The five celebrated Johns,* who, in the early settlement of the town, were placed in immediate succession over the First Church, exercised an almost unbounded influence in civil, as well as ecclesiastical concerns. They indeed attained to this pre-eminence, equally by their talents and their virtues. It was to have been expected that such men would become the earliest victims of the abominations in church and state, which threatened to desolate the mother country. It was a similar insupportable tyranny, at the beginning of the French Revolution, to which our capital has been indebted during a quarter of a century, for two of the brightest ornaments of the Gallican church.

But not to the early history of Boston must our attention be confined for men eminent in the clerical profession. It has enjoyed a full proportion of such characters in every succeeding generation.

Our capital has not indeed been unmindful of the advantages, which she has in this respect possessed; nor of her correspondent obligations. It would be difficult to point to any section of christendom, where the ministers of the Gospel have been uniformly treated with greater attention, respect, and affection. So notorious is the truth of this remark, that Boston has been proverbially characterized as THE PARADISE OF CLERGYMEN. May this continue to be her glory; and may she bring forth in more and more copious harvests, the best fruits of religious institutions, inherited from our fathers, nurtured with pious care, and blessed with the smiles of a benignant Providence.

NOTES UPON THE BIBLE-No. IV.

OUR judgment of the purity, in which we have the text of the New Testament, must be derived in some measure from its correspondence with the ancient versions; and our means of correcting any errours, that have crept into it, must be drawn in an equal degree from a comparison of the present text with those versions.

*Wilson, Norton, Cotton, Davenport, and Oxenbridge.

With the exception of the Gospel according to Matthew, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, the books of the New Testament were written in the Greek language. Those are believed to have appeared first in the Hebrew, or, more properly speaking, in what has been sometimes called the Syro-Chaldaick dialect; not the pure, unmixed Hebrew, such as was used by the nation of Israel before the captivity, and in which the earlier Jewish Scriptures were written; but the dialect which was spoken by the Jewish nation after their return from their long exile in Babylon. It was a mixture of the ancient Hebrew with the Chaldee, which was the language they had occasion to use in Babylon, and the Syriack, with which it was blended by their intercourse with their neighbours after their return.

The exception which I have mentioned expresses the general opinion of criticks. But it is not universal. There are those who maintain that these, as well as the other books, were originally written in Greek. But whether it was so or not, what is certain is, that they were translated into Greek at a very early period, and were used chiefly, if not altogether in that language. The use of the original indeed appears to have been entirely superseded by the translation, before any ancient version of the New Testament was made, of which there are any remains, or of which even the knowledge has been transmitted down to our times.

It is not easy, perhaps not even possible, now to ascertain, what was the exact date of the earliest version of the New Testament. Nor are the claims to superiour antiquity, urged in favour of two of them, settled beyond dispute. The preference however has been generally allowed to those of the Old Syriack, which is thought to have been made before the middle of the second century. This excellent version, 'the very best translation of the New Testament,' says Michaelis, ' that I have ever read, was made at Edessa, a city where the christian religion was planted in the first century, was adopted by its sovereigns, who erected churches with all the magnificence of heathen temples, and was thence early and widely propagated in the Eastern parts of Asia; a city also whose language was Syriack, and which was, during many ages, the Eastern metropolis of the christian world." version is called the Peshito or literal, or, as the author just referred to thinks more properly rendered, the pure, accurate,

This

uncorrupted, a title supposed to be given it to express confidence in its fidelity; since it is in fact less literal, though more faithful, than another version into the same language, the Philoxenian, which was made afterward in the fifth or sixth century.

The version first mentioned, the Old Syriack, it will be easily seen, must have high critical authority, and be of eminent use in ascertaining the original reading of the text; for as it is older by several centuries than the most ancient Greek manuscripts now extant, it ascertains to us, (which is very important,) what were the readings of at least one manuscript of that very early date, that is, the one from which that version was made. It is not indeed incredible, that the very autographs of the Apostles were yet in being, and that this version may have had the advantage of being compared with them. And besides this circumstance of its unquestionable antiquity, there is another, that contributed to the excellence ascribed to it by Michaelis, and before him by Prideaux, who declares it to be the best translation we have of the sacred writings in any ancient language;' viz. the affinity of the language with that, which was spoken by the Jews in our Saviour's time. So great,' says the former of these criticks, is the affinity of the Syriack to the dialect of Palestine, as to justify the assertion, in some respects, that the Syriack translator has recorded the actions and the speeches of Christ in the very language in which he spoke.'*

