§ 177. THE WORKS OF JEROME. 975
He distinguishes in most cases a double sense of the Scri]> tures: the literal and the spiritual, or the historical and the allegorical ; sometimes, with Origen and the Alexandrians, a triple sense: the historical, the tropological (moral), and the pneumatical (tn^'stical).
The word of God does unquestionably carry in its letter ? living and life-giving spirit, and is capable of endless application to all times and circumstances ; and here lies the truth in the allegorical method of the ancient church. But the spiritual sense must be derived with tender conscientiousness and self-command from the natural, literal meaning, not brought from without, as another sense beside, or above, or against the literal.
Jerome goes sometimes as far as Origen in the unscrupulouB twisting of the letter and the history, and adopts his mischievous principle of entirely rejecting the literal sense whenever it may seem ludicrous or unworthy. For instance : By the Shunamite damsel, the concubine of the aged king David, he understands (imitating Origen's allegorical obliteration of the double crime against Uriah and Batlishelm) the ever-virgin Wisdom of God, so extolled by Solomon ; ' and the earnest controversy between Paul and Peter he alters into a sham fight for the instruction of tlie Antiochian Christians who were present thus making out of it a deceitful accommodation, over wdiich Augustine (wlio took just offence at such patrocinitim mendacii) drew him into an epistolary controversy characteristic of the two men."
fundamentum extruere," or " quasi inter saxa et scopulos" (between Scylla and Cbarybdis), " sic inter bistoriam et allegoriam orationis cursum flectere."
' Ep. 52 ad Nepotianum, c. 2-4. He objects against the biptorical construction, that it is absurd, inasmuch as the aged David, then seventy years old, might as well have warmed himself in the arms of Bathsheba, Abigail, and the other wives and concubines still living, considering that Abraham at a still more advanced age was content with his Sarah, Isaac with his Rebeccah. The Shunamite, therefore, must be " sapientia quas numquam senescit " (c. 4, torn. i. 258). Nevertheless, in another place, he understands the same passage literally, Contra Jovinian. 1. i. c. 24 (torn. i. 8'74), where he mentions this and other sins of David, " non quod Sanctis viris aliquid detrahere audeam, sed quod aliTid sit in lege versari, aliud in evaugelio."
• Corap. Jerome's Com. on Gal. ii. 11-! 4; Aug. Epp. 28, 40, and 82, or Epp 56, e*?, and 116 among the Epistles of Jerome (Opera, i. 800 sqq. ; 404 sqq. ; 761 sqq.]
980 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
It is remarkable that Augustine and Jerome, in tlio t\ra exegetical questions, on which they corresponded, intercliauged sides, and each took the other's point of view. In the dispute on tlie occurrence in Antiocli (Gal. ii. 11-14), Augustine represented the principle of evangelical freedom and love of truth, Jerome the principle of traditional committal to dogma and an equivocal theory of accommodation ; while in their di.sputa on the authority of the Septuagint Jerome held to true progress, Augustine to retrogression and false traditionalism. And each afterwards saw his error, and at least partially gave it up.
In the exposition of the Prophets, Jerome sees too muny allusions to the heretics of his time (as Luther finds everywhere allusions to the Papists, fanatics, and sectarians) ; and, on the other hand, with the zeal he inherited from Origeu against all cliiliasm, he finds far too little reference to the end of all things in the second coming of our Lord. He limits, for example, even the eschatological discourse of Christ in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and Paul's prophecy of thy man of sin in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Among the exegetical works in the wider sense belongs the book On the Interpretation of the Hebrew Names, an etymological lexicon of the proper names of the Old and Kew Testaments, useful for its time, but in many respects defective, and now w^orthless ; ' and a free translation of the Onomasticon of Eusebius, a sort of biblical topology in alphabetical order, still valuable to antiquarian scholarship.^
After defending for a long time liis false interpretation, Jerome gave it up at last, A. D. 415, in his Dial, contra Pelag. 1. i. c. 22. Augustine, on the other hand, yielded his erroneous preference for a translation of the Old Testament fr.om the Septuagint instead of the original Hebrew, although he continued to entertain an exaggerated estimate of the value of tlie Septuagint and the very imperfect Itala. Besides these t"vo points of dispute the Origenistic errors were a subject Qf correspondence between these most distinguished fathers of tlie Latin Church.
* Liber de iiuerprctatione noniinuni Hebraicoruni, or De nominibua Ilebr. (Opera, torn. iii. 1-120). Clericcs, in his Quajstiones Hieronymianoj, severely criticise*! this book.
' LibtT de situ et nomiuibu.s locorum Ilebraiconim, usually cited under the tills Euflcbii Onomasticon (urbium et locorum S. Scriptural). Opera, torn. iii. 121-290