THE

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Quarterly Review.

OCTOBER, MDCCCXLVI.

ART. 1.-The Annals of the English Bible. By CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON. Two vols. London: Pickering. 1845.

IN order to form a true estimate of anything, we need both ability to form a judgment, and a proper criterion whereby that judgment may be regulated, or to which we may with confidence appeal. Still more, in dealing with others, and expecting them to form the same estimate with ourselves, both parties must acknowledge the same common standard of truth, and both must be equally well informed, and equally able to discern the true bearings of every point, so as to detect any deviation from that standard of truth to which all alike appeal. If the standard fall short of perfection, we so far lose the means of forming a full and perfectly true estimate; and, if we lack discernment, the power will fail us according to the deficiency, and we shall be unable to detect the amount of deviation, and the less so in proportion to the superiority and perfection of the standard. The Scriptures, in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, in the Greek of the New, constitute that standard of truth to which all Christians must ultimately resort in every question concerning faith and doctrine; but how few -how very few are qualified to form an independent judgment thereon! Books on familiar subjects cannot be understood without entering into the mind and spirit of the author; and the Bible is not only concerning the most sublime, mysterious, and momentous subjects which can occupy the mind of man, but it is the word of God, and requires that we should

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not only be impressed with a due reverence becoming the subject, but be lifted up into the mind and spirit of the author; and a knowledge not only of the spirit but also of the letter of Scripture is necessary for those who would attain an accurate knowledge of divine truth, or keep the requisite control over the temptation which all spiritual persons feel to become mystical and imaginative.

Even during the time while Hebrew and Greek continued to be spoken, we find mistakes to have been made by the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, and by Alexandrian or Hellenistic and Asiatic converts, who either too much neglected the written word, or retained the letter and lost sight of the spirit of Scripture. Much more since the languages of Scripture have become dead languages have mistakes of the same kind been committed, since men will carry to their studies the colour of their own minds, and, reading the Hebrew or Greek through such a medium, would unconsciously impart their own character to the versions they made, and the commentaries they wrote-becoming founders of sects under the semblance of being mere expositors of the word of God. Onesidedness may arise from deficiency or from excess, and to this want of balance do we ascribe the greater number of the sects that have arisen rather than to positive, predetermined, and systematic rejection of the truth; and it accounts for the fact of so many who seem to be diametrically opposed yet with equal confidence appealing to the same volume, and acknowledging its infallibility, which they may honestly do when each has imparted to the text the hue of his own system.

The Hebrew of the Old Testament, as being of primitive simplicity, and as possessing the oriental character of an ideographic and symbolical structure, rather than the redundant yet precise and rationalistic nature of the languages of Europe, was more susceptible of this adaptation to the system of an interpreter than was the Greek of the New Testament; and thus we find that the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, though sufficiently accurate for all who have no system to sustain, and sanctioned to a great extent by being verbally cited in a majority of the instances wherein the Old Testament is quoted in the four Gospels, yet has not been deemed sufficient for their purposes by Aquila, or Theodosion, or Symmachus; and all these several versions have been retained by Origen in his Hexapla, as though he himself was not fully satisfied with any of them. The instance of Origen is in point, to teach us not to trust too much to ourselves, but to have confidence in our fellow-men. He, admirable as he was

in many respects-learned, zealous, self-denying, most diligent, most charitable-yet even he, leaning to his own understanding, and indulging in fanciful notions and philosophical speculations, caused more trouble to the Church than all his learning and eloquence suffice to atone for.

Jerome was a man of a totally different class: less learned than Origen, less philosophical, far less amiable and attractive. But Jerome, having no system of his own, and directing all his attention to the literal interpretation of Scripture, produced a version which, though it contains many gross blunders, and is scarcely ever fairly up to the original, yet is as a whole so honest, so free from systematic bias or intentional misrepresentation, that we think the Roman Church was commendable in adopting it as their standard in default of a better; and that they have only erred in prohibiting any other version, and in so canonizing it as to foreclose any attempts to render the version of Jerome less faulty than it is. When Jerome wrote, he tells us that the Latin translations were so numerous that there were almost as many versions as manuscripts, and that of these numerous translations he availed himself so far as he was able. Any approach to the uniformity of truth is far better than such distraction and perplexity, and therefore Jerome, in the Vulgate, is entitled to the gratitude of the Church.

