between which it stands, in Mr. Bellamy's pamphlet, as its several parts are with each other.

"Our objector is perhaps not willing to believe what he is in the habit of reading; viz. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. So far, then, he is willing to go with the Apostle. But what says this gentleman to the last clause-and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I ask, if our critic were cleansed from all his unrighteousness, common sense would tell him that no unrighteousness would remain in him. When is this to be done? At death? No; as the tree falls so it lies. In eternity, or in purgatory? No; whatever our critic may funcy, (as he fancies the Hebrew Scripture, or, to use his own words, the very inspired volume' is corrupt,) the Church of England does not believe in any purgatory cleansing. But this gentleman plasters over his wounds, bruises, and putrifying sores, with the incompatibility of mere human nature.'" P. 66.

One expression, in this strange chaos of broken sentences, might lead persons, acquainted with the usual topics of biblical criticism, to imagine, that Mr. Whittaker had brought this odd tirade upon himself, by recommending the adoption of some conjectural emendations of the Sacred Text. His antagonist has insinuated this charge against him broadly and frequently; but without any fair grounds. Mr. Whittaker indeed might reasonably complain of having had hard measure dealt out to him, on this score. For whilst we ventured, in a former article, to find fault with his setting the authority of the received Hebrew text too high; where it did not accord with those passages of the LXX, which have been sanctioned by quotations in the New Testament *; Mr. Bellamy has been unsparing in the application of the terms infidel, deistical, blasphemous, to his scrupulously moderate remarks on the defects of the Hebrew text.

We cannot help feeling, that discussions of this kind do run the risk of giving some shock to the faith of persons unaccustomed to such enquiries. But this is not the age in which the most cautious persons can avoid hearing, or meeting, in some way or other, with any species of objection to the ordinary grounds of religious belief. The sneers, cavils, and arguments of the enemies of religion, are now scattered

We have since had the satisfaction of learning from Mr. Whittaker that in his remarks on the Septuagint translation of Amos ix. 12. (which we thought too depreciatory of its authority, as to the original state of that text) he meant simply to lay the alternative before his readers; and not to express any opinion, as to the necessity of holding the present Hebrew reading to be correct.

so promiscuously, and diffused with such persevering zeal, that no age or condition affords any security against their intrusion. It, consequently, becomes quite necessary for every Christian to take all opportunities of becoming acquainted with the answers to as many objections as possible. We shall not regret, therefore, having been compelled to lay open those uncertainties, which necessarily attend upon sa cred, as well as ordinary criticism, provided it secures for us the attention of our readers, whilst we make it our endeavour to meet the evil, by giving them a distinct notion, as we trust, of the nature of those uncertainties; and by laying before them the assurances of unexceptionable authorities, that no points of doctrine, or faith, depend upon having those uncertainties completely removed.

No book of any length ever was copied, whether as a manuscript, or in the press, without some omissions, or changes of words or letters. Human imperfection renders it impossible, that it should be otherwise. The Jewish Rabbis have indeed a legend, that one of their doctors was protected, whilst transcribing the Scriptures, by the immediate presence of an attendant angel, who would not allow even a fly to approach him. But internal interruption would be just as likely, as external, to divert his attention for a moment. To secure the supposed object of this angelic interference, it would have been equally necessary to prevent the intrusion of any ideas unconnected with the letters before his eyes, as to ward off the attacks of insects. Yet the impossibility of having any considerable task perfectly performed by imperfect beings, was overlooked; and Hebrew Bibles were, at one time, supposed to be perfect copies of each other, and of the original autographs; entirely exempt from any deviation, or error whatsoever. Whether this unreasonable notion originated amongst Christians, from a misconception of our Saviour's meaning in Matt. v. 18, and was adopted by the Jews, whose prejudices it flattered; or proceeded first from the Rabbinical schools, and received a ready assent - from Christians, as coincident with their view of that text, we do not remember. The opinion was, however, never universally acquiesced in; though it was entertained by many able Hebrew scholars, till different copies of the Hebrew Scriptures had been examined to ascertain its truth. It then gradually, but necessarily, fell to the ground. Within these last fifty years many thousands of various readings have been collected; chiefly by the industry of Kennicott and De Bossi. Mr. Bellamy still contends that there is not one; though extensive selections from this vast number, under different

forms of arrangement, may be purchased at any eminent booksellers.

We have said, there are many thousands. This has an alarming sound; and when Dr. Mill, in 1707, published his edition of the New Testament with an account of thirty thousand various readings, many pious persons thought that the authority of Scripture was ruined by his researches. But this terrific number has increased, with the increasing purity of the text; and should it become still greater, it will imply a greater probability that every error has been got rid of.

To illustrate this in a simple manner: let us suppose the following sentence to exist in some popular work, (of which numerous copies have been taken at different times and in different countries,) he brought their daughter from school, It is evident, that the carelessness of a transcriber might drop any single letter in that sentence, without creating any difficulty, as to the meaning of it; unless the omission was unfortunate enough to be that of the r in brought. The word bought would give the sentence a different meaning. But it would be a very improbable meaning. If the scene of the story was laid in England, this reading would convey the idea of an action inconsistent with our expectation, or notion of what might probably happen. If, therefore, it occurred to the editor of this supposed work, that introducing the letter r would clear up the difficulty, he would very probably insert this letter at once into the text, and take credit, in a note, for this happy conjectural emendation. At any rate, he would propose the adoption of this new reading.

