It is a connexion entirely of this kind, which we conceive to exist in the case of the type now under consideration. What took place in the type, when Israel was called out of Egypt, might have, been substantially verified in Jesus of Nazareth, though he had never in person visited that country. It would have met with true and valid fulfilment had he been obliged to take refuge any where from the malice of his enemies, or the troubles of life, during the earlier period of his history. That Egypt was actually chosen as the place of refuge, to which he was for a time sent, and from which he was again recalled, was an external and visible conformity to the inward, spiritual idea, granted in accommodation to the weak faith of believers, and an exception to the general course of God's dealings, rather than an example of it. So that the difficulty, on a nearer view, disappears; and in this respect the closely related subjects of type and prophecy stand on a footing.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONNEXION BETWEEN TYPE AND PROPHECY-VARIOUS COMBINATIONS OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER, GIVING RISE TO WHAT HAS BEEN CALLED THE "DOUBLE SENSE OF PROPHECY." THE SUBJECT EXPLAINED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PRINCIPLES ALREADY ADVANCED, FOLLOWED BY SOME REMARKS ON THE VIEWS COMMONLY ENTERTAINED REGARDING IT.

EVERY type necessarily possesses a prophetical character, and differs from what is commonly termed prophecy only in this, that it prefigures, while they foretell, coming realities. The one represents, by means of instructive acts or symbols, what is future, the other predicts it in express terms. The difference is not such as to affect the essential nature of the two subjects, or to prevent us from ranking the typical with the prophetical portions of Scripture, as containing real intimations of future things connected with the gospel, and manifesting in the correspondence of the one part with

non-existent prophecies, that it is a cheap mode of getting rid of difficulties. He will require, however, in carrying out his principle, not only to discover prophecies of which there is no record, but to expunge others, which still have a place on the record. For whatever difficulty attaches to the above passages, viewed as fulfilments of what is written in the prophecies of Isaiah and Hosea, is precisely of the same kind with that which attaches to Matt. viii. 17, comp. with Isa. liii. 4, to John xviii. 9, comp. with ch. xvii. 12; to ch. xix. 37, comp. with Zech. xii. 10; we may also add Matt. xxvi. 31, comp. Zech. xiii. 7; for that the kind of scattering chiefly intended in the prophecy was of a very different kind from that mentioned by Christ, is evident at a glance. In each of these cases, not less than the two above specified, there is an outwardness, and if we may so speak, a shallowness in the alleged fulfilment, which is far from meeting the deep and pregnant meaning of the prediction; yet still a fulfilment so far as it went; and one intended not to lead men to rest in it as the whole, but rather, in condescension to their weak and fleshly minds, to help them, as by the indication of a visible sign or omen, to penetrate into the full nd hidden meaning of the prophecy.

the other, the foresight and wisdom of Him who sees the end from the beginning. In distinctness and precision of meaning, however, simple prophecy has greatly the advantage over informations conveyed by type. The former may delineate the future as clearly and circumstantially as history does the past, and in point of fact, some of the sections of ancient prophecy are scarcely inferior in these respects to the evangelical narratives, which record their fulfilment. In regard to the types, on the other hand, however certain we may be of their reference to gospel events, and however satisfactorily we may be able to explain the nature of this reference, yet from having a significance or moral import of their own, apart from any thing prospective, it is evident that the prediction they unfold must be somewhat less transparent and possess more of a complicated character. Still, the relation between type and anti-type, especially if followed out into much detail, may produce as deep a conviction of design and pre-ordained connexion, as can be derived from simple prophecy and its fulfilment, though, from the nature of things, the evidence in the latter case must always be more obvious and palpable than in the former.

But the possession of the same common character is not the only link of connexion which unites together prophecy and type. They not only agree in having both a prospective reference to the future, but they are often also combined into one prospective exhibition of the future. Prophecy, though sometimes, is far from being always, of a simple and uncompounded nature, delineating the future in terms as plain and direct as history delineates the past. In many portions of it there is a certain degree of complexity, if not dubiety, and that often arising, as in the types, from the events and transactions of the past being somehow interwoven with its anticipations of things to come. In saying this, we approach the confines of a great controversy, on which some of the largest minds have expended their talents and learning, and with so much appearance of truth on both sides, that divines are still almost equally divided on the question, whether there is, or is not, a double sense in prophecy? The subject lies so directly across our path, that we cannot avoid handling it, without omitting a most important branch of our typological investigations; and we are further induced to grapple with it, from the persuasion, that the principles already unfolded in the preceding chapters, are capable of being applied, so as to prepare the way for a satisfactory statement of the point at issue. We shall, therefore, first of all make this application to the field of inquiry now stretching before us, proceeding right onward in our course, as if there were no controversy connected with it; and having done this, we shall add a few remarks on the sentiments of those, who hold either side of the question as it is usually stated.

