Now to understand the sense of an author....
A type brings with it absence and presence, pleasure and pain.
A cipher with a double sense, one clear, and in which it is said that the sense is hidden....
A portrait brings with it absence and presence, pleasure and pain. The reality excludes absence and pain.
Types.—To know if the law and the sacrifices are real or figurative, we must see if the prophets in speaking of these things limited their view and their thoughts to them, so that they saw only the old covenant; or if they saw in them somewhat else of which they were the semblance, for in a portrait we see the thing figured. For this we need only examine what they say.
When they speak of it as eternal, do they mean that same covenant which they elsewhere say will be changed; so of the sacrifices, etc.?
A cipher has two senses. If we intercept an important letter in which we see an obvious meaning, wherein it is nevertheless declared that the sense is veiled and obscure, that it is concealed, so that the letter might be read without discovering it, and understood without understanding, we can but think that here is a cipher with a double sense, and all the more if we find manifest contradictions in the literal sense. How greatly we ought to value those who interpret the cipher, and explain to us the hidden sense, especially if the principles they extract are wholly natural and clear. This is what Jesus Christ did, and the Apostles. They broke the seal, he rent the veil, and revealed the spirit. They have thereby taught us that man's enemies are his passions; that the Redeemer is to be spiritual and his reign spiritual; that there are to be two advents, one in lowliness to abase the proud, the other in glory to exalt the humble; that Jesus Christ is God and man.
The prophets said clearly that Israel would be always the beloved of God, that the law would be eternal, they have said also that their meaning would not be understood, and that it was veiled.
Types.—When the word of God, which cannot lie, is false literally, it is true spiritually. Sede a dextris meis, is false literally, therefore it is true spiritually.