lation, of the clause, "Our Lord”,—although it indicates a very culpable want of exactness, to say the least. The total misrepresentation of the entire passage is as glaring as it is offensive, and prepares us, at the outset, for the way in which every passage is treated that affirms the deity of the Saviour. We may remark, by the way, that in the Received Version, the departure from the order of the words in the original, is far from judicious, and weakens the force of the passage. The apostle's words might be thus freely rendered: Concerning His Son, the descendant of David, indeed, in His human nature, the mighty (or mightily declared) Son of God (or Messiah) in His holy, spiritual nature, as demonstrated by His resurrection from the dead,-Jesus Christ, Our Lord, from whom, &c. The parallel passage, Rom. ix. 5, Mr. Eyre thus paraphrases:

Of them according to the opinions I then entertained were exclusively the fathers, and from them the Christ; a God over all blessed for ever and ever, from them I mean according to the flesh.'

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ων

In these few lines, we have first, a daring interpolation without the shadow of a reason for it,—' according to the opinions I then entertained' as if it was a matter of opinion whether the patriarchs were of the Hebrew stock, and whether the Messiah was of that race; and as if moreover the Writer had formerly held such an opinion, but now renounced it. Next, here is a needless and violent transposition of the words тò xarà σágua, in utter defiance of the syntax, for the mere purpose of getting rid of their antithetical force. And thirdly, there is the gross impropriety of connecting the indefinite article, not simply with eòs, (which, taken by itself, might be understood in an inferior sense,) but with words that predicate universal supremacy as well as deity : -ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. In four different ways, the Socinians have attempted to evade the evidence of this passage: 1. by cancelling eòs, in defiance of all the MSS. and versions: 2. by interpreting the word as synonymous with Kúgios, which would still leave it impossible to understand the passage as ascribing less than the attributes of Deity to the Lord: 3. by conjecturally changing ô v into v o,—the expedient proposed by Schlitingius, but which even the Editors of the Improved Version deemed too hazardous; although Mr. Belsham has adopted it in his Translation, as preferable to the fourth equally desperate expedient: 4. by altering the punctuation, so as to make the verse conclude with a doxology to the Father *,-a mode so objectionable, that even Socinus, Crellius, Schliting, and Belsham have rejected it.

*The insufficiency, as well as inadmissibility, of this violent change, was pointed out in our review of Mr. Belsham's work, Eclectic Review, Vol. XIX. p. 502.

In this way false witnesses are generally found to confute each other. Mr. Eyre's version has the merit of being, perhaps, the most obviously erroneous and unmeaning. According to his view of the passage, what business has the phrase rò naтà σágua in the sentence at all? It is opposed to nothing; it illustrates nothing; it is altogether superfluous. And according to our Author's Socinian creed, in what sense can Christ be even a god over all, or a lord over all, a supreme and universal sovereign, entitled to eternal praise and worship? For this, take the passage as we will, must be necessarily implied in the expressions. After examining these various shifts of heresy, the conclusion of Michaelis must commend itself to the reader, as the only one which any honest mind can rest in: I, for my part, sincerely believe, that Paul 'here delivers the same doctrine of the divinity of Christ, which is elsewhere unquestionably maintained in the New Testa'ment.'

As Mr. Eyre does not attempt to support his unscrupulous transpositions and conjectural explanations of the original text, by any critical notes, or by any explanation of his principles of translation, it would be a mere waste of time and labour to enter into any further examination of his work, considered as a translation. He may be a scholar, but of competent scholarship we. find no evidence in these volumes; nor of any range of reading, critical or theological. Without wishing to offend, we must say, that the impression they are adapted to leave, is, that the Author's literary acquirements are not much in advance of his theological attainments; nor does the purity of his English compensate for his ill treatment of the Greek. That he may not have to complain of being dismissed without a hearing, we shall transcribe a few felicitous specimens of his Illustration without comment; leaving our readers to judge from them, how far Mr. Eyre's Work can aspire, as a paraphrase, to have as much fidelity as any translation, and as a translation, to be as bene'ficially illustrative as any commentary or paraphrase extant.'