This would be the ordinary mode of proceeding in editing any classical author. But it has been made a rule in sacred criticism, that no conjectural emendations should be permitted. It is a very excellent rule; because it would be impossible to define, precisely, the degree of probability which might be allowed to sanction a happy conjecture.

No correction, therefore, could be allowed (if the book was of inspired authority) till some MSS. was found containing the word brought instead of bought; but the reasons afforded by the story itself in favour of the word brought would, probably, secure the admission of this correction, if met with in a small number of independent MSS.

On the other hand had the sentence been this, he brought a horse from Yorkshire; the omission of the r would change it into a mode of expression not very uncommon, as used for, he bought a Yorkshire horse. Here, then, if the next copy met with by the editor had the correct reading brought, he

would by no means consider this as sufficient evidence as to what the author meant to say. He would examine as many copies as he could possibly get access to; and different copies in manuscript are, it must be remembered, equivalent to so many different editions of printed works. Suppose he examined 600 MSS., (Kennicott collated this number of Hebrew MSS. besides the Samaritan) and found that 590 of them had brought, and only 10 bought. The text might confidently then be said to be restored to its original purity, by the introduction of this letter r. If, in the course of this examination, he met with some MSS. which dropped whole words of the sentence, these would be marked as various readings; but surely the omission of the word brought in one, or horse in another, (omissions which would make the sentence incomplete) would not at all weaken our conviction, as to the original reading. Even the omission of the word Yorkshire, in one out of the 600, would leave the authority of the rest quite unimpaired. Much less would the omission of any other letter, as the h, or the e, or both of them in horse weaken the evidence for the correct reading.

To proceed from a sentence to a whole book. Suppose but one copy of the New Testament had come down to us; that it contained 500 errors, of which fifty affected the sense; though perhaps none of the fifty might occur in very important passages; such being usually more noticed, and therefore immediately corrected by the transcriber. In this case we should have no various readings, but a great number of errors. Let us next suppose, that the copy from which ours was transcribed should be recovered. On examining it, we should very likely find that most of the insignificant errors were different in the two copies. For a transcriber, who has the word which before him with the letter i or c left out, would very likely not see the error even if superstition forbade his intentionally correcting it, (as was the case with the Rabbinical transcribers ;) but, taking for granted that the word was spelt as usual, would spell it properly in his own transcript. Of the errors affecting the sense, it might be expected that the greater part should be the result of errors in the copy before our transcriber; yet it would be probable that his own neglect might have produced one or two. The result then would be, that we should have found perhaps 100 various readings (the insignificant variations being generally different, and supposed to be equally numerous in the two copies) but should have recovered the right sense in one or two passages at least; not to speak of the correction of various trifling errors The recovery of another copy, (the next in the

line of ascent) would in like manner add two or three hundred to one list of various readings, and supply us with the proper correction for one or two more injured passages. But if we could procure a MS. which had descended from the original by an entirely different line, and was in other respects of about the same value as to accuracy, with our first; every variety in the readings might here be expected to be different. We should then add 500 more to our list of various readings; we should have, on the same supposition, fifty more texts whose meaning was injured by these errors; but we should recover the correct reading of our first fifty; and so should have, between the two, materials for an accurate copy of the original. It would still, however, be desirable to go on collating as many MSS. as we could procure, to ascertain (as in the case of brought and bought a horse) which of the ambiguous readings ought to be adopted. The greater number of independent MSS. we could recover, the greater would be the certainty to which we should attain on these points; yet our list of various readings would increase most rapidly. So far then from having the authority of our edition destroyed by this ponderous list of various readings, there would have been 500 errors in our impression, if we had printed it when not a single various reading had been found; whilst the means of making our edition correct, and its authority indisputable would have become compleat, at the same time that the various readings approached to a countJess number.

In perfect coincidence with this view of what might be expected, are the facts stated by Dr. Bentley.

"In profane authors, whereof one MS. only had the luck to be preserved, as Velleius Paterculus among the Latins, and Hesychius among the Greeks; the faults of the Scribes are found so numerous, and the defects so beyond all redress; that, notwithstanding the pains of the learnedest and acutest criticks for two whole centuries, those books still are, and are like to continue a mere heap of errors. On the contrary, where the copies of any author are numerous, though the various readings always increase in proportion; tbere the text, by an accurate collation of them made by skilful and judicious hands, is ever the more correct, and comes nearer to the true words of the author. Terence is now in one of the best conditions of any of the classic writers. The oldest and best copy of him is now in the Vatican library, which comes nearest to the poets own hand; but even that has hundreds of errors, most of which may be mended out of other exemplars, that are otherwise more recent, and of inferior value. I myself have collated several; and do affirm, that I have seen twenty thousand various lections in that little author, not nearly so big as the whole New Testament." (Bentley's Remarks, Part I. § 32.)