books of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and revised those of the New by the best exemplars of the original he could obtain, and by a sedulous collation of the ancient Latin copies among themselves. His object was not to create a new text, but to rectify the more considerable errors of that already extant; and from which, as he says in his prefatory epistle to Damasus, he made it a rule not to depart more than was demanded by the sense. *

The recension thus accomplished by Jerome did not for a long time obtain general favour in the West; and, even in Rome, so late as the time of St. Gregory in 590, was merely considered as of co-ordinate authority with the more ancient versions. In an epistle to Leander, bishop of Seville, Gregory says expressly, that at Rome they used both the old and the new. Sedes Apostolica, cui præsideo, utraque translatione utitur. Yet in his own works he declares his personal preference of the new edition. Isidore, of Spain, also strongly recommended Jerome's work as more clear and trustworthy than the more ancient but confused versions; and the great theologians of the middle ages, Remigius, Bede, Rabanus, Bernard, Anselm, Peter Lombard, Albert, Aquinas, Bonaventura, and others, from one century to another, adopted it as their favourite standard of scripture.†

But the text, meantime, became subject to the same mutations which had interfered with the purity of the Vetus Latina. A custom introduced by Cassiodorus, (once a senator and minister to Theodoric, and afterwards an active president of a large monastery, and a zealous promoter of biblical studies,) of transcribing the version

* Iis tantum quæ sensum videbantur mutare correctis. The critics, however, have complained that he did not fully adhere to this principle. Vide SIMON, Hist. Critique du N. T. tom. ii. 29, &c.; and WETSTEIN's Prolegomena, p. 83.

+ Yet the Anglo-Saxon version (ninth century) was made from the old Latin.

of Jerome in parallel columns with the old ones, for the sake of convenient comparison, led to those mutual corrections and alterations of the texts which confounded one with the other. The propensity of some of the monkish scribes (" qui se sont mesles du mestier de critiques") for extempore emendations, and the unavoidable lapses of the pen, contributed to bring the Latin scriptures into sad deterioration. A specimen of this medi

æval Vulgate is found in the richly ornate manuscript of St. Emeram at Ratisbon, which was executed under the patronage of Charles the Bald. In this work, which is written in golden letters and bound in gold, set with pearls and precious stones, the text (that of the gospels) is a melange of several, and differs greatly, on that account, both from the ancient and Hieronymian Latin.

The emperor Charlemagne, in his care for the prosperity of religion and learning, had been desirous of restraining this tendency, and had made some efforts to provide the church with more correct exemplars ;* but the measures he adopted were not of sufficient extent or effectiveness to remedy an evil which seems in that state of society to have been inevitable, till the advent of the more hopeful times which, with other auguries of good in store for the world, witnessed the development of that wonder-working art which gives an unlimited multiplication to the records of truth, and insures their incorruptible integrity.

* MABILLON, Annal. tom. i. p. 25; THEGAN US, De Gestis Lud. Pii, apud DUCHESNE, Scriptores Francici, tom. ii. p. 277. Among those who laboured subsequently in this department was Stephen, second abbot of Citeaux, who, in attempting a new revision, invited the assistance of some learned Jews, to enable him to prefer those readings in the Old Testament which were most conformed to the Hebrew. Some of the authors of the low ages made a sort of catalogues raisonnés of errata in the Latin scriptures, which they called Biblical Correctories. Dupin mentions two Mss. of these, which, in his day, were in the library of the Sorbonne. Biblioth. des Aut. tom. xiv. p. 203.

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, Vulgata 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.

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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.