It has been said of earthly troubles, "If you gently touch a nettle, it will sting you for your pains; And the same is true in spiritual things. They whose chief end is to consult their own happiness, will always miss it. Past, Present, and Future will combine to distress them. But the heart armed with the purpose to follow Christ even in suffering -if needs be as he suffered, will find Omnipotence bear it along its appointed course. But it will be said, "When we find even good men arrayed against us, what are we to think?" Why, that it always has been so. Had Abraham consulted some good man of his day, whether he should go to Mount Moriah, would his adviser have told him go? When Peter told his Master, resolved to ascend the cross, "That be far from thee, Lord," what was the reply? "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me, for thou savorest not of the things that be of God, but those that be of men." Suppose Paul had held his peace and not withstood Peter to his face before the Church, where had been our Christian freedom to-day? Or suppose that Luther, instead of manfully doing God's work, had contented himself with berating the times, what had become of the Reformation? If that disciple, whom Jesus loved, testified in his old age, "I wrote unto the Church, but such and such an one receiveth us not," we need not study popularity. In the long run it is easier to please Christ than to suit even good men. If we had more of the spirit represented on that seal, where the ox stands with a plough on one side and an altar on the other, and the motto, "Ready for either," there would be less of gloomy foreboding, and more of wholesome and hearty joy. It is the double-minded man, who is ever glancing at his own comfort, that is unhappy. Paul, when he said, “For me to live is Christ," was sorrow proof. The world has always hated God. The Church has always caused grief to its truest friends, from the days of Moses even until now; and so will it ever be, while there remains a world and the Church is not yet glorified. Often the servant of Christ will find himself like a soldier, left, by the retreat of his comrades, to fight alone. But he is not alone, for Christ abideth in him and he in Christ; and if he be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, he will find his labor not in vain in the Lord, and the God of all grace who hath called him unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that he has suffered a while, will make him perfect. ARTICLE VII. THE ORIGIN OF THE LATIN VULGATE. Ir was on the eighth of April, A. D. 1546, that "the sacred and holy, œcumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost," passed the following decree : Insuper eadem sacro-sancta Synodus, considerans non parùm utilitatis accedere posse Ecclesiæ Dei, si ex omnibus Latinis editionibus, quæ circumferuntur, sacrorum librorum, quænam pro authentica habenda sit, innotescat; statuit, et declarat, ut hæc ipsa vetus et Vulgata editio, quæ longo tot seculorum usu in ipsa Ecclesia probata est, in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, prædicationibus, et expositionibus, pro authentica habeatur; et ut nemo illam rejicere quovis prætextu audeat, vel præsumat." "Moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod, considering that no little utility may accrue to the Church of God, if, out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, it be known which is to be held as authentic, ordains and declares, that the said old and Vulgate edition, which, by the long usage of so many ages, has been approved in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, preachings and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext soever." [Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Buckley's Translation. The Latin Vulgate Bible, a compilation of translations by known and unknown authors, being thus crowded into the place of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, as the text of common use, authority, and final appeal; and being thus held and used by so large a branch of the Christian Church, it is of importance to know, in outline at least, its origin, history, and comparative purity. It is also a matter of no small interest to notice the beginnings of a book fifteen hundred years old, where various hands, and without concert, furnished parts, and the disjecta membra came together by mutual attraction. Its increase till every part was supplied; the eliminating, substituting, and interpolating process, by which it was purified; its coming into favor over powerful rivals; its corruptions as it run the gauntlet of the ages, and its pious recensions; and finally, as an aggregation of translations, taking the place of the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, these things make the history of the Latin Vulgate an exceedingly interesting memoir to the scholar as well as the Christian. The book has had a most eventful life, and came to its crowning after the strange adventures of a thousand years, when the Council of Trent ordained and declared the said old Vulgate to be supreme authority in the one Holy Catholic Church. This The prevalent language of the readers and writers among the Christians of the apostolic age was the Greek. Throughout the more civilized nations of the Roman Empire it was the language of literature, while in Greece, Egypt, and perhaps Syria, it was the language of common life. There is presumption almost to proof that the entire New Testament was given by inspiration in this language. The notion of some, that the Gospel according to