye keeps it constantly in view as the guide by which alone he can be directed through the trackless ocean: so the Christian pilgrim, with the gospel in his hand, endeavours to explore his way. The book itself contains not that for which he is seeking, but it has been in mercy handed down to him by the inspirations of infinite wisdom, as a landmark to direct him in the way in which he should walk: it has not only taught him the nature and efficacy of spiritual worship, but it affords a standard by which all his thoughts may be tried, and enables him to distinguish between the wanderings of the imagination and the dictates of eternal wisdom. If contrary to the Scriptures, he rejects them; and whatever you may think of the superiority of your two-fold revelations, and the accuracy of your knowledge of the nature and use of right reason, no reasonable being who is convinced that the Scriptures were given to us by divine revelation, can believe in the truth of any thing which does not accord with them.

Such a tissue of inconsistencies has seldom been brought together—you say that the Scriptures were written under the inspiration of infinite wisdom, and also assert that they only proceed from the wisdom of man: you consider them as the box of Pandora from which the apostacy was derived, and every thing calculated to deceive us may be taken; and still continue to recommend them as proper to be read by young beginners in religion: that they, and every thing else that is received by man through his outward senses, is suitable only to the outward creature; and yet you are continually addressing your hearers through these senses, for the purposes of reproof and spiritual instruction.

That passages of Scripture have often been perverted to purposes far different from the spirit and original intention of them, must be admitted by all; and the sources from which these perversions have been derived it is not difficult to conceive.

It was long before any of the outward professors of Christianity had the hardihood to question their authority: they knew that the whole Christian world considered this book as the standard by which their doctrines were to be tested, and whenever their inclinations, or their vices, impelled them to actions contrary to the pure and obvious meaning of gospel ordinances, they sought to veil their aberrations by the perversion of the book itself. The man of the world found in it so many restraints upon his ambition and fancied enjoyments, that it is not surprising that he should be anxious to avail himself of every pretence to enlarge its boundaries and relax the rigour of his bonds. In this struggle, many of the priesthood were his faithful coadjutors, for they too felt the uneasiness of the straightened path prescribed to them, and that the pure Christian doctrines and principles could afford no field for the indulgence of their vanity by pompous declamation, or for the display of a superiority of mind by subtile disquisition: all was simple and practical, such as fishermen could teach and herdsmen understand.

Then began that system of mysticising and allegorising the Scriptures, a practice which accorded so well with the lively and subtle characters of the modern Greeks, that every priest became a mystagogue, and the pulpit a chair of theological alchymy, from which men were taught "how to reduce divinity to the maxims of the laboratory, explain morality by sal sulphur and mercury, and allegorize the Scripture itself, and the sacred mysteries thereof, into the Philosopher's Stone."^[18]

Hence the Scriptures became as one of the sibylline books of Paganism, to be opened by the priests alone, for they only could explain the oracles of God; and they acted with more consistency than you have done, by endeavouring to conceal them from the view of the laity; for if they are indeed such as you have described, and they have strove to make them, they ought not only to be concealed from the view of young beginners in religion, but prohibited to all but the initiated.

Thus was the simplicity of the Christian religion deformed, and the understandings of men subdued by an ambitious priesthood. They knew that gravity and meekness were the attributes and best ornaments of a gospel minister, and while pride and the spirit of domination reigned within them uncontrolled, they sought, by a sanctimonious exterior and affected humility, to prolong their sway; and we find the most imperious of the Roman pontiffs, when treading on the necks of kings, subscribing himself the servant of the servants of God.

I fear you will consider me as presumptuous, yet I must venture to entreat you to examine the course you have been pursuing; to consider whether the habit you have acquired of looking for some hidden novelty in every passage of Scripture, does not prevent you from perceiving its obvious meaning; and whether the manifest inconsistencies in which this practice involves you, is not sufficient proof of your being under the guidance of a different spirit from that which you claim as a director.

I have no disposition to question the uprightness of your motives, but I am fully persuaded that the applause with which you have been surrounded, has given an unhappy bias to your mind; and that if it was under a right direction, you would be enabled to see, that it is not the letter of the Scripture, but the habit, (in which you so largely indulge,) of seeking for meanings other than the letter, which has caused so many false interpretations and divisions among men: that the letter is intended to teach us our moral and spiritual duties, and points out with sufficient clearness the way in which we should walk; and that the nice distinctions and elaborate refinements of the orator, neither have a tendency to enlighten the understandings nor purify the hearts of the audience, though they often gratify the vanity of the one and amuse the imaginations of the other.