rather above all other men, what may be called an eminent gift of
prophecy."
Quaint Robert Robinson said of him, "There is no abridging this
sententious commentator, and the more I read him, the more does he
become a favourite expositor with me." Holy Baxter wrote, "I know
no man since the apostles' days, whom I value and honour more than
Calvin, and whose judgment in all things, one with another, I more
esteem and come nearer to."
If you are well enough versed in Latin, you will find in Poole's
Synopsis, a marvellous collection of all the wisdom and folly
of the critics. It is a large cyclopaedia worthy of the days when
theologians could be cyclopean, and had not shrunk from folios to
octavos. Query--a query for which I will not demand an answer--has
one of you ever beaten the dust from the venerable copy of Poole
which loads our library shelves? Yet as Poole spent no less than
ten years in compiling it, it should be worthy of your frequent
notice--ten years, let me add, spent in Amsterdam in exile for the
truth's sake from his native land.
His work was based upon an earlier compilation entitled Critici
Sacri, containing the concentrated light of a constellation of
learned men who have never been excelled in any age or country.
Matthew Poole also wrote Annotations upon the Word of God,
in English, which are mentioned by Matthew Henry as having passed
through many impressions in his day, and he not only highly praises
them, but declares that he has in his own work all along been brief
upon that which Mr. Poole has more largely discussed, and has
industriously declined what is to be found there. The three
volumes, tolerably cheap, and easily to be got at, are necessaries
for your libraries. On the whole, if I must have only one
commentary, and had read Matthew Henry as I have, I do not know but
what I should choose Poole. He is a very prudent and judicious
commentator; and one of the few who could honestly say, "We have
not willingly balked any obvious difficulty, and have designed a
just satisfaction to all our readers; and if any knot remains yet
untied, we have told our readers what hath been most probably said
for their satisfaction in the untying of it." Poole is not so pithy
and witty by far as Matthew Henry, but he is perhaps more accurate,
less a commentator, and more an expositor. You meet with no
ostentation of learning in Matthew Poole, and that for the simple
reason that he was so profoundly learned as to be able to give
results without a display of his intellectual crockery. A pedant
who is for ever quoting Ambrose and Jerome, Piscator and
OEcolampadius, in order to show what a copious reader he has been,
is usually a dealer in small wares, and quotes only what others
have quoted before him, but he who can give you the result and
outcome of very extensive reading without sounding a trumpet before
him is the really learned man. Mind you do not confound the
Annotations with the Synopsis; the English work is not a
translation of the Latin one, but an entirely distinct performance.
Strange to say, like the other great Matthew he did not live to
complete his work beyond Isaiah 58 ; other hands united to finish
the design.
Would it be possible to eulogise too much the incomparably
sententious and suggestive folios of John Trapp? Since Mr.
Dickinson has rendered them accessible, I trust most of you
have bought them. Trapp will be most valuable to men of
discernment, to thoughtful men, to men who only want a start in a
line of thought, and are then able to run alone. Trapp excels in
witty stories on the one hand, and learned allusions on the other.
You will not thoroughly enjoy him unless you can turn to the
original, and yet a mere dunce at classics will prize him. His
writings remind me of himself: he was a pastor, hence his holy
practical remarks; he was the head of a public school, and
everywhere we see his profound scholarship; he was for some time
amid the guns and drums of a parliamentary garrison, and he gossips
and tells queer anecdotes like a man used to a soldier's life; yet
withal, he comments as if he had been nothing else but a
commentator all his days. Some of his remarks are far fetched, and
like the far fetched rarities of Solomon's Tarshish, there is much
gold and silver, but there are also apes and peacocks. His
criticisms would some of them be the cause of amusement in these
days of greater scholarship; but for all that, he who shall excel
Trapp had need rise very early in the morning. Trapp is my especial
companion and treasure; I can read him when I am too weary for
anything else. Trapp is salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, and all the
other condiments. Put him on the table when you study, and when you
have your dish ready, use him by way of spicing the whole thing.
Yes, gentlemen, read Trapp certainly, and if you catch the
infection of his consecrated humour, so much the better for your
hearers.
A very distinguished place is due to Dr. Gill. Beyond all
controversy, Gill was one of the most able Hebraists of his day,
and in other matters no mean proficient. When an opponent in
controversy had ventured to call him "a botcher in divinity", the
good doctor, being compelled to become a fool in glorying, gave
such a list of his attainments as must have covered his accuser
with confusion. His great work on the Holy Scriptures is greatly
prized at the present day by the best authorities, which is
conclusive evidence of its value, since the set of the current of
theological thought is quite contrary to that of Dr. Gill. No one
in these days is likely to be censured for his Arminianism, but
most modern divines affect to sneer at anything a little too highly
Calvinistic: however, amid the decadence of his own rigid system,
and the disrepute of even more moderate Calvinism, Gill's laurels
as an expositor are still green. His ultraism is discarded, but his
learning is respected: the world and the church take leave to
question his dogmatism, but they both bow before his erudition.
