What contributed not a little to inflame the Rev. Editor to this pitch of vehemence, was the following notice, which appeared on the cover of the same Number of the Jewish Expositor (Jan. 1831).

The Jewish Expositor consists of two parts. The Monthly Intelligence, or concluding sheet, is the official publication of the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews, and may be had separately. The rest of the work consists of miscellaneous matter, the Editor of which, while the Committee of the London Society are in no degree responsible for what he publishes, is cordially desirous to promote their important object.'

This disclaimer proved an insufficient warning to the infatuated Editor; and on the cover of the April No., the Committee deemed it requisite to repeat the notice, with the additional intimation, that it did not belong to their province to 'exercise any superintendence over the contents' of the miscellaneous parts. Mr. Boys floundered on; and on the cover of the June No. appears the following final notice, which decided the fate of the publication.

We regret to state that the Monthly Intelligence of the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews, is withdrawn by a Resolution of the Society's Committee.'

No. I, of a new series, edited by the Rev. Thomas Boys, M.A., was announced, to appear in a few weeks; but it has never had birth.

In the mean time, Mr. Boys had not toiled wholly in vain. His criticisms, though refuted and exposed, and his editorial labours, though thus discarded and repudiated by his em ployers, had excited the attention of the enemies of the Bible Society in the north; and the essence of his charges against Mr. Greenfield is thus concentrated by Mr. Robert Haldane into one pithy and monstrous calumny.

To crown the whole of the extraordinary proceedings of the Earl Street Committee, Mr. Greenfield is now engaged as superintendant of the translating and editorial department of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Mr. Greenfield was recommended to the committee as a proper person for this office, as being the author of the prefaces and notes to Bagster's Comprehensive Bible. It is unnecessary here to expose the neologian and infidel character of many of these notes. This has recently been done by three respectable clergymen of the Church of England,-Mr. Boys, Mr. Gipps, and Mr. Thelwall. Mr. Boys exhibits and comments on several of them, proving that they are of the very worst description, and that they come to neither more nor less than this, that the Bible is not true.'

And then Mr. Haldane cites Mr. Boys's criticism on the notes to Exod. xxx. 6, and Luke i. 20, which we have already

transcribed, as the sufficient justification of this most abominable and scandalous untruth. Nothing loses by repeating; and the refuted charges have been industriously propagated, with variations, by the writers in the Record, and through other channels. In the twenty-second Report of the Edinburgh Bible Society, just published, the appointment of Mr. Greenfield forms a very prominent feature in the periodical tirade against the delinquencies of the Earl Street Committee; accompanied with a specific reference to the volume entitled "The Pillar of Truth," which is represented as an impotent defence' of the Comprehensive Bible, and is denounced with a still deeper ' and more unfaltering tone of condemnation.'

Of the unsatisfactory nature of this defence', says this Report, it might perhaps be sufficient to remark, that a charge of immorality can never be successfully refuted, by alleging that the accused has performed some good and moral actions. Still less can it be an apology for treating the Word of God with irreverence, that, in other parts of the same work, the truths of Christianity are not assailed. The charge against Bagster's Bible was not that it contained unmingled error, but that the criticisms discover a great want of reverence for the inspired record, and that the work is generally imbued with neologian principles.' Twenty-Second Report, pp. 36, 37.

The inditers of this paragraph must deliberately have calculated upon excluding The Pillar of Truth' from circulation, within reach of their influence; otherwise, they could never have ventured to give this deceptive account of the volume. The publication which they represent as a defence' and 'a 'failure', is, in fact, nothing more than a selection of the arguments and illustrations comprised in the pages of the Comprehensive Bible, with the mere addition, occasionally, of a few connecting words, or such passages of Scripture as were necessary for the correct apprehension of the subject. No defence of the notes is attempted; nor is any notice taken of the charges brought against Bagster's Bible; there is nothing polemical about the volume. It simply presents to the reader the detached and scattered notes in a consecutive arrangement; thus confronting calumny, not with argument, but with the naked fact. This practical reply to malignant misrepresentation is termed by these Edinburgh gentlemen a failure, a total failure, an utterly unsatisfactory defence, purely because, without being a defence, it is a complete refutation of the atrocious slander, the wickedness of which every reader of the volume must instantly detect. Why else should these gentlemen have felt compelled, while praising the Publisher for his honesty, to denounce the publication with a still deeper and more unfaltering tone of condemnation'? Wherefore, but because it is always necessary to increase the strength of asseveration, as the

danger of detection is increased. "Then began Peter to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man." The Prefaces and Notes reprinted as they originally appeared', could not surely deserve deeper condemnation' on account of their being detached from the sacred text, and exhibited in a separate publication. Were they as 'insidious and dangerous', as the Edinburgh folk represent them to be, one would think that they must be, in this shape, less insidious, less dangerous, less deeply to be condemned, than when intermingled with the Scriptures. In condemning this publication, therefore, in a deeper and more unfaltering tone, they have only overshot the mark, and betrayed themselves.

Not content, however, with misrepresenting this publication as an impotent Defence, the Writer of the Edinburgh Report puts arguments into the mouth of the Editor, for the purpose of replying to the supposed allegations. A charge of immorality,' it is remarked, can never be successfully refuted by alleging, 'that the accused has performed some good and moral actions.' Perfectly just; and "out of thine own mouth shalt thou be judged." Be it so, that, in bringing charges of the grossest kind against men of unblemished reputation, charges of insidious intention, mercenary motive, a clinging to power or place, dishonesty, denial of Christ, heresy, and apostacy,-the character of the accused parties goes for nothing, and that their known actions can furnish no refutation of the libel;-be it so: the Edinburgh Committee must submit to be tried by the same rule, and to have the same measure meted out to them. Whatever estimable qualities may adorn their private character as individuals, they have taught us to pronounce upon palpable immorality-the immorality of deliberate misrepresentation and indignant cruelty-without faltering or partiality.

