Neither have I been able to admire the logic so general among the
divines of both Churches, according to which if one, two, or perhaps
three sentences in any one of the Canonical books appear to declare a
given doctrine, all assertions of a different character must have been
meant to be taken metaphorically.
Ib. p. 26-7.
The Prophet Isaiah, too, clearly inculcates the spirituality of the
Godhead in the following declaration: 'But Egypt is man, and not God:
and their horses flesh, and not spirit'. (c. xxxi. 3.) * * *. In the
former member the Prophet declares that Egypt was man, and not God;
and then in terms of strict opposition enforces the sentiment by
adding, that their cavalry was flesh, and not spirit; which is just as
if he had said: 'But Egypt, which has horses in war, is only a man,
that is, flesh, and not God, who is spirit'.
Assuredly this is a false interpretation, and utterly unpoetical. It is
even doubtful whether [Hebrew: unable to transliterate. txt Ed.]
('ruach') in this place means 'spirit' in contradistinction to 'matter'
at all, and not rather air or wind. At all events, the poetic decorum,
the proportion, and the antithetic parallelism, demand a somewhat as
much below God, as the horse is below man. The opposition of 'flesh' and
'spirit' in the Gospel of St. John, who thought in Hebrew, though he
wrote in Greek, favours our common version,--'flesh and not spirit':
but the place in which this passage stands, namely, in one of the first
forty chapters of Isaiah, and therefore written long before the
Captivity, together with the majestic simplicity characteristic of
Isaiah's name gives perhaps a greater probability to the other: 'Egypt
is man, and not God; and her horses flesh, and not wind'.
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