then openly revealed, and not of any thing in its own nature dark and inconceivable. 4. If, in addition to the evidence arising from so many direct and clear passages in the writings of Paul, it should be thought necessary to recur to the usage of the Seventy, we find that in the prophet Daniel (ch. ii. 18, 19, 27-30, 47; iv. 9,) the word μvorηolov occurs not fewer than nine times, answering always to the Chaldaic NT raza, res arcana, and used in relation to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which was become a secret even to the dreamer himself, as he had forgot it. The word there is uniformly rendered in the common version secret; and it deserves to be remarked, that in those verses it is found connected with the verbs γνωρίζω, φωτίζω, and αποκαλυπτω, in a way exactly similar to the usage of the New Testament above observed. It occurs in no other place of that version, but one in Isaiah, of very doubtful import. In the apocryphal writings, (which, in matters of criticism on the Hellenistic idiom, are of good authority,) the word μvornoiov frequently occurs in the same sense, and is used in reference to human secrets as well as to divine. Nay, the word is not, even in the New Testament, confined to divine secrets; it expresses sometimes those of a different, and even contrary nature. Thus the apostle, speaking of the antichristian spirit, says, "The mystery of iniquity doth already work," 2 Thess. ii. 7. The spirit of antichrist hath begun to operate; but the operation is latent and unperceived. The gospel of Christ is a blessing, the spirit of antichrist a curse. Both are equally denominated mystery, or secret, whilst they remain concealed. 5. I shall be much misunderstood, if any one infer, from what has been now advanced, that I mean to signify that there is nothing in the doctrines of religion which is not on all sides perfectly comprehensible to us, or nothing from which difficulties may be raised that we are not able to give a satisfactory solution of. On the contrary, I am fully convinced, that in all sciences, particularly natural theology, as well as in revelation, there are many truths of this kind, whose evidence such objections are not regarded by a judicious person as of force sufficient to invalidate. For example, the divine omniscience is a tenet of natural religion. This manifestly implies God's foreknowledge of all future events. Yet, to reconcile the divine prescience with the freedom, and even the contingency, and consequently with the good or ill desert of human actions, is what I have never yet seen achieved by any, and indeed despair of seeing. That there are such difficulties also in the doctrines of revelation, it would in my opinion be very absurd to deny. But the present inquiry does not affect that matter in the least. This inquiry is critical, and concerns solely the scriptural acceptation of the word μvornotov, which I have shown to relate merely to the secrecy for some time μυστηριον, observed with regard to any doctrine, whether mysterious in the modern acceptation of the word or not. 6. The foregoing observations will throw some light on what Paul says, (1 Cor. iv. 1,) of the nature of the office with which he was vested: "Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God,"oikovoμovs μvoTηotwv Oɛov, dispensers to mankind of the gracious purposes of heaven, heretofore concealed, and therefore denominated secrets. Nor can any thing be more conformable than this interpretation, both to the instructions given to the apostles during our Lord's ministry, and to the commission they received from him. In regard to the former, he tells them, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven;" no secret relating to this subject is withheld from you; "but to them it is not given," Matt. xiii. 41; that is, not yet given. For these very apostles, when commissioned to preach, were not only empowered, but commanded, to disclose to all the world, (Matt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15,) the whole mystery of God, his secret counsels in regard to man's salvation. And that they might not imagine that the private informations received from their Master had never been intended for the public ear, he gave them this express injunction, "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops." He assigns the reason, the divine decree; a topic to which he oftener than once recurs. "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid that shall not be known," Matt. x. 26, 27. Again "There is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret but that it should come abroad," Mark iv. 22. This may serve to explain to us the import of those phrases which occur in the Epistles, as expressing the whole Christian institution-"the mystery of the Gospel, the mystery of the faith, the mystery of God, and the mystery of Christ;" mystery in the singular number, not mysteries in the plural, which would have been more conformable to the modern import of the word, as relating to the incomprehensibility of the different articles of doctrine. But the whole of the gospel, taken together, is denominated the mystery, the grand secret, in reference to the silence or concealment under which it was formerly kept; as, in like manner, it is styled the revelation of Jesus Christ, in reference to the publication afterwards enjoined. 7. I signified before, that there was another meaning which the term μvornpiov sometimes bears in the New Testament. But it is so nearly related to, if not coincident with the former, that I am doubtful whether I can call it other than a particular application of the same meaning. However, if the thing be understood, it is not material which of the two ways we denominate it. The word is sometimes employed to denote the figurative sense, as distinguished from the literal, which is conveyed under any fable, parable, allegory, symbolical action, representation, dream, or vision. It is plain that in this case the term μυστηριον is used comparatively; for, however clear the meaning intended to be conveyed in the apologue or parable may be to the intelligent, it is obscure compared with the literal sense, which to the unintelligent proves a kind of veil. The one is, as it were, open to the senses; the other requires penetration and reflection. Perhaps there was some allusion to the import of the term, when our Lord said to his disciples, "To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to them that are without, all these things are done in parables," Mark iv. 11. The apostles were let into the secret, and got the spiritual sense of the similitude, whilst the multitude amused themselves with the letter, and searched no further. * In this sense μvorηpiov is used in these words: "The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches," Rev. i. 20. Again, in the same book, "I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her," &c. ch. xvii. 7. There is only one other passage to which this meaning of the word is adapted, and on which I shall have occasion to remark afterwards: "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church," Eph. v. 32. Nor is it any objection to this interpretation of the word mystery here, that the apostle alluded not to any fiction, but to an historical fact, the formation