and scarcely avoidable, in the recovery of all other ancient writings. Of these varieties, thus scrupulously noted, there is hardly one in a thousand of any consequence to the sense of a single passage, no more than the various readings of our printed Bibles, of Homer, or Livy, would be, were they drawn together in the same manner, although they would compose a catalogue, ten thousand times longer. If a man cannot make sense of a particular passage in his Horace, erroneously printed, is it not a satisfaction to him to find that passage in another copy so printed as to do justice to that most accurate writer, and to his critical readers? It is worth observing, as hath been already done by the very ingenious Mr. White, that this clamour about interpolations is the expiring cry of heresy and infidelity. Let me add, that our covert infidels, having tried all their arts of forced interpretation, and found the word of God too refractory for their cunning, are now determined, as their last shift, to fling away their mask and the Bible together. They are more honest than their predecessors in infidelity. They perceive the Bible cannot be wrested to their opinions; and, therefore, there is nothing left for them, but to try if they can explode it. If, however, this sacred volume is once thrown aside, what will become of all that the Arians and Socinians have written? As to what the orthodox have written against them, the loss of that will not be lamented; and good reason, for they too have run into metaphysical refinements and fooleries, which the simplicity of revelation almost equally abhors. But, certain it is, that the book of God will continue to furnish plain and wholesome food for the rational soul, when all the French cooks of opinion shall be extinct, both they and their fires. But let us return to the subject of interpolation itself, and let us ask, when it was, that the Scriptures were so corrupted! It could not be in the dark ages of monkery, when the spirit of controversy was fast asleep; when the world thought all in one track, or thought not at all. Besides, we have manuscripts of the Scriptures, a thousand, and more than a thousand years old, which carry us back a good many centuries anterior to that era of ignorance. And it is from these very inanuscripts, that all the Bibles in present use have, after most accurate collations, been published. Well, but might not the Bible have been corrupted by the orthodox, the Monothelites, the Eutychians, the Nestorians, the Macedonians, the Sabellians, the Photinians, the Marcionites, the Arians, the Manichæans, the Gnostics, the Ebi

onites, the Cerinthians, the Donatists, the Novatians, or the Or thodox, as they were called, &c? Were there not enough of these paddlers in the stream to raise up mud? Yes, in the stream, but not in the fountain. These very men, Providence for wise pur poses permitting them, were too bitterly engaged against one another, and still more bitterly against the orthodox, to suffer the expunction of an old text, the insertion of a new one, or a material corruption of any one which concerned the controversies agitated, to creep in or out of the Scriptures, to which all sides had their sole and continual recourse for arguments and decisions. How could a passage be changed, all at once, in all or most of the copies, as well in the hands of the opponents as defendents? How changed in the memories of all the controvertists, or in the greater number of the translations? Again, how could wilful omissions, substitutions, or mutilations of passages, so sure to be detected, have served the cause it was employed in? A cause too, not worth serving, if in any degree indefensible, without a fraud so impious. To stare out of all countenance these talkers about interpolations, we have all the passages fairly standing out in the sacred text, as quoted of old by the orthodox, and by all the sects and heresies, recorded in the genuine works of Athana. sius, Hilary, Basil, Nazianzen, Jerome, Augustin, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Ecumenius, Theophilact, but more especially of Vigelius Tridentinus. The texts to be found in these, and a crowd of others, and found also in their proper places of Scripture, shew to demonstration that those Scriptures were then the same they are at this day; and yet these are the very passages of Scripture with which the ancient disputants were most tempted to make free. As to passages of a more moral nature, they stand out so thick in the writings of the fathers still extant, and so exactly the same with those in our present copies of the Bible, that no room for doubt is left concerning them. The Syriac, the Arabic, the Vulgate translations, all vouch the sameness of Scripture from the closing of its canon to this day. So much of the old Italic translation as is extant bears the same testimony; and, though perhaps indirectly, supports the genuineness of 1 John v. 7, the most disputed text in all the Bible, which Tertullian and Cyprian appear to have quoted, and where else they found it, but in that version, is, now-a-days, very hard to say.

Had it been in the power of the Roman church, after it became papistical, it is hard to say what attempts she might have made in

the distress she felt to maintain her usurpations by two or three texts, but slightly seeming to favour them, and in the midst of many tenets adopted by her, directly contrary to those Scriptures, for which she pretends to be the only voucher, and yet, on account of which, she shuts up those Scriptures from all, but her licensed bigots. But Popery, properly so called, had not its birth till early in the seventh century, Gregory the First, deservedly styled the Great, having utterly disclaimed, and indeed refuted its fundamental pretension, in the latter end of the sixth, by his elaborate letter to John of Constantinople. It was then too late, as I have briefly, but abundantly shewn, to tamper with the Scriptures, so that nothing but an infallibility of interpretation could serve the turn; and those interpretations were to be swallowed as infallibly right, though self-evidently wrong. Among other objections to the word of God, this one of interpolation was set up along with oral tradition, as more to be depended on, and from that cry, all that is now thrown about by Arians, Socinians, and Deists, is poorly borrowed. The violent contentions about Easter, about the Filioque, but more especially episcopal supremacy, set the eastern and western churches in such a flame against each other, and that for more than a thousand years, that neither durst venture on interpolations of Scripture. While the author of evil, taking the advantage of human corruption, raised all the above-mentioned heresies and schisms, God permitted them, that his word might thereby be kept pure and unsophisticated. Besides, he had always in every age of his church, so many wise and faithful servants to detect and expose all attempts of the wicked to pervert his word, that nothing could be more impracticable than material changes therein, such as are now insinuated, but not particularly pointed out, much less possible to be proved. We have, at this day, Homer and Herodotus, books much older than the New Testament, in very good order; and why not the New Testament, for the preservation whereof in its genuine purity an infinite number of persons, good and bad, learned and unlearned, were deeply engaged at the risk of their parties, opinions, and souls? Had any other book so many watchers to guard it, text by text, and word by word, in every hour of its duration as this? I place bad and unlearned men in the class of watchers, as I do now the present talkers about interpolations, who would not fail, were a single text any where foisted in, or but one word added to point an old one against

their opinions, to raise an outcry louder than thunder, and deservedly, at the fraud. The church was never without a host of these; insomuch, that while we lament the mischiefs they wilfully did, we, at the same time, bless God for the good they unwittingly occasioned. Noxious vermin, if wholly useless, had not made a part of creation. Such as infest the human body enforce a cleanliness, necessary to a free insensible perspiration, a chief source of health. Had the church been always kept as clean as Christ left it, the similarity of this allusion here had been unintelligible.

swer.

170. Why of all masters is God the worst served? Because he is infinitely the best of all masters, and will have none but free servants: shocking answer! Are we bad, because he is good? Are we unfaithful and wicked, because he allows us to be free? If I return this answer, as well for myself as for others, my fellow-servants have the less right to take umbrage at it. We often omit what we ought to do, and do that which God forbids; and is there any other cause for this, but the patience and goodness of God, who does not instantly punish every act of disobedience? Or did he not leave us to the exercise of our liberty, to try what sentiments of gratitude towards him we feel in our heart; or had he compelled our services, we should be always obedient at least, and but obedient. Thus it is, that conscience forces me to anHow it may work or sleep in others, I am not to judge. There is one that judgeth. Yet the behaviour of my neighbours forces me to fear they are too like myself. I have had, in succession, a variety of servants, one better, and another worse; but am sensible I never had one, who was not a better servant to me than I was to God, purely because he knew my pride and severity would not brook such failures in him, as I found in myself towards my God. Conscious of this comparison, I frequently bore the ill behaviour of a man, when I was just on the point of turning him away; and do not remember, save in one instance, that I dismissed any of them, but was always, by the rest, deserted for higher wages with somebody else, or for a master they liked better. In this, like Job, I did not despise the cause of my servant, when he contended with me; If I had, what then should I do, when God riseth up? When he visiteth, what then should I answer him?' At present, I have one of the best servants that ever man was blessed with; but feel inexpressible compunction and shame, when I compare his behaviour to me, with mine to God. It is true, I am a better master than a servant. But wretch

that I am! I was created, and purchased by the blood of Christ, to be a servant not a master. Even as a master, I am but a servant, and as such am to be tried, at the final account, by my purchaser. Thus I canvass myself. But when I look abroad at my fellow-clergymen, and 'my fellow-Christians, I see every where such a likeness to myself, such immense marks of delinquency, as force me to bode approaching ruin to both the church and kingdom, whereof I am a member, in reality an affectionate member. It stings me to the soul to think, that my sins help to raise the cry for judgments on both these objects of my love, the best of churches and countries, in every respect, but the service of God; and in this perhaps the worst, so far, I mean, as may be judged by the religious and political practice in general, which testifies an almost total disregard both to church and state. No set of people, I believe, ever thought more highly of their own understandings, nor were more exalted in the opinion of their own honour and greatness of soul, than we. Yet what proof of our wisdom do we give in the midst of an almost total indifference to the only possible means of our salvation? What proof of our magnanimity, in a total ingratitude to Providence for all the temporal blessings we enjoy, and all the spiritual, offered to us in the gospel and blood of our Redeemer? Do we, to shew our wisdom, postpone every worldly concern, in order to set forward the good required of us, and to redress the forbidden evil? Do we, to testify our gratitude, crowd the house and table of our infinite Benefactor? Do our clergy every where preach and act like men, who have set their hearts on a better world than this? Do our gentry keep within the bounds of humility, frugality, temperance, and chastity? Does the lower class of people, abhorring all profligacy of manners, aspire to those only attainable riches which no worms can corrupt, no thieves break through and steal?' If we all, a very few only excepted, take the contrary courses, where then is our wisdom? Where our dignity and generosity of soul? To be buried alive, that is, while the soul is still in the body, is most shocking. Yet far worse is his condition, whose soul serves for little else than to preserve his body from a stench, not at all so abominable as that which issues from its own spiritual putrefaction. Why should the dead bury their dead,' who don't stink half so ill as themselves? Servants! no, the slaves of sin can never be the servants of God. No professions can blind the eye of our Master. To please him, we must renounce ourselves, and recoil