From the similarity of nature existing between types and prophecies, we are prepared to expect, that they may sometimes run into each other, that what is prefigured in action, may at the same time be found described or predicted in words. And this it

is quite possible to conceive might take place under either of the three following methods. 1. A typical transaction having occurred might be historically described, and hence the description, being that of a prophetical circumstance or event, would come to possess a prophetical character. 2. Or, the essential truths and principles embodied in some typical transaction might be taken up and applied in an accompanying prediction, which at once explained the type, and expressly delineated to the eye of faith the coming reality. 3. Or finally, there might be a typical transaction, not past, but still future, or a line, perhaps, of typical transactions, which, though already begun, stretched considerably onwards, and along with this there might, for important reasons, be coupled a word of prophecy, not describing so much as pre-supposing what was typical, and carrying forward the truths and principles embodied in it to concerns far higher than any thing belonging to it, the concerns of God's everlasting kingdom. We could manifestly have no difficulty in conceiving these suppositions realized, without any violence being done to the essential nature of type or prophecy, or any derangement being made in their respective provinces,-nothing, in short, happening but what might have been expected from the relation subsisting between the two subjects, and their fitness for being employed in concert to the production of common ends. And we shall now endeavour briefly to show, that the suppositions just made are in precise accordance with the facts of the case.

I. The first supposition is that of a typical transaction historically described, and the description, as being that of a prophetical circumstance or event, coming consequently to possess a prophetical character. There are two classes of Scriptures, which may be said to verify this supposition; one of which is of so general and comprehensive a nature, that the fulfilment is properly confined to no single period, but is constantly recurring. And on this account, the examples belonging to it are commonly viewed as of a different order altogether from the other class, with which we associate them; but improperly, as we conceive, for the difference is not of an essential nature. To this class we refer the words in Ps. lxix. 9: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up: and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen on me,"-of which the former part is applied specially to Christ; and the latter to him in common with his faithful people, (John ii. 17, Rom. xv. 3.) Of the same kind also are the expressions in Ps. xliv. 22: "For thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter;" and in Isa. xlix. 8: "In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee," the last of which unquestionably had its fulfilment in Christ, while both are referred to by the apostle Paul, as finding their accomplishment in him and the early disciples, (Rom. viii. 36, 2 Cor. vi. 2.) Such passages occurring in the prophetic Scriptures, are obviously of a very general and comprehensive nature, and so far from being limited to any one age or individual, they express sentiments and principles, which are common to all periods of the

church's history. They record facts in experience, which have been a thousand times repeated in actual life, and the persons, in connexion with whom the record was originally given, may be viewed as types, and the record itself a prophecy, of facts appearing in gospel history, only because the truths and principles embodied in them, had there their chief and necessary manifestation. The connexion, however, between such portions of the Old and the New Testament scriptures, and the transactions respectively noticed in each, is not the less real, that it is so general; the adaptation of the one to the other, is not a simple accommodation of Old Testament words, to express similar though quite disconnected events of New Testament history, but is grounded in a proper and necessary correspondence, between the two economies. For whatever at any former period entered as an essential ingredient into the experience of God's faithful people, that could not fail again to make its appearance in the history and the work of Him, whom it behooved to be in all things the exemplar of his people, and in all to have the pre-eminence. There is, therefore, a real and important connexion, in which one kind of transactions stand as types of another, and the words descriptive of the one become predictive of the other, not indeed from any dubiety or complication in their meaning, but because expressive of facts in the earlier, which must have their counterpart in the later dispensation of God.*

