I have not the least doubt as to the opinion he will form on the contrast.
We may truly say of the majority of Protestant commentators, that—Their minds are blinded: for until this day remaineth the veil—upon their heart—in the reading of the Old, or New, Testament. This is more applicable, of course, to foreign reformed theologians—if I may use the term theologian of those who are ignorant of the first principles of theology—than to our own divines. The English Church has always studied the Fathers, and has loved them; there is no great gulf fixed between us and the Mediævals, as there is between the Church and Protestant sectaries, and gleams of patristic light are reflected in the pages of our great divines. But there are commentators among us, such as Scott, who, scorning the master-expositors of early and Mediæval days, go to the study of God’s Word with the veil of their self-sufficiency on their hearts, and become hopelessly involved in heresy.
Scott affords us a melancholy example of a mistaken vocation. A commentator on Holy Scripture should be a man of profound theological learning, and of great intellectual power. Scott, a most amiable and pious clergyman, was neither a well-read man, nor were his abilities at all above par. His voluminous Commentary is accordingly, though overflowing with pious sentiment, of small theological value.
Protestant clergy commenting on Scripture, amidst the bustle of their ministerial avocations and their connubial distractions, without referring to the great works of early and Mediæval theologians, whose whole lives were spent in prayer and Scriptural studies, stand the chance of blundering as grossly as would a farm labourer if he undertook to excogitate, for himself, a system of astronomy, without reference to any treatises on the science already existing, or qualifying himself for the study, by a mastery of the rule of three, but regarded with unmitigated contempt all the discoveries made by those who have spent their lives in the exclusive study of the stars, and rejected as useless all the appliances of art invented to facilitate this investigation.
FOOTNOTES
[1] I have been obliged somewhat to modify these expressions here; the originals are too profane for reproduction.
[2] The manner in which these and other points are deduced from the text cannot be explained here; suffice it to say that it exhibits great ingenuity and subtlety in the preacher.
[3] Notice the gentle and loving spirit of the Jesuit here; he avoids giving offence without retiring from his position.
[4] I believe he quotes Juvenal twice, Ovid once, and the Æneid twice.