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man language, he adds the practical experience derived from the many years in which he has been employed in classical instruction in two of our principal colleges. The volume will find a place in our college text-books, in our academies and higher schools, and in many private libraries. It will fill the same place in classical literature which the works of Jahn do in biblical.

NOTE FROM REV. DR. HOMER.

An article in the Princeton Repertory for April, contains some remarks upon the communication of J. Homer inserted in the Repository for October 1835. Had the writer of these remarks read attentively the No. of the Repository for Jan. 1836, pp. 478, 479, he would have found the means of correcting some typographical errors, which render a few sentences unintelligible. With respect to the meaning of improved text;—it may be remarked that the text of King James's version is capable of improvement, from its own translation of Hebrew and Greek words in other parts of the version; from the authorities adduced in other consulted versions; from the preceding English Bibles; and from foreign versions. It may be improved by its Grammar and Syntax being made to conform more to the Geneva Bible of 1560, and to certain portions of still earlier Bibles, not excepting Wicklif's. It may be improved by a more uniform translation of like words and phrases; not reudering a Greek word "ruler of the feast" in one verse, and “governor” in the next; not Mars Hill in one verse and Areopagus in another. There may also be an exchange of obsolete words for modern terms and phrases. Such improvements have been suggested by several critics. Such improvements are judiciously and usefully spread over the very valuable Bible of that distinguished grammarian and scholar, Dr. N. Webster. Such an improved text has been long in preparation by J. Homer, in order to produce a text more conformable to the pure Hebrew and Greek text, supported by the preceding English translations; also by the best foreign versions ancient and modern, with the aid of Hebrew and Greek Concordances, and of the principal lexicographers, commentators and critics from Erasmus to the present day. "Doctor Homer has never meant to charge a falsehood" upon the honest men of King James's six classes. The stationers, not the translators, styled the Bible "a new translation,” and announced it as newly translated out of the original tongues." The translators testify in their Preface, (the work of bishop Smith a translator and reviser), that their own version "is, in no part, a new translation." "We never thought," say they, "that we should need to make a new translation, but to make a good one, [their prescribed standard was Bishops' or Archbishop Parker's Bible of 1568], better; or out of many good ones, one principal good one." See their Preface in the excellent Bible of Dr. Coit, lately published by Wm. Peirce, Boston.

The transla

tors did not authorize any one of our times, or of their own, to substitute, as is done in the type of that justly esteemed publication, The Biblical Repertory, “an entirely new translation," for their own words, which require no paraphrase, and which affirm that “it is in no part a new translation." This fact is further confirmed by Dr. Gell, probably from the information of the wise and good archbishop Abbot, one of the translators, whose chaplain he had been. Dr. Gell's words are as follows: "When a part of the learned body suggested certain corrections and improvements in the translation, they were checked, and told that their proposed course would go to a new translation, which was never intended." Such changes of text as John Bellamy has exhibited go to make another and a new Bible, and are wholly repugnant to the sentiments of the writer of the present note. His attempt is to form an unbiassed revision of King James's text. This should contain such improvements and corrections, as may exhibit those variations of text and interpretation in which there is a general and nearly unanimous agreement, among the critics of our own and of preceding generations, and which will be supported by the rules of Hebrew, and of the Jewish and classical Greek grammar and synThe writer feels a stronger wish to vindicate and to confirm the present received English text, than to censure and change it by the aid of his researches. He has no hostility to the creed of King James's translators, whilst in his view the version of Tyndal, Coverdale and Rogers-men of supereminent piety and Biblical learning-is yet the most simple and scriptural. His object has long been to discover God's own revealed truth. "Let God be true," though every translator, and every commentator should be found, (yet in most cases unintentionally), a liar.

tax.

The writer of this note affirms, and is ready to prove from materials derived from books long under his eye, that the common version is derived from English and from foreign versions, compared more or less with the originals, yet often hastily; and that the text peculiar to the Bible of 1611, (and that text borrowed,) is but one thirty third part of the whole Old and New Testaments. He would add that, in the investigation of several years, he has not yet found a single chapter or verse of the common version, which he has not been able to trace to the authority of some translation in his own Book-collection. He would welcome the writer of the article in the Repertory to a week's visit at his house in Newton near Boston, and to a week's friendly and mutual investigation of this great subject. He is fully persuaded of the good intentions of the gentleman who penned the article in the Princeton Review, though he is a little too severe. The public may shortly have a fuller statement of the results of J. Homer's investigations, (some of them new), as connected with the common Bible. There were, doubtless, several truly learned men in the body of 1611. But they were not called, nor permitted, to make a free and independent use of their learning, nor to compose a translation, which might be justly styled NEW.

THE

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY

AND

Quarterly Observer.

No. XXIV.

OCTOBER, 1836.

ARTICLE I..

