Single sense

William Perkins on the one sense of Scripture, referring specifically to Galatians 4: “There is but one full and intire sense of every place of scripture, and that is also the literal sense . . . . To make many senses of scripture is to overturn all sense, and to make nothing certen.” Perkins, however, goes on to say that typology is located within this single, literal sense: “It may be said, that the historie of Abrahams familie here propounded, hath beside his proper and literall sense, a spiritual or mysticall sense. I answer, they are not two senses, but two parts of one full and intire sense. For not onlely the bare historie, but also that which is therby signified, is the full sense of the holy Ghost.”

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