Excerpt from Thomas Myers, Translator to Calvin’s Commentary

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Joshua

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What a great word from the translator of Calvin’s commentary, Thomas Myers (Calvin’s Commentary on Ezekiel, Vol. I, Translator’s Preface, pp. viii-ix):

There is a negative merit in Calvin’s Lectures, which has not been imitated by some later Commentators. He never makes those observations on Ezekiel’s style and diction which would reduce him to the level of a merely human writer. Grotius and Eichhorn, Lowth and Michaelis dwell on his erudition and genius, and assign him the same rank among the Hebrews which Æschylus holds among the Greeks. They praise his knowledge of architecture, and his skill in oratory. They call him bold, vehement, tragical; “in his sentiments elevated, warm, bitter, indignant; in his images fertile, magnificent, harsh, and sometimes almost deformed; in his diction grand, weighty, austere, rough, and sometimes uncultivated; abounding in repetition, not for the sake of ornament and gracefulness, but through indignation and violence.”

Such language as this clearly implies a very different view of the Prophet’s character and mission from that taken by Calvin. He looked upon him as a grand instrument in the hands of the Most High, and would have instinctively felt it to be profane thus to reduce him to the level of the Poets and Seers of heathenism. In this feeling we ought to concur. The modern method of criticising the style and matter of the Hebrew Prophets deserves our warmest reprobation. They are too often treated as if their thoughts and their language were only of human origin. Their visions, their metaphors, and their parables, are submitted to the crucible of a worldly alchemy, in entire forgetfulness that these men were the special messengers of GOD. To them it was commanded—“The word that I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou speak.” “Thou canst not go beyond the word of the Lord, to say less or more.” It is not for us to speak, as Bishop Lowth does, of a “remarkable instance of that exaggeration which is deservedly esteemed the characteristic of this poet.” And again, of “an image, suggested by the former part of this Prophecy, happily introduced and well pursued.” All such language as this, whether in praise or blame of the imagery and expressions of the Prophets of the Old Testament, is highly irreverent. It is scarcely consistent with simple and confiding views of Divine inspiration. They assume principles of interpretation, and of exegesis, totally at variance with that implicit confidence in the plenary inspiration of the Prophets, with which the early reformers were imbued.

And what have we gained by listening to the teachers of Modern Germany, and passing by as antiquated the giant expounders of Geneva? The question is an important one, and the answer to it implies much laborious reading and much patient thought. It requires some acquaintance with the writers on Biblical hermeneutics from Calvin’s time to our own—some symmetry of mind to pass a judicial sentence with candour and precision. This, at least, the casual reader may perceive, viz., a striking difference between the modern Neologian and the ancient Genevan tone in treating these sublime subjects; and the question will recur, what shall we gain by deserting Calvin and taking up with Eichhorn? That we may present the readers with some data for estimating fairly our defence of Calvin, we will make a few extracts from this well-known writer, selecting him simply as an average specimen from many others of even greater celebrity. In the 545th section of his introduction to the Old Testament, he speaks of his “originality,” of “the lively fiction of his inexhaustible imagination,” and of his “gathering materials for his poems.” In a few sections afterwards he adds, that his poems are “inventions,” and “a work” of art, and “manifest the wild shoots of a heated imagination.”

If this be the result of the elaborate researches of modern times, then we may surely throw ourselves back into the arms of older and sounder Commentators. They never delight in banishing the Almighty from his own Word: they never treat him as a stranger in his own land. His agency is with them no intermitting tide, carrying a shifting wave of glory from strand to strand, and leaving only a dreary waste of centuries between, strewed only with the wrecks of his broken workmanship. The long line of Hebrew Seers were either inspired of God, or their writings are deceptions.​
 
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