Matthew and the Epistle to the Hebrews, were written originally in Hebrew, is greatly wanting in reliable data. And the Old Testament Scriptures, then in common. use, were in this language. The most ancient version was the Septuagint, made by Alexandrian Jews, about 285 B. C. was used by our Lord and his Apostles; one hundred and fortyseven of the two hundred and forty-four quotations from the Old Testament in the New being from the Septuagint. In the first two centuries this version was much used by both Jews and Christians, and so became imperfect through the mistakes of the copyists. Early in the third century, therefore, Origen undertook a revision. In his studies and travels, gathering materials for this work, which cost him the labors of twenty-eight years, he found six other Greek versions of the Old Testament; that of Aquila, of Symmachus, of Theodotion, and three anonymous. So generally did the early Church use the Bible in Greek. It was the text not only in the Greek churches, but for many years the Latins had no other. But as the conquests of Alexander had carried this language through his vast empire, so the Romans, when they supplanted it by their victories, carried with them the Latin tongue. And so there slowly sprung up a demand for the Scriptures in that language. Before the close of the second century there was a Latin version. Tertullian made use of it, while he severely criticized some of its renderings. Lachmann, in his "Prolegomena to the New Testament," attempts to show that at first there was but one Latin version, originating in a Roman province in Northern Africa, whose capital was Carthage, and that what afterward appear as different versions are but variations and corruptions of this one. Eichhorn has this same view, whom Lachmann seems to have followed. The testimony of Augustine, however, is to the contrary. For, in his treatise on Christian Doctrine, he says that the number of those who translated the Greek Scriptures into the Latin cannot be told. For as soon as Christianity was introduced into any city or province, any one who had a Greek manuscript, and the knowledge to translate it, turned it at once into Latin. There is no evidence that any one before Jerome translated the entire Bible into Latin. One would render a Gospel, another an Epistle, another some other fragment of the holy volume; and so all was eventually translated. Then, to obtain an entire Latin copy, these fragments by different pens were united. By such a process we would expect to see many and varying copies, for no two would be likely to combine the same fragments, and when comparing one copy with another, attempts would be made to harmonize them by varying, amending, and interpolating. And such was the fact. The copies and variations among them multiplied. And confusion was introduced, not only by the differing versions, but by the incorporation of marginal notes into the text through the carelessness of the transcribers. And so the matter stood in the times of Augustine. Yet one version had gained the preeminence, of which this father thus speaks: "In ipsis autem interpretationibus, Itala ceteris præferatur: nam est verborum tenacior, cum perspicuitate sententiæ." Concerning this version, that Augustine calls the Itala, there has been much discussion and investigation within the Romish Church. They assume that it was made in the times of the Apostles, and possibly by one of them, and so has an authority equal to, or above, the original Hebrew and Greek. The other copies or versions, spoken of as extant in the times of Augustine, they regard as corruptions and variations from this one, and that for substance all the churches then had but one Latin translation, and that the Itala. And vast learning and labor have been expended, specially by the Benedictine brethren of St. Maure, to prove this theory of but one version, and to gather again its scattered parts, and set it forth in its integrity, and almost apostolic authority. Prominent among the laborers in this field are Sabatier and Blanchini. The great work of the former was published at Rome in 1743, in three splendid volumes folio. Its one aim was to establish the point in question. The other was issued at Rome in 1749, in four volumes of the largest folio. But the labor was vain for the end sought, though these two vast works furnish much aid in correcting and using the manuscripts of the first ages. Of course the Papal Church, having put the Vulgate in the place of the original Scriptures, is greatly interested to show that the translation, which they have thus exalted, came from a very ancient, if not apostolic pen. But their immense labors for this are a failure. Even Bellarmine admits that, "The Vulgar Edition hath not one author, but some things from Jerome, and some things from Lucian, and some things from Theodotion, and some things from another unknown interpreter." (De Eccl. Script. Lib. 2.) But though the Itala was thus preferred, as being a more literal translation, and truer to the sense, it did not exclude the inferior ones from use, or prevent their multiplication. For when Augustine would persuade Jerome to make an entirely new translation, he said, that the Latin Bibles in use were hardly to be endured, and that one would hesitate to quote any one as authority, they differed so much from each other. Jerome, however, was not moved, at first, to comply with the wish of Augustine, but listened rather to Damasus, Bishop of Rome, (A. D. 366-84,) who requested him to publish a revision of the Itala. This he found to be no easy labor, from |