6. who has labored greatly for who has labored greatly for you.

We then see clearly how insignificant those variations are, of which so much was said at first.

Such is the astonishing preservation of the Greek manuscripts which have transmitted to us the New Testament. After having been copied and re-copied so many times in Asia, Europe, and Africa; in convents, in colleges, in palaces, or in parsonages; and that almost without interruption for fifteen hundred years; after that, during the last three centuries, and especially the last hundred and thirty years, so many noble characters, so many ingenious minds, so many learned lives have been consumed in labors, till then unrivalled in their extent, admirable in their sagacity, and scrupulous as those of the Masorites; after that all the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, buried in private, or monastic, or national libraries, both eastern and western, have been searched; after that they have compared with them, not only all the ancient versions of the Scriptures, Latin, Salidic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Sclavonic, Persian, Coptic, Syriac and Gothic, but also all the ancient fathers of the church who

have cited them in their innumerable writings, both in Latin and in Greek; after so many researches, see, by our specimen, what they have been able to find.

Judge them all from this one epistle thus put fully under your eye. It is the longest and the most important of the epistles of the New Testament, "the golden key of the Scriptures," "the ocean of Christian doctrine." It has four hundred and thirty-three verses; and among its four hundred and thirty-three verses, ninety-six Greek words not found elsewhere in the New Testament, And (admitting even all the corrections adopted or only preferred by Griesbach,) how many readings have you found in it which change, even slightly, the sense of any phrase? You have found four! And what are they? We will repeat them.

1. Chap. vi. 6.-In place of that in which.....being dead, Griesbach reads, being dead to that in which. And remark, that here the difference in the Greek is in only one letter (an o in place of an e,) and that, on the other hand, the greatest number of the manuscripts were so much in favor of the old text, that since Griesbach, Tittman, in his edition of 1824, has rejected this correction, and that Lachman has likewise adopted the reading of the old text in his edition of 1831. Scholz, however, has preserved the new.)

2. Chap. xi. 6.-In place of, if by grace, then is it no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; but if it be of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is no more work.

Griesbach has retrenched the latter part of the phrase.

3. Chap. xii. 11.-In place of serving the Lord, Griesbach reads serving the opportunity.

It will be observed that this correction is of two letters in one of the Greek words, and that also the number of the manuscripts does not justify the change. Again here, Whitby told Mill that more than thirty manuscripts, that all the ancient versions, that Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerom, all the annotators of the Greeks, and all the Latins, with the exception of Ambrose, followed the ancient text; and the two scholars we have just named, (Lachman and Tittman,) the one laboring at Berlin, the other a professor at Leipsic, have restored the ancient text in their respective editions of the New Testament. Scholz, whom the learned world appears to prefer to all who have preceded him, has done the same in his edition of 1836.

4. Chap. vi. 16.-In place of, whether of sin unto death, or of righteousness, Griesbach reads, whether of sin, or of righteousness; but he marks it with his sign, which indicates merely a faint probabil

ity; and Tittman and Lachman, in their respective editions, have also rejected this correction. Mr. Scholz has followed them.

We have omitted to re-notice the passage cut off from chap. viii. 1, because it is restored in the fourth verse.

We see, then, that such is the admirable integrity of the epistle to the Romans. According to Griesbach, four insignificant corrections in the whole epistle; according to more modern critics, ONE ALONE, and that the most unimportant of the four; and according to Scholz, Two!

We repeat, that we have not chosen the epistle to the Romans as a specimen, for any other reason than its length and its importance. We have not taken the time to examine whether it presents more or fewer variations than any other part of the New Testament.

We have just run over, for example, in Griesbach, while re-perusing these last pages, the EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS, written at the same time and upon the same subject as the epistle to the Romans; and we have there found only the three following corrections which may affect the sense, or rather the form of the meaning.

iv. 17. They would exclude us; say, they would exclude you. iv. 26. She is the mother of us all; say, she is mother of us. v. 19. Adultery, fornication, impurity; say, fornication, impurity. These simple tables, we think, will speak to our readers more forcibly than all our general assertions can do.

