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chapel on the same spot where the old one stood; and soon after made the old house at Auchinhabrig one of the most neat and convenient belonging to the Roman Catholic clergy in Scotland. This and other anavoidable expenses encumbered him with debt; from which he was, however, relieved by the generosity of the late duke of Norfolk. He then thought that a little farm would help him to live more comfortably; but the result was quite the reverse; he was obliged to borrow money to stock it, and the failure of three successive crops plunged him into deeper and deeper difficulties. Another chapel, too, which he built at Fochabers, added considerably to his burdens. The publication of his Satires' that year, brought him in some money, but not enough. Still, however, he had spirit and hopes, and he was not in the end disappointed. In 1779, he left Auchinhabrig, after having continued during ten years in the assiduous discharge of the various duties belonging to his pastoral office. When he retired, it was with the most sincere and unfeigned regret of all those among whom he had ministered. The attention which he paid to the instruction of the young had never been surpassed, and but rarely equalled by any of his predecessors.

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His great learning-which began now to be universally known among the literati of the North-obtained for him, in the year 1780, a diploma, creating him Doctor of Laws, from the university of Aberdeen, an honour that had never, since the Reformation, been conferred by that body on a Roman Catholic.

About this period Dr Geddes went to London, and officiated for a few months as priest in the Imperial ambassador's chapel, till it was suppressed at the end of the year 1780, by an order from the emperor Joseph II. Dr Geddes afterwards preached occasionally at the chapel in Duke street, Lincoln's inn Fields, till Easter, 1782, when, it is believed, he totally declined the exercise of clerical functions.

It was at a much earlier period than this that he formed a design of giving a new translation of the whole Bible. About the year 1760 he began to read with this view; he was then acquainted with only two versions of that book, the vulgar Latin, and the vulgar English; with the latter he became dissatisfied because it was too literal. "When," he says, "from the ancient I turned to the modern versions, my opinion was soon strengthened into conviction. There were seven modern versions to which I had then access-the French, the Italian, the Dutch; and in Latin, those of Munster, Castalio, Junius, and Pagninus. Of these seven, the one which I opened with prejudice, was the one which I read through with the greatest pleasure. I had been taught to consider Castalio's translation as a profane burlesque of holy writ. What was my surprise to find, that he had seized the very spirit of the original, and transfused it into elegant Latin. I saw, indeed, and was sorry to see, that, through his excessive refinement, a part of the simplicity of his original had evaporated in the operation; and, in this respect, his version is inferior to the Vulgate but still the spirit of the original is there; whereas, that of his contrast, Pagninus, appears like an almost breathless body, dragging along its limbs in the most awkward and clumsy manner; yet this Pagninus has been the general model of vernacular versions."

Dr Geddes now resolved to execute a free translation of the Scrip

tures.

After he had spent much of his life in Biblical studies, he com plains of having met with a long and cruel interruption to them, and says, "I had but little hopes of ever being in a situation to resume them, when Providence threw me into the arms of such a patron as Origen himself might have been proud to boast of-a patron, who, for these ten years past, has, with a dignity peculiar to himself, afforded me every conveniency that my heart could desire, towards the carrying on and completing of my arduous work."

While Lord Petre's generosity secured to our author all the comforts of life, and all the means necessary to proceed with his work, it was nevertheless inadequate to indemnify him in the expenses of the press. The subscribers were few in comparison of the magnitude of his undertaking; and the volumes were finished in a style so handsome, and even expensive, that little or perhaps scarcely any profit could have accrued to the author had the whole impression been sold. In the year 1792, the first volume of this work, dedicated to his patron, Lord Petre, and containing the first six books of the Old Testament, was published. This, he informed the public, had been delayed more than a year by a combination of causes and circumstances, which he could neither foresee nor prevent; the principal of which was a long series of bad health, and a lowness of spirits which accompanied it. "A dangerous fever," says he, "and its lasting consequences put a stop to the press-work for a whole year. This was to be submitted to with Christian resignation; but the rubs I have received from human malignancy are a trial of patience not easily borne. Will it be readily believed that these rubs have chiefly been raised by professed Catholics, -by members of that very body which I principally meant to serve,— by mine own brethren, if brethren they may be called, who sit down and speak against their brother, and slander their own mother's son !' Ignorance, envy, and malice, in the various shapes of Monks, Friars, and Witlings, have been busy these ten years in depreciating my labours, and assassinating my reputation."

