false apostles would have been construed as
the vaunt of a fool, I will willingly be accounted a greater fool, by
taking place of them, and openly pleading, that as to their ministry, I
not only come up even with them, but outstrip and go beyond them: though
this same commentator a little after, as it were forgetting what he had
just before delivered, tacks about and shifts to another interpretation.

But why do I insist upon any one particular example, when in general
it is the public charter of all divines, to mould and bend the sacred
oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading them (as Heaven
by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together, or drawing them back,
as they please? Thus indeed St. Paul himself minces and mangles some
citations he makes use of, and seems to wrest them to a different sense
from what they were first intended for, as is confessed by the great
linguist, St. Hierom.

Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of an altar, he
draws from it an argument for the proof of the christian religion; but
leaving out great part of the sentence, which perhaps if fully recited
might have prejudiced his cause, he mentions only the two last words
viz., _To the unknown God_; and this too not without alteration, for the
whole inscription runs thus: _To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa,
to all foreign and unknown Gods_.

[Illustration: 360]

'Tis an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that our
young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place, and putting
a false construction on the rest, can make any passage serviceable to
their own purpose; though from the coherence of what went before, or
follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be either wide enough, or
perhaps quite contradictory to what they would thrust and impose upon
it. In which knack the divines are grown now so expert, that the lawyers
themselves begin to be jealous of an encroachment upon what was formerly
their sole privilege and practice. And indeed what can they despair of
proving, since the fore-mentioned commentator (I had almost blundered
out his name), but that I am restrained by fear of the same Greek
proverbial sarcasm) did upon a text of St. Luke put an interpretation,
no more agreeable to the meaning of the place, than one contrary quality
is to another? The passage is this, when Judas's treachery was preparing
to be executed, and accordingly it seemed requisite that all the