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ROM. V. 1. 6 Through Christ, faithfulness being accounted unto us even as it was to Abraham for righteousness, through Christ, through our pledge to be as to faithfulness one with him, and God's promise to accept us, to accept all the faithful as one with him, we through Christ by faithfulness have access to this gracious state of peace in which we stand before God, through Christ, through his death, whereby as in a mirror we see reflected under a concentration of light the image of that self-prostration, into the similitude of which we are baptized or pledged.

'With God, and as far as concerns our acceptance with him, the pledge if sincere is every thing. In what way, whether with any and what particular overt acts we glorify God depends upon him: whether we fill a throne or a dungeon, it is to him: but to us and our per

sonal salvation, the internal principle is the great consideration.-It is by the internal principle, the spirit of fidelity, the spirit, that spoke through the wounds of Jesus, that we obtain the gift of this peace with God, and are enabled confidently to exult in the hope of his glory, or of the open manifestation of his acceptance. I call it a gift, because with us, as it was with Abraham, it is not a return for an act done, but a free gift, on the presumption that like Abraham we have sincerely determined to obey God whatever the trial, to which he may be pleased to call us.'

ROM. V. 7-10. 'I say therefore, that God's love to us as a ground of hope acquires additional force, if we refer to the season and conjuncture, to our state and condition, at the particular time, when Christ died for us, Christ, in whom as his living word God revealed himself to man, Christ, in whose love for us we recognize the perfect image of that love which our father bears towards us; Christ then in reference to the season of his death has especially bound us in love to his father. A man possibly will die for one who is just to him, though he will do so with reluctance, and for one who is good to him, for a friend, for a benefactor perhaps he shrinks not from death; but God evinced his love to us inasmuch as Christ, (who is the perfect image of his father, who is in effect identified with God in his good will to man by a unity of will and affection,) died for us, while we were yet sinners, yet as it were his enemies.

Being therefore righteous in the sight of God by the death of Christ; being by baptism, or that faithfulness of spirit which is implied in baptism, accepted in Christ, accepted as members of his crucified body, his death, being accepted as ours, who have in baptism faithfully pledged ourselves to be one in all things with Christ; death the penalty of sin being thus paid or rather with reference to us remitted, and ourselves now, notwithstanding our past delinquencies, reinstated in God's favor; and all this resulting from an unexampled and unmerited instance of God's interposing love, we hail such interposition as a proof, as an irrefragable assurance to us of ultimate salvation; an assurance, that, as we are faithfully pledged to be one with Christ in his death, it will be even more accordant with the now demonstrated goodness of God, that we shall likewise be one with Christ in his life.

God's design of mercy, accomplished by the unmerited interposition of his love through Christ, has taken effect upon us. Christ's death has aroused us. We are ready like him to die daily for God. And therefore, feeling assured that his spirit is within us, we know that we are righteous in the sight of God, and we doubt not, that the divine love, which has been operating for us so beneficially during the period of our disgrace, will under the existing circumstance of our happy reinstatement, complete its work, saving us from the wrath to come. For if when we were alienated from our father, we have been brought home and reconciled by the convincing appeal Christ made in his own blood to our feelings and understandings, if we have been excited to zeal and emulation by that noble instance of self-devotion : if led on by his death we confidently entered on the road to heaven

led on still more powerfully by his resurrection, we gaze with triumph up into that heaven whither he is gone before us, and hail the unquestionable confirmation of our brightest hopes in his open and eternal glorification.'

2 COR. XII. 1—6. About fourteen years ago I knew a man in Christ; whether in the body or out of the body I know not. God knows! I commence with the singular phraseology adopted by some of the empyrics I am about to caricature: some of them blasphemously pretending that their souls have been separated from their bodies and rapt to heaven, others that they have been favoured with beatific visions both in body and soul. I knew such a one carried up into the third heaven, (the vain fancies of an idle philosophy respecting a number of heavens!) and I knew such a man, whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knows! I repeat this well known and mystical form of expression, because it immediately places before you the apostolic pretenders who use it; I knew him to be caught up to paradise, and he heard unutterable words, (cabalistic or talismanic words) which it is unlawful for a man to speak; I am using the verbose tautology of those pompous pretenders.