Soon after the publication of this volume, three Vicars Apostolic, styling themselves the bishops of Rama, Acanthos, and Centuriæ, issued a Pastoral Letter, addressed to their respective flocks, warning them against the reception and use of Dr Geddes' version. This episcopal stretch of power, as Dr Geddes conceived it to be, occasioned a correspondence between him and the bishop of Centuriæ; in the course of which the prelate, availing himself of the authority belonging to his office, declared the doctor suspended from the exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, unless within the course of a few days he should signify his submission to an injunction contained in the Pastoral Letter. The doctor was not a whit deterred by this threat, and in a short time afterwards he published a much longer letter to the bishop with a short preface addressed to the English Catholics, in which he says: "I trust ye will not deem it presumption in me to grapple with the bishops; indeed, I would boldly grapple with popes, if popes dared to injure me. Our Catholic ancestors frequently grappled with them, and sometimes came off victorious. A pope, and consequently a bishop,-may do wrong, and if he do wrong, may be told of it even by an inferior."

It was not till the year 1797, that the second volume of the Translation' was given to the world. It was dedicated to her royal highness

the duchess of Gloucester, as an 66 early, spontaneous, and liberal encourager of the work." In the preface to this volume, Dr Geddes boldly controverts the doctrine of the absolute and plenary inspiration of the scriptures; he considers the Hebrew historians to have written from such human documents as they could find, and that consequently they were liable to mistakes. In the scale of merit, he ranks them much lower than the more celebrated historians of Greece and Rome, because, after carefully perusing them, and properly appreciating their value, he was unable, as he thought, to find in the Hebrew writers that elegance, correctness, and lucid order, which were to be found in the Greeks and Romans. In his volume of Critical Remarks,' published in the year 1800, he entered into a vindication of his theory.

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Besides the translation of the early books of the Bible, and the 'Critical Remarks,' Dr Geddes wrote The Prospectus of a New Translation of the Bible,' 4to. 1786.- A Letter to the Bishop of London on the same subject,' 1787. His proposals came out in 1788. In the year 1790, he published a 'General Answer to the Queries, Counsels, and Criticisms respecting the intended Translation.' In 1793, he wrote an Address to the Public on the Publication of his New Translation; and in the succeeding year, his letter to, and correspondence with, the bishop of Centuriæ, were published. As a controversialist, Dr Geddes distinguished himself in the year 1787, by a 'Letter to Dr Priestley, in defence of the Divinity of Jesus Christ; and, a ' Letter to a Member of Parliament, on the expediency of a general repeal of all penal statutes that regard religious opinions. In a Modest Apology for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain,' published in the spring of 1800, Dr Geddes displayed much zeal in defence of the tenets to which he adhered, and great moderation when descanting upon the injuries to which himself and brethren were subject, by the continuance of persecuting laws. In pursuing his great work, Dr Geddes intended next to have presented the world with a new translation of the book of Psalms. During the last whole year of his life, his studies and literary labours were greatly interrupted by a long series of painful affliction, yet in every interval of ease he applied to a work in which his heart was engaged. He had already printed in octavo size one hundred and four of the Psalms, and had prepared completely for the press as far as the 118th Psalm, when he was arrested by a most painful and excruciating disorder, which terminated his life on the 26th of February, 1802.

Dr John Mason Good published Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr Geddes,' in 1803. The following is a portion of the biographer's general sketch of the doctor's character: "In his corporeal make he was slender, and in the bold and formidable outlines of his countenance, not highly prepossessing on a first interview; but never was there a face or form through which the soul developed itself more completely than through his own. Every feature, and indeed every limb, was in harmony with the entire system, and displayed the restless and indefatigable operations of the interior of the machine. A play of cheerfulness beamed uniformly from his cheeks, and his animated eyes rather darted than looked benevolence. Yet such was the irritability of his nerves, that a slight degree of opposition to his opinions, and especially when advanced by persons whose mental powers did not warrant such oppo

