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recollection, too, that the version has been a witness for the truth in the benighted East for so many ages, a fontal light from which the oriental church has derived its only pure instruction in righteousness, through the entire period of her apocalyptic desolation;-all these attributes, and others which will not fail to discover themselves to the student, must invest this venerable monument of the learning of the primitive church with a value and an excellency peculiar to itself.

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As with the Gospels already published, the following version of the Acts and Epistles has been made directly from the Syriac. We have Latin translations of the Peschito, by Sionita, De la Boderie, and Schaaf; but they have not obtained the entire approval of the learned. The Latin translations in the Polyglots are not to be fully depended on. Dr. Pococke, who, as an Arabic scholar, Golius has said, was second to no man, has pronounced the condemnation of the Latin rendering of the Arabic scriptures in those great works; and with respect to that of the Peschito, Michaëlis affirms, that the author, Sionita, had cuted it with the greatest inaccuracy; as almost every page betrays either hurry or ignorance, and not seldom both qualities united;" while of the translation of Schaaf it may be observed, that, though not liable to this sweeping charge of inaccuracy, it is not sufficiently idiomatic to be a true representation of the Syrian Testament. It is with the utmost diffidence that I offer this effort in our own language. Should it assist any of my fellow-disciples in their inquiry into the meaning of the divine oracles, the solitary toil of some years will not have been in vain. I have endeavoured to render the Syriac as literally as the structure of the two languages would allow; having been desirous, not merely of translating, in the general sense of the term, but of giving, as faithfully as possible, a

delineation of the peculiar cast of expression which the inspired writings possess in this venerable text of the oriental church.

On this account, as I have observed before, the ordinary choice enjoyed by a translator between the literal and the free method of rendering his subject could not be exercised; since the translation here, to be of any specific utility to the biblical student unacquainted with Aramaic, must, of necessity, be given ad verbum. It should be such a version as that defined by a great master in the science of interpretation: "An exact image of the original; in which image nothing should be drawn either greater or less, better or worse, than the original; but, so composed, that it might be acknowledged as another original itself. It follows, that a translator should use those words, and those only, which clearly express all the meaning of the author, and in the same manner as the author." "'* And this has been humbly but strenuously attempted in the present undertaking, both with regard to the grammatical signification of words, and, as far as possible, their collocated order. It need not be remarked, that such a plan would not admit of an artificial elegance of style; after the manner, for example, of Castellio's Latin Testament. Had the individual now writing been ambitious of any thing of this kind, he must have sought for some more appropriate document on which to make the essay; for the task, which it has been his sacred solace as well as labour to fulfil, prohibited even a paraphrastic expression; and demanded that verbal faithfulness to the original, that scrupulous parsimony and careful pondering of words, that tenacitas verborum cum perspicuitate sententiæ, which St. Augustine so commends in the unpolished Italic version; † that determination, in * ERNESTI.

AUGUSTINUS De Doctrina Christiana, lib. xi.

short, to translate literally, not diffusively; to employ such words, and those all in meaning, number, and collocation, as would best portray a true copy of the original; and, following the principle laid down by Morus, so to exhibit the author's thoughts in our own language, as to make it apparent, that, had he himself used our language, he would have expressed himself just as the translator has done.* But, when we apply such a principle to the rendering of the TRUE SAYINGS OF GOD, we may well say, with the profoundest awe, "Who is sufficient for these things?"

* MORUS, Dissert. De Discrimine Sensus et Significationis in Interpretando.

PART II.

SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES.

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THE Syrian canon of the New Testament comprises three parts, the Gospels; the Acts, or Histories, of the Apostles; and the Epistles. THE GOSPELS, as introducing the other portions of the sacred volume, occupy a natural position in the archives of the covenant of grace. They exhibit a history, communicated by the Holy Spirit himself, of that vast transaction by which eternal life has been recovered to us by Him "who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification." But they are more than history, even though inspired. They are a constituent part of a divine document, which not only recounts the cost and manner of our redemption, but sets forth, as well, the mind, the purposes, and promises of a reconciled God to his redeemed creatures; a covenant writing, which the hand of inspiration has indited, sealed, and made over to our world, to attest the reality of our ransom by Christ, and to assure the believer of his true and inviolable right to immortality.

The book of THE ACTS was written by St. Luke, and probably about the year 61. It is a continuation of the Gospel narrative in such particulars as relate to the full opening and establishment of the Christian dispensation. The evangelist did not contemplate the composition of a history of the church at large, inasmuch as he has omitted many of the leading events connected with the first trials and triumphs of the Christian religion, with the certainty, though not the circumstances, of which we have an acquaintance from other sources: such were the martyrdom of James the Less, the persecutions which

rendered necessary the exhortations delivered to the Palestinian Christians in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the earliest Missionary labours in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the conversion of the Edessenes, the foundation of the church in Rome, and other primary transactions which he has deliberately omitted. Nor was it intended to be a memorial of the apostles in general, some of whom are not mentioned; nor a complete biography of St. Paul, for which St. Luke had doubtless the most ample materials but his design was to show how the divine purposes of salvation were unfolded after the ascension of the Redeemer, in the full ushering in of the evangelic dispensation by the advent of the Holy Spirit, and the inauguration of the Gentiles to the fellowship and privileges of the church; a design which gives, it will be perceived, a completeness to the narrative commenced in the Gospels at the nativity of the incarnate Word, and carried down to the consummation of his atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. We find in the developement of this narrative a succession of impressive specimens of the labours of the apostles and first evangelists; and, incidentally, the normal principles of the Christian ecclesiastical polity. We shall read the book of the Acts with greater advantage by keeping these objects of the writer in mind.

In the EPISTLES of the New Testament the preaching of the apostolic time is perpetuated to our own and to all future ages. Though dead, the first commissioned ambassadors of Christ still speak to us, and in words which the Holy Ghost teacheth. By the dispensation of the truth committed to them, the unsearchable riches of the Son of God were to be announced to the nations; and "all men" on earth, and the principalities in heaven, to be given to see the mystery of the true and holy fellowship of men enlightened, sanctified, ennobled, and made happy in the salvation of God. (Eph. iii. 8-11.) In

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