ABSTRACT
THERE IS A DISTINCTION to be made between allegorical and tropological interpretation. The allegorical is concerned with the belief of the Church, and as such has a corporate or general reference. The tropological, or moral, is concerned with the individual soul. The Church as the Body of Christ could not sin: the individual Christian did. The preacher of the Icelandic sermon for the Feast of Dedication (Appendix 4) provided two sets of symbols, using the parts of the church. One set is allegorical describing the Church corporately, the second applies the symbols to the life of the individual Christian.
But as a church thus marketh all Christian people, so also doth it betoken in itself every Christian man, who truly becometh the temple of the Holy Ghost in good living; for every man serving God buildeth to himself a spiritual Church, not of beams and stones but of good works.
