index referred him to, it does not upon that fuller explication, come up to the strength of the impression which the index had led him to expect; and here, after all, it is only the author's and the reader's judgment as to the matter that is at issue; and at the worst, the author has only used an ordinary method in calling attention to his labours, to provoke investigation, and to stimulate inquiry.

It is only one, who has as little respect for truth as he has for the decent courtesies of life and the established allowances and deferences of the commonwealth of learning, that would, for any advantage that a detected error could give to his argumentation, violate the echoes of the grove with the eructatations of the shambles and the gospel-shop.

An error is not a falsehood—a misquotation is not a forgery. But when it is for what in the very worst view, was only an error-that we find that error called a gross error-when it is to that which is really no forgery at all, we find the terms applied, that it is "an impudent forgery," what can we say, but that such a charge is a DOWNRIGHT John Pye Smith: a fair example of the manners, the style, and the conscience of a minister of the gospel-a preacher of salvation through blood, and -GO TO CHAPEL AND HEAR IT YOURSELVES!

Of the accuracy and fidelity of Erasmus, on whom the main chance for the accuracy and fidelity of all versions of the Greek Testament subsequently derived from his, must ultimately depend, we find, from Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 2, chap. xii. sect. 1, p. 444, edit. 3. Lond. 1819, (only Dr. Smith will assure the reader that this is another impudent forgery, for, as in the Church of Rome, so among our no less priest-ridden dissenters, a man is not to believe his own eyes, nor trust his own reason, in contradiction to God's ministers.) We find that there is a reading in the second Epistle of Peter (which Epistle itself is of questionable authenticity) which Erasmus has foisted in, which no one has been able to discover in any manuscript whatever. That word happens to be one of the most frightful significancy of the whole evangelical canonade the war-whoop of the gospel, arwλelas. In the twenty-second chapter of the book of Revelation, he has even ventured to give his own translation from the Latin, because the Codex Reuchlini, which was the only Greek manuscript which he had of that book, was there defective. Of this, his only copy for so important a part of Scripture, he boasted that it was "tantæ vetustatis ut apostolorum ætate scriptum videri potest,” of such antiquity as to seem to have been written in the age of the apostles, though it contained internal evidence of the handwriting of Andrew of Cæsarea, in the ninth century; and he himself borrowed it from Reuchlin, though it was not his property; but was borrowed by Reuchlin, from the monks of the

Monastery of Basil; and he kept it himself for thirty years, till he died. Dr. Mill says, "that of a hundred alterations, which Erasmus made, in his edition of 1527, ninety relate to the Revelation only. One of his most violent opponents was the learned Spaniard Lopez de Stunica, who published Annotationes adversus Erasmus in defensione translationis N. T. Erasmus replied in his Apologies, both to him and his other antagonists; and the controversy has been so far useful, that many points of criticism have been cleared up, which would otherwise have remained obscure. But the character of Erasmus seems to have lost by it, for he was more intent on his own defence, than the investigation of truth."-Vol. 2. p. 445.

What more to the just disparagement of this great man, the Expositions of Lopez might have brought forward, I have not here * the means of knowing. Though to hear both sides is the first maxim of reason and justice; yet 'tis a most certain and safe presumption that, if he brought forward any thing like the language of Dr. John Pye Smith, Erasmus had no formidable opponent.

The writer of the Manifesto has now met the shock of the Doctor's furious attack-Truth, and not Victory is his aim. That there should be nothing in the Manifesto, that might have been worded better than it was, or that might not fairly and justly be liable to censure and correction, (as I cheerfully admit this part of the Manifesto, is,)—is what I never hoped; but that a single sentence of it should be liable to the charge of forgery, or fraud, is what I never feared.

One single argument, that had been pregnant of such an inference, though couched in language of silk, and breathed in tones of music, I can tell this angry Doctor, would have been more terrible than all his foul, ill-mannered, and unmeasured revilings; and had he but shown in any one passage of his book, a capacity to perceive a truth that made against his own views, a disposition to recognize any one claim of his antagonist, on a humane or liberal consideration; his criticism would have been respectable, and his censure formidable. As it is, he perches but as a gnat upon a cow's horn; and God only knows, or cares, whether he intended to sting us, or to rest himself and be off again.

Here in Oakham Gaol, being a prisoner of Jesus Christ. Some apology I hope for the deficiency!

END OF SECTION VII,

SECTION VIII.

THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE TEXT, IN THE COMMON EDITIONS OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT.

1. "FROM the facts already stated, the impartial reader will be at no loss to judge concerning what this dishonourable Manifesto writer, chooses to call the infinitely suspicious origination of the present received text." I beg leave to suggest, that no impartial reader would presume the Manifesto writer to be dishonourable; that no facts, already stated, support the presumption of dishonour, and that the reader has full right to retain his character of impartiality, even though he should not be content to acquiesce in the condemnation which either party may pronounce against the other.

2. "His parade of referring to the introduction of the Unitarian Improved Version, is in the same spirit of deception."

But there has been no deception in any part, in any iota of the Manifesto. Even in the instance in which the mighty effort made to compress immense extent of matter, into the smallest compass of exhibition, has caused a syncopation or synechdoche, which read as a detail, which it is not-rather than as an index referring to a detail, which it is-might lead to an error, there is no deceit, no intention of deceiving; the reader, referring to the given authority, will find the whole matter extensively set before him; and, surely, no writer, intending to produce a false impression, would have put into the hands of the reader, the means of instantly correcting it.

