Note 223 — PRELIMINARY REMARKS (continued 4)

Had the following passage occurred sooner to my recollection, it should have been sooner inserted:—"Are we to conduct the Interpretation of Holy Scripture as we would that of any other writing? We are and we are not. So far as the words are concerned, the mere words of Scripture have the same office with those of all language written or spoken in sincerity." They must be studied "by the same means and the same rules which would guide us to the meaning of any other work; by a knowledge of the languages in which the books were written, the Hebrew, the Chaldee, the Greek, and of those other languages, as the Syriac and Arabic, which may illustrate them; and of all the ordinary rules of Grammar and Criticism, and the peculiar information respecting times and circumstances, history and customs,—all the resources, in a word, of the Interpretation of any work of any kind. The Grammatical and Historical interpretation of profane or sacred writings is the same.... "All Scripture," meanwhile, "is given by Inspiration of God:" and this at once introduces several important differences; which whoever neglects may yet, with whatsoever advantages of learning and talent, fail to discover the real meaning of the Word of God."—From Dr. Hawkins (Provost of Oriel)'s Inaugural Lecture as Dean Ireland's Professor, delivered in 1847,—pp. 29-30.

It is but fair to Mr. Jowett to add that, in terms, he has very nearly (not quite) said the self-same thing himself, at p. 337, (upper half the page.) But it is the peculiar method of this most slippery writer, or most illogical thinker, occasionally to grant almost all that heart can desire, as far as words go; but straightway to deny, or evacuate, or explain away, the thing which those words ought to signify.—Thus, at p. 337, he volunteers the remark that "No one who has a Christian feeling would place Classical on a level with Sacred Literature;" and at p. 377, he observes that, "There are many respects in which Scripture is unlike any other book." And yet, (as I have shown, p. cxliii. to p. cl.,) Mr. Jowett puts the Bible on a level with Sophocles and Plato; and argues throughout as if Scripture were in no essential respect unlike any other book!