conversion of the Jews, who are called princes. Chap, vii., their conversion a blessing to the Church. Chap. viii. 1-4, their zeal; 5-7, the calling in of the Assyrians and Egyptians, and all the nations bordering on the eastern regions, and their glorious condition after their conversion; 11, 12, the care which the bridegroom will exercise over the whole Church; 13, what he requires of her; 14, her longing desire to be carried with him into everlasting mansions.
As Brightman's Commentary may be regarded as the fullest development of the Chaldee interpretation Christianized, we shall give a few specimens of his mode of exposition.
I sleep, but my heart, &c. chap. v. 1.—The negligence of the Church
lying thus is declared first by her drowsiness, then by his enticing call, and
lastly by the slight causes of her excuse. Sleep caused her outward senses
to be benumbed, that she neither regarded nor considered how superstitions
arose, as it happened to the householder in Matt. xiii. 25. Neither could
it be otherwise (when the bridegroom left the garden and his friends or
fellows drunken with prosperity, wholly gaping after riches and honours,
all common good despised), but sleep would overcome the spouse, wherein
outwardly she should not differ from a dead woman, however the heart
should move and live, the seed of faith not altogether quenched. This
drowsiness crept in, in the time of Constantine, when a gaping heaviness,
with a continued desire of sleeping, so oppressed the spouse, that the
sharpest-sighted pastors could not use their outward senses: not perceiving
how ambition crept in among the bishops, and not only that, but how
they began to consecrate temples to saints, earnestly to seek their reliques,
to worship them with prayers, and to believe that prayers made in the
honour of saints at their sepulchres did profit much. Who could now tell
whether the Church were sleeping or waking? who neither loathed nor
perceived such things. When Constantine was dead, Christ found the
Church asleep, and sought by all means to stir her up both by knocking
and calling. He knocked by persecutions in the times of Constance, Julian
and Valens, of whom though Julian were a professed enemy, (A.D. 368,)
yet the other two exceeded him in cruelty. After their tyrannous reign
God stirred up Valentinian in the west parts, by whom Christ lovingly
called his spouse, that, returning unto her former integrity, she should open
and let him in. Then taking away Valens, he called more earnestly at
both doors (as it were) as well in the west as in the east, by Gratian and
Theodosius the elder; after by Arcadius and Honorius, then by Theodosius
the younger, and Valentinian the third. And lastly, (that there
might be four pair as it were answerable to the four voices, my sister, my
love, my dove, my undefiled one,) by Marcion alone in the east. These
emperors studied and laboured very religiously to defend and enlarge true
religion; but the Church was in all the fault, who having these helps
