386 HENRY KIEKE WHITE S liExUAIXS. 



to which I think it necessary to offer a few words by way 

 of reply ; as they not only put an erroneous construction 

 on certain passages of that paper, but are otherwise open 

 to material objection. 



The object of Mr Toone, in pome parts of his observa- 

 tions, appears to have been to refute something which he 

 fancied I had advanced, tending to establish the gene- 

 ral merit of Sternhold and Hoplcins' translation of the 

 Psalms : but he might have saved himself this unneces- 

 sary trouble, as I have decidedly condemned it as mere 

 doggrel, still preserved in our churches to the detriment 

 of religion. And the version of the passage in question 

 is adduced as a brilliant, though probably accidental, ex- 

 ception to the general character of the work. What ne- 

 cessity, therefure, your correspondent could see for " hop- 

 ing tliat I should think with him, that the sooner the old 

 version of the Psalms was consigned to ohlloioii, the better 

 it ivould he for rational devotion,'^ I am perfectly at a loss 

 to imagine. 



This concluding sentence of Mr Toone's paper, which 

 I consider as introduced merely by way of rounding the 

 period, and making a graceful exit, needs no further ani- 

 madversion. I shall therefore proceed to examine the ob- 

 jections of the " worthy clergyman of the Church of Eng- 

 land" to these verses cited by your correspondent, by 

 which he hopes to prove that Dryden, Knox, and the nu- 

 merous other eminent men who have expressed their ad- 

 miration thereof, to be little better than idiots. The first 

 is this : 



" Cheriibim is the plural for Cherub ; but our ver- 

 sioner, by adding an s to it, has rendered them both plu- 

 rals." By adding an s to what ? If the pronoun it re- 

 fer to cherubim, as according to the construction of the 

 sentence it really does, the whole objection is nonsense. 

 But the worthy gentleman, no doubt, meant to say, that 

 Sternhold had rendered them both plurals, by the addi- 

 tion of an s to cherub. Even in this sense, however, I 

 conceive the charge to be easily obviated ; for, though 

 cherubim is doubtless usually considered as the plural of 

 cherub, yet the two words are frequently so used in tlie 



