topics are such as were the usual groundwork of such gratulatory odes, with the poets of antiquity: they all fall under two general heads the praises of the bridegroom, and the praises of the bride. The bridegroom is praised for the comeliness of his person and the urbanity of his address

for his military exploits-for the extent of his conquests-for the upright administration of his government-for the magnificence of his court. The bride is celebrated for her high birth-for the beauty of her person, the richness of her dress, and her numerous train of blooming bridemaids. It is foretold that the marriage will be fruitful, and that the sons of the great king will be sovereigns of the whole earth. In this general structure of the poem, we find nothing but the common topics and the common arrangement of every weddingsong: and were it not that it is come down to us in the authentic collection of the sacred hymns of the Hebrew church, and that some particular expressions are found in it, which, with all the allowance that can be made for the hyperbolisms of the oriental style, (of which, of late years, we have been

accustomed to hear more than is true, as applied to the sacred writers,) are not easily applicable to the parties, even in a royal marriage,—were it not for such expressions which occur, and for the notorious circumstance that it had a distinguished place in the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, we should not be led to divine, from any thing in the general structure of the poem, that this psalm had reference to any religious subject. But when we connect these circumstances with another, which cannot have escaped the observation of any reader of the Bible, that the relation between the Saviour and his church is represented in the writings both of the Old and New Testament under the image of the relation of a husband to his wife,-that it is a favourite image with all the ancient prophets, when they would set forth the loving kindness of God for the church, or the church's dutiful return of love to him; while, on the contrary, the idolatry of the church, in her apostacies, is represented as the adultery of a married woman,-that this image has been consecrated to this signification by our Lord's own use of it, who describes

God in the act of settling the church in her final state of peace and perfection, as a king making a marriage for his son ;-the conjecture that will naturally arise upon the recollection of these circumstances will be, that this epithalamium, preserved among the sacred writings of the ancient Jewish church, celebrates no common marriage, but the great mystical wedding,— that Christ is the bridegroom, and the spouse his church. And this was the unanimous opinion of all antiquity, without exception even of the Jewish expositors for although, with the veil of ignorance and prejudice upon their understandings and their hearts, they discern not the completion of this or of any of their prophesies in the Son of Mary, yet they all allow, that this is one of the prophesies which relate to the Messiah and Messiah's people; and none of them ever dreamed of an application of it to the marriage of any earthly prince.

It is the more extraordinary, that there should have arisen in the.Christian church, in later ages, expositors of great name and

authority, and indeed of great learning, who have maintained that the immediate subject of the psalm is the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter; and can discover only a distant reference to Christ and the church, as typified by the Jewish king and his Egyptian bride. This exposition, too absurd and gross for Jewish blindness, contrary to the unanimous sense of the fathers of the earliest ages, unfortunately gained credit, in a late age, in the reformed churches, upon the authority of Calvin; insomuch, that in an English translation of the Bible, which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeth's Bible, because it was in common use in private families in her reign, we have this argument prefixed to the psalm: "The majestie of Solomon, his honour, strength, beauty, riches, and power, are praised; and also his marriage with the Egyptian, being an heathen woman, is blessed." It is added indeed, "Under this figure, the wonderfull majestie and increase of the kingdom of Christ, and his church now taken of the Gentiles, is described."-Now the account of this matter is this. This English trans

lation of the Bible, which is, indeed, upon the whole, a very good one, and furnished, with very edifying notes 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