"Dan. iii. 18. "Nor worship the, for thy golden image.' The same answer as the last.

"Hos. ix. 3. marg. Not into Egypt. Flatly contradicting text.' Reader, the whole note is as follows, 'Not into Egypt itself, but into another bondage as bad as that.' Is this a flat contradiction of the text? Is the writer, who quotes it as such, and mutilates it for his own purpose, deserving of your confidence?

"Matth. iv, 20. 'Left their nets. The article ta used for the possessive pronoun.' In other words, Mr. Curtis complains that their is printed in italics, because tà, he says, is used for the possessive pronoun.

"John vii. 16. 'Jesus answered them, and said. And said inserted.' The Greek requires it, and so it was printed in 1701.

"1 Cor. iv. 9. As it were appointed, for approved to death.' And yet in 1617 it was appointed.

And and

"I Cor. xv. 41. And another glory of the moon. glory inserted. The change had been made in 1629, and is justified by the structure of the sentence and the words of the original.

1 Cor. xv. 48. Such are they also that are earthly. Also inserted.' The Greek requires it, and the insertion was made

as early as in 1629.

Of the

“2 Cor. xi. 32. 'Kept the city of the Damascenes. Damascenes inserted.' The words are in the Greek, and are to be found in English Bibles in 1629.

it.'

6

Ephes. vi. 24. Amen inserted. The better MSS. omitting Does Mr. Curtis talk of MSS? The word is wanting in A, but appears in 1617.

"1 Tim. i. 4. Rather than godly edifying. Godly inserted.' The word appears in Bishop Lloyd's Bible of 1701, and the word sou ought not to have been left untranslated.

“1 John iii. 16. 'Love of God, because he laid down his life. To discard a reading, which implies that Christ was God.' Mr. Curtis here complains that the words of God are now printed in italics, although he knows, or ought to know, that they do not appear in the Greek. And afterwards,

1 John v. 12. Son of God, (second time Son occurs). Of God inserted.' This insertion was made, according to the Greek, at least as early as in 1629. — Oxford Bibles, pp. 13 - 15.

There are those in England and in this country, who appear to be more solicitous about the honor and integrity of King James's translation, than about the honor and integrity of the word of God. A distinction ought certainly to be

made between a private and a public version of the Scriptures; the latter being, to all intents and purposes, the property of the public. In regard, therefore, to any attempted emendations of such a version, the only question in which an enlightened Christian can take much interest, is, Will they bring it into greater conformity to the uncorrupted text of the sacred writers?

[We have obtained the author's permission to insert the following Discourse, believing it to contain an able and judicious discussion of a subject, which, however often treated, still possesses great interest, and is exciting, at the present time in some parts of this country, more attention, than at any former period. THE EDITORS.]

ART. VII. - Popery and its kindred Principles unfriendly to the Improvement of Man. A Dudleian Lecture, delivered before the University in Cambridge, May 8, 1833. By CONVERS FRANCIS, Minister of the Congregational Society in Watertown.

THE Christian world presents itself to the religious inquirer under the two great divisions of the Catholic church and the Protestant church. A large portion of the record of strife, exhibited by ecclesiastical history, is occupied with the mutual accusations of these leading parties. One side has been bitterly reproached with the rash love of novelty, contempt for ancient and consecrated authority, and all the discordant varieties of bold heresy; the other has been not less sharply reproved for foul abuses, gross corruptions in doctrine and practice, tyranny over the souls of men, and monstrous and unscriptural claims to temporal and spiritual power.

There was a time when this controversy absorbed into itself nearly all the great interests of Europe, or at least gave them a peculiar character and direction. Society was heaved and shaken by it to the very centre. It brought into intense action a power over the minds of men far deeper and more agitating, than any from which preceding parties and rivalries had sprung. The Reformation was a central point, around which rallied the conflicting forces of the European mind, and from which influences went forth,

that reached almost every department of effort and almost every form of thought. For a long time, scarcely an event of any importance occurred in the political world, which was not, either wholly or in its modifications, the result of this religious revolution; and the destiny of states, whether great or small, was more or less subject to its action. The bold Augustinian friar probably anticipated as little, as Leo the Tenth, the consequences of that impulse, which, in its mighty action, broke down, in a great degree, the strength of national distinctions, and so far took the place even of the pride of country, that the Lutheran of one nation felt himself allied by closer ties to the Lutheran of another nation, than to his fellow-subjects at home, and hailed with joy a victory achieved by those who were in arms for the cause of his faith, though it were gained at the expense or by the disgrace of his own land.* Under circumstances

like these, it is easy to imagine, how keen and engrossing must have been the interest felt, in every form of the controversy, between Popery and Protestantism, and how much of the usual extravagance of inflamed partisans must have been brought out on both sides.

