Artificial refinement ill suits Holy IVrit. 11 that as often as the overrank crop shews stalks that abound Leand. in leaves, the grains of the ears are least filled and swelling. And hence that art of speaking itself, which is conveyed by rules of worldly training, I have despised to observe; for as the tenor of this Epistle also will tell, I do not escape the collisions of metacism"^, nor do 1 avoid the confusion of bar- barisms, and I slight the observing ofsituations and arrange- ments, and the cases of prepositions ; for I account it very far from meet to submit the words of the divine Oracle to the rules of Donatus *. For neither are these observed by any of the translators thereof, in the authoritative* text of Holy' aucto- Writ. Now as my exposition takes its origin from thence, "^'^ ^ it is plainly meet that this production, like a kind of offspring, should wear the likeness of its mother'. Now it is the new Translation that I comment on ; but when a case to be proved requires it, 1 take now the new and now the old fortestimony, that as the Apostolic See, over which I preside by ordinance of God, uses both, the labours of my undertaking may have the support of both. ' i. e. either the collision of ms, or the letter m at the end of a word, followed by a vowel at the beginning of another. Vide Du Cange, in voc. • Donatus was a great grammarian of the fourth centur) , the preceptor of S. Jerome, who highly commends him. His work on grammar was in such general use as to be called a ' Donatus,' as we speak of a ' Virgil,' or a ' Ho- race, or ' an Ainsworth.' Vide Biogr. Univ. Paris, 1814. t. xi. * There was a great number of Versions of both the Old and New Testament in the Latin tongue, from the Greek. Of these there was one generally received, and which became by prescription the Authorized Version in the Latin Church ; this long dis- puted precedence with S. Jerome's Version, which in the New Testament was only a correction of the Text, and in the Old a New Translation from the Hebrew: in the course of time, but not without great opposition, this Ver- sion superseded the ' Old" or ' Italian' Translation. Vide Du Pin. Bibl. Writ- ers, t. i. c. vii. s. 1 and 2. t ii. c. iv. s. 1. NOTE A. S. Thorn. Aq. thus settles the ques- tion of the hidden sense of Holy Writ. Summ. Theol.Qu.i. Art. 10. " I answer, it is to be said that God is the Author of Holy Scripture, Who has the power not only to adapt words to convey a mean- ing, which even man may do, but even things themselves, and so whereas in all sciences words have a signification, this particular science has this property, that the very things which are signified by words do also signify somewhat farther. That primary signification. therefore, whereby words signify things, relates to the first sense, which is the historical or literal sense, but that sig- nification by which things that are signified by words again signify other things is called the spiritual sense, and this is based upon the literal sense, and supposes it." And he divides the hidden signification thus. " Now the spiritual sense is divided into three sorts. For aii the Apostle says in Heb. vii. The Old Law is a figure of the New Law, and the New Law itself, a« Dionysius gays,