I.

(Note 9, p. 459.)

This is a most extraordinary note. The author uses "so to say" (="as it were") merely to qualify the figure, which a pagan might think extravagant. "This is, as it were, the door of life:" the expression qualifies the rhetoric, not the Scripture, as such. On the contrary, I should adduce this very passage as an instance of our author's familiarity alike with the spirit and the letter of two most important texts of the Gospel, which he expounds and enforces with an earnest intelligence, and with a spirit truly evangelical.