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which the Spirit of God has communicated to the world. and these languages being dead have long since ceased to change. The meaning of the words used by the sacred penmen is fixed and immutable; which it could not have been, had these languages continued to be spoken.*

But this constant mutation in a living language will probably render new translations, or corrections of old translations, necessary every two or three hundred years. For although the English tongue may have changed less during the last two hundred years than it ever did in the same lapse of time before; yet the changes which have taken place since the reign of James I. do now render a new translation necessary. For if the King's translators had given a translation every way faithful and correct, in the language then spoken in Britain, the changes in the English language which have since been introduced, would render that translation in many instances incorrect. The truth of this assumption will appear from a few specifications.

In the second Epistle to Corinth, (viii. 1.) common version, Paul says, "We do you to wit of the grace of God bestowed upon the churches of Macedonia." This was, Lo doubt, a correct and intelligible rendering of the Greek words Γνοριζομεν δε υμιν to the people of that day, but to us it is as unintelligible as the Greek original. How few are there who can translate "We do you to wit," by We cause you to know? which is the modern English of the above sentence. The same may be observed of the term "wot" in all places where it occurs.

one.

The term "conversation" was a very exact rendering of the term Avalon in that day, as the old statutes and laws of England attest; but it is now a very incorrect what a person says. Then it was equivalent to our word It then signified what a person did; it now denotes behavior, but now it is confined to what proceeds from the in which this term occurs: such as 1 Peter, ii. 12. "Having lips; consequently all those passages are now mistranslated i. 13. "You have heard of my conversation in time past in your conversation honest among the Gentiles." Galatians, the Jews' religion." James iii. 13. "Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom." Excepting Phil. i. 27. iii. 20. and Heb. xiii. 5. in every other of the Jewish Prophets and the Christian Apostles. It is true much analogy *That Hebrew and Greek which are now spoken are not the languages vous Roman which Cicero spoke, than the modern Hebrew and Greek are exists between them. But the modern Italian is not more unlike the nerunlike the language of Isaiah, and that of Luke and Paul.

place where the word conversation occurs in the common version, it is Avaslgoon in Greek; and in our modern style it is always a mistranslation. In all those places substitute the term behavior, and then we have an exact translation into the language which we speak.

We shall next instance the term "double-minded," which was a very literal translation of the word Auxos; but the term "double-minded," if, in the days of King James, it denoted a person who sometimes leaned to one opinion and sometimes to another, has come to denote a quite different character. It now, as defined by Johnson, signifies a deceitful or an insidious person. To say that a deceitful person is unstable in all his ways, as the Apostle says of the double-minded man, is not only a mistranslation in our style, but conveys a false idea to the reader: for, while "a man of two minds" is unstable in all his ways, it is very far from fact to say, that "a deceitful man is unstable in all his ways."

But not to be tedious on this subject, we shall only adduce another specification of this kind. 1 Thess. iv. 15. "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep." The word "prevent" did, in that day, exactly translate davw. used transitively; but now it does not. For then "prevent" was used as synonimous with anticipate or outstrip; but now it is commonly used as equivalent to hinder. Hence, we have found many unable to understand this important declaration of Paul to the Thessalonians. They supposed that Paul was assuring them that those who should be alive upon the earth, at the coming of the Lord to judge the world, would not hinder the resurrection and glorious change of the dead saints. But how different the ideas communicated by the Apostle, when a proper substitute for the term "prevent" is found; such as the word anticipate or outstrip! Then it reads, "We which are alive at the coming of the Lord will not anticipate the dead"—we will not be changed an instant sooner than they. The living and dead saints at the same moment shall be glorified together. In the common version the word "prevent" and its derivatives occur frequently, and are mistranslations owing to the change in the use and meaning of words which has since that time occurred. Such are the following: "The God of my mercy shall prevent me"-"Let thy mercies speedily prevent us"-"I prevented the dawning of the morning"-"Mine eyes prevented the night watches""Jesus prevented him, saying, Simon, of whom do the Kings of the earth take tribute?" and sundry other places

too numerous to cite; in all of which the word anticipate would, in our time, exactly express the meaning.

These specifications are sufficient to show that changes have taken place in our own language, within two hundred years, that make any translation of that age incorrect in numerous instances, however perfect it might have been when it first appeared. At the same time it ought to be remarked, that the English language has undergone much fewer changes in the last two hundred years than it ever did in the same time before. This will appear to the most superficial observer, who will read any passage in the English Bibles printed two or three hundred years before James' reign. I shall give one extract from an old translation, at least two hundred years older than the common

one:

Genesis i. "In ye beginning God maid of nought hev. ene and erthe. Forsothe the erthe was idil and voide, and derknissis werun on the face of depthe, and the Spyrit of the Lord was born on the waters. And God seide, Lizt be maid, and lizt was maid; and God sez the lizt that it was good, and he departide the lizt fro derknissis; and he clep. ide ye lizt dai, and the darknissis nizt, and the eventyd and mornetyd was maid on dai. And (God) seide, Make we man in our ymage and likenesse, and be he souereyn to the fisshes of the see, and to the volatiles of hevene, and to unreasonable beestes of the erthe, and to eche creature, and to eche creeping beest which is movid in erthe. And God maid of nought a man to his ymage and likenesse. God maid of nought hem, male and female."

