charitable opinion, the same Clergyman afterwards repeated his allegations in the Orthodox Journal! To save time and space, I do not here transcribe his observations at length: but the whole amounted to this, that he cites the above text as an unanswerable proof of WILFUL corruption, and as a clear vindication of what had been only insinuated lightly by him against our last translators, in his conversation of April 7th, 1813. §

My answer to him, by a private note, went to show that I deemed this version fair, and quite consistent with the Greek words in the context of that passage: yet, I had THEN no suspicion that the very same version was to be found in a multitude of early Roman Catholic Bibles, and that this rendering (if it were really erroneous) was formerly seen in even THEIR OWN BEST LATIN Vulgate COPIES! Well might Mr. Gandolphy tell us, in his Sermons (vol. i. p. 296), that," provided he is allowed to EXPLAIN the Scriptures to a child, he cares not who is employed to teach him to READ THEM :" but, I will presently prove how little reason he had to affirm (as it concerned this text, &c.) that our "Protestant English translations are CORRUPT, ABSURD, SENSELESS, CONTRARY, AND PERVERTING THE MEANING OF THE HOLY GHOST." Bishop Milner, he untruly says, p. 310, "The Catholic Church has never absolutely prohibited, but simply regulated, the reading of the Scriptures;" as if a prohibition applied to nine tenths of all who can and would read the Bible, were not an absolute prohibition, because one person in ten is grudgingly permitted to read by a written license, obtained from his tyrannizing Confessor or Parish Priest !!!

Like

Since the year 1818, I have occasionally looked into such Bibles as happened to fall in my way, in order to ascertain what ground there was for Mr. Gandolphy's assertion respecting the text in 1 Cor. xi. 27. And, I have the more solicitously done so, because I soon perceived this charge to be very frequently made by other English Papists, but most warmly by Dr. John Milner in several of his publications. Thus, at p. 385 of his "Inquiry into the

One of Mr. Gandolphy's arguments in favour of his PURe version of 1 Cor. xi. 27, is, that THE GREEK TEXT IN THE SEPTUAGINT IS, ivy, &c. not knowing that the Septuagint was a version of the Hebrew Old Testament only, and made about two hundred and eighty years before the birth of Christ! Such profound Critics are some of these zealous Missionary Priests of England !!!

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vulgar opinions of Ireland, third edition, 1810," I find the following remarks:-" I cannot," says he, "help noticing another corruption in the common English Testament, which, though small to the eye, is great as to the sense, in as much as it spoils a scriptural argument in favour of the Catholic doctrine concerning the body and blood of Christ being both received under either kind. The Greek text is: ὥστε ἧς ἂν ἐσθίῃ τον ἄρτον τούτον, ή πίνῃ τὸ ποτήριον του κυρίου αναξίως, ἔνοχος ἔσται του σώματος και του αιματος του κυρίου, 1 Cor. xi. 27. "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.' Instead of this our faithful version, the Common Testament most unfaithfully translates the passage: 'Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup shall be guilty, &c.'”

This objection I recollect to have also seen in a MS. letter of our Henry VIII. against Luther's followers, to prove that the sacramental wine might be kept back from the Laity; so that Bishop Milner is not the first distinguished personage who builds an argument on such a sandy foundation, to cloak an act of injustice! In his last volume too, but just published, called "The End of Religious Controversy," he again renews the attack upon our Bible in the following language:

Having mentioned the " many WILFUL errors of their predecessors," which King James's translators "left behind" without correction, he says; "Two of these I had occasion to notice in the Inquiry into the character of the Irish Catholics, namely, 1 Cor. xi. 27, where the conjunctive and is put for the disjunctive or, and Matt. xix. 11, where cannot is put for do not, to the altering the sense im both instances. Now, though these corruptions stand in direct opposition to the original, as the Rev. Mr. Grier and Dr. Ryan themselves quote it; yet, these writers have the confidence to deny they are corruptions, because they pretend to prove from other texts, that the cup is necessary, and that continency is not necessary." The above remark occurs in his ninth letter; and again he resumes the subject in the thirty-ninth, on "Communion under one kind," where the author charges the late Bishop Porteus with unfairly overlooking this text of St. Paul:

"Another more important passage for Communion under either kind he [Bishop Porteus] entirely overlooks, where the Apostle says, Whosoevor shall eat this bread OR drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty

of the body and the blood of the Lord. True it is that in the English Bible the text is here corrupted, the conjunctive AND being put for the disjunctive OR, contrary to the original Greek, as well as to the Latin Vulgate, to the version of Beza, &c. But, as his Lordship could not be ignorant of this corruption and the importance of the genuine text, it is inexcusable in him to have passed it over unnoticed."-Dr. Milner in a note here tells us, Mr. Grier had nothing to say for this alteration of St. Paul's Epistle, in his defence of our Bible.

I have thus explicitly and largely set down the very language of our opponents, in order to give the utmost force to their vile accusation: and I will now prove that the crime of "corrupting this text," as they call it, is not of our committing but their own; for that the first editions of the Vulgate New Testament had the disputed word of this passage as we have rendered it, viz. AND not OR. Readers will also remember, that, in all theological disputes, a Roman Catholic has no right to rest upon any version as authentic," except the Latin Vulgate; and, therefore, if I demonstrate that the Latin editions of highest authority and of the earliest date agree with our English translation, no Vicar Apostolic, or Bishop, or Priest in the Church of Rome, can claim any other reply, or justly require any superior evidence." The fact is," says Bishop Milner, "our Church being under the necessity of pointing out to her children AN AUTHENTIC, UNADULTERATED TEXT of the Holy Scriptures, recommends that which she has always had under her own eye, and in constant use, without saying any thing of the other texts; which do not possess the same honour and advantage." P. 386, Inquiry, &c. of Dr. Milner, on the Antiquities of Ireland.