PERMANENCE OF FREE INSTITUTIONS.

By Rev. Chester Dewey, Pittsfield, Mass. Formerly Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, Williams College.

THE stability of our government and the perfection of our free institutions, is a subject of high interest to the philanthropist. The citizens of these United States and the lovers of liberal principles over the world, feel their own wisdom and integrity to be involved in the result. The experiment of a government originating in the people, begun under favorable circumstances, and our geographical position, our religious principles, as well as the views upon education, and a variety of other considerations, gave high promise of success. It cannot be expected that the experiment can ever be commenced with a fairer prospect. Ours is considered as the final trial. If free institutions cannot exist and flourish and prove permanent, and be the channel of immeasurable good to the inhabitants of these States, where shall the philanthropist hope to find human nature that is qualified to enjoy and perpetuate them? Not on the earth. The enemies of free governments rejoice at any indications of a failure in this grand experiment. Such indications, it is not to be denied, have been presented. But they have passed away; and the early promise has been to a great VOL. VIII. No. 24.

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extent performed; and the friends of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic have rejoiced. And they will continue to rejoice; the songs of joy and exultation will yet rise in higher strains, and will be heard in every land. Man can retain his freedom. The institutions of our country will prove permanent. This is the proposition to be maintained.

Luxury, vice, dissipation and ignorance are considered as compatible with the existence and prosperity of monarchical and despotic governments; because, men are there to be governed by force, and not by reason, and are to be held in subjection by fear, and not by principle. A purer age may show that this maxim in politics does not comport with the existence of good government. But it is immovably settled that the knowledge and virtue of the people, good principles and moral purity are the foundation and support and perfecting power and perpetuity of a free government. In politics this is an axiom. To maintain the above proposition then, it becomes necessary to show the superiority of this age in knowledge and virtue, and the existence and continued action of causes which will increase and extend their influence in our country; and that too, while the tide of our population is increasing with unparalleled rapidity, while a stream of foreigners with habits and principles not congenial to our institutions is flowing in upon our country, and finding a habitation among our citizens, and while a wave of prosperity in all the honest pursuits of life is rolling its heavy and turbid waters upon all the opposing barriers.

It is not an easy matter indeed to form a correct opinion of the relative merit of the age in which we live. There are various and obvious causes in operation which may prevent the existence of that impartiality at which we honestly aim. We ourselves form a part of the active and intelligent agents about whom our decision is to be made, and from whom the age takes its character. As our own knowledge and wisdom and virtue are more highly appreciated than those of others, so will these particulars appear more prominent in our own age compared with those of past times. We are more familiar too with the minutiae of things, and with the delicate shades of knowledge, and with the smaller differences that exist, while we are rather accustomed to consider only things in general in the knowledge of past generations. Often the minute differences give the great interest to the passing events and scenes; the general truth or principle may be adopted by all, while the less details consti

tute the grand difference, and are the only thing on which the feelings seem to be fastened, and about which our zeal is enkindled and our energy brought into action. The equality of all men by creation, and their endowment by their Creator with "certain inalienable rights," such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," are general and fundamental truths in our system of government, and universally adopted; and yet where great inequality and deprivation of rights exists, men may greatly differ in their plans of effecting an equality, while all their feelings will be enlisted on the subject. There is besides, our own self-esteem, our desire to entertain a good opinion of the age because we live in it. For, it is more gratifying to think well of the generality of our contemporaries, than it is to allow the deterioration of the age in all respects, and thus to be compelled, in order to be respectable in our own eyes, to place oneself in a position superior far in mental and moral acquisitions to all around him. This high elevation of oneself in a sinking generation is certainly less grateful to a generous mind than that indefinite rank which he takes among the constellations which shine and delight and ennoble the firmament of his day. Painful indeed must it be to such a man to be compelled to conclude that he lives in a falling age, and that all things are tending to intellectual, civil, moral, and religious ruin, and that our children or the immediate descendants of those with whom we mingle, must live under a duller sky, and breathe a heavier and more murky atmosphere, and be oppressed with more of that moral miasma which bears its recipients to the grave;which is to the age what the malaria is to the once queen of the world, an invisible, resistless, ruthless destroyer. In such circumstances lived the historian Tacitus, who wrote in the latter part of the first century of our era the history of the falling Roman Empire. He was relatively a virtuous man in an age of corruption; he loved literature, when she had lost her hold on Roman taste; he was eloquent, when the legitimate objects of eloquence could no longer be effected; he loved philosophy, when its doctrines had ceased to exert any influence over the corrupted people; he loved the republic too, when the liberties of Rome had departed, and her vices and luxury and venality required the almost lawless arm of tyrannic power to restrain them, and to give to her citizens any security and any prospect of peace. His elegant and accomplished friend, Pliny, was the admirer and flatterer of regal power and regal virtues, and pro

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