and administer every ordinance of religion. "I am united to your blessedness, that is, to the See of Peter, to whom Christ said, 'feed my lambs,' 'feed my sheep,"" is the cheering cry of every Catholic minister now, as it was in the days of Jerome and Augustine. But out of this Church there is no such mission. The Apostolical line has been broken elsewhere by heresy, the line of preachers is new; it may ascend as high as some king-reformer, or some other, who notoriously rebelled against, and left the Church of his ordination, but there it stops; and there a line begins, new, and isolated, and unknown as an authority, to the rest of Christendom. The Church of the new preachers may be be a regal Establishment, it may have the authority of a parliament for its existence; but that is its highest honor, and this is its creation. The Establishment being essentially English, it may be called the English Church: but what becomes of the Church of our common creed? What is the meaning of the words "I believe in the holy Catholic Church," when repeated by an Anglican?

What did religion gain by the removal of a Pope, and the substitution of a King for the spiritual head? Unity of faith? That has disappeared. Freedom from the state? She has become its slave. The power of enforcing discipline? That has been taken out of her hands. The appointment of her own ministers? No, no: ministers of state appoint these. I speak of a fact; I care not how this fact may be explained in words; but the state does appoint the episcopal order; and though the clergy, even with a dean at their head, may denounce the bishop elect as an infidel, still the bishop elect will soon become the

consecrated prelate, and in his hands will be placed the reins of spiritual power, together with the riches of the see.1 Has virtue been promoted? No: even the Anglican bishops are forced to regret the heathenism and demoralization of these days. Has a knowledge of the Bible at least been the result? Again I answer no. See the crowds who follow dissent in a thousand contradictory forms, and my answer is at once justified. Attend to the reports relative to the state of knowledge in our towns, and what shall you find? That there are numbers who know not who Christ is-many, who hardly know even if there be a God. And has England left herself a chance of becoming Catholic, and of ceasing to be an object of pity to the nations of the world, on account of her separatism? No: the Dutchman's act justifies rebellion, in case an English monarch shall dare to belong to the Church of the Alfreds, and Edwards, and Richards, who formerly held the English sceptre. Since that day,

On Christmas night no Mass is sung;

the Mass has been proscribed. Since the Reformation, no more do we hear that knell

Which they were wont to toll

For welfare of a parted soul;

for prayers for the dead, if not illegal, are not consistent with Protestant ideas. Anglicans will not be helped by the prayers of the faithful, or believe in a middle state of

Let the reader bear in mind what occurred on the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the See of Hereford.

souls; but, with the profane Skelton, tutor to Henry VIII,

they say,

"I will no priestis for me sing-Dies iræ, dies illa," &c.

No more

Merry sing the monks of Ely

When the king is passing by;

....

The monasteries, still glorious, even in their present ruined condition, are the receptacles of lowing cattle and birds of night: God's praises may no more be celebrated there. Angel guardians have been banished; the "communion of saints" is no longer enjoyed; a table has taken the place of the altar; and Christ, having left his temple, it seems to be under an interdict. Men no longer walk on a rock,—on the soliditas cathedræ Petri, but on a quicksand: here to-day, there to-morrow. Poor England! If some men will prefer the barley-corn to the gem; the teachings of Wart, Slender, Mouldy, and Shallow, to the teachings of the Leos, Gregories, and Piuses, who shall envy their choice? To us, who have the happiness of being Catholics, be it given to remain to the end, united to Peter's See, that see which made England Catholic, and further, which made it one, and holy, and happy.

177

Chapter the Seventh.

On the Anglican Authorized Bible.

CONTENTS.

Heretics, both ancient and modern, adopt some distinctive version of the Scriptures.-Necessity of this; and consequent recriminations.— Translations formerly approved of, but condemned by Henry VIII.— Elizabeth's Bibles denounced.-The Authorized version of 1611.— History of this version.-The Translators, and the rules which they were obliged by James to follow.-No correct Anglican Bible till seventy-seven years after the Reformation.-Consequences to be drawn from this admission, fatal to the Reformation.-The Authorized Version has been and is complained of by the learned.-Proofs.-Lowth has shaken to pieces the very foundations on which the translation of the Old Testament was based.-Obvious difficulties in connection with the translation of the New Testament.-Development of the principles of this difficulty.-Labours of Mills and others to recover the true Apostolic text.-Proofs given in detail of the ignorance and unfitness of the English translators.

Ar all times, the various sects which have divided the Church have had recourse to new translations of the Sacred Scriptures. Marcion, as Tertullian informs us, rejected the version made use of by the first apologist of Christianity; the Arians adopted an edition of the Scriptures which was emphatically their own; and so it was with the other sects which appeared age after age. What then happened has particularly characterized the heresies.

of the sixteenth and following centuries. Beza, and Castalio, and Luther and Calvin, as well as the English reformers, all heaven-sent, if their words are worthy of credit, deemed it wise, if not absolutely necessary, to issue fresh translations of the Sacred Scriptures, when engaged in the task of teaching new systems and new creeds. Innovations of the Bible kept pace with innovations of faith: the Bible was to be reformed when the

Reformation was to be spread. This was obviously natural. As might be expected, the Bible of one party met with opposition from the defenders of another Bible and another creed. If Beza condemned the translation of Ecolampadius, Castalio condemned Beza's version, and Molinous condemned Castalio's. Luther censured Munzer, and Zwingli Luther, for having mistranslated the sacred text. Nor have the English translators escaped censure. Notwithstanding the praise originally given by the Anglican reformers to the translation made by Tyndal, it was enacted by the authority of Parliament in 1543— "that all manner of books of the Old and New Testament, of the crafty, false, and untrue translation of Tyndal, be forthwith abolished, and forbidden to be used and kept: and also, that all other Bibles, not being of Tyndal's translation, in which were found any preambles or annotations, other than the quotations or summary of the chapters, should be purged of the said preambles or annotations, either by cutting them out, or blotting them in such wise that they might not be perceived or read; and finally, that the Bible be not read openly in any Church, but by leave of the King, or of the ordinary of the place; nor privately by any women, artificers, apprentices, journeymen, husbandmen, labourers, or by any of the servants of yeo