First then of the _purport_, namely, what the Gospel does _not_, and what it _does_ profess to be. The Gospel is not a system of Theology, nor a _syntagma_ of theoretical propositions and conclusions for the enlargement of speculative knowledge, ethical or metaphysical. But it is a history, a series of facts and events related or announced. These do indeed involve, or rather I should say they at the same time _are_, most important doctrinal Truths; but still _Facts_ and Declaration of _Facts_.
Secondly of the _language_. This is a wide subject. But the point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of thoroughly understanding the distinction between _analogous_, and _metaphorical_ language. _Analogies_ are used in aid of _Conviction_: Metaphors, as means of _Illustration_. The language is analogous, wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same thing, power, or principle in a lower but more known form. Such, for instance, is the language of John iii. 6. _That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit._ The latter half of the verse contains the fact _asserted_; the former half the _analogous_ fact, by which it is rendered intelligible. If any man choose to call this _metaphorical_ or figurative, I ask him whether with Hobbes and Bolingbroke he applies the same rule to the moral attributes of the Deity? Whether he regards the divine Justice, for instance, as a _metaphorical_ term, a mere figure of speech? If he disclaims this, then I answer, neither do I regard the words, _born again_, or _spiritual life_, as figures or metaphors. I have only to add, that these analogies are the material, or (to speak chemically) the _base_, of Symbols and symbolical expressions; the nature of which is always _tau_tegorical, that is, expressing the _same_ subject but with a _difference_, in contra-distinction from metaphors and similitudes, that are always _alle_gorical, that is, expressing a _different_ subject but with a resemblance.
Of _metaphorical_ language, on the other hand, let the following be taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, we will suppose, of an act, which in its own nature, and as a producing and efficient _cause_, is transcendent; but which produces sundry _effects_, each of which is the same in kind with an effect produced by a cause well known and of ordinary occurrence. Now when I characterize or designate this transcendent act, in exclusive reference to these its _effects_, by a succession of names borrowed from their ordinary causes; not for the purpose of rendering the act itself, or the manner of the agency, conceivable, but in order to show the nature and magnitude of the benefits received from it, and thus to excite the due admiration, gratitude, and love in the receivers; in this case I should be rightly described as speaking _metaphorically_. And in this case to confound _the similarity_, in respect of the effects relatively to the recipients, with _an identity_ in respect of the causes or modes of causation relatively to the transcendent act or the Divine Agent, is a confusion of metaphor with analogy, and of figurative with literal; and has been and continues to be a fruitful source of superstition or enthusiasm in believers, and of objections and prejudices to infidels and sceptics. But each of these points is worthy of a separate consideration: and apt occasions will be found of reverting to them severally in the following Aphorisms, or the comments thereto attached.