We do not sufficiently extol the Scriptures when we regard it to be their sole end to impart instruction or teach doctrine. These are important offices in the Church, for rightly discharging which she is provided with the word of God. But man has a higher duty than that of furnishing his mind with knowledge, or attaining just thoughts concerning present things, and proper motives of conduct and action in this world. The true importance of Scripture consists in its being a revelation of things which we cannot otherwise know, but which, being made known, become a solid foundation whereon to adjust all the knowledge which we have acquired by other means; and Scripture is moreover a test to discriminate between truth and error, and a clue to guide us into other unexplored provinces of knowledge. And, above all, Scripture exercises the spirit and regulates the will of man, which are faculties higher than the understanding, and which the objects of knowledge do not reach, do not minister to, do not discipline. The Scriptures, in their highest aspect, reveal spiritual things, with which the spirit, and not the understanding, has to do, and which can only be spiritually apprehended. They reveal to us what God is, what man was intended to be, how far

short of this he has fallen, and by what means his recovery is to be effected, in the mere statement of which things it is obvious that they lie wholly beyond the region of our knowledge-God alone could know them, and we have to believe them when revealed, that is, to receive them by faith. Systems belong to philosophy, and to things open to the cognizance of man, and theories which man is capable of devising: they deal in speculation, and probability, and reasons, and motives, all of which may be true, but likewise may be false. Scripture deals with facts, unalterable facts, things which cannot be otherwise -with God himself, who has condescended to reveal what he is, and what he requires of man. With man it deals, not only as he now appears, but as he was at the beginning, made in the image of God, and as he shall be hereafter, when restored by the grace of God. With the present means of grace it deals, in the spiritual use of which man may regain more than his pristine standing, or by the rejection and abuse of which he will incur more than his former guilt; and it sets before us the futurity which awaits the sons of God and heirs of glory on the one hand, and awaits the disobedient and children of wrath on the other.

The importance of such a revelation and such a standard as the Scriptures afford is felt most strongly as we most attentively regard the condition of man himself, who, though made in the image of God, is found for the most part unconscious of the dignity of his being, and when at all awakened to a sense of his high calling finds himself surrounded with perplexities which he cannot unravel, or difficulties which appear insuperable. First, he knows not God, whose image he ought to bear; secondly, he knows not himself; and least of all can he discover any divine or Godward tendencies within the human soul, though it is there alone that he can rationally seek for the image of God. Self-partiality, or the largest charity, can discern scarcely any traces of a witness worthy of God, borne by ourselves, or by the rest of mankind. Where-may all the descendants of Adam exclaim-where can the image of God be found? Where is the least semblance of its existence in any of the human race on the face of all the earth?

The heathen, having no knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, knew not by revelation whence, and for what end, man had received his being; but they instinctively felt that there was a mystery in the origin and destiny of the head of creation far beyond anything which outwardly appears; and within their own being, by the working of their own thoughts, they strove to solve the mystery, not knowing that man himself was

the great enigma, and that, as with man the fall began and the disorder was introduced, so, in scrutinizing the heart of man, they were groping into the very region of darkness, and plunging deeper into that abyss which obscured the light of God, and removed man still farther from the path by which he may regain a true standing, and know aright both God and himself.

The true character of God could only be known by revelation: creation, marred by the fall, wrecked at the deluge, no longer witnessed truly of the Creator, and least of all was he seen in that creature who had been made in the image of God. Man, who brought sin and death into the world, had sunk deeper than the other creatures in the corruption introduced by the transgression in which he had been foremost; and in a state of nature he is still found prone to wanton cruelty, and often causing greater suffering to his fellow-men than the brute creation inflict upon each other, unless they are trained to cruelty for savage sports, or provoked to ferocity by human persecution; and the first lesson taught by the Scripture is one of humiliation under this state of things, and self-distrust under the conviction that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and that God alone can truly disclose its condition. This therefore leads to self-distrust, and a looking to God for help, when hope is immediately quickened by the promise which runs through all the word of God—that in this very creation the original purposes of love shall be ultimately consummated, and that where now appears only a scene of disorder, and so much that is positively evil, and so great an amount of misery, the result shall yet prove worthy of God, brought about, too, in the same creation as to its materials, yet so changed in condition and character as to appear new-a new creation in which each thing shall оссиру its predetermined place and do its predestined work—an universe the whole of which God shall again pronounce to be very good, in its orderly course working out the complete, and final, and unchangeable blessedness of all the heirs of the kingdom of heaven-a consummation of which Paradise is the description and Eden was the shadow and the type.

And since the incarnation, and in the Christian Church, we have more than promises to rely on the seal of fact has, in this respect, been set to the declarations of the word of God. In Christ a standard has been given, and the true image of God has been revealed in the Son of Man; and this not given as an angelic being, or some higher and more perfect formnot as a model for contemplation, but which fallen man might