JNTRODUOTION.
sued, and how the freedom and independence of it seem to
anticipate the most modem spirit of enquiry.
After premising that no one can hope to penetrate satis-
£etctorily the obscurity which enshrouds the first part of
Grenesis^ without a knowledge of Hebrew^ Colet proceeds
to give the result of his own study of the opening chapter.
'The first point to be noticed^ is one which he does not
raise till the second Letter; but on which he lays such
stress then and afterwards, reveking to it again and again,
that it deserres to be put in the forefront now. This is,
that Moses all along adJEipted his teaching to suit the needs
and capacity of a rude and uninstructed multitude.
To him, Moses is a wise and considerate lawgiver, teach-
ing a rude and unciTilized people the first elements of
religious knowledge. He does not scruple to compare him
to a poet, quoting the authority of Origen for the expres-
fiion ; ^ and the break in the manuscript, unfortunate as it
is, yet occurs at a point just so far adyanced, as to leave
nntouched the remarkable sentence, in which Moses is said
to have made use of an '^ honestissimo et piissimo fig-
mento.^'

Now, without pressing this lapt word unduly, or forget-
ting that it has a more creditable sound in Latin than in
English, it is plain that we have here a distinct recognition
of the great truth, conveyed in the beginning of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, that God has '' in many measures/^ no less
than " in many ways,'' spoken to our fathers in times past.
