Such  is  the  opinion  already  advocated  in  this  volume  re-
specting the  use  made  by  the  New  Testament  writers  of
certain  phrases  and  passages  of  the  Old  Testament  for  the
expression  of  ideas  not  by  any  means  identical  with  those
they  were  primarily  employed  to  express.  Such  is,  also,
the  doctrine  that  in  the  form  and  manner  of  instruction,
used  by  the  first  teachers  of  Christianity,  much  was  ac-
commodated to  the  national  tastes,  habits,  and  concep-
tions of  those  whom  they  addressed,  and  to  whom  they
communicated  truth  in  the  way  and  degree  in  which  they
were  best  able  to  bear  it.  In  both  these  cases  there  was
doubtless  an  accommodation ;  but  it  was  an  accommo-
dation of  a  totally  different  kind  from  that  supposed  by
the  theory  now  under  consideration.  In  the  one  case
there  was  an  accommodation  of  words  which  had  been
once  used  to  express  one  thing,  to  the  expression  of  an-
other, no  less  true  and  important  than  the  former.  In
the  other  case,  there  was  a  coming  down  of  the  teacher  to
the  level  of  the  scholar,  that  so  the  latter  might  be  gra-

*  It  forms  the  main  thesis  of  a  work  which  made  no  small  noise  in  its
day,  but  which  is  now  known  chiefly  by  the  replies  which  it  called  forth  from
the  pens  of  Chandler,  Sykes,  Sherlock,  and  others — I  mean  Anthony  Collins's
Discourse  of  the  Grounds  and  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Religio7i,  Lond.  1724.
