Vir GENERAL PREFACE.
specting which even the Christian, who denied its continued obliga- tion, was ready to admit that it was promulgated originally under the highest seals of divine authority. The argument by which the stead- fastness of the primitive converts was secured, and the superior glory of the Christian dispensation vindicated, rests mainly upon two prin- ciples,—the divine glory of its Founder, and the typical character of the rites and sacrifices under the law. In regard to the former of these truths, it cannot be affirmed that there is any novel or peculiar disclosure in this Epistle beyond what may be obtained from other parts of revelation; but in no other inspired book is the typical cha- racter of the Mosaic ritual declared and elucidated with any degree of fulness, as the definite and formal object of the writer. It is a perilous experiment for any system, slowly evolved in the course of ages, when its separate parts, coloured with the changeful hue of the different times and circumstances in which they came to light, are tested with the view of ascertaining if they possess the unity and coherence which truth, and truth only, can under such a trial evince. Any essential inconsistency would be fatal to the claims and pretensions of the system. But when a body of truths, having in themselves no abstract and necessary relationship, such as links the principles and axioms of geometry into the unity of a science, hazards its entire character and authority upon the assertion that some change, annulling the outward forms in which it had been pre- viously embodied, has not only left its essential principles unim- paired, but stamped upon them a confirmation so important and so indispensable that without it they would be proved untenable and absurd,—it must be felt that a system which comes safely out of the testing ordeal of such a change is entitled to our implicit confidence. _ Accordingly, Christian scholarship and genius have laboured with peculiar care to establish the connection between the old and new dispensations. The perfect symmetry in the temple of divine truth must ever constrain admiration; and when the disappearance of typical rites is seen to be tantamount to the removal of the scatfold- ing, so as to unveil the finished beauty of the edifice, the demon- stration is complete that Christianity is indeed from God. If the Epistle to the Hebrews had not been given us, we would have had little direct and explicit ratification of the principle by which type — and antitype are connected. ‘The correspondence between them ex- hibits and proves the unity of divine truth under a change of external rites and forms so complete, as, but for the identity of the principles embodied in them, might have seemed incompatible with the divine authority of either economy, and yet so indispensable that both eco- nomies shed on each other the lustre of mutual confirmation. It is on this ground that we can vindicate fully the language of our author, to which needless exception has sometimes been taken as exagge- rated,—that “this Epistle is as useful to the church as the sun is to the world.” It is the key-stone which locks the arch of nareaies truth into symmetry and strength.
GENERAL PREFACE. IX
The degree to which Dr Owen has succeeded in his task is indi- cated in the graceful critique upon this Exposition, in the life of the author prefixed to his miscellaneous works, Vol. I. p. Ixxxiv. There is not much to be added in regard to the history of the work. In the year 1668, when his public ministrations as a preacher of the gospel were considerably interrupted by the severity of the times,
Owen seems to have prosecuted his literary labours with the more assiduity, giving to the world not merely his valuable treatises on the Nature of Indwelling Sin, and on Psalm cxxx., but the first volume of his greatest work, the Exposition which follows, and which originally appeared in four folio volumes. It was the result of deep and earnest investigation, pursued for many years; and in subserviency to it, we learn, on his own authority, that the .whole course of his previous studies had been regulated. In 1674, though he was reduced to such infirmity that we find him at Tunbridge Wells for the benefit of his health, and though he was involved in all the bitter distractions of the Communion controversy, he is able, amid growing years and weakness, to lay the church of Christ under increasing obligations to him, by the publication, not to refer to minor productions, of two massive folios, his “ Discourse on the Holy Spirit,” and the second volume of the present work. He was quite as busy, vindicating Dissenters from unfounded charges, in 1680, when the third volume issued from the press. Death overtook him before the publication of the fourth, but not before he had brought it to completion ; so that the whole work reaches us as his precious bequest to the church of Christ, and the utterance of his dying testi- mony for the truth; and by means of it, our author, to employ the language of the Epistle that proved the subject of his closing labours upon the earth, “ being dead, yet speaketh.”
- Considering the full-explanation given by Dr Owen himself, in his various prefaces, of the plan which he adopted and the objects which he had in view throughout his commentary, we need not ob- trude upon the reader any further remarks on these points. The - nature of the Exposition is threefold ;—partly critical, in the brief comment sometimes made on the text and language of the Epistle; partly doctrinal, in the ample and thorough discussion of the great truths of which the language is the vehicle; and partly practical, in the observations immediately bearing on life and duty with which these discussions are generally followed up. That so much of the Exercitations, and of the earlier portion of the Exposition, should be occupied with a refutation of Socinian and Jewish errors, is a circumstance adinitting of explanation, from the progress which Socinianism was making in the times of Owen, and from the lin- gering deference that was paid to the notions of the Jews on all matters of Hebrew literature and learning. The space occupied with these controversial discussions may sometimes lead the reader away from the direct consideration of the Epistle, but it was profess- edly to meet these errors that the work was undertaken; and the Epistle itself gives prominence to the very doctrines on which a Chris-