H. (Page 44.)

It may appear to Mr. H. very wise and philosophical to estimate the amount of guilt by the length of time in which it has been contracted. But it is excessively absurd. We might as well make light of the wickedness of his pamphlet from the shortness of the time in which he penned it.

I. (Page 45.)

It might be curious to transfer a similar argument to his own idea of "the precise amount of penalty" (p. 65.) due to sin, and which he says the atonement paid, according to the view which he takes of death as the extinction of being. But it is not within my object to examine the tissue of absurd inconsistences in his pamphlet; and in which a much abler writer than Mr. H. would necessarily be involved, in maintaining his lie under a professed appeal to the word of truth.

K. (Page 45.)

In one passage (p. 59.) Mr. H. facetiously remarks" one good effect I will concede to the doctrine [of Hell torments:] it certainly has a tendency to keep men from hanging themselves. Yet he afterwards seems to retract this sportive concession: for he tells us (p. 63.) that annihilation is indeed the most terrible subject that a living being can contemplate." But he has himself some suspicion of a more terrible; for in p. 35. he guards the position with a perhaps ;- the apprehension of annihilation is perhaps more exquisitely dreadful than the expectation of eternal life, even in misery and torment! The phraseology of the whole sentence, if it were worth quoting at large, would shew a curious vacillation and misgiving of mind in the writer, when he indited it.

REMARKS,

CORRECTIVE OF

OCCASIONAL MISTRANSLATIONS

IN THE

ENGLISH VERSION

OF

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES.

[First Published 1831.]

TO WHICH ARE NOW ADDED

SEVERAL EXPOSITORY REMARKS,

NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE following pages form a small part of a series of remarks which I have for some time wished to publish. The printing of these in a detached form is in compliance with the desire of a friend, to whom I happened to communicate the observations on the passage in the Epistle of James, and who conceived that they may be serviceable for checking some melancholy delusions, which have lately appeared in this city.

I cannot put out even these few corrections of our English Translation of the BIBLE, without distinctly stating, that I hold at a very high rate the general excellence of that translation. It was executed, with much pains and care, by men who were sound scholars, and (what is even of greater importance in this matter,) by men who were intentionally faithful in the work. In these respects it stands most favourably distinguished from the various new translations, put forward since, by persons deficient alike in learning and in honesty. As men, however, our translators were fallible. They were also, in some degree, restrained from the free exercise of their own judgment, by the instructions of their royal employer; and their con

nexion with state-religion unavoidably produced some unfavorable bias on their minds. While I, therefore, deprecate the thought of displacing their version, to make room for any other which could now be substituted, I yet conceive that such occasional corrections of it, as are exemplified in the following pages, may be of use to the English reader for clearing the true meaning of particular passages.

No English readers need be deterred from perusing these Remarks by the Greek characters which occasionally occur in them. These may be altogether passed over, without any injury to the general meaning. In the few cases where I do quote the original, it is for the sake of those readers who are more or less capable of examining it, but who may not have any copy of the Greek Testament immediately at hand.

Let me add, that I have not in any instance thought it necessary to examine, whether I have been anticipated in my criticisms by any other writers. I am less solicitous about the originality of my remarks, than about their justice and utility. What has heretofore been done in the way of biblical criticism has generally been inaccessible to all, except the learned. It has been one of my objects to present what I offer in a form in which the Christian reader, who knows not any language but the English, shall be competent both to understand my remarks, and to estimate their truth.

REMARKS,

CORRECTIVE OF OCCASIONAL MISTRANSLATIONS

IN THE

ENGLISH VERSION OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES.

I.

"Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and, if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."-James v. 14, 15.

INSTEAD of the words, "shall save the sick," we should read " shall heal the sick," or restore him to health.

