The publication of Ward s Errata to the Protestant Bible has disclosed a most curious and important fact, that the scriptural church of England and I reland was originally founded on a false translation of the scriptures. It was the boast of the first reformers, that they had emancipated their disciples from the shackles of Catholic despotism, and had restored to them the freedom of the children of God :it now appears, that this freedom consisted in reading an erroneous version of the inspired writings, and in venerating as the dictates of eternal Wisdom the blunders of ignorant or interested translators. The scriptures, they exclaimed, are the sole rule of faith. Here they are, no longer concealed under the obscurity of a learned language, but exhibited to you in your native tongue. Here you will easily detect the errors of Popery, and learn the true doctrine of the Gospel. The credulity of multitudes accepted with joy the proffered boon ;the new teachers were hailed as apostles commissioned by heaven ;and every old woman, both male and female, that could read, became an adept, if not in the knowledge of the Bible, at least in the prejudices and errors of its translators. It is not for man to dispute the wisdom of Providence, and arraign at the bar of his private judgment the means which God may choose for the diffusion of religious knowledge. Otherwise, I must confess, there appears to me something very unaccountable in the scriptural blunders of the apostles of the reformation. The object, they said, of their mission was the dissemination of evangelic truth. If the Holy Spirit selected them for this important office, he must also have gifted them with the true knowledge of the scriptures, and, if he gifted them with the true knowledge of the scriptures, it seems to follow that he ought also to have granted them the power to make a true translation of the
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