Similitude First. [We have seen in Justin and Irenæus what seem to us an overstrained allegorizing, and more will be encountered in Origen. On this whole subject, however, as it struck the Oriental and primitive instincts, take the following very illustrative remarks, attributed to Hartley of Winwich:— “Nature, in its proper order, is the book of God, and exhibits spiritual things in material forms. The knowledge of correspondences being so little understood, is one main cause of the obscurity of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which were chiefly written by the rules of this science: and not Scripture alone, but man, also, as an image of the spiritual and natural worlds, contains in himself the correspondences of both: of the former, in his interior, and of the latter in his exterior or bodily, part, and so is called the microcosm, or little world.” Such texts as Heb. ix. 24, 1 Cor. ii. 13, 14, go far to explain to us the childlike faith of the Fathers. See note on Leighton’s St. Peter, p. 238, vol. iii. Ed. Of William West, B.A. 1870.]