Creation in Plan and in Progress, an Essay on the First Chapter of Genesis

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1861. Excerpt: ... i I APPENDIX. (Extract from Archbishop Wake's Preliminary Discourse on the Epistle of St Barnabas.) "But there is yet one objection more, and that much insisted upon by those who are enemies to this Epistle. They tell us it is full of a strange sort of allegorical interpretations of Holy Scripture; and therefore unworthy to be fathered on so evangelical an author. And yet, notwithstanding this, we find Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, Eusebius and St Jerome (some of the greatest and most learned critics of those ages that were nearest to the time in which it was written) not doubting to ascribe it to St Barnabas, and to think it worthy too of such an author. "I need not say how general a way this was of interpreting Scripture in the time that St Barnabas lived. To omit Origen, who has been noted as excessive in it, and for whom yet a learned man has very lately made a reasonable apology, who has ever shewn a more diffusive knowledge than Clemens Alexandrinus has done in all his composures 1 And yet in his works we find the very same method taken of interpreting the Holy Scriptures; and that without any reproach either to his learning, or to his judgment. What author has there been more generally applauded for his admirable piety than the other Clement 1 and yet in his Epistle to the Corinthians we meet with more than one instance of the same kind of interpretation, which was nevertheless admired by the best and most primitive Christians. "Even St Paul himself, in his Epistles received by us as canonical, affords not a few instances of this which is so much found fault with in St Barnabas; as I might easily make appear from a multitude of passages out of them, were it needful for me to enlarge on a point which every one who has read the Scriptures with any care cannot choose but have...