and were therefore the harder to be persuaded to come over to so spiritual an institution. 30. It was from hence, I suppose, that the most early heretics were so wedded to their mystical interpretations of Scripture, and so much valued themselves upon the account of them: against whose false and impure doctrines our late great critic, Dr. Hammond", supposes St. Barnabas to have principally designed his Epistle: and therefore that, being to deal with men who valued nothing but such kind of expositions, he was forced to confute them in their own way; both as most suitable to their manners, and most proper either to convince them of their errors, or at least to prevent others, especially the Jewish converts, from falling into them. 31. But whether this were so or not, thus much is evident from what has been said: that the Hellenistical Jews, to whom it is most probable St. Barnabas addressed his Epistle, were altogether used to this way of interpreting the Holy Scriptures: and therefore that howsoever it may appear to us, who are so utterly unaccustomed to it, yet we ought not to wonder that St Barnabas, who was himself a Jew, should at such a time, and upon such an occasion as this, make use of it, or suppose it at all unworthy of him so to do. 32. Nor indeed were they the Jews only that led the holy men in those days into these mystical expositions of the Sacred Scriptures. Even the Gentile philosophers conduced towards it: whilst the better to cover over the fabulous stories of their gods, which they saw were too ridiculous to be maintained, they explained the whole system of 10 Dissert. de Antichristo, c. vii. Et Dissert. I. contr. Blondel. e. vii. sect. 4, 5. their idolatry by allegorical analogies; and shewed all the poetical accounts of them to be only the outside shadows of a sort of natural theology included under those fictions. Thus Heraclides' of Pontus wrote a whole book of the allegories of Homer; and Metrodorus' of Lampsacus is fallen foul upon by Tatian, in his Oration against the Greeks, for pretending that neither Juno, nor Minerva, nor Jupiter, were what those imagined. who built temples and altars to them, Puotus dè ὑποστάσεις καὶ στοιχείων διακοσμήσεις. Nay so far went this last author in his allegories, as to turn all the Trojan and Grecian heroes into mere fictions: and to make Hector, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and even Helena herself, nothing less than what one would think they were, and what the common people ignorantly imagined them to be. 33. And for the influence which this had upon the Ancient Fathers', who from philosophers became Christians: the writings both of Justin Martyr, and Clemens Alexandrinus, sufficiently shew. And if we may believe Porphyry', an enemy, in the case of Origen; he tells us in the same place in which he complains of him, "for "turning those things that were clearly delivered by Moses into mystical significations"-not only that he did this in imitation of the Grecians, but that it was from his frequent conversation with Numenius and Cronius, Moderatus, Nicomachus, and others among the Pythagoreans, and with Charemon and Cornutus among the Stoics, that he had learnt his allegorical way of expounding the Holy' 1 Tatian. contr. Græc. p. 160. B. C. 2 See Hist. Crit. du V. T. Liv. iii. cap. viii. 3 Apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. vi. c. 19. p. 178. Scriptures; and applied that to his religion, which they were wont to do to their superstition. 34. From all which it appears, that this way of writing, in matters of religion, was in those days generally used, not only among the Jews, but among the wiser and more philosophical of the Gentiles too; and from both came to be almost universally practised among the Primitive Christians which being so, we ought to be far from censuring of St. Barnabas for his mystical application of what God prescribed to the Jews in the Old Testament, to the spiritual accomplishment of it in the New. Much less should we ever the more call in question either the truth, or credit, of his Epistle upon this account. 35. Having said thus much either in vindication of the allegorical expositions of this Epistle, or at least by way of apology for them, I shall add but little more concerning the Epistle itself. I have before observed, as to the time of its writing, that it was somewhat after the destruction of Jerusalem; and as we may conjecture from the subject of it (for title at present it has none, nor does it appear that it ever had any), was addressed to the Jews, to draw them off from the letter of the law, to a spiritual understanding of it; and by that means dispose them to embrace the Gospel. Whether he had, besides this, a farther design in it, as Dr. Hammonds supposes: to confute the errors of the Gnostick heretics, and to prevent the Jewish converts from falling into them, it is not certain, but may, from the chief points insisted upon by him, be probably enough supposed. If any one shall think it strange, that disputing against the Jews for the truth of the Gospel, he Dissert. de Antichristo, cap. vii. If '. should not have urged any of those passages relating to the Messiah, which seem to us the most apposite to such a purpose; such as the Oracle of Jacob concerning the time that Shiloh was to come; the LXX Weeks of Daniel; the Prophecies of Haggai and Malachi, of his coming while the second temple stood, and which was now destroyed when he wrote this Epistle; and the like—'Monsieur Le Moyne will give him a ready answer, viz. that these passages relate chiefly to the time of Christ's appearing, and that this was no controversy in those days; the Jews not only confessing it, but being ready at every turn, through this persuasion, to set up some one or other for their Messiah, to their shame and confusion. It was therefore, then, but little necessary to use those arguments against them, which now appear to be the most proper and convincing. Since the state of the question has been altered: and the Jews deny, either that their Messiah is come; or that it was necessary for him to have come about the time that our Saviour Christ appeared in the flesh. Saviour 36. But though the chief design of this Epistle was to convince the Jews of the truth of our religion, yet are there not wanting in the latter part of it many excellent rules, to render it still very useful to the pious reader. Indeed some have doubted whether this did originally belong to this Epistle; or whether it has not since been added to it. But seeing we find this part quoted by the Fathers as belonging to St. Barnabas, no less than the other,and that the measure assigned to it, in the ancient Stichometries, can hardly be well accounted for without it, I do not see but that we ought to conclude, that our author did divide his Epistle into 1 Proleg. ad Var. Sacr. 2 Præfat. Usser. ad edit. Oxon. p. 11, &c. ̧ the two parts, in which we now have it; and that this latter, as well as the former, was written by him. 37. As for the Translation which I have here given of it: I have made it up out of what remains of the original Greek, and of the old Latin Version; and of each of which, though a part be lost, yet it has so fallen out, that between them we not only have the whole Epistle, but that, too, free of those interpolations which Vossius' tells us some had endeavoured to make in this, as well as in Ignatius's Epistles. The passages of Holy Scripture which are here quoted according to the Septuagint, I have chose rather to set down as they are in our English Bible, than to amuse the common reader with a new translation of them. Upon the whole, I have endeavoured to attain to the sense of my author, and to make him as plain and easy as I was able. If in any thing I shall have chanced to mistake him, I have only this to say for myself; that he must be better acquainted with the road than I pretend to be, who will undertake to travel so long a journey in the dark, and never to miss his way. 3 Is. Vossius, Annot. in Barnab. p. 318. |