Robert South · 3 of 24
Sermon XXXVII. The Scribe Instructed, &c. · Part 1
The Scribe instructed, &c.
A SERMON
PREACHED AT ST. MARY’S CHURCH IN OXON,
BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY,
JULY 29, 1660.
Being the time of the King’s commissioners meeting there, soon after the Restoration, for the visitation of that University.
Matthew xiii. 52.
Then said he unto them. Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.
IN this chapter we have a large discourse from the great preacher of ; a discourse fraught with all the commending excellencies of speech; delightful for its variety, admirable for its convincing quickness and argumentative closeness, and (which is seldom an excellency in other sermons) excellent for its length.
For that which is carried on with a continued, unflagging vigour of expression can never be thought tedious, nor consequently long. And Christ, who was not only the preacher, but himself also the word, was undoubtedly furnished with a strain of heavenly oratory far above the heights of all human rhetoric whatsoever: his sermons being of that and ornament, that (as the world generally goes) they might have prevailed even without truth, and yet pregnant with such irresistible truth, that the ornament might have been spared; and indeed it still seems to have been used, rather to gratify than persuade the hearer. So that we may (only with a reverential acknowledgment both of the difference of the persons and of the subject) give that testimony of Christ’s sermons, which Cicero (the great master of the Roman eloquence) did of Demosthenes’s orations, who being asked, which of them was the best, answered, the longest.
Accordingly, our Saviour having in the verse here pitched upon for my text, finished his foregoing discourse, he now closes up all with the character of a preacher, or evangelist; still addressing himself to his disciples, as to a designed seminary of preachers; or rather indeed, as to a kind of little itinerant academy, if I may so call it, of such as were to take his heavenly doctrines for the sole rule of their practice, and his excellent way of preaching for the standing pattern of their imitation; thus lying at the feet of their blessed Lord, with the humblest attention of scholars, and the lowest prostration of subjects. The very name and notion of a disciple implying, and the nature of the thing itself requiring both these qualifications.
Now the discussion of the words before us shall He in these following particulars:
1st, To shew, What is here meant by the scribe
2dly, What by being instructed unto the kingdom of heaven. And,
3dly and lastly, What by bringing out of his treasure things new and old; and how upon this account he stands compared to an householder.
And I. Concerning the word scribe. It was a name, which amongst the Jews was applied to two sorts of officers.
1. To a civil; and so it signifies a notary, or in a large sense any one employed to draw up deeds or writings: whether in an higher station or degree, as we read in the 2 Kings xxii. and the 3d verse, that Shaphan was γραμματεὺς βασιλέως, the king’s scribe, or secretary; or, as in a lower sense and acception of the word, we find this appellation given to that officer who appeared in quelling the uproar at Ephesus, as we read in Acts xix. where, in the 35th verse, he is called γραμματεὺς, which, I think, we may fitly enough render, (as our English text does,) the townclerk, or public notary of the city. To this sort also some would refer those mentioned in Matthew ii. and the 4th verse, who are there called the scribes of the people; as if they were such notaries as we have been speaking of; but the business about which we read in that chapter that Herod called them together, seems to evince the contrary; which was to inquire of such as were skilled in the writings of the prophets, when and where the Messiah was to be born. The resolution of which was very unlikely to be had from those who were only notaries and journeymen to courts, to draw up indictments, bonds, leases, contracts, and the like. And from we may, no doubt, conclude, that this sort of scribes was quite of another nature from the scribe here alluded to in the text; and which shall be next treated of: and therefore,
2. This name scribe signifies a church-officer, one skilful and conversant in the law, to interpret and explain it. For still we find the scribes reckoned with the great doctors of the Jewish church, and for the most part joined with the in the writings of the evangelists, and by St. Paul with the disputer of this world, 1 Cor. i. 20; and sometimes called also νομικοὶ, lawyers, as in St. Luke vii. 30, and in St. Luke xi. 52; that is to say, men skilful and expert in the Mosaic law. Not that these scribes were really and properly any part of the , (as some have thought;) for was the name of a sect, scribe of an office: and whereas we read, in Acts xxiii. and the 9th verse, of the γραμματεῖς there said to be τοῦ μέρους τῶν Φαρισαίων, of part of the ; the word of part is not to be understood in respect of distribution, as it signifies a correlate to the whole, but in respect of opinion; as that they were of the ’ part or side, or, in other words, joined with them in some of their opinions; as possibly