Probably no man since Gill's days has at all equalled him in the
matter of Rabbinical learning. Say what you will about that lore,
it has its value: of course, a man has to rake among perfect
dunghills and dust heaps, but there are a few jewels which the
world could not afford to miss. Gill was a master cinder sifter
among the Targums, the Talmuds, the Mishna, and the Gemara. Richly
did he deserve the degree of which he said, "I never bought it, nor
thought it, nor sought it."
He was always at work; it is difficult to say when he slept, for
he wrote 10,000 folio pages of theology. The portrait of him which
belongs to this church, and hangs in my private vestry, and from
which all the published portraits have been engraved, represents
him after an interview with an Arminian gentleman, turning up his
nose in a most expressive manner, as if he could not endure even
the smell of freewill. In some such a vein he wrote his commentary.
He hunts Arminianism throughout the whole of it. He is far from
being so interesting and readable as Matthew Henry. He delivered
his comments to his people from Sabbath to Sabbath, hence their
peculiar mannerism. His frequent method of animad-version is, "This
text does not mean this", nobody ever thought it did; "It does not
mean that", only two or three heretics ever imagined it did; and
again it does not mean a third thing, or a fourth, or a fifth, or a
sixth absurdity; but at last he thinks it does mean so-and-so, and
tells you so in a methodical, sermon like manner. This is an easy
method, gentlemen, of filling up the time, if you are ever short of
heads for a sermon. Show your people firstly, secondly, and
thirdly, what the text does not mean, and then afterwards you can
go back and show them what it does mean. It may be thought,
however, that one such a teacher is enough, and that what was
tolerated from a learned doctor would be scouted in a student fresh
from college. For good, sound, massive, sober sense in commenting,
who can excel Gill? Very seldom does he allow himself to be run
away with by imagination, except now and then when he tries to open
up a parable, and finds a meaning in every circumstance and minute
detail; or when he falls upon a text which is not congenial with
his creed, and hacks and hews terribly to bring the word of God
into a more systematic shape. Gill is the Coryphaeus of
hyper-Calvinism, but if his followers never went beyond their
master, they would not go very far astray.
I have placed next to Gill in my library Adam Clarke, but as
I have no desire to have my rest broken by wars among the authors,
I have placed Doddridge between them. If the spirits of the two
worthies could descend to the earth in the same mood in which they
departed, no one house would be able to hold them. Adam Clarke is
the great annotator of our Wesleyan friends; and they have no
reason to be ashamed of him, for he takes rank among the chief of
expositors. His mind was evidently fascinated by the singularities
of learning, and hence his commentary is rather too much of an old
curiosity shop, but it is filled with valuable rarities, such as
none but a great man could have collected. Like Gill, he is one
sided, only in the opposite direction to our friend the Baptist.
The use of the two authors may help to preserve the balance of your
judgments. If you consider Clarke wanting in unction, do not read
him for savour but for criticism, and then you will not be
disappointed.
The author thought that lengthy reflections were rather for the
preacher than the commentator, and hence it was not a part of his
plan to write such observations as those which endear Matthew Henry
to the million. If you have a copy of Adam Clarke, and exercise
discretion in reading it, you will derive immense advantage from
it, for frequently by a sort of side light he brings out the
meaning of the text in an astonishingly novel manner. I do not
wonder that Adam Clarke still stands, notwithstanding his
peculiarities, a prince among commentators. I do not find him so
helpful as Gill, but still from his side of the question, with
which I have personally no sympathy, he is an important writer, and
deserves to be studied by every reader of the Scriptures. He very
judiciously says of Dr. Gill, "He was a very learned and good man,
but has often lost sight of his better judgment in spiritualising
the text"; this is the very verdict which we pass upon himself,
only altering the last sentence a word or two; "He has often lost
sight of his better judgment in following learned singularities";
the monkey, instead of the serpent, tempting Eve, is a notable
instance.
As I am paying no sort of attention to chronological order, I
shall now wander back to old Master Mayer, a rare and valuable
author. I have been in London a long time now, but I have only of
late been able to complete my set. The first volume especially is
rare in the extreme. The six volumes, folio, are a most judicious
and able digest of feather commentators, enriched with the author's
own notes, forming altogether one of the fullest and best of
learned English commentaries; not meant for popular use, but
invaluable to the student. He is a link between the modern school,