greatly reduced, when we include only | ings of the Hebrew manuscripts by those books of the Word which are Kennicott, hardly offer sufficient interplenarily inspired.

est to compensate for the trouble they cost! (Einleitung, 2 th. s. 700.) But these very misreckonings, and the ab

a precious discovery for the church of God. She expected as much; but she is delighted to owe it to the labors of her very adversaries. "In truth," says a learned man of our day, "but for those precious negative conclusions which men have come to, the direct result obtained from the consumption

The labors of the critics in confirm-sence of these discoveries, have proved ing the wonderful accuracy of the Word of God in the letter are thus summed up by Professor Gaussen: "As respects the Old Testament, the indefatigable investigations of the four folios of Father Houbigant, the thirty years' labor of John Henry Michaelis, above all, the great Critical Bible, and the ten years' study of the famous Kennicott of so many men's lives in these immense (who consulted five hundred and eighty-researches, may seem to amount to one Hebrew manuscripts); and, in fine, nothing; and, one may say, that in Professor Rossi's collection of six hun- order to come to it, time, talent, and dred and eighty manuscripts. As re- learning have all been foolishly thrown spects the New Testament, the no less away." (Wiseman's Disc. on the Relagigantic investigations of Mill, Benzel, tions, etc., ii. Disc. 10.) But, as we have Wetstein, and Griesbach (who consulted said, this result is immense in virtue of three hundred and thirty-five manu- its nothingness, and all powerful in virscripts for the Gospels alone); the tue of its insignificance. "When one latest researches of Nolan, Matthæi, thinks that the Bible has been copied Lawrence, and Hug; above all, those during thirty centuries, as no book of of Scholz, with his six hundred and man has ever been, or ever will be; seventy-four manuscripts for the Gos- that it was subjected to all the catastropels and ninety-three for the Apoca- phes and all the captivities of Israel; lypse (without reckoning his four hun- that it was transported seventy years to dred and fifty-six manuscripts for the Babylon; that it has seen itself so often Acts and Epistles and his fifty-three | persecuted, or forgotten, or interdicted, Lectionaria). All these vast labors or burnt, from the days of the Philishave so convincingly established the tines to those of the Selucida;—when astonishing preservation of that text, one thinks that, since the time of [the copied, nevertheless, so many thousand first advent of our Lord and Saviour] times (in Hebrew during thirty-three Jesus Christ, it has had to traverse the centuries and in Greek during eighteen first three centuries of imperial persehundred years), that the hopes of the cution, when persons found in possesenemies of religion, in this quarter, sion of the Holy Books were thrown to have been subverted, and, as Michaelis the wild beasts; next, the seventh, has said, 'They have ceased henceforth | eighth, and ninth centuries, when false to look for anything from those critical researches, which they at first so warmly recommended, because they expected discoveries from them, which have never been made"" (tom. ii., p. 266).

The learned rationalist Eichhorn himself also owns that the different read

books, false legends, and false decretals, were everywhere multiplied; the tenth century, when so few could read, even among princes; the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, when the use of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue was punished with death, and when

sought out some new text, as the recompense and the glory of their wearisome watchings; although learned men, not content with the libraries of the West, have visited those of Russia, and carried their researches into the monasteries of Mont Athos, Turkish Asia, and Egypt, there to look for new instruments of the sacred text ;—“ nothing can be discovered," says a learned person already quoted, "not even a single reading, that could throw doubt on any one of the passages before considered as certain. All the variantes almost without exception, leave untouched the essential ideas of each phrase, and bear only on points of secondary importance;" such as the insertion or the omission of an article, or a conjunction, the position of an adjective before or after its substantive, the greater or less exactness of a grammatical construction.

