5.  The fifth is—­“transposing words and letters.”

6.  The sixth is—­“dividing one word into two.”

7.  The seventh is—­“adding other words to those in the text, in order to make the sense more clear, and to accommodate it to the subject they we upon.”

8.  The eighth is—­“changing the order of words.”

9.  The ninth is—­“changing the order of words, and adding other words.”

10.  The tenth is—­“changing the order of words, adding words, and retrenching words,” which, (says he) is a method often used by Paul.  Of the application of all these rules, he gives examples taken from the New Testament.

It is not necessary to make many observations upon these rules, they speak for themselves most significantly; for what is there that cannot be proved from the Old Testament, or any other book, yea, from Euclid’s Elements! or even an old almanac! by the help of “altering words and sentences; adding; retrenching; and transposing, and cutting words in two,” as is stated above by a learned and good man, and sincere Christian who found out, and brought forward, these rules, as the best means of getting the authors of the New Testament out of a difficulty, which had long shocked and grieved their best friends.

CHAPTER VI.

Examination of the meaning of the phrase “This
was done that it might be fulfilled.”

It may be objected from divers learned authors, who have been very sensible of the difficulties stated in the preceding chapters, and have, sensible of the difficulties stated in the preceding chapters, therefore, taken other ground than their predecessors, in order to defend themselves the better; I say, it may be objected to what I have advanced, that Christianity is not in fact grounded on the prophetical, or other, quotations made from the Old, in the New, Testament; but that those quotations being allegorically applied by the authors of the New Testament, are merely arguments ad hominem, to convince the Jews of the truth of Christianity, who allowed such a method of arguing to be valid, and are not arguments to the rest of mankind.

To which I answer—­That this distinction is the pure invention of those who make the objection, and not only has no foundation in the New Testament, but is utterly subverted by its express declarations; for the authors of the books of the New Testament always argue absolutely from the quotations they cite as prophecies out of the books of the Old Testament.  Moses and the prophets are every where represented to be a just foundation for Christianity; and the author of the Epistle to the Romans expressly says, ch. xvi. 26, 26, “The gospel, which was kept secret since the world began, was now made manifest by the scriptures of the prophets (wherein that gospel was secretly contained) to all nations,” by the means of the preachers of the gospel who gave the secret or spiritual sense of those scriptures; for to the ancient Jews, according to them, the gospel was preached by the types of their law, and, therefore, must have been considered as truly contained in it.