It was not till the early part of the sixteenth century that the Latin Vulgate received the attentions of a man who was both qualified as a scholar to do much towards restoring its textual purity, and, by the exercise of his art as a printer, to insure it a permanent character and status. This was Robert Etienne, or Stephens, of Paris, who exhibited successive editions in 1528, 1532, 1534, 1540, 1545, and 1546. That of 1540 is considered the best. The text of Stephens occasioned much discussion, and Hentenius published what was professedly an emended edition, in folio, at Louvain, in 1547; which was followed by another, or rather a reprint of the same, in 5 vols. 8vo., by the Plantins at Antwerp, in 1565 and 1574; and by that of Lucas Brugensis, at Louvain, in 3 vols. 8vo., 1573, and in 8vo. and 4to. in 1586.

None of these biblical enterprises, however, had the public sanction of the church. But in 1590 there issued from the press of the Vatican an edition, in three volumes, folio, under the auspices and personal care of the reigning Pontiff, Sixtus V.,* and pronounced by him to be free from error, and the authentic text of holy scripture. Yet so replete with misreadings was this specimen of Papal editorship, that Gregory XIV., the successor of Sixtus, suppressed it by authority; and Clement VIII., in 1592, presented the church with what his infallibility deemed to be a new and more correct edition, which has formed the basis of all subsequent impressions. The distressing lapse of infallibility betrayed by Sixtus V. in this affair, has not been overlooked by the antagonists of Rome. A copy of the Sixtine edition is a great rarity. The Clementine text bears the title, Biblia sacra Latina Vulgate Editionis Sixti V. et Clementis VIII.

At the Council of Trent, the church of Rome had given

* Biblia sacra Latina, Vulgate Editionis Jussu Sixti V. recognita et edita.

formal recognition of the Latin Vulgate, by "notifying, ordaining, and declaring, that this ancient and common edition, which had been approved in the church for such a length of ages, should, in public readings, disputations, preachings, and expositions, be held as AUTHENTIC, and that no man should dare or presume to reject it on any pretext." *

There have not been wanting fanatics in the Romish communion, who, on the authority of this declaration, have maintained that the Vulgate is altogether exempt from fault or error: while some, as Melchior Canus, Titelman, Salmeron, and even Morinus, have represented St. Jerome as having been expressly inspired for the work. But it is only justice to say, that many distinguished scholars and divines in that church, looking at the subject in the simple light of truth, regard the word "authentic" as indicating merely that moral conformity between the version and the original scriptures, which, taken in connexion with the considerations of antiquity and general usage, gave the church a legitimate reason to prefer it, not to the original scriptures, for they are not mentioned in the decree at all, but to all other Latin editions.

We Protestants, on the other hand, have perhaps entertained too great a prejudice against the Vulgate, on account of this ecumenical sanction of Rome; as if, from that circumstance, it had become a mere instrument for the maintenance of the errors of Popery. Whereas, the Vulgate existed long before most of those errors were ever heard of. Its substantial basis existed in the third,

* Sacrosancta synodus......innotescit, statuit, et declarat ut hæc ipsa vetus et vulgata editio, quæ longo tot sæculorum usu in ecclesia probata est, in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, prædicationibus, et expositionibus pro authentica habeatur, &c.

+ That erudite father himself was of a very different opinion. See his Preface to the Pentateuch, and his Commentary on the fortieth Chapter of Ezekiel.

C

or even the second, century, and the ability and integrity of Jerome, who revised it in the fourth, are admitted by the whole of Christendom. The men too, who, through a long series of years, shed the only light upon the western church which it then enjoyed, kindled their torches at this source. It was from this volume that Luther, in the library at Erfurt, received the first clear ray of evangelic truth.* Why, then, should we denounce the Vulgate, because the church of Rome, so late as the sixteenth century, thought proper to call this time-proved and venerable copy of the scriptures an authentic version? Had the Council of Trent ordered a new Latin translation to be made, expressly antagonistical to the Reformation, a Protestant would naturally look upon such a work with suspicion and disfavour; but, as the case stands, the Vulgate is neither the better nor the worse for the opinion expressed of it at Trent. And so far from its being an instrument for the promotion of Popery, we may say, that, with the exception of a few passages, which are admitted, by learned and impartial men among the Romanists themselves, to be blunders or corruptions, † a Protestant, who is thoroughly read in the Vulgate, needs no better weapon by which to vindicate the doctrines of the Reformation.

