CONCLUSION.
To pursue these subjects further, or to go into other “strange doctrines,” doctrines published by their leaders and standard writers, this tract should be lengthened out to a large octavo. We don’t even mention the other renderings in this new Bible, just as serious and erroneous as the above; much less notice the transposition of tenses and prepositions, or the awkward English diction throughout. Suffice it to say, that some renderings are good, and some of the notes good; but, taken as a whole, with a great dis play of learning, the ignorance of the results of modern criticism is almost incredible. And the fatal upsetting of vital doctrines condemns the work altogether as more calculated to promote scepticism than true religion—the most sacred subjects being handled with irreverent familiarity.
Finally, the boasted light of Ritualists and Exclusives will be found, on examination, very slender indeed. Dogmatic assertions supply the place of proofs; a style adapted to captivate females and young people. And our solemn advice to all is, to receive nothing in these days without a concordance in hand. If a Greek or Hebrew concordance, so much the better. The Apostle Paul, whose own words were tested by the Bereans, who “searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so” (Acts, xvii. 11), exhorts us to “prove all things.” Examine well the truth of the assertions put forth dogmatically. For Ritualism and Exclusiveism which divide the Church of England, and “Brethrenism,” so dazzle people with High Church pretensions as to blind the eyes; and with the overruling passion for Church position, all things else are taken in, if emanating from the same source, like as a prism, which divides the light into party-colours, but through which all objects appear distorted. The people, however, are to be felt for who, in their simplicity, are so carried away, that one cannot help exclaiming with Bossuet, that “good intentions, combined with slender enlightenment, were a great misfortune in so exalted a position.” For the doctrinal views to which both parties are committed relate not to mere partyism or church peculiarities, but affect the very nature and substance of Christianity itself, and yet they know it not.
