exemplified to the apocalypt', 'The spirit and the bride say, Come.' And may not the Beloved's account of himself, in this description, be thought to have reference to his incarnation-state; when, on his very entrance, as it were, into his garden, he had myrrh with frankincense presented to him; and when, in his infant years, he was literally nourished with milk, as had been prophesied of him under the title of Immanu-cl, Butter and honey shall he eat. I have drunk my wine with my milk:-All of his own furnishing, not of his spouse's providing, as illustrated, and, as it were, looked back to, by the evangelical prophet Isaiah 3. Ho, every 'one-come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price,' therefore the free gift of him, whose property it is, and who here, as by the same instrument in another place 4, makes offer of this feast of joy with the most flowing kindness of invitation, Eat, O friends, drink, yea drink abundantly, O beloved.' No christian, I hope, needs be told what this points at, as it is more particularly expressed by our Poet, where he says in his Proverbs, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.' But the emphatic repetition in the latter part of the present invitation, is what I would have especially taken notice of.— Drink abundantly, , shacru: Our margins have it, be drunken,' the LXX. Sun, Jerom and

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I Rev. xxii. 17.

3 Chap. lv. 1.

2 Isaiah vii. 15.

4 Prov. ix. 5.

the

the Vulgate, inebriamini, all conveying the idea of drunkenness,' either in a good or bad sense, as the context directs. Here the highest authority limits it to a good sense, and supposes an inebria⚫tion' of a commendable nature. The apostle's caution, Be not drunk with wine,' ne inebriemini vino', does not go against this: For he immediately qualifies it by speaking of excess,' which would spoil the use of even the wine here alluded to, and we find the Corinthians blamed on this account. May not all this be of some use in removing from Noah, a preacher of righteousness, the reproach which the bad sense of this word has so universally, but, in my opinion, so unjustly thrown upon him? Noah planted a vineyard,' we are told, and he drank of the wine, (, veischar, •εevon, LXX. inebriatus est, Vulgate), and was ' drunken,' &c. Much moral wisdom has been employed on the topic of Noah's drunkenness; and the good patriarch has been drawn in a very disagreeable attitude, as a beacon, it is said, to us to beware of the rock on which he was like to have been wrecked; and all this occasioned by affixing a bad sense to a word, which as we see here admits of a good one. Noah,, ischar; so did Joseph's brethren, "", ischru, which our translation reads, were merry with him.' Besides how can this affair of Noah be said to have been set up, or be by us viewed as a

,ישכרו

warn

Ephes. v. 18.

2 1 Cor. xi. 21:

3 Gen. ix. 20, 21.

4. Gen. xliii, 34,

warning, when the spirit of God puts no stigma or reproof upon it, in which case we are taught by Irenæus, non nos esse accusatores, sed typum quærere not to be accusers, but to look out for a 'type.' Indeed the example, taking it altogether, looks rather the typical way, than the way of accusation. Noah awoke from his wine', and knew 'what his younger son had done unto him.' Let us not add to the text to account for his coming to that knowledge, but take the whole as it stands, with the wonderful prophecies immediately emitted by him, in consequence of his inebriation, which it is owned on all hands have been literally accomplished; and which, none will and which, none will say, could be the effects of a carnal and culpable drunkenness. But enough of this; which I have offered, not so much to vindicate our venerable progenitor, as to shew how capable scripture is to elucidate itself, by giving us, as in this instance, a key in one place, to open up any apparent difficulty in another. And now to return to the Song, where, whatever shall become of my explication of this verse, it is certain that some such typical and allusive explication is necessary, as no stretch of accommodation can adjust it to a literal sense, on any hypothesis whatever. And the same is the case with what follows from the second to the eighth verse, where the spouse's situation is described to be, with only

some

I Compare Psalm 1xxviii. 65.

2 See above on chap. iii. 5.

some additional variety of circumstances, much like what it was in the 3d and 4th chapters; therefore the more difficult to be accounted for on the common supposition.

VER. 2.-I sleep, but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me,

my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

I sleep, but my heart waketh.-An abrupt introduction, uncertain in its application to natural sleep, but in the spiritual sense highly expressive and edifying. The voice of my Beloved that knocketh.-Let the Apocalypt explain this': Behold, I stand at the door and knock.' The additional characters here are sublimely descriptive of the Beloved's ardent affection, by an accumulation of fond and endearing appellations; and his account of himself is allusive to his low state of humanity, similar in so far to the Psalmist's account of him ", 'the dew of thy birth,' compared with other places where dew is spoken of as a blessing, the dew of Her'mon on the hill of Zion, there the Lord promised 'his blessing'.'

VER.

I Rev. iii. 20.

2 Psalm cx. 3.

3 Psalm cxxxiii. See particularly, with a view to the present phraseology, Deut. xxxii. 2. Micah v. 1. See also Gen. xxvii. 28. 39. Deut. xxxiii. 28, &c.

VER. 3.-I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them ?

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An ungrateful return to such a gracious and pressing request; and the sloth, from which it proceeded, is stigmatized by Solomon in strong language' The slothful saith, There is a lion in the way; as a door turneth on its hinges, so doth the 'slothful upon his bed; the slothful hideth his hand in his bosom, it grieveth him to bring it a'gain to his mouth.' All which is parabolically condemned by the greater than Solomon"- they 'all with one consent began to make excuse-none of these men that were bidden shall taste of my supper.' Yet ungrateful and provoking as this excuse-making practice is, nothing is more common than such pretences for it as these under our present notice. Those who made the excuses in the parable had some plausibility of reason on their side. The necessary attendance on lawful and important business, and the festivity of marriage, which under the Jewish œconomy freed the man from any public avocation for the first year, might be thought a sufficient apology for their not accepting the favour designed for them. But how trif ling, how pitiful, is the excuse before us, in any view which can be taken of it? of it indeed, there seems to be, cleanliness, a little tincture of self-sufficiency and

In the latter part under the mask of

arro

2 St Luke xiv. 17. 24.

I Prov. xxvi. 13, 14, 15.