others of them might join with the Sadducees in some of theirs. By scribe therefore must be here meant a doctor or expounder of the law to the people; such an one as Ezra, that excellent person, so renowned amongst the Jews; who, in Ezra vii. verse 6, is said to have been a ready scribe in the law of Moses. For though, indeed, the word scribe in the English and Latin imports barely a writer, and the Greek γραμματεὺς by its derivation from γράφω, strictly signifies no more; yet by its nearer derivation from γράμμα, which signifies a letter, it seems to represent to us the nature of the office from the notation of the name, viz. that these scribes were men of the bare letter, or the text; whose business it was to explain and give the literal sense and meaning of the law. And therefore, that the men here spoken of, whom the Jews accounted of such eminent skill in it, should by their office be only writers, or transcribers of it, can with no more reason, I think, be affirmed, than if we should allow him to be a skilful divine, who should transcribe other men’s works, and, which is more, preach them when he had done. But,
2. As for the meaning of that expression, of being instructed unto the kingdom of heaven. By the kingdom of heaven is here signified to us, only the preaching of the gospel, or the condition and state of the Church under the gospel; as, , for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, that is, the gospel is shortly to be preached: now we are to take notice, that it was the way of Christ, in his preaching to the Jews, to express the offices, and things belonging to his church under the gospel, by alluding to those of the Jewish church under the law, as being known, and familiar to them. Hence he calls a minister, or preacher of the gospel, a scribe: and this from the analogy of what the scribe did in the explication of the Mosaic law, with what the gospel minister was to do, in preaching and pressing home the doctrines of Christianity upon the heart and conscience; much the harder work, God knows, of the two.
Now the word which we here render instructed, in the Greek is μαθητευθεὶς, one who was taught, schooled, or disciplined to the work by long exercise and study. He was not to be inspired, or blown into the ministry, but to come to it by mature study and labour. He was to fetch his preparations from industry, not infusion. And forasmuch as Christ’s design was to express evangelical officers by legal, there must, as I shew, be some resemblance between them; and since the matter or subject they were engaged in was wholly diverse, this resemblance was to hold, at least, in the qualification of the persons, viz. that as the scribe of the law did with much labour stock himself with all variety of learning requisite to find out the sense of the same, so the evangelical scribe, or preacher, should bring as much learning, and bestow as much labour in his employment, as the other did in his; especially since it required full as much, and deserved a great deal more: and so pass we to the
3d thing proposed, which was to shew what is to be understood by bringing out of his treasure things new and old. By treasure is here signified that which in Latin is called penus, a storehouse, or repository; and the bringing out things new and old was (as some are of opinion) a kind of proverb, or proverbial speech amongst the Hebrews, expressing a man’s giving a plentiful or liberal entertainment to his friends, and such as came about him. And accordingly, as here borrowed from the householder, and applied to the gospel-scribe in the text, it makes the drift and import of the whole parable to amount to this: that as the former, if a man of substance and sufficiency, of a large stock, and as large a mind, will entertain his friends and guests with plenty and variety of provision, answerable to the difference of men’s palates, as well as to the difference of the season; not confining them to the same standing common fare, but, as occasion requires, adding something of more cost and rarity besides; so our gospel-scribe or preacher, in the entertainment of his spiritual guests, is not always to set before them only the main substantials of religion, whether for belief or practice, but, as the matter shall require, to add also illustration to the one, and enforcement to the other, sometimes persuading, sometimes terrifying; and accordingly addressing himself to the afflicted and desponding with gospel lenitives, and to the hard and obstinate with legal corrosives; and since the relish of all is not the same, he is to apply to the vulgar with plain familiar similitudes, and to the learned with greater choiceness of language and closeness of argument; and moreover, since every age of the church more peculiarly needs the clearer discussion of some truth or other, then more particularly doubted of, or op posed; therefore, to the inculcating the general acknowledged points of Christianity, he is to add something of the controversies, opinions, and vices of the times; otherwise he cannot reach men’s minds and inclinations, which are apt to be argued this way or that way, according to different times and occasions; and consequently he falls so far short of a good orator, and much more of an accurate preacher.
