Improved Version, if they were really guilty of those gross and palpable mutilations and perversions of the scripture which he imputes to them, would be not only the basest but the weakest of mankind. If they had thus fraudulently and audaciously imposed their own forgeries as the text of Griesbach and the version of Newcome, could they ever have flattered themselves that they should escape detection, or that they should not be immediately exposed to the scorn and ignominy which their conduct deserved? It is impossible. Even folly herself could never have expected it.

"But," says the reverend accuser, "they pro"fessed to follow Griesbach's text and Archbishop "Newcome's version because they were less ge.

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nerally known, and therefore their deviations "from them less likely to be detected." What! a doctor of divinity of the University of Oxford talk of the text of Griesbach as not being generally known! Let me assure him that, in the year 1808, when the Improved Version was first published, the edition of Griesbach was in the hands of every biblical scholar, some Bampton Lecturers perchance excepted. The first edition, published in 1775 and 1777, had long been disposed of; and of the second and highly improved edition, the first volume had been in possession of the scriptural student from the year 1796; and

the second volume, which had been delayed ten years for the invaluable communications of professor Birch, had been published two years before; and through the munificent patronage of the late illustrious and venerable and truly pious Duke of Grafton had been very extensively circulated. And though, by an unfortunate accident, a considerable number of the copies of the Primate's version were lost, a large proportion were still preserved, amply sufficient to have detected and exposed the Editors of the Improved Version, if they had been foolish and wicked enough to have been guilty of the impious and audacious fraud imputed to them by their reverend accuser.

And what motive can reasonably be assigned to these abused and calumniated Editors, which could induce them to act so base and foolish a part? Men do not usually act without a sufficient reason; and where the crime is great the temptation is proportionable. If indeed mitres and crosiers had danced before the eyes of these reprobated Editors; if deaneries and bishoprics had awaited them as the prize of their laborious and iniquitous exertions to support a tottering and unrighteous cause, frail human nature might pos.. sibly have given way. They might have been induced to falsify and prevaricate, and against their better knowledge they might have been led to per

vert and to corrupt the word of God:-they might have been tempted to tamper with the sacred text; and, in defiance of all evidence, to retain notorious interpolations as genuine readings, in order to impose upon the ignorant, and to support popular and established errors:-they might eagerly have contended for gross mistranslations which they knew to be erroneous, but which, in sound at least, were favourable to the popular system: they might have tortured and wrested the genuine and figurative language of scripture to a sense which they well knew to be the reverse of its real meaning, in order to support a cause which it was their interest to defend ;-and with the utmost exertion of ingenuity and industry, and the most pompous display of learning, they might have laboured to advocate the faulty translation of a faulty text, and to oppose with the utmost vehemence and bitterness every attempt at improvement; and meanly to depreciate the qualifications, to asperse the motives, and to calumniate the characters of those who, with the best intentions, in the calmest and most inoffensive language and manner, and from the best authorities, endeavoured to correct the text and to improve the version.

That such might have been the conduct of the Editors of the Improved Version, if temptations

sufficiently powerful had fallen in their way, I will not pretend to deny; for they were men, and to the frailties of human nature they were undoubtedly liable. But their situation was widely different. They were and could be under no temptation to the crime with which they are charged. For had they been weak enough to expect that their numerous fraudulent and audacious corruptions of the sacred text would have been unobserved or unnoticed by their ignorant brethren, and by their too indulgent adversaries, what could they have looked for as the result of their successful fraud? They would still have been exposed to public obloquy. They would still have been marked as the ringleaders of a sect which had forfeited the name of christian; which denies, and labours to subvert, the fundamental doctrines of the gospel; which deserves to be placed under the ban of society, and to be deprived of the common rights and privileges of free-born Britons; and finally, they would still have been regarded as main supporters of that God-denying heresy, against which every one who looks for advancement in the church, from the curate to the prelate, must tilt his lance, and in conflict with which even the stripling in theology must flesh his ecclesiastical sword, before the gate of preferment can be unlocked for his admission.

And are these the motives which would induce men of common understanding, and of decency of character, audaciously and presumptuously, in the face of the whole world, in a learned and inquisitive age, to commit a most palpable, impious, and atrocious fraud;-a fraud which must necessarily be detected the instant that it was published; and the detection of which would inevitably expose the perpetrators of it to public and everlasting infamy? It is impossible! The very supposition of it is a contradiction to all the moral feelings and the best principles of human nature; and, what is more, to all the established laws of the human mind, which are as fixed and unalterable as the laws which keep the planets in their orbits. It is therefore a contradiction in terms, that the Editors of the Improved Version, if they possessed the intellect and the feelings of men, should, under the circumstances in which they published that work, have been guilty of that deliberate, fraudulent, and impious corruption of the sacred text, to subserve their own wicked designs, with which they are openly, and in the most unqualified manner, charged by the Bampton Lecturer.

I am, &c.