Lecture 1
A Chat about Commentaries
In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to
your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the
commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance
will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such
wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without
assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have
laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that
opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of
conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would
resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems
odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit
reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has
revealed to others. My chat this afternoon is not for these great
originals, but for you who are content to learn of holy men, taught
of God, and mighty in the Scriptures. It has been the fashion of
late years to speak against the use of commentaries. If there were
any fear that the expositions of Matthew Henry, Gill, Scott, and
others, would be exalted into Christian Targums, we would join the
chorus of objectors, but the existence or approach of such a danger
we do not suspect. The temptations of our times lie rather in empty
pretensions to novelty of sentiment, than in a slavish following of
accepted guides. A respectable acquaintance with the opinions of
the giants of the past, might have saved many an erratic thinker
from wild interpretations and outrageous inferences. Usually, we
have found the despisers of commentaries to be men who have no sort
of acquaintance with them; in their case, it is the opposite of
familiarity which has bred contempt. It is true there are a number
of expositions of the whole Bible which are hardly worth shelf
room; they aim at too much and fail altogether; the authors have
spread a little learning over a vast surface, and have badly
attempted for the entire Scriptures what they might have
accomplished for one book with tolerable success; but who will deny
the preeminent value of such expositions as those of Calvin, Ness,
Henry, Trapp, Poole, and Bengel, which are as deep as they are
broad? and yet further, who can pretend to biblical learning who
has not made himself familiar with the great writers who spent a
life in explaining some one sacred book? Caryl on Job will not
exhaust the patience of a student who loves every letter of the
Word; even Collinges, with his nine hundred and nine pages upon one
chapter of the Song, will not be too full for the preacher's use;
nor will Manton's long metre edition of the hundred and nineteenth
Psalm ( Ps 119:1-176 ) be too profuse. No stranger could imagine the
vast amount of real learning to be found in old commentaries like
the following:--Durham on Solomon's Song, Wilcocks on Psalms and
Proverbs, Jermin on Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, Greenhill on
Ezekiel, Burroughs on Hosea, Ainsworth on the Pentateuch, King on
Jonah, Hutcheson on John, Peter Martyr on Romans, &c., and in
Willett, Sibbes, Bayne, Elton, Byfield, Daille, Adams, Taylor,
Barlow, Goodwin, and others on the various epistles. Without
attempting to give in detail the names of all, I intend in a
familiar talk to mention the more notable, who wrote upon the whole
Bible, or on either Testament, and I especially direct your
attention to the titles, which in Puritan writers generally give in
brief the run of the work.
First among the mighty for general usefulness we are bound to
mention the man whose name is a household word, Matthew Henry.
He is most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and
sober, terse and trustworthy. You will find him to be glittering
with metaphors, rich in analogies, overflowing with illustrations,
superabundant in reflections. He delights in apposition and
alliteration; he is usually plain, quaint, and full of pith; he
sees right through a text directly; apparently he is not critical,
but he quietly gives the result of an accurate critical knowledge
of the original fully up to the best critics of his time. He is not
versed in the manners and customs of the East, for the Holy Land
was not so accessible as in our day; but he is deeply spiritual,
heavenly, and profitable; finding good matter in every text, and
from all deducing most practical and judicious lessons. His is a
kind of commentary to be placed where I saw it, in the old meeting
house at Chester--chained in the vestry for anybody and everybody
to read. It is the poor man's commentary, the old Christian's
companion, suitable to everybody, instructive to all. His own
account of how he was led to write his exposition, affords us an
example of delighting in the law of the Lord. "If any desire to
know how so mean and obscure a person as I am, who in learning,
judgment, felicity of expression, and all advantages for such a
service, am less than the least of all my Master's servants, came
to venture upon so great a work, I can give no other account of it
but this. It has long been my practice, what little time I had to
spare in my study from my constant preparations for the pulpit, to
spend it in drawing up expositions upon some parts of the New
Testament, not so much for my own use, as purely for my own
entertainment, because I know not how to employ my thoughts and
time more to my satisfaction. Trahit sua quemque voluptas; every
man that studies hath some beloved study, which is his delight
above any other; and this is mine. It is that learning which it was
my happiness from a child to be trained up in by my ever honoured
father, whose memory must always be very dear and precious to me.