Here I have a vision, and common rumour has manufactured it to my hands, that only wants to be verified, to do as much for me, as any of those wonderful tales do for my opponents, with which they abuse your ears, and disturb your imaginations.

Here fighting Satan in his ministers with their own weapons, here personating one of themselves, I will boast, I will parade the same false clothing that they do of mysterious influence and cabalistic power, provided for me by common rumor, here I have ground indeed for magnificent boasting.

'But I disclaim every thing of the kind, I want not the inventions of vain philosophy or superstition to recommend me. I will not boast of myself, except, as I have before said, of those bodily privations calamities and mental anxieties or sufferings, to which from the imbecility of my nature, and the humbleness of my personal pretensions and condition, I am liable.

For if I choose to boast seriously, that is, if I venture upon such boasting as my will shall second; not that, of which I have given you a dramatic specimen; it shall not be the vain unfounded pretensions of a fool. For I will utter nothing but truth. My speech shall be simple, void of extravagance, I will cautiously guard against any one estimating me above that which he himself sees, or what I myself tell him.'

2 COR. XIII. 14. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, your identification with Christ the seed as heir of the promise of life, and the love of God, that is, the consequence of such identification, and the participation of the holy spirit, that is, of that holy spirit which was in Christ, without which there can be no identification with him, or title to its blessed consequence; this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and love of God, and participation of the holy spirit, be in your community, not partially, but universally, that is, among you all.

Amen.'

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HEB. 1.3. That son was a glorious effulgence; and a character or imprint of God; of that which constitutes God: he bore the imprint or character of God, as far as man is concerned to know God. He was bright and glorious, and not more bright and glorious than perfect and exact as a filial representative of God to man, in his attributes of love and power : and bearing as it were all the fruits of the promises-producing all the blessings which those promises unfold by his powerful word-like his father, who said, "let there be light, and there was light," saying to the faithful," be pure, and they are pure:"-and effecting this purification of us all from our sins, to be a people peculiar to himself as our eternal King-effecting this new creation of all the faithful of every nation, without the priestly intervention of rites and ceremonies,doing all by himself, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty among the highest, becoming that eternal King who was to save his people, in whom only the glory and universal dominion, depicted throughout the prophecies in colours of apparent exaggeration, are, or shall be fully realized.'

HEB. XII. 1. " Having therefore such a cloud of witnesses, which, as the smoke of a sacrifice, ascends from the altar of faithfulness, pervading us with a sweet smelling odour, having such a cloud of faithful witnesses to assure us of the perfect sanctification of faithfulness without the ceremonial encumbrances of the law; let us put from us every thing that is a weight upon the free activity of a faithful spirit, even the sin offering which is so habituated to those who have lived under the law, which suits so comfortably the customary feelings of a Jew, which folds itself so readily around a wounded but not regenerated conscience, which, consequently is an impediment to the vigorous activity of that spirit of faithfulness, which would break from the trammels of a mere carnal shadow of purification; let us, I say, cast away these ceremonials, and persevere with pertinacity and spirit in the race which we have to run.'

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Ohe jam satis. These specimens will be regarded as more than sufficient to justify stronger language of reprobation than we have deemed it becoming our office to employ. This is making Scripture' with a witness,—of all exercises of ingenuity the most perilous. The passages which the above extracts affect to illustrate, cannot be considered as among the obscure or difficult portions of the Apostolic writings; and they shew that, as Archbishop Whately remarks, the chief objection to St. Paul's Epistles is not from the things hard to be understood which 'they contain, but from the things easy to be understood;' that the doctrines so plainly taught by him constitute the real stumbling-block. The critic is perplexed, the translator blunders, the theologian refines and calls in the aid of casuistry, because the obvious and natural sense is precisely that which it is assumed the Apostle cannot mean, and because, if that be the sense, it is felt, that either St. Paul must be wrong, or they;either he was not inspired, nay more, was a bad reasoner and a bungling moralist, or they have need to be themselves taught the