The translation, as it stands, is right : nor will the sense be difficult, if only the word "for" be taken as co/mectmg the text with the xohole subject contained in the context. The whole may be explained thus : 1 1 expect of you, in future, a different state of mind from that which you have recently indulged. You are offered up as living sacrifices to God ; and, as such, must be holy, and without blemish : and as the sacrifices under the law were offered through the instrumentality of fire, and always with the accom- paniment of salt, so must you be salted with fire, and salted with salt, in order that your savour may come up with acceptance before God.'
If it be said that the term " salting with fire" is a strange expression ; I answer, it is no more strange as applied to the preservation of the soul from sin, than as applied to the preservation of the body from destruc- tion. On the contrary, it is expressly sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures in the sense now put upon it; whereas it is nowhere sanctioned in the sense which I am now controverting. John the Baptist says, " Christ shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with firee." And it is no more strange to be "salted with fire," than to be " baptized with fire." If it be said, that "baptizing with fire" means only the enduing with grace, which shall purify as fire; I answer, this is the precise meaning which I annex to the " salting with fire ;" namely, the enduing with grace, which shall purify as fire. The two expressions are precisely parallel, both in terms and import. And, this interpretation brings unity into the subject in the place of discord; and simplicity in the place of inexplicable confusion.
Having, I hope, thrown the true light upon this
difficult passage, I now proceed to comment upon it,
as an injunction from our blessed Lord.
[Under the Mosaic Law, this was God's command : " Every oblation of thy meat-offering shalt thou season with salt ; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering: with all thine
e Luke iii. 16.