penmen.  In explaining the predictions of the prophets, he maintains that they referred to events anterior to the coming of Christ, and were accomplished in these; so that the natural and obvious sense of the words and phrases, in which they were delivered, does not terminate in Christ; yet, that in some of the predictions, those particularly, which the writers of the New Testament apply to Christ, there is, besides the literal and obvious signification, a hidden and mysterious sense, which lies concealed under the external mark of certain persons, certain events, and certain actions, which are representative of the person, the ministry, the sufferings, and the merits of the Son of God.

[Sidenote:  CHAP.  X. 1621-1634.]

It has been objected, that this system leads to Socinianism, and even beyond it.  All Catholic, and several episcopalian Protestant divines object to it; they generally contend, that the sacred writings ought always to be understood in that sense only, which has been attributed to them, by the early fathers.—­Against this system, Dr. Whitby published his celebrated work “Concerning the Interpretation of Scripture after the manner of the Fathers."[038]

[Sidenote:  X. 5.  His Commentary on the Scriptures.]

The system of Grotius was defended, to a certain extent, by Father Simon, the oratorian, the father of the modern biblical school.  Against both Simon and Grotius, Bossuet wielded his powerful lance,—­in his “Pastoral Instruction on the Works of Father Simon,” and his “Dissertations upon Grotius.”  In these works he says that, during thirty years,

“Grotius searched for truth in good faith, and at last was so near it, that it is wonderful that he did not take the last step, to which God called him.  Shocked at Calvin’s harsh doctrines, he embraced Arminianism; then, abandoned it.  More a lawyer than a theologian, more a polite scholar than a philosopher, he throws the doctrine of the immortality of the soul into obscurity.  He endeavours to weaken and steal from the church, her most powerful proofs of the divinity of the Son of God, and strives to darken the prophecies, which announce the arrival of the Messiah.”

Bossuet proceeds to particularize some of the principal errors of Grotius:  Le Clerc replied to the prelate’s criticism, by his Sentimens de quelques Theologiens de la Hollande.—­Grotius had also an able advocate in Father Simon.  His defence of Grotius against the charge of semi-Pelagianism, in the Bibliotheque de Sainjore,[039] appears to be satisfactory.  He cites the note of Grotius, on the Acts of the Apostles, (the celebrated ch. xiii. ver. 38), in which he says expressly that he does not exclude preventive grace:  this the semi-Pelagians denied altogether.  But in his defence of Grotius against the charge of Socinianism, he is not equally successful.  Bossuet sent his Pastoral Instruction, and Dissertations upon Grotius, to the bishop of Frejus, afterward Cardinal de Fleury:  he accompanied them by a letter, which closes with these remarkable words: