different to that Establishment of which they are professed disciples, or constituted guardians? Insinuations of such a nature, against such persons, are really somewhat confounding. An eminent statesman of antiquity, on being informed that one of the most illustrous of his countrymen had been put to death on a charge of treason, is reported to have exclaimed, " If Parmenio was innocent, who then is safe? If Parmenio was guilty, who then is to be trusted?" So we may say; If the exalted personages alluded to, and many others equally, or scarcely less, distinguished, are innocent of the dis loyalty charged upon them, then where is the character, however elevated, which may not be vilified? If, on the contrary, they deserve the imputation, then what possible assurance can we have of the loyalty of any body else,-of the Bishop of Carlisle, for example, or the Bishop of Lincoln, or the new Bishop of Llandaff, or the learned and (we affix the epithet most sincerely) venerable Society at Bartlett's Buildings?

Let us now proceed to examine the substance of the right reverend author's reasoning; which is, in fact, no other than the familiar argument of the inexpedience and danger of distributing Bibles without note or comment. The lower orders of the community, it seems, cannot gain any understanding of the true scriptural meaning of various parts of the holy Scriptures, unless they are provided with some guide or help for the purpose. So far from this, the distribution of the unexplained Bible, the Bishop elsewhere tells us, will be too likely to "give encouragement to the wayward mind to wrest it to wrong ideas, perplexing doubts, and hurtful purposes."

The absolute necessity of Biblical commentaries, and the dangers to be apprehended from the circulation of the unexpounded text, have, as has just been obCHRIST. OBSERY. No. 181.

served, formed a familiar head of objection with the assailants of the Bible Society. Occasionally, in deed, the argument has been proposed in a shape so extravagant, as clearly to identify it with the old papal topic of the nasus cereus, the theme of the strongest reprobation of our reformers. With what feelings would the Ridleys and the Jewels have heard it maintained by a member of the English Church, that the true and unadulterated word of God, if given away by a Papist, will be produc tive of Popery; if by a Socinian, of Socinianism; if by a Calvinist, of Calvinism? Yet has this proposition been laid down in the broadest terms by a controvertist on the present subject. The work before us exhibits a greatly mitigated, and far more tolerable, form of the same argument. The Bishop of Carlisle is apprehensive that wayward minds may pervert the unexplained Bible to hurtful purposes. He cannot conceive how the lower classes should understand the holy Scriptures, or at least various parts of them, without assistance. But the argument does not appear to be supported by any new proofs or illustrations, excepting a passage from Lactantius, and an incident recorded in the Acts; both of which, so far as they apply at all, prove the contrary.

The passage from Lactantius, whatever be its force or meaning, does not refer to the scriptural books in general, but to the writings of the prophets, or, at the most, to the whole of the Old Testament*; which now constitutes

• The technical term The Prophets, has a greater latitude in the writings of the fathers, than among modern Christians. Moses, David, and Solomon, are

included in it by Lactantius himself

(Inst. lib. IV. cc. 5, 8.); and the word appears occasionally put for the Old Tes tament in general. The term was used with a different sort of latitude by the later Jews. See Christ. Observ. Vol. IV. pp. 765 et seq. This last method

F

but a part of the sacred canon. But what does the passage in fact mean? A very leading idea of the disquisition from which it is extracted, is this; That the ancient prophecies were a sealed book before the coming and passion of Christ, but that, as they referred to these very events, therefore, when the events actually took place, the predictions became lucid and intelligible. In exact conformity with this idea, the extract in question states, that our Saviour, after his resurrection, explained the prophecies to his disciples, which prophecies could not be understood (“antequam pateretar") before he suffered. It is true, the passage further implies

of using it is supposed to have been sanctioned by our Divine Saviour himself in the last chapter of St. Luke (cited above.) See Poole's Synops. in loco.

It is necessary to bear in mind the enlarged sense put on the term by the fathers, in order to conceive the full force of that passage in the Te Deum; "The glorious company of the Apostles -the goodly fellowship of the Prophets -praise thee." Indeed, we conceive the term Apostles also to be there used with a similar extension; and this idea too seems justified by several passages

in the fathers. The reader will then

perceive with what beauty of gradation the chorus of praise is arranged in that unrivalled composition. The Hallelujah is represented as beginning with the highest order of created beings, and as descending, through various orders of the blessed, to earth; while the angelic host of cherubim and seraphim,-the beatified ministers of the complete dispensation of Christ,-the beatified ministers of the prophetic dispensation of Moses, the beatified martyrs of Christ who had sealed a good confession with their blood, and the holy church throughout all the world,-successively bear a part in the harmony. This simple description is perhaps more really sublime than the splendid angelic hierarchy of the schools, with all their "thrones, dominations, princedoms,

virtues, powers," even when distributed and quaternioned by the admirable genius of Milton.

Vide Instit. lib. IV. cc. 15, 20,

that, even then, those prophecies would not have been understood had not our Saviour himself condescended to expound them;— that is, they would not have been understood by the disciples:-but does this apply to us, whom these very disciples have furnished with the true solution of the prophetic mysteries, by largely relating the history of their Divine Master, and minutely illustrating it from the several predictions which it successively fulfilled? Do we, who are thus surrounded by the daylight of the New Testament, stand in the same position with the disciples under the circumstances supposed, rootedly prepossessed as they were with the notion of a temporal Messiah, stunned in all their hopes by the death of Christ, and scarcely able to trust their senses for the evidence of his resurrection?

We have thus joined issue very contentedly with the right reverend author, on the passage quoted from Lactantius; with what success the reader must judge; — but, having done so, let us be allowed citing an incident in the history to express our surprise, that, in of our Saviour, and citing it as the ground-work of an important argument, it should have been thought proper to state the fact rather in the words of an uninspired father of the church, and that too so late a father as Lactantius; than in the language of the sacred Evangelist who records it. It is perfectly fair to give us the note and comment; but at least let us have the text also. St. Luke, who relates the incident in his last chapter, not only says much more fully what is said by Lactantius (and, so far, the remarks we have already made on Lactantius will apply), but he adds this capital circumstance, "Then ed he their understanding, that they might understand the Scrip

open

tures." Here was more than exposition; here was illumination

likewise; and it is this which makes the important feature of the story. For any thing that appears, it was hardness of heart and prejudice which made the disciples so slow in comprehending the Prophets; not any inherent difficulty in applying the predictions which they had read to the occurrences which they had seen. At all events, the circumstance recorded by the Evangelist may suggest to us a serious doubt, whether the prin cipal requisite for a profitable perusal of the Scriptures be not something beyond the power of notes and comments to supply.

The Bishop's second precedent is derived from the Acts of the Apostles. Philip, he observes, was "sent to the Ethiopian Eunuch, to shew him the spirituality of the prophecies of Isaiah, and the general doctrine of the faith of Christ." The intended inference is, that the Bible should not be entrusted to the common people, unless accompanied either by a teacher or by a commentary. It would hardly appear that the conclusiveness of this inference had been very deeply considered. For can it be seriously maintained, that even a child, with the New Testament - nay, with this very narrative-in his hands, resembles the noble Ethiopian, educated and statedly resident in a heathen country, a recent visitor at Jerusalem, and in whose hearing our blessed Saviour had probably never been named except as a notorious and convicted impostor? The precedent little applies to those who, in the same page that relates the Ethiopian's doubts, find also recorded the decisive manner in which those doubts were resolved. In the case of such persons, the passage, far from proving the want of a commentary, does itself supply the commentary that was wanted, and thus enables them, even without a guide, to "understand what they read."

If, then, the two precedents that

have been just considered, are to be argued from in the unconditional manner of which he who has produced them sets the example,-they seem clearly to establish, that the sacred Books require no exposition whatever. For both of them lead us to this consideration, that the Scripa tures as we now have them, that is, the Jewish and Christian Scriptures combined, give us, not only doubts, but solutions. The Bible, in this view, is itself both text and commentary, that which was commentary in the days of the Apostles having now become a part of the text. Therefore, arguing broadly and arbitrarily from these precedents, it would rather follow that all additional commentaries might be discarded, as being at the best superfluities.

But such inferences in the gross are little conducive to the interests of truth. There is no doubt that Scripture contains difficulties which a judicious expositor may often assist in dispelling: neither is there any doubt that a practical commentary may much contribute to edification; and, on both grounds, it is clearly incumbent on Christians, according to their several means and opportunities, to promote the use and circulation of such expositions and commentaries as they honestly judge to be the best and most scriptural. The note and the comment are important as well as the text; the office of circulating, so far as occasions serve, the one, is as obligatory as that of circulating, so far as occasions serve, the other. To this extent all are agreed. But, when we come to estimate the relative importance of these two objects, the comparative force of these two obligations, then it is that a deplorable difference of sentiment arises.

In the opinion of Dr. Wordsworth (for, in him, we have a right to assume that the expression is an accurate exponent of the thought,) the distribution of explanatory com ments and devotional forms is of

almost equal dignity and importance with that of the sacred text itself. In our judgment, on the contrary, such language is rash, unscriptural, and untrue; for the former of those objects is very greatly inferior in dignity and in portance to the latter. Nor does this imply any inconsistency. The mathematician talks of his infinites of different orders, and with much more reason may the moralist talk of obligations unequal in their degree. It is not less the duty of a Christian to relieve the temporal necessities of his fellow-men, than to minister to their spiritual wants; but, if these duties were in any case to come into conflict, that man would be thought a very indifferent Christian who could hesitate between them a single moment.

To resume, however, our more immediate task-The Bishop of Carlisle repeatedly adverts to the alarm which the proceedings of the Bible Society have occasioned. In a passage which will hereafter be adduced, he even describes this apprehension as having extended to "multitudes." They dread, it seems, the effects which the indiscriminate perusal of the Bible may produce on the bulk of the people. The intended inference for the Bible Society, we presume, is, Multis terribilis, multos caveto. But Surely these multitudes might find some fitter subject for their fears. We believe it to be a very great mistake in point of fact, that persons of the lower orders, when put in possession of a Bible, are apt to be misled or injured by the more difficult or perplexing parts of holy writ. For it very beautifully happens-and it is an additional exmple of the principle of compensation in the works of Providence that the same circumstances which in one view increase their danger as readers of the unexplained Scripture, do in another diminish it. This we shall attempt briefly to shew, not as a matter of curious observation, but as immediately

bearing on the great question of the circulation of the Bible without note or comment. In truth, having disposed, as we trust, of the precedents referred to by our author, it is natural that we should now directly address ourselves to the disproof of his leading position.

In the first place, if uneducated readers of the Bible are less acute than the learned, they are in the same proportion less fastidious. Their unsophisticated minds thrive on that plain fare which more delicate tastes find homely and unpleasing.. They read the simple narrative of the Fall of Man, and they draw from it the obvious moral, without once thinking it necessary to allegorize it into modern philosophy. They peruse the history of Redemption, and they contemplate its mysteries in reverent attention, without once finding it expedient to resolve them into the rational religion of Socinianism. With them, the heart is more busy than the discursive faculty, and it teaches them gratefully to receive truths

From which our nicer optics turn away.

It cannot be necessary to quote authorities on so clear a point. That the great perverter of Scripture has been presumptuous or purblind learning, not humble and unsuspecting ignorance, is a truth now universally known, and always acknowledged,-always that is, except when it is to be acted upon. Yet, since Lactantius, as we have seen,has been appealed to in thework before us, it may not be uninteresting to shew how closely the opi❤ nion of that classical writer concurs with the general sentiment on the present subject. In a passage, of which an English translation may more easily represent the sense than the elegance, the Christian Cicero thus delivers himself: "One principal reason why the sacred Scripture finds so little credence with the wise and learned and mighty of the present age, is, that