To the antiquity and value of this version we have the testimony of Bishop Lowth, which, though applied by him particularly to the Old Testament, is equally applicable, so far as the application is required, to the New; 'that it stands next in order of time to the Chaldee paraphrase of Jonathan, and is of superiour usefulness and authority in ascertaining and in explaining the original text; and that it is supposed to have been made as early as the close of the first century.' In these opinions of the age, and of the authority of this venerable version, we have the concurrence also of other criticks. Marsh, however, in his notes on Michaelis, holds a different opinion. He thinks the earliest certain evidences of its existence are found in the quotations from it in the works of Ephrem the Syrian, in the fourth century; and that, although it may have existed one or two centuries before that time, it cannot possibly have been made earlier than the middle of the second. The only ground of this opinion, so strongly stated, is that not till that time were the several books of the New Testament collected into one volume.' But a conclusion seems to me here to be drawn beyond what the premises will warrant. I can perceive no ground for asserting, that the several books of the New Testament cannot possibly have been translated separately, before they were collected together into a single volume.

The version, whose claim to antiquity stands next to that of the Old Syriack, if indeed it be inferiour, is the Latin.

As the Eastern Christians, in the extensive countries, that made use of the several dialects of the Syriack, had the New Testament early translated into their native tongue; so also the Western Christians, whose vernacular tongue was Latin, must have been equally desirous of having the writings, which contained the history, and taught the doctrines of their faith, in their own tongue.

Before the time of Jerome, who flourished at the close of the fourth century, and was the author of a corrected edition of the whole Bible in Latin, which is known by the title of the Latin Vulgate, there appear to have been several Latin versions of different degrees of merit; one of which, the vetus Italica, which can now no longer be distinguished from the others, had a higher degree of authority attributed to it, than the rest. Of the origin and the authors of these versions no distinct history remains. They had been long in the hands of Christians before the age of Jerome; and no better account can probably now be given of them than that, which was given of them by his cotemporary Augustin. says, that on the first promulgation of Christianity, every person who got possession of a Greek manuscript, and knew somewhat of the two languages, set about translating the Scriptures.'

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This passage of Augustin renders probable the supposition of Ridley and Michaelis, as to the origin of these various Latin versions. The New Testament was read in the christian churches in the same manner, as the Old Testament was in the Jewish Synagogues. As the Jews, after reading the original Hebrew, explained it by a Chaldee paraphrase; so the christian bishops and publick teachers expounded the passages in Latin, which they first read in Greek. In the beginning this was done ex tempore; but, by degrees, in order to facilitate the public service, these translations were committed to writing, and at length copies were communicated to the different members. We may thus account for their great multiplicity, variety, and the confusion and inconvenience, which two or three centuries had introduced, when it was remedied by the learned and critical labours of Jerome.'

That eminent scholar, better qualified for the task than any other man of that, or of any succeeding age, for several centuries, undertook the labour, which he executed with great ability and success, of furnishing a complete version of the New Testament in Latin, from the old Italick, corrected with care by the Greek text. Of the Old Testament also, which had before been translated only from the Septuagint, he gave a complete Latin version from the original Hebrew. This version, usually known by the name of the Vulgate, got into general use in the Western churches, superseded the use of all others, and was declared authentick by the Council of Trent at the beginning of the reformation. By the reformers it was, however, on the other hand, decried as extremely faulty. At a time, when it was the highest accomplishment of a scholar to write elegant Latin, the literal translation of the Vulgate was regarded with a very unreasonable contempt. It seems not to have been considered at that time how much this very circumstance must increase its value, as a means of ascertaining what was the reading of the Greek text at the early period, at which the version was made, or at least at the time, that it was corrected by Jerome. Later criticks have duly appreciated this circumstance, and the version has accordingly risen into higher estimation with learned divines. of the protestant faith. It has been found, and the estimation of its value has risen with the discovery, that its variations from the received text were of less importance than was then imagined, since the manuscripts, which were used for the first printed editions, were modern compared with that, from which this version was taken; and besides, that in general, the more ancient was the manuscript or version, with which it was compared, the closer was found to be their agreement together.

The christian religion was early embraced in Egypt. Toward the close of the second century, we find at Alexandria a church, a bishop, and a flourishing catechetical school, at the head of which were placed successively Pantænus, Clement, and in the beginning of the third century, Origen, the most learned divine, and probably the most accomplished scholar of the age in which he lived.

The Greek language had been used here since the conquests of Alexander. It was spoken in the court of the Ptole