the books of the ancient fathers were mutilated, when so many ancient traditions were garbled and falsified, even to the very acts of the emperors, and to those of the councils;-then we can perceive how necessary it was that the Providence of God should always have put forth its mighty power, in order that, on the one hand, the church of the Jews should give us in its integrity that Word which records its revolts, which predicts its ruin, which describes Jesus Christ; and on the other, that the Christian churches (the most powerful of which, and the Roman sect in particular, interdicted the people from reading the sacred books, and substituted in so many ways the traditions of the middle ages for the Word of God), should nevertheless transmit to us, in all their purity, those Scriptures which condemn all their traditions, their images, their dead languages, their absolution, their celibacy; which say that Rome would be the seat of a terrible apostasy, where 'the man of sin would be seen sitting as God in the temple of God, waging war on the saints, forbidding to marry, and to use meats which God had created;' which say of images, 'Thou shalt not bow down to them,'of unknown tongues, 'Thou shalt not use them,'-of the cup, 'Drink ye all of it,'-of the Virgin 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?'-and of marriage, 'It is honorable in all."—(Theo-zar), saw in their possession an imphrastus, 12mo, pp. 168-170.)

Now, although the libraries in which ancient copies of the sacred books may be found have been called upon to give their testimony; although the elucidations given by the Fathers of all ages, have been studied; although the Arabic, Syriac, Latin, Armenian, and Ethiopian versions have been collated; although all the manuscripts, of all countries and ages, have been collected and examined a thousand times over, by countless critics, who have eagerly

And would we be less rigorous in our demands with respect to the Old Testament ?-the famous Indian manuscript, recently deposited in the Cambridge library, will furnish an example.

"It is thirty-three years since the pious and learned Claudius Buchanan, while visiting, on the Indian Peninsula, the Black Jews of Malabar (who are supposed to be the remains of the first dispersion under Nebuchadnez

mense roll, composed of thirty-seven skins, tinged with red, forty-eight feet long, twenty-two inches wide, and which, in its originally perfect state, must have had ninety English feet of development. The Holy Scriptures had been traced on it by different hands. There remained one hundred and seventeen columns of beautiful writing; and there was wanting only Leviticus and part of Deuteronomy. Buchanan succeeded in having this ancient and precious monument, which

On this subject it may be as well to quote five of the heads treated of by the celebrated Michaelis. They are as follows:

"I. By the laws of criticism we are able to distinguish, in most cases, the true reading from the false.

served for the worship of the syna- word, and sometimes even of a single gogue, committed to his care, and he af- letter" (Ib., p. 190). "While the Comterwards deposited it in the Cambridge | edies of Terence alone have presented Library. The impossibility of sup- thirty thousand different readings, yet posing that this roll had been taken these are only six in number, and they from a copy brought by European have been copied a thousand times less Jews, was perceived from certain evi- often than the New Testament" (Ib., dent marks. Now, Mr. Yeates, lately p. 196).-See Wiseman's Disc., vol. ii., submitted it to the most attentive ex- p. 189. amination, and took the trouble to collate it, word by word, letter by letter, with a Hebrew edition of Van der Hooght. He has published the results of his researches. And what have they been? Why, this: That there do not exist, between the Text of India and that of the West, above forty small differences, not one of which is of sufficient importance to lead to even a slight change in the meaning and interpretation of our ancient text; and that these are but the additions or retrenchments of an ▾ or a 7,-letters, the presence or absence of which, cannot alter the import of the word"(See Christian Observer, vol. xii., p. 170; Horne's Introd. and App., p. 95, ed. 1818; Examen d'un Exemplaire Indien du Pentateuque, p. 8).—Ib., pp. 171, 172.

"So much for the Old Testament. But let it not be thought that the Providence that watched over that sacred Book, and which committed it to the care of the Jews (Rom. iii. 1, 2), has done less for the protection of the oracles of the New Testament, committed by it to the new people of God. It has not left to the latter less cogent motives to gratitude and feelings of security" (Ib., p. 174). In the four Gospels and the Apocalypse scarcely any corrections exist that have been introduced by the new readings of Griesbach and Scholz, as the result of their immense researches, which have any weight at all. [In the entire Testament very few], and in most intances these consist but in the difference of a single

"II. It is not denied that some few of the various readings affect doctrines as well as words, and, without caution, might produce error; but these are so few that the generality of divines would be unable to recollect a single instance, and these few are so easily distinguished by critical rules that not one has been selected by the reformers of the present age as a basis of a new doctrine.

