and illustrations (except that in many points they savour too much of Calvinism), was made and first published at Geneva, by the English Protestants who fled thither from Mary's persecution. During their residence there, they contracted a veneration for the character of Calvin, which was no more than was due to his great piety and his great learning; but they unfortunately contracted also a veneration for his opinions,-a veneration more than was due to the opinions of any uninspired teacher. The bad effects of this unreasonable partiality the church of England feels, in some points, to. the present day; and this false notion, which they who were led away with it circulated among the people of this country, of the true subject of this psalm, in the argument which they presumed to prefix to it, is one instance of this calamitous consequence.

Calvin was undoubtedly a good man, and a great divine: but with all his great talents and his great learning, he was, by his want of taste, and by the poverty of his imagination, a most wretched expositor of the prophecies, just as he would have been a wretched expositor of any secular poet. He had no sense of the beauties, and no understanding of the imagery of poetry; and the far greater part of the prophetical writings, and all the psalms without exception, are poetical. And there is no stronger instance of his inability in this branch of sacred criticism than his notion of this psalm. "It is certain," he has the arrogance to say, with all antiquity, Jewish and Christian, in opposition to him, "it is certain that this psalm was composed concerning Solomon. Yet the subject is not dalliance; but, under the figure of Solomon, the holy conjunction of Christ with his church is propounded to us."

It is most certain, that, in the prophetical book of the Song of Solomon, the union of Christ and his church is described in images taken entirely from the mutual pas

sion and early loves of Solomon and his Egyptian bride. And this perhaps might be the ground of Calvin's error: he might imagine, that this psalm was another shorter poem upon the same subject, and of the same cast. But no two compositions can be more unlike than the Song of Solomon and this forty-fifth psalm. Read the Song of Solomon, you will find the Hebrew king, if you know any thing of his history, produced indeed as the emblem of a greater personage, but you will find him in every page. Read the forty-fifth psalm, and tell me if you can any where find King Solomon. We find, indeed, passages which may be applicable to Solomon, but not more applicable to him than to many other earthly kings, such as comeliness of person and urbanity of address, mentioned in the second verse. These might be qualities, for any thing that we know to the contrary, belonging to Solomon;-I say, for any thing that we know to the contrary; for in these particulars the sacred history gives no information. We read of Solomon's learning, and of his wisdom, and of the admirable sagacity and integrity of his judicial decisions: but we read not at all, as far as I recollect, of the extraordinary comeliness of his person, or the affability of his speech, And if he possessed these qualities, they are no more than other monarchs have possessed in a degree not to be surpassed by Solomon. Splendour and stateliness of dress, twice mentioned in this psalm, were not peculiar to Solomon, but belong to every great and opulent monarch. Other circumstances might be mentioned, applicable indeed to Solomon, but no otherwise than as generally applicable to every king. But the circumstances which are characteristic of the king who is the hero of this poem, are every one of them utterly inapplicable to Solomon; insomuch, that not one of them can be ascribed to him, without contradicting the history of his reign. The hero of this poem is a warrior,

who girds his sword upon his thigh, rides in pursuit of flying foes, makes havock among them with his sharp arrows, and reigns at last by conquest over his van. quished enemies. Now Solomon was no warrior: he enjoyed a long reign of forty years of uninterrupted peace. He retained, indeed, the sovereignty of the countries which his father had conquered, but he made no new conquests of his own. He had dominion over all the region west of the Euphrates, over all the kings on this side of the river (they were his vassals), and he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine, and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon." If Solomon ever girded a sword upon his thigh, it must have been merely for state; if he had a quiver of sharp arrows, he could have had no use for them but in hunting. We read, indeed, that Jehovah, offended at the idolatries of Solomon in his old age, stirred up an adversary unto Solomon in Hadad the Edomite, and another in Rezon the Syrian, and a third in Jeroboam the son of Nebat. But though Hadad and Rezon bore Solomon and his people a grudge, there is no reason to suppose that the enmity of either broke out into acts of open hostility, during Solomon's life at least, -certainly into none of such importance as to engage the old monarch in a war with either. The contrary is evident from two circumstances;-the first, that the return of Hadad into his country from Egypt was early in the reign of Solomon; for he returned as soon as he heard that David and Joab were both dead. And if this Edomite had provoked a war in so carly a period of Solomon's reign, the sacred history could not have spoken in the terms of which it speaks of the uninterrupted peace which Israel enjoyed all the days of Solomon. The second circumstance is this: In that portion of the history which mentions these adversaries, it

is said of the third adversary, Jeroboam, "that he lifted up his hand against the king;" and yet it is certain, that Jeroboam never lifted up his hand till Solomon himself was in his grave. Solomon was jealous of Jeroboam, as the person marked by the prophet Ahijah as the future king of one branch of the divided kingdom, “and sought to kill him." Jeroboam thereupon fled into Egypt, and remained there till the death of Solomon. And this makes it probable of the two foreign adversaries, that whatever hatred might be rankling in their hearts, they awaited for Solomon's death, before they proceeded to open hostilities. But, however that might be, it is most certain, that the character of a warrior and a conqueror never less belonged to any monarch than to Solomon.

Another circumstance of distinction in the great personage celebrated in this psalm, is his love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness. The original expresses that he had set his heart upon righteousness, and bore an antipathy to wickedness. His love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness had been so much the ruling principles of his whole conduct, that for this he was advanced to a condition of the highest bliss, and endless perpetuity was promised to his kingdom. The word we render righteousness, in its strict and proper meaning, signifies "justice," or the constant and perpetual observance of the natural distinctions of right and wrong in civil society; and principally with respect to property in private persons, and, in a magistrate or sovereign, in the impartial exercise of judicial authority. But the word we render wickedness, denotes not only injustice, but whatever is contrary to moral purity in the indulgence of the appetites of the individual, and whatever is contrary to a principle of true piety towards God. Now the word righteousness being here opposed to this wickedness, must certainly be taken as generally as the word to which it is opposed in a contrary signification.

It must signify, therefore, not merely "justice," in the sense we have explained, but purity of private manners, and piety towards God. Now Solomon was certainly upon the whole a good king; nor was he without piety: but his love of righteousness, in the large sense in which we have shown the word is to be taken, and his antipathy to the contrary, fell very far short of what the psalmist ascribes to his great king, and procured for him no such stability of his monarchy. Solomon, whatever might be the general worth and virtue of his character, had no such predominant attachment to righteousness nor antipathy to wickedness, in the large sense in which the words are taken by the psalmist, but that his love for the one, and his hatred of the other, were overpowered. by his doating fondness for many of his seven hundred wives, who had so much influence with him in his later years, that they turned away his heart to other gods, and prevailed upon the aged king to erect temples to their idols.

Another circumstance wholly inapplicable to Solomon is, the numerous progeny of sons, the issue of the marriage, all of whom were to be made princes over all the earth. Solomon had but one son that we read of, that ever came to be a king, his son and successor Rehoboam; and so far was he from being a prince over all the earth, that he was no sooner seated on the throne than he lost the greater part of his father's kingdom.

Upon the whole, therefore, it appears, that in the character which the psalmist draws of the king whose marriage is the occasion and the subject of this song, some things are so general, as in a certain sense to be applicable to any great king, of fable or of history, of ancient or of modern times. And these things are, indeed, applicable to Solomon, because he was a great king, but for no other reason. They are no otherwise applicable to him, than to King Priam, or Agamemnon, to King