But whatever defects, or whatever excellencies might have existed in Jerom's revision of the Old Testament, only two books of it, the Psalms and the book of Job, have descended to the present age. In fact, these two books, with the Chronicles, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Solomon's Song, were the only parts of it, which were ever published. The manuscripts, which contained his revision of the other books of the Old Testament, were entrusted by him to some person, who either secreted or destroyed them. Of this enemy to sacred criticism, who, like certain modern writers, appears to have preferred a corrupted to a genuine text, we know nothing more than what Jerom has incidently said of him in a letter to Augustine, Pleraque prioris laboris fraude cujusdam

amisimus.

The loss sustained by this treachery served only to stimulate Jerom to fresh exertions. He determined no longer to revise an old translation from the Greek, but to make a new translation from the Hebrew. And this translation from the Hebrew he finished in the year 405.

But nearly two hundred years elapsed before this translation received the sanction of the church. The contemporaries of Jerom regarded a translation from the Hebrew, as a dangerous innovation: for, strange as it may appear, the Septuagint version was more respected in the Latin church, than the Hebrew original. At that time, the now-exploded story of seventy-two interpreters, all translating by divine inspiration, all translating independently, yet each of them

producing the same translation, was firmly believed, in the Latin as well as in the Greek church. And this belief, united with a hatred of the Jews, and an ignorance of Hebrew, gave to the Septuagint version an higher rank, than to the original itself. Hence Augustine, in other respects a friend and admirer of Jerom, who concurred with him in opinion, as to the state of the old version, and promoted his revisal of it from the Greek, yet, when Jerom undertook his translation from the Hebrew, inveighed bitterly against it, as if Christianity itself were affected by the undertaking. At length, however, Pope Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, gave to Jerom's translation the sanction of Papal authority. From that period the old translation from the Greek was gradually abandoned for Jerom's translation from the Hebrew, except in the Psalms, where the daily repetition of them in the church service, and their being adapted to church music, made it difficult to introduce alterations.

Such is the history of the Latin Vulgate in the Old Testament. In the New Testament the Latin Vulgate is the old translation, corrected by Jerom, as already related. With respect to the Apocrypha, as contained in the Vulgate, those books are partly in the old translation, and partly in a translation made by Jerom himself. But it must not be inferred that modern manuscripts, or printed editions of the Vulgate, contain either Jerom's translations, or Jerom's corrections in the same state, in which he delivered them. Latin manuscripts were no less exposed to alteration

in the middle ages, than they were in the early ages of Christianity. Even the two editions of the Vulgate, which were printed at Rome in 1590 and 1592, both of them under Papal authority, and both of them pronounced authentic, differ materially from each other, in sense, as well as in words. But the modern state of the Latin Vulgate is a subject, which is foreign to the present Lecture; though the fact, which has been just stated, may teach us this useful lesson, that nothing but sacred criticism can preserve the Bible in its pristine purity.

We must now again direct our attention to the East, and proceed from the Latin to the Syrian church. For this church, at an early age of Christianity, a translation had been made, of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and of the New Testament from the Greek. And this translation, which is called the Old Syriac version, soon became, and still remains, the established version of the Syrian church.

But there was another Syriac version of the New Testament, which has likewise descended to the present age and it is this Syriac version which properly belongs to an history of criticism, because it was afterwards collated with Greek manuscripts. It is called the Philoxenian version, from Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis, under whose auspices it was made by Polycarp, his rural bishop. It was undertaken at the beginning of the sixth century, from motives at present unknown, though not improbably from a desire of having a translation of the New Testament, which should approach to the original even more closely,

!

than the old or common version. For the Philoxenian version adheres to it, even with servility. And this quality, instead of forming an objection to it, constitutes its chief value. In the translation of works, which are designed for amusement, something more must be attempted, than mere fidelity. But in works intended for divine instruction, a translation cannot be too close. And, whenever ancient versions are applied to the purposes of criticism, even a servile adherence to their original augments the value of them. An ancient version, except in places where that version has been altered, is regarded as the representative of the Hebrew or Greek manuscript, from which that version was taken; consequently, the more closely such manuscript is represented, the more accurately shall we know its readings, and hence the more precisely shall we be enabled to judge, when the authenticity of readings is disputed.

To render this close translation still more conformable with the original, it was collated with Greek manuscripts in Egypt, at the beginning of the seventh century. The person who undertook this collation was Thomas, bishop of Germanicia; and he not only corrected the Syriac text from those manuscripts, where he thought that correction was necessary, but at other times he noted their various readings in the margin. As these various readings were taken from manuscripts of the Greek Testament, which were probably much older, than the oldest now extant, they are of course important to sacred criticism. A copy of this revision or edition of the Philoxenian version,

with the Greek readings in the margin, is now in the Bodleian Library; and it has been printed by Dr. White, the Hebrew Professor at Oxford, with short, but very useful notes.

The collation of the Philoxenian version is the last effort in sacred criticism, which was attempted in Egypt: nor does any part of Asia, since that period, present us with a similar undertaking. In six years from the date of this collation, commenced the Era, and soon afterwards the devastation, of the Arabs. The Jewish school at Tiberias, with another, which had been established at Babylon, continued, it is true, to preserve a precarious existence. It is true also, that learning revived under the Caliphs of Bagdad; but it was not the learning of the Bible. The Christians of the East remained in subjection and ignorance; and even the Jews were compelled at last, to abandon the schools, to which they were so long attached.

If we turn our attention from the East to the Greek empire at this period, we shall find it equally devoid of materials for our present inquiry. Indeed the criticism of the Bible does not appear to have ever taken root in Greece and the metropolis of the Greek empire, as far as religion was concerned, seems to have been wholly engaged with the controverted points of dogmatic Theology.

If we go onward to the West of Europe, the prospect is still gloomy: for after the death of Jerom, we find no one among the Latin fathers, who could lay claim to the title of critic. Some dawnings of this science occasionally indeed broke through the general