This, I conceive, is the genuine and full sense of the words we are now upon, and which I shall yet further strengthen with this observation: “That we shall find that Christ’s design all along the evangelists was to place the economy of the church under the gospel, above that of the Jewish church under the law, as more excellent in every particular.” Now it was the way of the scribes then, to dwell wholly upon the letter of the law, and what Moses said; shewing the construction, the coherence, and force of his words, only sometimes sprinkling them a little with tradition, and the pompous allegation of their ancient rabbies, Ἐῤῥέθη τοῖς ἀρχαίως. But Christ, who, we read, taught with authority, and not as the scribes, as one not only expounding, but also commanding the words, took a freedom of expression, in shewing not the sense of Moses only, but the further sense and intent of God himself speaking to Moses; and then clothing this sense in parables, similitudes, and other advantages of rhetoric, so as to give it an easier entrance and admission into the mind and affections; and what he did himself, he recommended to the practice of his disciples. So that, I think, we may not unfitly account for the meaning of our Saviour in this chapter thus: You see how the scribes of the law with much anxiety and niceness confine themselves to the let ter of Moses, but the scribe who is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, and fitted to preach the gospel, must not dwell only upon the letter and shell of things, but often enlarge and amplify upon the subject he handles, adapting his discourse to the various circumstances, tempers, and apprehensions of his hearers; and so letting it rise or fall in the degrees of its plainness or quickness, according to his hearers dulness or docility.
Thus, I hope, I have made out the full import of the words, and the design of our Saviour in them, which I shall now more throughly prosecute in this proposition, naturally resulting from them so explained, viz.
That the greatest advantages, both as to largeness of natural, and exquisiteness of acquired abilities, are not only consistent with, but required to the due performance of the work and business of a preacher of the gospel.
Not that I affirm, that every one, who has not such a furniture of parts and knowledge, is therefore wholly unfit or forbidden to be a preacher; for then most of us might for ever sit down and adore, but not venture upon this work. But in giving a rule for any thing or action, we must assign the utmost perfection which either of them is capable of, and to which men ought to aspire; not to which they of necessity must or can attain. We know the copy always falls short of the original, and the performance of the precept. But still the rule must be absolute, and highly perfect; otherwise, we should never look upon our improvement as our duty, or our imperfections as our defects.
In the handling of the proposition drawn forth, I shall shew,
1st, What qualifications are required as necessary to a minister of the word, from the force of the comparison between him and the scribe mentioned in the text.
2dly, I shall shew the reasons to evince and prove their necessity: and
3dly, I shall draw some inferences from the whole.
And first, concerning the qualifications required, &c.
I shall bring them under these two.
1. An ability and strength of the powers and faculties of the mind. And,
2. An habitual preparation of the same, by study, exercise, and improvement.
Which two, I conceive, contain all that both nature and art can do in this matter.
And first, for the first of these two.
1. A natural ability and strength of the powers and faculties of the mind. And what these are is apparent, viz. judgment, memory, and invention.
Now, whether these three are three distinct things both in being distinguished from one another, and likewise from the substance of the soul itself considered without any such faculties, but only receiving these several denominations from the several respects arising from the several actions exerted immediately by itself upon several objects, or several qualities of the same object; I say, whether of these two it is, is not easy to decide; and it is well, that it is not necessary. Aquinas and most with him affirm the former, and Scotus with his followers the latter. But yet to assert with him, that in a created nature essence and power are the same, seems too near and bold a step to the incommunicable simplicity of the divine; and according to the received way of arguing will pass for a great absurdity. However, not to insist further upon a point merely philosophical, but supposing (at least probably) that (according to the common opinion) the soul acts or works by powers and faculties, as well as habits, distinct from its own substance; I proceed to shew the necessity of the three forementioned faculties in the business of the ministry. And,
1st, For that great leading one, the judgment: without which, how can any controversy in philosophy or divinity be duly managed, stated, or determined? How can that which is ambiguous be cleared, that which is fallacious be detected, or even truth itself be defended? How, where the words of scripture may bear several senses, some proper, and some figurative, can we be assured which the writer or speaker of them intended them in? How also, without this, when a scripture has been corrupted, partly by filching some words out of it, and partly by a supposititious foisting of some in, shall the whole be rescued from the imposture passed upon it, and so restored true and genuine to itself? And lastly, how shall many seeming clashings and dark pas sages in sacred history and chronology be placed in such a light, as may throughly satisfy, or at least effectually silence the doubtful and exceptious? All which particulars (with many more of the like nature) being confessedly knotty and difficult, can never be accorded, but by a competent stock of critical learning; and can any one (even according to the very signification of the word) be said to be a critic, and yet not judicious? And then,