In the eleventh chapter of the third book of Kings, we have this singular translation, 2d and 3d verses:-"There fore King Solomon was couplid to yo wymmen bi moost brennynge love: and wyves as queens, were un sev. ene hundred to hym; and thre hundrid secondarie wyves."

Now, however exact and literal such translations may have been to a people who spoke so differently from us, most certainly every one will admit that, to us, they would be every way defective and incorrect. In a certain degree, then, the present version is incorrect, on the accounts already specified. And were there no other argument to be adduced in favor of a new translation, to us it appears that this would be a sufficient one.

But in the preceding remarks it has been taken for granted, that the common version was an exact representation of the meaning of the original at the time in which it was made. This, however, is not admitted by any sect in christendom. All parties are occasionally finding fault.

None are willing to abide by it in every sentence. And, indeed, there is no translation that could be made, that would prove all the tenets of any party. And if a translation that does not prove all the tenets and ceremonies of a sect, is to be censured by that sect, then there cannot exist any translation that would be considered correct. It is, however, true, that the common version was made at a time when religious controversy was at its zenith; and that the tenets of the translators, whether designedly or undesignedly, did, on many occasions, give a wrong turn to words and sentences bearing upon their favorite dogmas. This is, perhaps, to be attributed more to the influence which Theodore Beza, the Genevese critics, and the fathers of the Geneva theology had upon the King's translators, than to any design they had to give a partial translation If the Arminians were the only persons who say so, it might be more questionable; but as the most distinguished critics of the Calvinistic school of the last century, have concurred in regretting the influence which Beza, and others of the same school, had upon the popular version, it adds very much to the probability that the charge is well founded.

Dr. Campbell, though a dignitary in that side of the house, has not spared Junius and Tremellius, nor the great Beza, in his "Preliminary Dissertations and Notes," for their boldness with the original text. He has not only insinuated, that these fathers of the Calvinistic Israel did, wilfully, and knowingly, interpolate the scriptures, and torture many passages to favor their system; but he has unequivocally accused and convicted them of the crime. In vol. ii. p. 228, on an extract from Beza, in which he gives his reasons for certain translations, the Doctor remarks "Here we have a man who, in effect, acknowledges that he would not have translated some things in the way he has done, if it were not that he could thereby strike a severer blow against some adverse sect, or ward off a blow which an adversary might aim against him. Of these great objects he never loses sight. I own," says the Doctor, "that my ideas on this subject are so much the reverse of Beza's, that I think a translator is bound to abstract from, and as ar as possible, forget all sects and systems, together with all the polemic jargon which they have been the occasion of introducing. His aim ought to be invariably to give the untainted sentiments of the author, and to express himself in such a manner as men would do amongst whom such disputes had never been agitated."

An apology is offered for Beza by our author, for his wilful mistranslations. After adducing several examples of

his glosses and interpolations, he quotes a passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Beza is defending the perseverance of the saints. Bishop Pearson had before observed, that this passage was unfaithfully translated by Beza. "But," says our author, "this is one of the many passages in which this interpreter has judged, that the sacred penmen, having expressed themselves incautiously, and hav. ing given a handle to the patrons of erroneous tenets, stood in need of him more as a corrector than as a translator. In this manner Beza supports the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, having been followed in the first of these errors by the French and English translators, but not in the second; and not by the Italian translator in either, though as much a Calvinist as any of them." This apology is not more severe than just. For, in fact, Beza, and others of the same school, have written and translated as though they considered themselves correctors of the too unguarded style of the Apostles and Evangelists. In doing this they may have been conscientious.

It is neither insinuated nor affirmed that the Arminian critics have been faultless in these respects; but as the com. mon translation was not made by them, we have nothing to say of them in this place. We introduce these strictures on Beza not from any other design than to show that, in the estimation of his own party, he was a very unfaithful translator; and because not only the translator of the narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but other eminent translators and critics have shown, that the veneration in which Beza was held by the King's translators, gave to their translation a sectarian character, and introduced many inaccuracies into it.

But it may be asked, Where shall we find translators in a sectarian age, who are not enlisted under the banners of some system, who are not prejudiced in favor of some creed? and will not the religious prepossessions of a transator however eminent or faithful soever he may be, in some measure, tincture or vitiate his translation? We must answer, that it is almost, if not altogether impossible to find any eminent translator, who is not either enlisted under some system, or some way or other identified with it, and that every man's prepossessions must either directly or indirectly affect his own thoughts, reasonings, and expressions on all religious subjects. Yet it may so happen that, now and then, once or twice in a hundred years, an individual or two may arise, whose literary acquirements, whose genius, independence of mind, honesty, and candor, may fit them to be faithful and competent translators; and