"III. On the other hand, the discovery of the various readings has removed many objections which had been made to the New Testament.

"V. The most important readings, which make an alteration in the sense, relate in general to subjects that have no connection with articles of faith.

"VI. By far the greatest number relate to trifles, and make no alteration in the sense."-Int. Rep., I., N. S., p. 491.

Notwithstanding all this care, as the transcribers were not inspired, "it will be asked," says Waterman, "have no errors crept into the writings thus delivered to us? Are there no various readings? Have no words been added or omitted? Are no sentences obscure? Have no transcribers of the original manuscript made mistakes? Undoubtedly, in all these respects, the answer must be given in the affirmative. Some

mistakes have been made by transcrib- | have had no other concern in the maters. Some sentences are obscure. Some ter, than that of faithfully copying, and, words have probably been added or omitted. There are many various readings. Errors have crept in."Bible the Word of God, Lect. 8, p. 222.

The above concessions, therefore, be it remembered, apply to very few passages, and often to unimportant particulars. The integrity of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, as it exists in the version of Von der Hooght, is admitted to be most miraculously preserved; while, with the exception of a few trifling differences, the Greek edition of the New Testament by Griesbach, and that published by Taylor for the students of the University of London, are deserving of the greatest confidence, in which the various readings are all mentioned at the foot of the page.

of late, collecting together, the variety of materials which the Jews had provided to their hands; and further, that the Jews do not possess any more correct copies than those known to Christians. III. That it is unquestionably true, as advanced by E. Swedenborg, 'that the Jewish nation has been preserved for the sake of the Word;' but 'that this has been done, not because, without them, the text of the Old Testament would have been corrupted by Christians, but because, without them, it would, in its original language, have perished altogether;' it being a certain fact, that, during hundreds of years, the Hebrew Scriptures were never read, nor a word of the Hebrew language understood, by a single Christian. IV. It may be observed, as most remark- That when E. S. observes, 'that the able, that no doctrine of faith or pre- Word has been preserved, especially cept of life is dependent on any doubtful the Word of the Old Testament, as to passage; and no errors in the lapse of every iota and apex, from the time in ages, and by the errors of transcribers, which it was written, and this by the exist, which in the slightest degree in- labors of the Masorites;' it is advanced validate the inspiration or impair the by him, not as an assertion of his own, authority of the Word of God, as a but as the common opinion of the learned plenarily inspired work. of his time, and not from his commuThis important subject is ably dis-nication with the spiritual world, from cussed in a series of papers on The In- which source he did not derive a knowltegrity of the Word of God in the Letter, edge of natural facts, but only of spiritin the Intellectual Repository, vol. vi. and ual; wherefore, we are as much at libvol. i., N. S., where it is shown, "I. erty to exercise a rational judgment That Dr. Bentley's assertion, that 'the upon it, as if it still lay only in the real text of the sacred writers does not writings of the critics, and had never now lie in any single manuscript or been noticed by him at all: also, 'that edition, but is dispersed through them when the nature of the Masorah is exall,' is highly reasonable; and that such amined, we must conclude, that when dispersion is equivalent to preservation, E. S. speaks of the integrity of the and affords the means, at the Lord's Sacred Text through the labors of the time, of restoration. II. That whether Masorites, he can only mean, that they our present Hebrew manuscripts and have been instrumental to that object,— printed copies of the Word are authen- not that they have secured it from all tic or not; whether they all agree, or [blemish and] defect in the individual contain many variations; we have re- copies, and that, with respect to their ceived them all, bad, good, and indiffer-numbering of the verses, words, and ent, from the Jews; that Christians letters, if we take this for an infallible