monly been taken from Lardner, Cappe, Wakefield, or some other eminent critic, the title will not appear so indecorous as many apprehend. And to say the truth, though the common version possesses great merit, considering the age when it was made, and though it is regarded by many with a veneration only due to inspiration, the means of improving both the text and the translation have accumulated to such a degree in the last two hundred years, that to say of any modern version that it is an improvement upon that of King James's translators, who used a copy carelessly formed from manuscripts of little note, and who laboured under the prejudices of an age just emerging from barbarism, is at best but moderate praise*.

* Do the Articles of the Church of England want re"visal?" says the late excellent Bishop Watson. “Undoubt"edly. What should you think of a comment annexed two "hundred years ago by a learned man or two to particular "passages of a book printed from the worst manuscripts, writ"ten in a strange language, and in a style wholly different "from that which prevails in Europe? You would not, I am 66 convinced, suppose that this comment could receive no "amendment from emendations of the text itself, no illustra"tion from a more intimate acquaintance with the style of "the original, no light from the labours of learning employed "for above two centuries in studying the history of those 66 people, nor from the observations of travellers upon their "manners." Bp. Watson's Miscel. Tracts, p. 25.

I now proceed to give a few specimens of the learned Lecturer's specific objections to particular passages in the Improved Version; from which we shall soon learn to estimate the calibre of the réverend gentleman's qualifications as a Scripture critic, and his right to assume the high tone of censure and rebuke, by which he seeks to impose upon men of " humble docility" and "

prostrate

1. The learned Lecturer (p. 172.) retails the charge, which has been repeatedly alleged and refuted, viz. that the Editors of the Improved Version "cite Lardner to show that the account

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given in the Gospels is erroneous, and that our "Lord was not born till after Herod's death." He adds, "that Lardner has asserted no such thing."

No, nor have the Editors asserted it of him. What they state, and what neither the learned Lecturer nor any of his more learned coadjutors can deny, is, that Dr. Lardner has abundantly proved that Herod died at least seventeen years before Augustus. Here Lardner's testimony ends. But a greater than Lardner, the evangelist Luke (chap. iii.) tells us, what these gentlemen are very unwilling to learn," that Jesus began to be thirty years of age in the fifteenth year of the reign of "Tiberius;" and consequently, that he was born

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only fifteen years before the death of Augustus, that is, two years at least after Herod's death. This is plain matter of fact; and, as the learned Lecturer very justly observes, it "shakes the whole cre"dit of the narrative" of the miraculous conception. With the vague hypotheses which Lardner as well as others have brought forward to reconcile facts that are evidently contradictory, the Editors of the Improved Version have no concern. They abide by the plain, intelligible, uncontradicted assertion of Luke, and renounce the heathen fable of the miraculous conception.

2. I have ventured to assert, (and the learned Bishop of St. David's has had the goodness to circulate the assertion far more extensively than it was in my power to do,) that " Bishop Horsley "himself would have been the first to laugh to "scorn the solemn ignoramus who should seri

ously profess to believe that the advantage of "the argument remained with him." This, I think, is sufficiently evident to all who read and understand the controversy. S however, is not the good fortune of our learned Lecturer. He grievously complains, (p. 173.) that these ungodly Editors still maintain the genuine orthodoxy of the Ebionites" with as much con"fidence as if they had not been long since

confuted by a learned prelate whom they all

"dare to depreciate now he is dead, though not "even the ablest of them could give him a sa

tisfactory answer when he was alive." Poor faint-hearted Unitarians!-It is some consolation, however, to know that Bishop Horsley was silenced when living by his indefatigable and justly celebrated opponent; and that since his death, when the controversy was revived, both his pious son, and his learned successor, have thought proper to desist from his defence; and even that paragon of literary journals, the British Critic itself, has been constrained reluctantly to acknowledge, that "Bishop Horsley suffered himself to be led " into error by following the conjectural wanderWings of Dr. Mosheim," by which "he made a "false step at the outset, which, with all his abi

lity, he was unable to reclaim." So little does the Bampton Lecturer understand, and so little qualified is he to give a judgment, in this celebrated controversy.

3. The learned Lecturer proceeds to allege (p. 174.), that "it is one of the artifices" of these evil Editors" to make free with the article, substituting a son for the son of God, whenever they find it convenient so to do."

With regard to the definite article, I do not believe that it is ever neglected by the Editors; nor has the writer produced a single fact in proof

of his charge. Whether the translation should be indefinite, when the original, is indefinite, is often a mere matter of taste; and I confess there are passages in the Improved Version in which the indefinite article is used, where I should rather have preferred the definite. This error, if it be such, occurs still more frequently in Mr. Wakefield's Version ;-but who that was not bent upon finding fault, would ever think of alleging it as a serious charge?

4. To the Improved Version the Editors have prefixed an excellent motto from Archbishop Parker's preface to the Bishop's Bible. “No of

fence," says the learned prelate," can justly be "taken for this new labour; nothing prejudicing

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any other man's judgment by this doing; nor

yet professing this so absolute a translation, as "that hereafter might follow no other who might "see that which was not yet understood." This surely is innocent enough; but it does not satisfy our Bampton Lecturer. "Why," says he (p. 171.), "do they prefix to their Version a "motto from the words of another archbishop?. "The motive is plain. It is to induce the world' "to suppose that both (Parker and Newcome)

were of the same opinion with themselves." To refute an assertion so silly would be equally silly; but it shows the intemperate spirit of those who