The other class of passages, which comes within the terms of the first supposition, is like the one just considered, of a very limited description, and so far corresponds to the former, that it consists of words used originally as historically descriptive of something past, but afterwards regarded as prophetically descriptive of the future events of the gospel. It differs from the other only in this, that the description applies to facts, not of a general and comprehensive, but, on the contrary, of a very special and particular nature. Such, for example, is the passage in Hos. xi. 1: "I have called my Son out of Egypt," unquestionably penned by the prophet in reference to the historical fact of Israel's deliverance from that land

We might have included in the class specified above, Ps. lxxviii. 2, "I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old; " which in Matth. xiii. 35, is spoken of as a prediction fulfilled in our Lord's using the parabolic mode of address. For we would explain the connexion between the declaration of the Psalmist, and our Lord's conduct in this respect, on the same principle as that just stated. Every prophet may be said to speak in parables in the sense here conveyed by the original, which is comprehensive of all discourses upon divine things, delivered in measured, elevated, or figurative terms, and possessing such a depth and profundity of meaning, as would prove too much for the discernment of all but the spiritually enlightened. (Lowth, Prælec. IV.) The parables of our Lord formed one species of it, but not by any means the only one. It was the common prophetic, or poetical diction, which admitted of great varieties, as may be understood by simply comparing the 13th chap. of Matthew, with that of Psal. Ixxviii. which are both called parabolical, yet extremely different. And as Jesus was pre-eminently a prophet, it became him to use this appropriate diction in some of its most approved forms. So that his doing so might with perfect truth and propriety be cited as the fulfilment of Ps. lxxviii. 2. Not as if that were literally a prediction, and a prediction pointing solely and explicitly to Christ, but as indicating a general fact concerning the prophetical office, which, however it might appear in the history of the Psalmist, or any other Old Testament prophet, required to be found peculiarly and principally in Christ.

of bondage, but applied in the gospel, Matth. ii. 15, to Christ's return from the same country, after a temporary sojourn within its borders. Precisely similar is the use made by John, chap. xix. 36, of the direction in Ex. xii. 46, concerning the paschal lamb, "A bone of him shall not be broken,"-which he not only terms a prophecy of Christ, but intimates that the necessity of its being fulfilled was the secret cause, why the limbs of Jesus were preserved from being broken on the cross. It is obvious, that both the Old Testament scriptures just noticed, are not in the ordinary sense of the term, or considered by themselves, prophecies. They derive their prophetical character from the objects with which they stand in immediate connexion, and which were typical of similar and corresponding objects under the gospel. Israel was nationally the son of God, his first-born because chosen to hold, in comparison of other nations on earth, a pre-eminent place in the love and counsels of Jehovah, and as such well fitted to represent the person of Jesus, who, as Son, holds that place in comparison of all, not only on earth, but also in heaven. Hence the distinctive names of each are sometimes interchanged; Israel is called peculiarly the Son of God, his elect, his servant, the beloved of heaven ;* Christ is addressed by the names of Jacob, and Israel, and is characterized as the seed of Abraham.† And as the names and relations, so also the histories of the two must to a certain extent correspond. The great lines of procedure, the leading truths and principles of government, which were wrought out, though amid many defects and imperfections, in the history of the national son, must necessarily find their complete and perfect development in the history of him who is Son by divine and proper relationship; and when the Evangelist informs us of Christ's descent in infancy into Egypt, and his return from it, as taking place that the Scripture, "out of Egypt have I called my Son," might be fulfilled, he is just reading out to us the typical design contemplated by. Israel's original sojourn in that country, and their subsequent deliverance. The Scripture fulfilled is prophetical, only because the event which it describes was typical; but in being thus viewed as prophetical, the meaning of its words remains precisely what it was; not one of them is changed from its plain and literal import; nor is the passage merely accommodated to a new and similar, though unconnected event, but strictly and properly fulfilled, because, being descriptive of a typical, that is, a prophetical action, the ultimate design and meaning of the Spirit, as manifested in that portion of the word and dealings of God, could only thus be accomplished.

The same explanation in substance may be given regarding the other example, to which reference has been made. The scripture, "A bone of him shall not be broken," is in itself a historical testimony, and becomes prophetical, simply from being descriptive of a typical or prophetical action. The latter being a real prophecy

• Ex. iv. 22, Isa. xlv. 4, xli. 8, 9, Ps. lx. 5.

Isa. xlix. 3, Ps. xxiv. 6, Gal. iii. 16.