“DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COUNTERFEIT AND TRUE PROPHETS
By M. E. Cornell
Interesting Extracts. No. 8.
“DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COUNTERFEIT AND TRUE PROPHETS
Voltaire, “Many nations, the Greek, the Egyptians, &c., had also their oracles, their prophets, their nabim, their seers.” Jews' reply:—“Yes, sir, but does it follow, that because other nations had false prophets, therefore the Jews had no true ones? We think that counterfeit coin is not an evidence that sterling money never existed. It rather proves the contrary. Could you show in any one of those nations a body of prophecies so clear, so precise, so wisely written as ours? Could you vindicate their authority, and show the accomplishment of them as we do? Why are the pretended prophecies of other nations fallen into oblivion? Why were they despised even by those persons to whom they promised such prosperity and conquests? Why have ours been preserved for so many ages, and revered at this day, not only by the Jews, but by the most enlightened people of the universe? Is it not because the former have been convicted of falsehood, absurdity, and imposition, and that the truth of the latter has been demonstrated by an incontestable chain of events, which all the prudence of man could not foresee. . . . Alas, what relation can there be between the sublime doctrine, the pure morality, the noble generosity of the latter, and the ambition, avarice and blind fanaticism of the former? Do you see the Jewish prophets announcing to their people absurd and barbarous divinities? prescribing impure rites? requiring innocent blood? and ordering unfortunate children to be sacrificed by those very persons who gave them birth?” Letters to Voltaire pp. 277—279. Martin Luther says: The allegorical sense is commonly uncertain and by no means safe to build our faith upon: for it usually depends on human opinion and conjecture only. . . . Therefore Origen, Jerome, and similar of the fathers are to be avoided with the whole of that Alexandrian School, which formerly abounded in this species of interpretation. For later writers unhappily following their too much praised and prevailing example, it has come to pass that men make just what they please of the scriptures, until some accommodate the word of God to the most extravagant absurdities. Annotations on Deut. cap 1, Fol. 55. William Tyndale says: “No man dare abide the literal sense of the text, but under a protestation, if it please the Pope. Thou shalt understand, therefore that the scripture hath but one sense and that is the literal sense. . . . The greatest cause of which captivity and decay of faith, and this blindness wherein we are now, sprang first from allegories; for Origen, and the doctors of his time, drew all the scriptures into allegory, insomuch as that twenty doctors expounded one text twenty different ways. . . . Yea they are come into such blindness that they not only say the literal sense profiteth not, but also that it is hurtful, and killeth the soul.” Works, Vol. 1. p. 307. “Words, which admit of different senses, should be taken in their most common and obvious meaning unless such a construction lead to absurd consequences, or be inconsistent with the known intention of the writer.” Hedge's Logic.