Though this version, as might be expected from its history, is neither uniform nor homogeneous in all its parts, yet it is universally admitted, that its general clearness,

* Auf ein zeit, wie er die bücher nacheinander besieht......kombt er über die Lateinische Biblia.-MATHESIUS in MERLE D'AUBIGNE'S "History," book ii. c. 2.

+ As Gen. iii. 15: "She shall bruise thy head." This is rectified by HOUBIGANT, a priest of the oratory, whose translation of the Old Testament had the sanction of the Pope. And Heb. xi. 21: Jacob "adored the top of his staff:" but here the best Romanist critics admit, that a preposition 66 upon " is wanting, through the omission, intentional or not, of transcribers.

simplicity, and perspicuity are admirable. To the student of divinity it has a peculiar interest, as the text used in no small part of European theology, both ancient and modern; and while it assists him to understand more easily the fathers of the western church, it opens a grand repertory of the Latin language itself. The very homeliness of its style is only an argument of its value in this last point of view; for, as Michaëlis says, "It is certain no man can know more than the half of a language, nor have an adequate notion of its etymology, who is acquainted only with the small portion that is preserved in elegantly written books. Those phrases of common life which are used by men of liberal education at furthest in epistolary correspondence, and even the expressions of the illiterate, are not unworthy the notice of philology. I have frequently," adds Michaëlis, "conversed on this subject with the celebrated Gesner, who used to say that the Vulgate was to him an auctor classicus, not because he could learn to write from it elegant Latin, but because it enabled him to survey the Latin language in its whole extent." *

IV. THE SYRIAC VERSIONS.

I. 1. CONTEMPORANEOUS with the earliest of the Latin translations just noticed, was the version in the Syrian language, which has been ever since regarded by the Eastern churches as an authentic and inestimable text of the holy scriptures. This version has been distinguished, from time immemorial, by the name of PESCHITO, that is, "the simple, clear, or uncorrupted."

[A translation of sacred scripture among the rabbin

* Latin translations of the scriptures have been made in more modern times by Arias Montanus, Beza, Junius and Tremellius, Castellio and Houbigant. But these do not come within the design of the present sketches, which are devoted solely to the ancient versions.

ists has been called, as already observed, a TARGUM, that is, "a representation of words in another tongue," or, the meaning of words in one language delivered in another. If an abstruse or allegorical import be given to the words translated, it is termed MIDRASH; on the other hand, the simple rendering of the record, ad verbum, or literally, they call PESCHUT.

[In the Chaldee Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel, the terms of the Hebrew original are closely adhered to, and even retained, in passages where it could be done by reducing them to the Chaldee forms. In the Syriac translation, the same principle obtains in the OldTestament portion, so far as the wider divergence of the languages would admit; while, in the New Testament, a remarkable ability has been manifested in exhibiting a faithful representation of the Greek text in that idiomatic Aramean, which was natural to the inspired writers themselves, and into which their Greek compositions so easily reverted. Now, this faithfully simple character of the work, in the estimation of the oriental theologians of the olden time, brought it under the denomination of Peschut, and was evidently the reason of the Syriacized title by which it is always known, PESCHITO, versio simplex.]

2. The Syriac version of the Old Testament contains the whole of the canonical books. The apocryphal treatises are rejected: we have indeed translations of them into the language, which may be found in the Polyglots; but they were made at a later day from the Septuagint. But in the Syrian New Testament the canon is less extensive than ours. The Second Epistle of Peter, and that of Jude, the Second and Third Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation, are wanting: they are supplied in the printed editions; but the text, whether considered as to style or the mode of conception, is plainly a different production. But though these holy