Learned men know what a long and very warm debate there has been about the text of the three heavenly witnesses, 1 JOHN, v. 7; and they know how little a Papist cares for the fact of that text being wanting in every Greek manuscript, except only one of but modern existence, because it is found in all the printed copies of their Vulgate and in most of the Latin manuscripts: nay, BOSSUET, the great oracle among them, places the genuineness of this passage in John among the ecclesiastical traditions which all the faithful are obliged to receive, under the pain of an anathema if they refuse. (See a quotation from Bossuet, in Mr. Charles Butler's Works, 1817, vol. i. Appendix 2nd, p. 383, "J'avou au reste, &c.")

This therefore being the case, I contend that no Roman Catholic ought to hesitate one moment in admitting our English version of 1 Cor. xi. 27, when I shall have shown this to be the common reading in nearly all the early and approved editions of the Latin Vulgate. Even then, however, it is possible for such an unfair disputant as Bishop Milner to find some bye-way of escape; for he, when it suits his argument, can not only give up the Greek copies, but the Latin Vulgate and the authorized Rheims Testament, and translate differently from them all in a theological controversy!!!§ An example of this is cited in p. 79 of my late "Correspondence on the Roman Catholic Bible Society."

My proofs are these: FIRST, I find it stated in p. 492, vol. iii. of Curæ Philologica et Critica WOLFII, 4to. Basil, 1741, that more than thirty of the earliest printed editions of the Vulgate translation, between the years 1462 and 1569, have et biberit, agreeing with our own version: SECONDLY, he states that the Missals, both printed and manuscript copies, likewise read et biberit; which is demonstrated indeed by Le Brun, a late Priest of the Oratory at Paris, in Continuat. Memoriarum Literariarum et Historic. tom. viii. parte i. n. iii.; and in Ephemerides Paris. An. 1730. Dec. p. 451. sq. ed. Belg. Besides, THIRDLY, I have myself, since Mr. Gandolphy wrote to me on this subject in 1813, examined such printed editions of the Vulgate Latin as came in my way, and have found above sixty of them to contain the same rendering of the text. In the FOURTH place, I have consulted several manuscripts of the Vulgate, some at the British Museum, others in the libraries of private individuals (whom I can name), in which I found et biberet, &c. not vel or aut biberit. FIFTHLY, Some of the very oldest translations into German, French, &c. made from the Vulgate by Roman Catholics themselves, agree in the disputed passage with ours. SIXTHLY, Not merely do the printed versions agree, but likewise different manuscript translations which I examined; and particularly those in French which are founded on the version of Guiart des Moulins, or on the History of Peter Comestor, so highly esteemed by the schoolmen, &c. before printing was dis covered.

For a full proof that our common version is justified by the best and oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, and also is supported by unanswerable criticisms, I refer to the commentaries of Wolfius, Rosenmüller, Whitby, Macknight, Dr. Adam Clarke, and the MSS. named in Griesbach, Wetstein, &c. &c. &c. But none of these are wanted to answer, POPISH OBJECTORS.

And here I will incidentally take occasion to observe, that many Popish translations used before the discovery of printing, as well as long afterwards, till Protestants detected their infidelities, were the most abominably incorrect, and published with interpolations or omissions. Those which I have myself seen are chiefly the French manuscripts and early printed Bibles; but, I cannot now stop to enumerate or detail them. The worst of these were issued from Paris, Lyons, and Bordeaux; of which as only one specimen, I will give the corrupted text in 1 Cor. xi. 27, from a Paris edition of "La Grant Bible en François Historiée," 2 volumes folio, very splendidly printed, and in my own library. It stands thus: "Quiconques mengera le corps de nostre Seigneur indigne, il sera coulpable comme Judas qui le vendit;" i. e. "Whoever shall eat the body of our Lord unworthily, he will be guilty as Judas who sold him."-Now, let Dr. Milner and Mr. Gandolphy, with all their abusive comrades, tell me who are the corrupters of Scripture. If this short reply to their base charges against our English Translators will not silence them, I have other materials in reserve for a future publication, to repel their bitter calumny.

It is particularly to be noticed, that, among the editions of the Latin Vulgate to which I allude above, as being examined by myself, are some of peculiar value: for instance, the very first Bible ever printed by FUST and GUTTENBERG (called the Mazarine Bible), about the year 1450 or soon after, but without a date; the first Bible executed with a date, by the next printers at Mentz, A.D. 1462; the famous Bible, without a date, in two volumes folio, double columns, 45 lines each, supposed by some to precede the last named edition; the celebrated copy in the POLYGLOTT of Cardinal XIMENES, with the authority of Pope LEO the Tenth; the early Bible of Eggerstein, about 1468; also, that with the Notes of NICOLAS DE LYRA; PETER COMESTOR'S Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, written in the middle of the 12th century; the Bible of the Louvain Doctors; that of the Paris Divines; the grand Polyglott of Antwerp; the Bible of the Salamanca University; and a multitude of others, highly important, which it would be tedious to particularize: but to these I could add some very early German and French versions made by authority, and not less valuable for demonstrating my point.

Therefore, it is certain that no Protestants could have had any hand in corrupting the text mentioned, as LUTHER