Nothing is more indubitable than this correction. The Greek word owo is applicable to deliverance from any danger or calamity, as preservation from drowning, (Matt. xiv. 30.) to escape in shipwreck, (Acts xxvii. 31, 44; xxviii. 1, 4.) &c. But in no fewer than eleven other passages of the New Testament, is the word applied to recovery from sickness, or deliverance from bodily infirmities, viz. Matt. ix. 21, 22; Mark v. 23, 28, 34; vi. 56; x. 52; Luke viii. 36, 50; John xi. 12; Acts iv. 9. In all these places our translators have rightly employed some English phrase denoting restoration to health, or bodily soundness; while, in all of them, the Greek word is precisely the same, as they have mistranslated save, in James v. 15. (The same verb also, only compounded with a preposition, occurs in the same sense in Matt. xiv. 36, and Luke vii. 3.)

That it is deliverance from disease that is here intended, appears indeed plainly from the words of the passage, "shall save the sick," and "the Lord shall raise him up." The latter expression is commonly applied to a person raised up from a sick bed, as in Matt. viii. 15; ix. 6, 7, 25; Mark i. 32. And as to the former words, no one capable of reading the original to any advantage, can doubt that the necessary import of the Greek σwo. Tov KAMNONTA is," shall deliver him from his sickness." The man who does not feel this to be the decisive force of the words, at least when his attention is directed to it, may think that he knows Greek, because he has learned to spell it; but he really knows nothing of the language to any useful purpose.

Something of this may be felt even by the mere English reader, if for "the sick," we substitute the phrase "the patient." In marking the character or state of the person whose deliverance is spoken of, the nature of the deliverance intended is sufficiently intimated.

If one has fallen into the water, and I exclaim, "who will save that drowning man?" could any one doubt that the expression "save in such a connexion, implied deliver him from drowning? Even so in the case of a sick person; if I speak of something as that which will save the patient, is it not manifest from the connexion, that, by his being saved, I mean simply delivered from his disease?

But some perhaps may urge, as an objection to this view, that it is written, "if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."— It is and this leads me to mark one or two things for the further elucidation of the passage.

It is plain, that it could not have been the Apostle's design to give any directions by which a Christian should be exempted from the bodily infirmities, and ultimate mortality, which are the common allotment of all men in this world.

But beside such cases of sickness and of death as occur in what is called the ordinary course of nature, the Scriptures expressly teach, that there are other cases, which form part of the fatherly discipline which the Lord maintains over his children, for their profitable correction, and "that they should not be condemned with the world." Hebr. xii. 5, 7; Job v. 17, 18; xxxvi. 8, 10; Ps. lxxxix. 30, 33. Thus, when the Apostle Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for their gross abuse of the Lord's Supper, he declares to them, (1 Cor. xi. 30, 31.) "for this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep," that is, have been visited with death. He recals their attention to the divine origin and nature of the ordinance which they had so much perverted, that it ceased with them to be the Lord's Supper, (v. 20,) and testifies that in this they were eating and drinking judgment to themselves," (v. 29,) that is, bringing on themselves those judicial visitations of sickness, and death itself, by which the Lord mercifully rebuked their sin.

Now it is evidently such a case of sickness that is spoken of in the passage under consideration from the Epistle of James, when it is said, "if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him :" that is, if the sickness has been sent as a visitation of corrective discipline for sin. And, in such a view, the sick person appears to be represented as acknowledging it when he calls for the elders of the church, that he may be restored to health. His sin being forgiven, the rod of correction which it had occasioned shall be removed.

One word more on the anointing with oil, directed in the passage. As we have seen that the case of disease spoken of, was, in one sense, beside the ordinary course of nature, so also was its removal. The sick person was restored to health, through the intervention of the elders of the church, in the exercise of that supernatural "gift of healing," (1 Cor. xii. 9,) which existed in the Apostolic age, and for the confirmation of the Apostolic mission. Yet the cure, though superhuman, was preceded by an external application, and by prayer. And, in like manner, we find that the Lord Jesus, when about to confer sight on the man born blind, "anointed his eyes" with moistened clay, and directed him to "wash in the pool of Siloam," John ix. 6, 7. Many other examples might be adduced, but in Mark vi. 13, it is expressly related of the twelve Apostles, when first sent out by