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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
that , their original depository ? Were they not safely kept , even before the invention of printing ? If they have ever been in peril , it was not from the absence , but from the interference of an Established Church . The Catholic hierarchy kept the Scriptures out of sight as much as it was able , and contended
for its own value as a depository ; but the attempt failed . Even the manuscript Bible could not be suppressed : the printed Bible cannot be concealed . After having defied power so long " , in its feebler form ,, it cannot need protection in its stronger form . There is no occasion for an Establishment , to perpetuate the true standard of Christian doctrine . It is independent of all such help . The word of God requires not the aid of an ecclesiastical
corporation . The Bishop ' s argument challenges some allusion to the conduct of the Church , in relation to the Scriptures . Little is the merit which it can claim on the ground of preserving and disseminating them in their purity . It adheres to a translation which its own best critics have pronounced to be greatly in need of correction . The text from which this translation was made ,
obtained currency from the beauty of the types in which it was printed , rather than from its accuracy . Many errors have , as the Bishop well knows , —no man better , —been detected and demonstrated in it : yet is it not only retained , but made the standard of translations into other languages , thereby sending mistakes and interpolations all over the world . Nay , there has not been care enou gh even to preserve the English reprint correct . It is abundant in typographical errors , which often affect the sense . For the best edition of our own common version , conformed to
what all scholars allow to be the standard Greek text , we must look to America . We allude to Mr . Palfrey ' s edition , published at Boston . Suppose the authorized version to be not only the best which has been made , but the best which can be made ; still that edition is the best representation of it , to the great shame of the Church of England .
As the Bible would have existed quite as safely without the Establishment , so , we apprehend , would its true interpretation , whatever that interpretation may be . What is the security worth when the ' times of error * come , which the Bishop predicts ? How can the Church , dependent as it is upon the State , live through those times without adopting and perpetuating the
error ? * The Church may , if it be necessary , institute a new comparison between the word of God , and the construction which it lias put upon that word , in order to make the agreement between them more complete and entire . ( p . 32 . ) Very well , then ; if the error be prevalent , such revision is demanded , and it becomes established . Whenever the ' times of error * come , and they must come , to make out this estimate of the Church ' s worth , its worthlessness is instantly shown . Either its creeds and article
Untitled Article
Defence of the Church Establishment . 25 d
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 259, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/27/
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