are heuristic devices that can be freely called upon in interpretation when they are deemed helpful. With the vast witness of Scripture set before them through the mediation of the Book of Common Prayer, Anglican interpreters were forced to moderate the inclination to impose doctrinal categories upon the text in a way that, to borrow a phrase from Article XX of the Church of England, makes one part of Scripture “repugnant” to another. The figural reader is identified in his refusal to privilege any
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