There are some truths which must be seen with our own eyes. We have ourselves had the happy experience of this. We had unquestionably read what others have said upon the insignificancy of the different readings presented by the manuscripts; we had often studied the variations of Mill, and the severe reproaches of his opponent, Whitby ;* we had examined the writings of Wetstein, of Griesbach, of Lachman, and of Tittman; but when, twice, in taking part in the labor of a new version of the New Testament, we had to correct the French text by the most esteemed variations, first to introduce and then to cut them off, and then to replace, in French, the sense of the ancient reading: then we had twice, as it were, an intuition of this astonishing preservation of the Scriptures; and we have felt ourselves penetrated with gratitude towards that admirable Providence which has ceaselessly watched over the oracles of God, to preserve their integrity so fully.

Let the objection we are answering now be weighed. Let us be

* Examen variaut. lectionum, J. Millii. Lond. 1710.

shown, for instance, how three or four variations, which we have just passed in review, in the epistle to the Romans, and which, in the opinion of the most modern critics, are reduced to one alone, or to two, could render the original inspiration an illusion to us.

We admit that, in these three or four passages, as in the other sacred books, where the genuine word of the text might be contested; there, and there alone, of the two different readings of the manuscript, one is the inspired word and not the other: we admit that you must, in these few cases, divide or suspend your confidence between two expressions; but see just how far the uncertainty extends: there it must stop, it can go no further.

It is calculated that in the seven thousand nine hundred and fiftynine verses of the New Testament, there are scarcely ten verses where these differences, which are most frequently merely of a word or letter, have any importance.

Thus, then, all the efforts of the enemies of inspiration to overthrow our faith on this ground, have in the end only served to establish it. They have compelled the Church to follow them in their investigations, and immediately afterward to precede them in the same work; and what have we there discovered? It is, that the text is even more pure than the most pious men had dared to hope; it is that the enemies of inspiration, and those of the orthodox doctrines, at least in Germany, have been forced to admit it. They had hoped, after the labors of Erasmus, of Stephens, and of Mill, to find, among the manuscripts of our libraries, readings more favorable to the Socinian doctrines than those which Beza and Elzevir employed. Many even imagined that the uncertainties would become such, and the discrepancies so grave, that all evangelical belief positive, exclusive as they termed it, would be overthrown. But it is not so. It is now a process terminated; the plaintiffs are non-suited; the inquest having been made by modern criticism at their request; all the judges, even on the rationalist benches,* have pronounced, with entire unanimity, that it is a lost case, and that the objectors must search elsewhere for arguments and grievances.

When this question of the integrity of the original text presented itself for the first time to the excellent and learned Bengel, more than a hundred and twenty years ago, he was terrified at it; his honest and pious soul was profoundly troubled by it. Then began on his

"Read Machalis, tom. ii., p. 266. Eichhorn. Einleitung, 2. th. S. 700. Edit. Leips. 1824,"

part those labors of sacred criticism which gave a new direction to this science among the Germans. The English had preceded the Germans in it, but were soon left behind them. Finally, after long researches, Bengel, in 1721, happy and confirmed, trusting and grateful, wrote to his pupil, Reuss :- Eat simply the bread of the Scriptures, such as you find it; and be not disturbed if perchance you find here and there a little fragment of the millstone which has fallen into it. You may then dismiss all the doubts which have once so horribly tormented me. If the Holy Scriptures, which have been copied so often, and which have so often passed the imperfect hands of men always fallible, were absolutely without variations, the miracle would be so great that faith in it would no more be faith. I am astonished, on the contrary, that there has resulted from all the transcribings, a no greater number of different readings.' The comedies alone of Terence have presented thirty thousand, and yet they are but six* in number, and have been copied a thousand times less frequently than the New Testament."t

SECTION I.

THE Manifesto writer asserts that, "The manuscript from which the received text was taken, was stolen by the librarian, and sold to a sky-rocket maker, in the year 1749;" and to support his allegation he refers to the works of Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough. If we had not already seen such disgusting instances of the falsehood and audacity of this Manifesto writer, one could scarcely have thought it possible that any man would make and publish such base misrepresentations, and hold them forth too as quotations from eminent authors. The facts which he has thus dishonestly garbled are briefly as follows.

"The first printed edition of the whole New Testament, in its original language, was at Alcala de Heuares in Spain, under the direction of Cardinal Ximenes, in 1513, or 1514. The editors gave no information as to what manuscripts they derived their text from, except the acknowledgment for the loan of some by the reigning Pope, Leo X. The terms of this acknowledgment are such as imply that they

Archives du Christianisme, tome vii. No. 17.-Wiseman, Disc. on the Relations of Science, tome ii. p. 199. Gaussen on the Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures, pp. 83-99.