We will then concede that, in relation to the present question, the character of the accused goes for nothing; that the character for orthodoxy and consistent piety borne by Mr. Bagster for more than half a century, goes for nothing; that the fact of Mr. Greenfield's not being a neologist, and all the services he has rendered to Biblical literature go for nothing. If, instead of his having long been a member of the late Dr. Waugh's church, he had been an attendant at Essex Street or the Rotunda, the charge would not, according to the reasoning which goes down in Edinburgh, have been a whit more credible. Very well. But who has alleged any such absurdity as that the Comprehensive Bible ought not to be censured, because the Editor has performed some good actions, or because, in some parts of that work, the truths of Christianity are not assailed? Wherefore all this pains to disprove a plea never set up? How true is it, that one falsehood begets another! The

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only defence offered by the Publisher of Bagster's Bible, is the reprinting of the calumniated Notes; thus submitting to full investigation the very act which is stigmatized as immorality. But the assault was made, not upon Mr. Bagster only, and upon Mr. Greenfield, but upon the Earl Street Committee for taking into their employ a man destitute of the most essential qualifications for the office to which he has been appointed, and, by so doing, striving to lay the ax to the root of the tree of life, and to wither those leaves which are for the healing of the 'nations. Stronger language than this could not have been used, had Mr. Greenfield been a professed infidel. Now, in such a case, the character of the accused will at least out-weigh that of the calumniator. Before the Notes to the Comprehensive Bible can be proved to be insidious, dangerous, and such as render their author unfit to be employed in the task of philological revision, these Edinburgh gentlemen must succeed in destroying the character for orthodoxy, integrity, and piety, not of Mr. Greenfield only, the unoffending object of their malignity, but of the real authors of the notes and criticisms which he has cited; that is to say, of Bishop Lowth, of Blayney, of Kennicott, of Scott, of Faber, of Dr. A. Clarke, and others, from whose works the very passages most strongly reprobated are taken. Then, and not till then, will they obtain credit for believing in their own representations. Unless Mr. Greenfield can be accused of having garbled the citations he has made, his intention in compiling cannot surely be more insidious than that which actuated his authorities respectively in inditing the matter contained in the Notes. And if the general character of the Compilation be called in question, which these veracious gentlemen represent (at p. 33 of their Report) as 'a mass of error,' and deeply impregnated with the poison of German 'neology,' while yet (at p. 37) they say, the charge against 'Bagster's Bible was not, that it contained unmingled error,'then, we must think that the Publisher, by bringing that mass of error, which is yet not a mass of error, fairly before the public in the tangible shape of 'The Pillar of Truth,' has taken the very best and fairest method of enabling that public to appreciate the intentions and competency of the Compiler, and the animus of these pious rebukers of immorality' and neologism.

6

To our worthy friends on the other side of the Tweed, this language will doubtless appear very personal, and it may be called abuse. But is it to be endured, that a body of men calling themselves Christians and Gentlemen, should continue to issue, year after year, a series of the foulest attacks upon individuals every whit as respectable as themselves, to say the least,to stamp with their collective sanction the darkest calumnies and basest misrepresentations, and then to claim the privilege of immunity from exposure? Is it not a horrible thing, to find

a conspiracy organized under the name of a Bible Society, its main object being to hinder the circulation of the Bible, under the old Popish pretence of securing a purer circulation and a 'purer agency?' For our own parts, we can most truly say, that our grief at such a display of awful self-deception, of Pharisaic zeal in unison with Pharisaic morality, is far deeper than even our indignation. Nothing but the publicity and reiteration of the crime should have induced us to inflict this public chastisement on the delinquents, and to turn back on their own heads the scorn, reprobation, and abhorrence which they have for years been endeavouring to excite towards the Committee and Officers of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and every individual in any way connected with them.

Of Mr. Greenfield's competency for his office as the Superintendant of the Translating Department, we have now before us a specimen which will bring the question to a fair issue. And it happens, singularly enough, that, in this instance, Mr. Greenfield's merits and qualifications come into direct comparison with those of some of his reverend assailants. This beautifully printed edition of the New Testament in Hebrew, for which the religious public are indebted to the enterprise of the publisher of the Comprehensive Bible, is substantially a new translation from the original; and the Translator is Mr. Greenfield. Now, as there previously existed a Hebrew Version of the New Testament, executed under the auspices of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, and towards which the Edinburgh Bible Society have contributed £700, it must doubtless seem a work of presumptuous supererogation on the part of Mr. Bagster, to employ Mr. Greenfield in preparing a new Translation. Doubtless their joint object must have been, to neologize the sacred text; and the critical examination of the present Translator's performance cannot fail to supply fresh proof of his heterodox propensities. The Translation put forth under the sanction of the Rev. Thomas Boys, Hebrew and Theological Tutor of the Jewish Institution, and of his learned coadjutors, must of necessity be pre-eminently pure, orthodox, and trustworthy. That learned Hebraist does not receive £400 a year for doing nothing. Judah d'Allemand, too, was, we apprehend, well paid. Nor would the Edinburgh Committee have sent six donations in aid of the Translation, without having previously ascertained the orthodoxy, competency, and fidelity of all parties concerned. Nay, it appears that the Earl Street Committee have circulated some five or six thousand of these Hebrew Testaments, on the faith of the auspices under which the Translation was executed. Whereas Mr. Greenfield's translation is, at present, under a critical quarantine. Now, then, is the time for comparing the rival Versions, with a