3. "His parade of referring," &c. (p. 33.) coupled with the charge in his first paragraph, of my "making an ostentatious reference to the titles of books, chapters, pages, and passages, marked as quotations, when the books and passages, say no such thing;" are words which would surely lead the reader to understand that he had, at least, some one or two palpable hits at the honour of the Manifesto writer, and that he had found a passage purporting to be in such a page of such an author, of which he could say, THESE WORDS ARE NOT THERE! But what is deceit? what is falsehood? and deceit and falsehood of the most malicious and evangelical character; if it be not, after such a force of accusation, to be obliged to shirk off with the evasion, that these words, which are there quoted, are garbled; and that the quoter, who quoted what served his own purpose, (which was, certainly, all that he intended to quote,) ought to have quoted something else, which would have served somebody else's purpose? I freely, and once for all, confess, that after many years of study and acquaintance with divines, and with their works, (and I wish, I knew less of them than I do,) experience has shown me that their's is bad company, and that a man can make

no better advantage of his misfortune in falling into it, than by informing himself, as an honest man would, of the mysteries of a gang of thieves, taking their word, not for all that they say, but for what they sometimes say without meaning that it should strike vulgar observance, when nature's honesty will, ever and anon, break out or press through the policy of the craft and tell us unexpected truth.

With this view, and this alone, I quote Christian authors; and as the wicked murderer, in his sleep, betrays the secret of his burthened conscience, in broken sentences, and unconcatenated ejaculations; in this way also, may more than divines meant to communicate, be extracted from their writings. And all the pledge for the fidelity of this most important of all possible exercises of critical shrewdness, is the proof that, say they whatever else they might say, contradict, recall, confuse, deny, confound; yet, this, which we present as their saying, is, what they really did say; of this, we produce the undeniable evidence: we claim no more privilege for our inference, than we yield to the most opposite inference, and let the galled jade wince!

I did not quote the passage from the Unitarian Improved Version, which my reverend opponent thinks I ought to have quoted, 1st. Because I did not believe it myself. I hope that may pass for one good reason; and, 2ndly, because it would have been utterly impossible to have made quotations of so great a length within the compass of space assigned to my whole matter; and that, for another. But as for my being an "unprincipled slanderer and deceiver," I throw myself on the reader's justice to decide, whether 'tis my character or his own, that this meek and humble minister of Christ compromises, when in the very volume which he accused me of having falsely pretended to quote, there, even in the same Section that he himself was quoting; there, before his eyes, were the very sentences as purporting to be quoted by me: where he must have seen, that they were not garbled, nor put in stronger light than they would have appeared, if read, and conned together in the connection of the whole Dissertation from beginning to end, and standing thus within ten lines of the period, which the doctor would have had me quoted.

"SO THAT the received text rests upon the authority of no more that twenty or thirty manuscripts, most of which are of little note." Such reader, is the whole of the sentence, thus exhibiting in itself a succinct and complete sense; and the only variation, in the quotation, as it stands in the Manifesto, is the omission of the two words, So that. The sentence, which immediately follows, in the Unitarian Version, is,-"But since the received text was completed by the Elzevir edition of 1624, upwards of three hundred manuscripts, either of the whole, or of different parts of the New Testament, have been collated by

learned men, with much care, industry, and skill.”—Intro duct. p. x.

From this sentence, marking it as the matter of a distinct sentence, I extracted so much of the information as I wanted, adhering to the words as closely as possible in an abbreviation of them.

It (i. e. the received text,) was completed by the Elzevir edition of 1624.

Reader! without appealing to thy impartiality, I ask thy reason, I ask thine eyes, is this referring to the Unitarian Improved Version, in the spirit of deception; is this garbling; is this endeavouring to show a sense in a part of a sentence which the whole sentence taken together would not imply, or which the whole argument in which it stands, would be found to contravene? Or is it (of all men on earth,) for him to accuse another of garbling or quoting a passage deceitfully, who, at the very time, and in the very argument that he offers to make it seem that another has done so, does so himself, and makes what the Unitarian Editors say of the books of the New Testament, pass for a refutation of what the writer of the Manifesto has said of the Received Text of the New Testament; which the Editors of the Unitarian Version were so far from intending to contravene, that they have actually said, not only all that the Manifesto says on that subject, but much more to the same purpose?

For what end, then, does the Reverend Doctor Smith apply such terrible epithets to the author of the Manifesto? why thus call him an unprincipled slanderer and deceiver? Why, but to conceal his own machinations, to supply, by clamour, the total want of argument; and to set pursuit on the wrong tract, by crying STOP THIEF! when all the while-aye! when all the while!-Oh, God! what a wicked world it is!-Surely, Dr. Smith ought to feel, that the greatness of the occasion calls for his prayers he shall have the full benefit of mine-God forgive him!

I shall now subjoin, without note, or comment, a few of the ADMISSIONS OF THE MOST LEARNED CRITICS AS TO THE INFINITELY SUSPICIOUS ORIGINATION OF THE RECEIVED TEXT

Which the reader may, if he pleases, take Dr. John Pye Smith's word, are impudent forgeries, and unblushing falsehoods, but which, if he turns to the authors referred to, will be very likely to stare him in the face.

1. A. D. 1624.—An edition of the Greek Testament was published at Leyden, at the office of the Elzevirs, who were the most eminent printers of the time. The Editor, who super

1