of Eve out of the body of Adam her husband. For, though there is no necessity that the story which supplies us with the body of the parable or allegory (if I may so express myself) be literally true, there is, on the other hand, no necessity that it be false. Passages of true history are sometimes allegorized by the sacred penmen. Witness the story of Abraham and his two sons, Isaac by his wife Sarah, and Ishmael by his bond-woman Hagar, of which the apostle has made an allegory for representing the comparative natures of the Mosaic dispensation and the Christian, Gal. iv. 22, &c. 8. As to the passage quoted from the Epistle to the Ephesians, let it be observed, that the word μvornotov is there rendered in the Vulgate sacramentum. Although this Latin word was long used very indefinitely by ecclesiastical writers, it came at length, with the more judicious, to acquire a meaning more precise and fixed. Firmilian calls Noah's ark the sacrament of the church of Christ. It is manifest, from the illustration he subjoins, that he means the symbol, type, or emblem of the church; alluding to an expression of the apostle Peter, 1 Ep. iii. 20, 21. This may, on a superficial view, be thought nearly coincident with the second sense of the word μvornotov above assigned. But, in fact, + Cyp. Epist. 75; in some editions 43. Diss. X. Part iii. sect. 9. μυστηριον it is rather an inversion of it. It is not, in Scripture language, the type that is called the mystery, but the antitype; not the sign in any figurative speech or action, but the thing signified. It would, therefore, have corresponded better to the import of the Greek word to say, "The church of Christ is the sacrament of Noah's ark; To μvorηolov, the secret antitype, which that vessel, destined for the salvation of the chosen few from the deluge, was intended to adumbrate. This use, however, not uncommon among the fathers of the third century, has given rise to the definition of a sacrament as the visible sign of an invisible grace; a definition to which some regard has been paid by most parties, Protestant as well as Romish. 9. But to return to μvornpiov: It is plain that the earliest perversion of this word, from its genuine and original sense, (a secret, or something concealed,) was in making it to denote some solemn and sacred ceremony. Nor is it difficult to point out the causes that would naturally bring ecclesiastic writers to employ it in a sense, which has so close an affinity to a common application of the word in profane authors. Among the different ceremonies employed by the heathen in their idolatrous superstitions, some were public and performed in the open courts, or in those parts of the temples to which all had access; others were more secretly performed in places from which the crowd was carefully excluded. To assist, or even be present at these, a select number only was admitted, to each of whom a formal and solemn initiation was necessary. These secret rites, on account of this very circumstance, their secrecy, were generally denominated mysteries. They were different, according to what was thought agreeable to the different deities in whose honour they were celebrated. Thus they had the mysteries of Ceres, the mysteries of Proserpine, the mysteries of Bacchus, &c. Now there were some things in the Christian worship, which, though essentially different from all Pagan rites, had as much resemblance in this circumstance, the exclusion of the multitude, as would give sufficient handle to the heathen, to style them the Christian mysteries. 10. Probably the term would be first applied only to what was called in the primitive church the eucharist, which we call the Lord's supper, and afterwards extended to baptism and other sacred ceremonies. In regard to the first-mentioned ordinance, it cannot be denied that in the article of concealment there was a pretty close analogy. Not only were all infidels, both Jews and Gentiles, excluded from witnessing the commemoration of the death of Christ, but even many believers, particularly the catechumens and the penitents: the former, because not yet initiated by baptism into the church; the latter, because not yet restored to the communion of Christians, after having fallen into some scandalous sin. Besides, the secrecy that Christians were often, on account of the persecutions to which they were exposed, obliged to observe, which made them meet for social worship in the night-time, or very early in the morning, would naturally draw on their ceremonies from the Gentiles the name of mysteries. And it is not unreasonable to think, that a name which had its rise among their enemies might afterwards be adopted by themselves. The name Christians, first used at Antioch, seems, from the manner wherein it is mentioned in Acts xi. 26, to have been at first given contemptuously to the disciples by infidels, and not assumed by themselves. The common titles by which, for many years after that period, they continued to distinguish those of their own society, as we learn both from the Acts and from Paul's Epistles, were, the faithful or believers, the disciples, and the brethren. Yet, before the expiration of the . apostolic age, they adopted the name Christian, and gloried in it. The apostle Peter uses it in one place, (1 Ep. iv. 16,) the only place in Scripture wherein it is used by one of themselves. Some other words and phrases which became fashionable amongst ecclesiastical writers, might naturally enough be accounted for in the same manner. 11. But how the Greek μvorηpov came first to be translated into Latin sacramentum, it is not easy to conjecture. None of the classical significations of the Latin word seems to have any affinity to the Greek term. For whether we understand it simply for a sacred ceremony, (sacramentum from sacrare, as juramentum from jurare,) or for the pledge deposited by the litigants in a process to ensure obedience to the award of the judge, or for the military oath of fidelity-none of these conveys to us either of the senses of the word uvorηotov explained above. At the same time it is not denied, that in the classical import the Latin word may admit an allusive application to the more solemn ordinances of religion, as implying in the participants a sacred engagement equivalent to an oath. All that I here contend for is, that the Latin word sacramentum does not, in any of these senses, convey exactly the meaning of the Greek name μvorηolov, whose place it occupies in the Vulgate. Houbigant, a Romish priest, has, in his Latin translation of the Old Testament, used neither sacramentum nor mysterium; but, where either of these terms had been employed in the Vulgate, he substitutes secretum, arcanum, or absconditum. Erasmus, though he wrote at an earlier period, has only once admitted sacramentum into his version of the New Testament, and said with the Vulgate sacramentum septem stellarum. Now it is to this practice, not easily accounted for, in the old Latin translators, that we owe the ecclesiastical term sacrament, which, though properly not scriptural, even Protestants have not thought fit to reject: they have only confined it a little in the application, using it solely of the two primary institutions of the gospel, baptism, and the Lord's supper; whereas the Romanists |