2dly, For memory. This may be reckoned twofold. 1. That which serves to treasure up our reading, or observations. And 2. That which serves to suggest to us, in our reciting or repeating of any thing, which we had endeavoured to commit to our memory before. I distinguish them, because one may be, and often is excellent, where the other is deficient. But now, were this never so large, yet theology is of that vast compass, as to employ and exhaust it. For what volumes are thereof antiquity, church-history, and other divine learning, which well deserve reading; and to what purpose do we read, if we cannot remember? But then also, for the reciting or repeating part of memory, that is so necessary, that Cicero himself observes of oratory, (which indeed upon a sacred subject is preaching,) that upon the want of memory alone, omnia, etiamsi praeclarissima fuerint, in oratore peritura. And we know that, to a popular auditory, it is upon the matter all. There being, in the esteem of many, but little difference between sermons read, and homilies, save only this, that homilies are much better. And then for the
Third faculty, which is invention: a faculty acting chiefly in the strength of what is offered it by the imagination. This is so far from being admitted by many as necessary, that it is decried by them as utterly unlawful; such grand exemplars, I mean, as make their own abilities the sole measure of what is fit or unfit, lawful or unlawful; so that what they themselves cannot reach, others, forsooth, ought not to attempt. But I see not why divinity should suffer for their narrowness, and be deprived of the service of a most useful and excellent endowment of the mind, and which gives a gloss and a shine to all the rest. For I reckon upon this as a great truth, that there can be no endowment in the soul of man, which God himself is the cause and giver of, but may even in its highest and choicest operations be and employed in the work of the ministry. And there is also another principle, which I account altogether as true as the former; namely, that piety engages no man to be dull; though lately, I confess, it passed with some for a mark of . And when I shall see these principles disproved, I shall be ready to grant all exercise of the fancy or invention, in the handling things sacred, to be unlawful. As fancy, indeed, is often taken in the worst sense, for a conceited, curious, whimsical brain, which is apt to please itself in strange, odd, and ungrounded notions; so I confess, that nothing is more contrary to or destructive of true divinity; but then I must add withal, that if fancy be taken in this sense, those who damn it in its other sober and right acception, have much the greatest share of it themselves. But if, on the other hand, we take fancy for that power or ability of the mind, which suggests apposite and pertinent expressions, and handsome ways of clothing and setting off those truths which the judgment has rationally pitched upon, it will be found full as useful as any of all the three mentioned by us in the work of preaching; and consequently slighted and disapproved of by none but such as envy that in others, which they are never like to be envied for the want of in themselves. He therefore who thinks to be a scribe instructed for the kingdom of heaven, without a competency of judgment, memory, and invention, attempts a great superstructure where there is no foundation; and this, surely, is a very preposterous way to edify either himself or others.
And thus much for the first of the two qualifications of our evangelical scribe; to wit, a tolerable ability or strength of the powers and faculties of the mind; particularly of those three, judgment, memory, and invention. I proceed now to the other, and
Second qualification: which was an habitual preparation by study, exercise, and due improvement of the same. Powers act but weakly and irregularly, till they are heightened and perfected by their ha bits. A well radicated habit, in a lively, vegete faculty, is like an apple of gold in a picture of silver; it is perfection upon perfection, it is a coat of mail upon our armour, and, in a word, it is the raising the soul at least one story higher: for take off but these wheels, and the powers in all their operations will drive but heavily. Now it is not enough to have books, or for a man to have his divinity in his pocket, or upon the shelf; but he must have mastered his notions, till they even incorporate into his mind, so as to be able to produce and wield them upon all occasions; and not when a difficulty is proposed, and a performance enjoined, to say, that he will consult such and such authors: for this is not to be a divine, who is rather to be a walking library, than a walking index. As, to go no farther than the similitude in the text, we should not account him a good or generous housekeeper, who should not have always something of standing provision by him, so as never to be so surprised, but that he should still be found able to treat his friend at least, though perhaps not always presently to feast him: so the scribe here spoken of should have an inward, lasting fulness and sufficiency, to support and bear him up; especially where present performance urges, and actual preparation can be but short. Thus, it is not the oil in the wick, but in the vessel, which must feed the lamp. The former indeed may cause a present blaze, but it is the latter which must give it a lasting light. It is not the spending-money a man has in his pocket, but his hoards in the chest, or in the bank, which must make him rich. A dying man has his breath in his nostrils, but to have it in the lungs is that which must preserve life. Nor will it suffice to have raked up a few notions here and there, or to rally up all one’s little utmost into one discourse, which can constitute a divine, or give a man stock enough to set up with; any more than a soldier who had filled his snapsack should thereupon set up for keeping house. No; a man would then quickly be drained, his short stock would serve but for one meeting in ordinary converse, and he would be in danger of meeting with the same company twice. And therefore there must be store, plenty, and a treasure, lest he turn broker in divinity, and having run the rounds of a beaten exhausted common place, be forced to stand still, or go the same round over again; pretending to his auditors, that it is profit able for them to hear the same truths often inculcated to them; though, I humbly conceive, that to inculcate the same truths, is not of necessity to repeat the same words. And therefore, to avoid such beggarly pretences, there must be an habitual preparation as to the work we are now speaking of. And that in two respects.