After the agitation of the contest had retired within narrower bounds, a long and heavy swell of disputation continued to propagate a deep interest in the subject, at least through the religious world. The volumes of Hall, of Chillingworth, of Barrow, and others, testify how large a part of the learning, ability, and zeal of the best minds in English theology, was expended in this direction. That the Puritans should have entered into the warfare with all their hearts, was naturally to be expected of men, who believed that even the established church of their own land still folded within her embrace many of the errors and corruptions of her Papal predecessor. Our history testifies, that the excitement did not die out among our fathers for many years. When the licensers of the press at Cambridge, in 1688, had given permission to print the book De Imitatione Christi, ascribed to Thomas à Kempis, so beautiful in its practical and spiritual character, the Court interposed to check the publication, and recommended to the licensers a more full revisal of the book, "it being wrote by a Popish

* See Schiller's Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges, Buch. i.

minister and containing some things less safe to be infused among the people."* How much, it might be asked, did the principle of this attempt at constraint_upon the press, so far as it went, differ from that of the Index Expurgatorius of Rome?

With whatever indifference we may look back from our present situation on this controversy, it would be a mistake to regard it as a waste of strength. or zeal. It was the result of a praiseworthy struggle of the mind to throw off its chains and burthens. It was a great and noble impulse in the cause of general improvement, a large step in the onward course, from which no inthralment, however strongly guarded, can always hold man back. But it was in the nature of the case, that in the progress of such a conflict much injustice should be committed on either hand, that many unworthy prejudices, and no little unchristian asperity, should be embalmed and perpetuated on both sides, and that there should be a disposition to overlook or deny the concessions, modifications, or explanations, by which intelligent men so often satisfy their own consciences in holding what their opponents deem manifest and dangerous errors.

In this case, as in most others, the candid and dispassionate of both parties will freely acknowledge, that each has its faults, that each is open to censure. The Catholic will admit, that corruptions of doctrine and practice, in various forms, have dimmed what he considers the holy light of his church; † and the Protestant will confess, that there are abundant reasons for the prayer, which is said to have been used by some. old ministers, "that the Lord would reform the churches called the reformed." On the one hand, the vices, the tyranny, and the profligate ambition of many of those spiritual rulers, who, from the seven hills of Rome, once held resistless sway over Christendom, are neither to be denied nor palliated. On the other, we must value the

* Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, Vol. I. p. 236. Probably no book, except the Bible, has been so often printed as the Imitation of Christ. It is said that, including all the translations, it has passed through nearly two thousand editions.

The church of Rome has not been insensible to the ecclesiastical abuses, with which the testimony of history reproaches her; and even before the time of Luther the necessity of reform, in some respects, was felt and expressed more than once by leading men. See Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 187.

support of a cause more than historical accuracy, if we fail to perceive in Luther, and some of his associates, any of the pride of passion and the ambition of leading a new party, though baptized with the name of zeal for truth. The dark shades of that picture, which the most partial hand must draw of the introduction of the Reformation into England, cannot be concealed. "We must reason ourselves out of our ordinary impulses, we must beseech nature to be quiet within us for a while," before we can regard coolly transactions like some of those which, in this connexion blacken the reign of Henry the Eighth. On these and similar points there has been a wearisome waste of accusation and apologies, of crimination and defence. It is worse than useless, it is unfaithfulness to the solemn cause of truth, to cover up with good words that obliquity of principle or conduct among Protestants, which, when found among Catholics, we hold forth to reproach with all the eloquence of exaggeration.

It has been the favorite but fruitless employment of some theologians, more in the past than at present, to appropriate to Popery or to the Pontiffs of Rome the Scriptural expressions concerning the Man of Sin, Antichrist, &c., and even to show that this application of those terms was a specific object of prophecy. With equal confidence have their opponents found Luther and Calvin distinctly shadowed forth in the fearful visions of the Apocalypse. It would carry me too far, even were it worth the while, to examine the arguments for these various interpretations. It is sufficient to remark, that it would be more true to the meaning of the sacred writers, as well as more edifying, to apply such passages of Scripture to the spirit and principles of which they are descriptive, wherever these appear, rather than to particular classes or bodies of men. The Man of

* Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation, &c. p. 37. This abusive book is written with all that coarse strength and that violent spirit of vituperation, for which its author is so remarkable. With many gross misrepresentations and sweeping, indiscriminate assertions, it contains a mixture of truth, to which it would be well if more heed were given. One of Cobbett's opponents has justly remarked of Henry the Eighth, that "he never embraced the distinguishing doctrines of the Reformation, but retained to the last the leading dogmas of Popery, which he had been taught in his youth, and which influenced the conduct of his whole life."