[130] St. Paul blends both forms of expression, and asserts the same doctrine when speaking of the _celestial body_ provided for _the new man_ in the spiritual flesh and blood, (that is, the informing power and vivific life of the incarnate Word: for the Blood is the Life, and the Flesh the Power)--when speaking, I say, of this _celestial body_, as a _house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens_, yet brought down to us, made appropriable by faith, and _ours_--he adds, _for in this earthly house_ (that is, this mortal life, as the inward principle or energy of our Tabernacle, or outward and sensible body) _we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life_. 2 Cor. v. 1-4.
The four last words of the first verse (_eternal in the heavens_) compared with the conclusion of v. 2, (_which is from heaven_) present a coincidence with John iii. 13, "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven." [Would not the coincidence be more apparent, if the words of John had been rendered word for word, even to a disregard of the English idiom, and with what would be servile and superstitious fidelity in the translation of a common classic? I can see no reason why the ουδεις, so frequent in St. John, should not be rendered literally, _no one_; and there may be a reason why it should. I have some doubt likewise respecting the omission of the definite articles τον, του, τω--and a greater, as to the ὁ ων, both in this place and in John i. 18, being _adequately_ rendered by our _which is_. What sense some of the Greek Fathers attached to, or inferred from, St. Paul's _in the Heavens_, the theological student (and to theologians is this note principally addressed) may find in Waterland's Letters to a Country Clergyman--a divine, whose judgment and strong sound sense are as unquestionable as his learning and orthodoxy. A clergyman in full orders, who has never read the works of Bull and Waterland, has a duty yet to perform.]
Let it not be objected, that, forgetful of my own professed aversion to allegorical interpretations, I have, in this note, fallen into "the fond humour of the mystic divines, and _allegorizers_ of Holy Writ."[131] There is, believe me, a wide difference between _symbolical_ and _allegorical_. If I say that the flesh and blood (_corpus noumenon_) of the Incarnate Word are power and life, I say likewise that this mysterious power and life are _verily_ and _actually_ the flesh and blood of Christ. _They_ are the allegorizers, who turn the 6th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John,--_the hard saying,--who can hear it?_--after which time many of Christ's disciples, who had been eye-witnesses of his mighty miracles, who had heard the sublime morality of his Sermon on the Mount, had glorified God for the wisdom which they had heard, and had been prepared to acknowledge, _This is indeed the Christ_,--went back and walked no more with him!--the hard sayings, which even THE TWELVE were not yet competent to understand farther than that they were to be spiritually understood; and which the chief of the Apostles was content to receive with an implicit and anticipative faith!--_they_, I repeat, are the allegorizers who moralize these hard sayings, these high words of mystery, into a hyperbolical metaphor _per catachresin_, which only means a belief of the doctrine which Paul believed, an obedience to the law, respecting which Paul _was blameless_, before the voice called him on the road to Damascus! What every parent, every humane preceptor, would do when a child had misunderstood a metaphor or apologue in a literal sense, we all know. But the meek and merciful Jesus suffered _many_ of HIS disciples to fall off from eternal life, when, to retain them, he had only to say,--O ye simple-ones! why are ye offended? My words, indeed, sound strange; but I mean no more than what you have often and often heard from me before, with delight and entire acquiescence!--_Credat Judæus! Non ego._ It is sufficient for me to know that I have used the language of Paul and John, as it was understood and interpreted by Justin Martyr. Tertullian, Irenæus, and (if he does not err) by the whole Christian Church then existing.