1. In respect of the generality of knowledge required to it. The truth is, if we consider that great multitude of things to be known, and the labour and time required to the knowledge of each particular, it is enough to discourage and dash all attempt, and cause a careless despair. What Hippocrates said of the cure of the body, is much truer of the cure of the soul, “that life is short, and art long.” And I might add also, that the mind is weak and narrow, and the business difficult and large. And should I say, that preaching was the least part of a divine, it would, I believe, be thought a bold word, and look like a paradox, (as the world goes,) but perhaps, for all that, never the further from being a great truth. For is it not a greater thing to untie the knots of many intricate and perplexing controversies; and to bring together all the ends of a loose and hardly cohering hypothesis? to refute the opinions and stop the mouths of gainsayers, whereas some of them are so opposite amongst themselves, that you can hardly confute one, but with arguments taken from the other, though both of them equally erroneous? In which and the like cases to carry an argument for the defence of truth so warily and exactly, that an adversary shall not sometimes be able to pervert it to the support of an error, (since though the argument may be materially the same, yet the different application and management of it may produce quite different inferences from it;) this, no doubt, is a matter of great difficulty, and no less dexterity. And the like also may be said of casuistical divinity for resolving cases of conscience; especially where several obligations seem to interfere, and, as it were, justle one another, so that it seems impossible to the conscience to turn either way without sin, and while it does so, must needs be held under great distraction. To clear a way out of which, being a work certainly depending upon much knowledge of the canon and civil laws, as well as of the principles of divinity, it must needs require much toil and labour for the casuist to provide himself with materials for this purpose, and then no less art and skill to manage and apply them to the conscience. And as it is highly requisite that this should in some measure be found in every divine, and in its height and perfection in some, which since it cannot well be, but by the whole employment of a man’s time, not took off or diverted by other ministerial business, it so far shews the happy constitution of such churches, as afford place of suitable scholastic maintenance (without the trouble of a pastoral charge) for such whose abilities carry them to the study of the controversial or critical part of theology, rather than any other belonging to the ministry. But on the contrary, where there is no such proper maintenance allotted for a divine, but by preaching only, let us suppose, that which in such a case we easily may; That one had a peculiar inclination to controversy, or to dive into antiquity, or to search critically into the original letter of the scriptures; and withal had little inclination, and perhaps less ability to preach, but yet knew no other way to live as a divine, but by preaching; do we not here lose an excellent casuist, an accurate critic, or profound school-divine, only to make a very mean preacher? who, had he had the forementioned opportunity of encouragement, might have been eminently serviceable to the church in any of those other ways, while he only serves the natural necessities of life in this. And this has been observed by a learned knight to have been an inconvenience even in those days, when the revenues of the church were not wholly reformed from it; that for our not then setting aside whole societies for the managing of controversies and nothing else, as the church of Rome finds it necessary to do, divines for the most part handle controversies only as a diversion in the midst of their other pastoral labours, and many of them have performed it accordingly. For as man’s faculties will not suffice him for all arts and sciences, so neither will they sometimes reach all the parts and difficulties of any one of them. But the late times made the matter yet ten times worse with us, when the rooters and through-reformers made clean work with the church, and took away all, and so, by stripping the clergy of their rights and preferments, left us in a fair posture, (you may be sure,) both offensive and defensive, to encounter our acute and learned adversaries the Jesuits. For then the polemics of the field had quite silenced those of the schools. All being took up and busied, some in pulpits, and some in tubs, in the grand work of preaching and holding forth, and that of edification, (as the word then went;) so that they seemed like an army of men armed only with trowels, and perhaps amongst thousands only a Saul and a Jonathan with swords in their hands, only one or two with scholastic artillery, and preparation for controversy. But this by the way, and as a sad instance to shew how fatal it is, that when divinity takes in so large a compass of learning, and that for so many uses, the church should be robbed of the proper and most effectual means of stocking herself with it.