He often minded me, that a good textuary is a good divine; and that
I should read other books with this in my eye, that I might be the
better able to understand and apply the Scripture." You are aware,
perhaps, that the latter part of the New Testament was completed by
other hands, the good man having gone the way of all flesh. The
writers were Messrs, Evans, Brown, Mayo, Bays, Rosewell, Harriss,
Atkinson, Smith, Tong, Wright, Merrell, Hill, Reynolds, and
Billingsley--all Dissenting ministers. They have executed their
work exceedingly well, have worked in much of the matter which
Henry had collected, and have done their best to follow his
methods, but their combined production is far inferior to Matthew
Henry himself, and any reader will soon detect the difference.
Every minister ought to read Matthew Henry entirely and carefully
through once at least. I should recommend you to get through it in
the next twelve months after you leave college. Begin at the
beginning, and resolve that you will traverse the goodly land from
Dan to Beersheba. You will acquire a vast store of sermons if you
read with your notebook close at hand; and as for thoughts, they
will swarm around you like twittering swallows around an old gable
towards the close of autumn. If you publicly expound the chapter
you have just been reading, your people will wonder at the novelty
of your remarks and the depth of your thoughts, and then you may
tell them what a treasure Henry is. Mr. Jay's sermons bear
indubitable evidence of his having studied Matthew Henry almost
daily. Many of the quaint things in Jay's sermons are either
directly traceable to Matthew Henry or to his familiarity with that
writer. I have thought that the style of Jay was founded upon
Matthew Henry: Matthew Henry is Jay writing, Jay is Matthew Henry
preaching. What more could I say in commendation either of the
preacher or the author?
It would not be possible for me too earnestly to press upon you
the importance of reading the expositions of that prince among men,
John Calvin! I am afraid that scant purses may debar you from
their purchase, but if it be possible procure them, and meanwhile,
since they are in the College library, use them diligently. I have
often felt inclined to cry out with Father Simon, a Roman Catholic,
"Calvin possessed a sublime genius", and with Scaliger, "Oh! how
well has Calvin reached the meaning of the prophets--no one
better." You will find forty two or more goodly volumes worth their
weight in gold. Of all commentators I believe John Calvin to be the
most candid. In his expositions he is not always what moderns would
call Calvinistic; that is to say, where Scripture maintains the
doctrine of predestination and grace he flinches in no degree, but
inasmuch as some Scriptures bear the impress of human free action
and responsibility, he does not shun to expound their meaning in
all fairness and integrity. He was no trimmer and pruner of texts.
He gave their meaning as far as he knew it. His honest intention
was to translate the Hebrew and the Greek originals as accurately
as he possibly could, and then to give the meaning which would
naturally be conveyed by such Greek and Hebrew words: he laboured,
in fact, to declare, not his own mind upon the Spirit's words, but
the mind of the Spirit as couched in those words. Dr. King very
truly says of him, "No writer ever dealt more fairly and honestly
by the Word of God. He is scrupulously careful to let it speak for
itself, and to guard against every tendency of his own mind to put
upon it a questionable meaning for the sake of establishing some
doctrine which he feels to be important, or some theory which he is
anxious to uphold. This is one of his prime excellences. He will
not maintain any doctrine, however orthodox and essential, by a
text of Scripture which to him appears of doubtful application, or
of inadequate force. For instance, firmly as he believed the
doctrine of the Trinity, he refuses to derive an argument in its
favour from the plural form of the name of God in the first chapter
of Genesis. It were easy to multiply examples of this kind, which,
whether we agree in his conclusion or not, cannot fail to produce
the conviction that he is at least an honest commentator, and will
not make any passage of Scripture speak more or less than,
according to his view, its divine Author intended it to speak."
The edition of John Calvin's works which was issued by the
Calvin Translation Society, is greatly enriched by the remarks of
the editors, consisting not merely of notes on the Latin of Calvin,
and the French translation, or on the text of the original
Scriptures, but also of weighty opinions of eminent critics,
illustrative manners and customs, and observations of travellers.
By the way, gentlemen, what a pity it is that people do not, as a
rule, read the notes in the old Puritan books! If you purchase old
copies of such writers as Brooks, you will find that the notes in
the margin are almost as rich as the books themselves. They are
dust of gold, of the same metal as the ingots in the centre of the
page. But to return to Calvin. If you needed any confirmatory
evidence as to the value of his writings, I might summon a cloud of
witnesses, but it will suffice to quote one or two. Here is the
opinion of one who is looked upon as his great enemy, namely,
Arminius: "Next to the perusal of the Scriptures, which I earnestly
inculcate, I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin's commentaries,
which I extol in loftier terms than Helmich himself; for I
affirm that he excels beyond comparison in the interpretation of
Scripture, and that his commentaries ought to be more highly valued
than all that is handed down to us by the Library of the Fathers;
so that I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others, or