46.  The Song of Solomon is a fine poem—­but its mystical reference to religion lies too deep for a common understanding:  if you read it, therefore, it will be rather as matter of curiosity than of edification.

47.  Next follow the Prophecies; which, though highly deserving the greatest attention and study, I think you had better omit for some years, and then read them with a good Exposition, as they are much too difficult for you to understand without assistance.  Dr. Newton on the prophecies, will help you much, whenever you undertake this study; which you should by all means do when your understanding is ripe enough; because one of the main proofs of our religion rests on the testimony of the prophecies; and they are very frequently quoted, and referred to, in the New Testament:  besides, the sublimity of the language and sentiments, through all the disadvantages of a antiquity and translation, must, in very many passages, strike every person of taste; and the excellent moral and religious precepts found in them, must be useful to all.

48.  Though I have spoken of these books in the order in which they stand, I repeat, that they are not to be read in that order—­but that the thread of the history is to be pursued, from Nehemiah to the first book of the Maccabees, in the Apocrypha; taking care to observe the chronology regularly, by referring to the index, which supplies the deficiencies of this history from Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews.  The first of Maccabees carries on the story till within 195 years of our Lord’s circumcision:  the second book is the same narrative, written by a different hand, and does not bring the history so forward as the first; so that it may be entirely omitted, unless you have the curiosity to read some particulars of the heroic constancy of the Jews, under the tortures inflicted by their heathen conquerors, with a few other things not mentioned in the first book.

49.  You must then connect the history by the help of the index, which will give you brief heads of the changes that happened in the state of the Jews, from this time till the birth of the Messiah.

50.  The other books of the Apocrypha, though not admitted as of sacred authority, have many things well worth your attention; particularly the admirable book called Ecclesiasticus, and the book of Wisdom.  But, in the course of reading which I advise, these must be omitted till after you have gone through the Gospels and Acts, that you may not lose the historical thread.

Of the New Testament, which is constantly to be referred to as the Rule and Direction of our moral Conduct.