Puritan sacramental hermeneutics

William Perkins on figures of speech: “There is a certaine agreement and proportion of the externall things with the internall, and of the actions of one with the actions of the other: wherby it commeth to passe, that the signes, as it were certaine visible words incurring into the externall sense, do by a certaine proportionable resemblance draw a Christian minde to the consideration of the things signified, and to be applyed. This mutuall, and as I may say, sacramentall relation, is the cause of so many figurative speeches and Metonymies which are used.”

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