sition, put to flight in a moment the natural character of his countenance, and cheerfulness and benevolence were exchanged for exacerbation and tumult. Of this physical and irresistible impulse in his constitution, no man was more thoroughly sensible than himself; and if no man ever less succeeded in subduing it, no man ever took more pains to obtain a victory. Let us, however, fairly strike the balance, and we shall find, that if such a peculiar construction of body had its evil, it also had its advantage; and that the very irritability of soul which occasionally hurried him, against his consent, into a violence of controversy not perfectly consistent with the polished manners of the day, hurried him a thousand times oftener, and with a thousand times more rapidity, because assisted instead of opposed by his judgment, into acts of kindness and benevolence. The moment he beheld the possibility of doing good by his own exertions, the good was instantly done, although it were to a man who, perhaps, had causelessly quarrelled with him a few hours before. It was not in his nature to pause, with our academic and cold-blooded philosophers of the present day, that he might first weigh the precise demand of moral or political justice, and inquire into the advantage that would accrue to himself, or in what manner the world at large might be benefited either by a good action or a good example; it was stimulus enough for him that distress existed, and that he knew it, and it afterwards afforded him satisfaction enough, that he had removed or mitigated it. In intellectual talents, he had few equals, and fewer still who had improved the possession of equal talents in an equal degree. To an ardent thirst after knowledge, in all its multitudinous ramifications, he added an astonishing facility in acquiring and retaining it: and so extensive was his erudition, that it was difficult to start a subject into which he could not enter, and be heard with both attention and profit. But theology was the prime object of his pursuits, the darling science of his heart, which he had indefatigably studied from his infancy, and to which every other acquisition was made to bend. From his verbal knowledge of the Bible, he might have been regarded as a living concordance; and this not with respect to any individual language alone, or the various and rival renderings of any individual language, but a concordance that should comprise the best exemplars of the most celebrated tongues into which the Bible has ever been translated. As an interpreter of it, he was strictly faithful and honest to the meaning, or what he apprehended to be the meaning, of his original; and though, in his critical remarks upon the text, he allowed himself a latitude and boldness which injured his popularity, and drew down upon his head a torrent of abusive appellations, how seldom have we seen a man systematically educated in the characteristic tenets of any established community whatsoever, and especially of the church of Rome, who, when he has once begun to feel his independence, and has determined to shake off his fetters, and to think for himself, has not flown much further from the goal at which he started."

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THE grandfather of Dr Erskine was Lieutenant Colonel John Erskine, son of Henry, second Lord Cardross, who suffered severely during the tyrannical reign of Charles the Second, on account of his attachment to presbyterian principles. Colonel Erskine, who escaped to Holland under circumstances of jeopardy during the reign of James the Second, was one of the most zealous supporters of the revolution in 1688, a warm friend of the Hanover succession, and a determined and conscientious adherent to the church of Scotland. Many anecdotes are still told of this respectable gentleman, illustrative of his peculiarities as a man, his unbending politics as a whig, and his conduct as a Christian. His father was the eldest son of the colonel, and was bred to the profession of the law. He was for many years professor of Scots law in the university of Edinburgh, and while in this office published Institutes of the Law of Scotland,' which continues to this day the standard book of reference in the courts of that country.

Mr Erskine, his eldest son, was born on the 2d of June, 1721. His mother was the daughter of the Hon. James Melville, of Balgarvie, in the county of Fife. He received the rudiments of his classical education, assisted by a private tutor, at the school of Cupar, in Fife, where his grandmother lived; and at the high-school of Edinburgh, and entered the university there some time between 1733 and 1737. At that period several of the chairs were occupied by men of considerable eminence. Sir John Pringle, who was afterwards president of the Royal society of London, was professor of moral philosophy; and of his lectures in this important department, Dr Erskine speaks with high approbation, in the appendix to his sermon on the death of Dr Robert

son.

It was the

Dr Erskine was not originally destined for the ministry. wish of his family that he should devote his life to the practice of the law; a profession in which his father had acquired distinguished reputation, and where, had he applied himself, he had every encouragement to expect its honours and emoluments. Indeed he attended the law classes after his course of philosophy was finished, and no doubt afterwards experienced the benefit of these studies. But nothing could divert his mind from the great object to which he determined to devote his time and his talents. His attachment to the ministry of the gospel conquered the pride of family, the love of honour, and the temptation' of riches. It would appear that he had considerable difficulty in obtaining his father's consent; though there is no foundation whatever for the assertion of Warburton, in one of his letters to Hurd, that his father disinherited him on this account. In a letter to Dr Doddridge, he had communicated a copy of the reasons which he had assigned to his father in justification of his choice. To this the doctor refers in his answer, dated Northampton, June 11th, 1743:-"The account which you gave to your worthy father, of the motives which determined your resolution to enter on the ministry, in that excellent letter which you

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