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    not , for ourselves , allow that in the epistolary writings of the New Testament really inconclusive reasoning has been discovered . It is of vast importance , that controversial authors ^ and those especially against whom almost every man ' s

    hand is armed , do not overstate theii * positions , but enunciate them in as rfear , precise and correct terms as possible . Mr . Wellbeloved owns and laments that some of our most distinguished writers have occasionally given to their opinions , which yet will bear the most rigid examination , a form that unnecessarily renders them

    obnoxious and repulsive : and he has a right to make the complaint , because he cannot incur the censure ; because his own practice is exactly the reverse , because he is at once honest in avowal

    and judicious and deliberate in statement . A willing adversary fastens without a pause on unweighed language ; and the phrase outlives any explanation of the innocence , any proof of the accuracy , of the ideas , which it was employed to convey .

    Archdeacon Wrangham having specifically assailed the Improved Version of the New Testament * the writer of the " Three Letters" undertakes the vindication of it , and wins fresh laurels in the conflict . —Pp . 56—74 .

    The dignitary condescends , after Magee , and the late Mr . Renriell , and many others , to quarrel with the title : he speaks of what has been fantastically styled by its editors the Im £ r <> ved Version of the New

    Testament . No objection can well be more puerile and trifling . What pretensions could this or any other version of the Christian Scriptures offer to public regard , if , upon the whole , it were not an improved version ? The work

    in question even claims to be an improvement of Archbishop Newcome ' s * attempt toward revising our English translation of the Greek * Scriptures ;" and the sole inquiry , among men of learning , sense and unaffected candour , shoiild be , are these claims established ?

    Is not the text , and , taken altogether , is not the translation , in a superior degree , correct and faithful ?

    We do not appeal , on such subjects , to men who pronounce judgment witl ^ QUt examination , but to those who will read and reflect for the ink selves . The merits of the Improved

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    Version have been rigorously weighed by friends , as the pages of the Monthly Repository can attest : that Version * without assuming to be faultless , fears

    not sound criticism from fpes \ it requires only " a clear stage , and n . q favour / ' * and deprecates nothing but to be condemned without being tried , and to be rendered the object of invee ** tive , and not of argument .

    " Permit me , " say ? i Mr . Wellbeloved , " to ask , in what respect the title is * fantastical ? Is the authorized English version so perfect that whatever professes to be an improvement of it , must be pronounced fantastical ? Why then did

    the late Professor Symonds collect , with so much pains , the numerous passages in that version which require to be amended ? Why did the Venerable Primate of Ireland devote his great biblical learning ,

    his talents , and industry , to the accomplishment of a New Translation ? If , instead of An Attempt towards revising &c , he had entitled his excellent work An Improved Version , I cannot think you would have condemned that title as

    fantastical . Much less , then , should this con * demnation fall on the work of the Unitarian Editors , which Is , * in many respects , an improvement of the Primate ' s . 1 think I may assert , without justly exposing myself to the charge of presumption * that I am better acquainted with this

    Improved Version thai } yourself ; who , as-, far as I can judge , know little or nothing of it , but what you have collected from the pages of Laurence , Nares , Magee , and Rennell ; and I hesitate no ^ to pronounce it a real and manifest improvement upon the Authorized Version . "

    The writer of the . " Three Letters " proceeds to defend the Improved Version , which , however , tie acknowledges to be capable of emendation , from certain other accusations reiterated by the Archdeacon of Cleveland , whom , in reference to one of those charges , he thus rebukes :

    That the Improved Version deviates in almost every page from the Archbishop ' s , will be allowed -, but that it widely deviates from it , is an assertion which you are not authorized to make : and I am inclined to hope that you would not have

    made it , had you , instead of trusting ta representations of others , compared for yourself the two versions , or even read that Review by a Unitarian writer to the testimony of which you refer . Dr . Carpewter , whom you rightly nacne as the

    * Spectator , No . 436 ,

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    42 Review . —^ Wellbeloved ^ Letters to Archdeacon Wrqngham .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1825, page 42, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2532/page/42/