140 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS BE MORGAN. 



1836. question whether all these books are genuine, and were really 

 written by the persons whose names they bear. Still less with 

 the question whether being written by different persons, at 

 different times, to different persons, &c., they can be used in 

 interpreting each other in the same manner as the different parts 

 of a book written by the same person. I have been obliged to 

 consider this. 



2. These books are written in a foreign language, and 

 more than that, in a dead language, of which every one knows 

 that it is utterly impossible to render any phrase exactly into 

 corresponding English. This question no way concerns you. 

 You dwell upon a single English word in the translation just as 

 much as if it were the original itself. To me your version is 

 useless, as I know that those who made it were utterly incom- 

 petent to take that view of the original language which the sub- 

 ject requires. 



3. These books have come down to us in manuscripts which 

 differ from each other repeatedly, and in one or two instances, if 

 not in more, there is proof, which theologians of all parties 

 unite in admitting, that additions have been made to the writers' 

 text. You care nothing for this ; I doubt if you knew the fact. 

 I have been obliged to know it. 



4. Your expressions amount to the following : If you do not 

 take it for granted that King James's translators chose the 

 right Greek,- and turned it into the right English, and more than 

 that, drew all their inferences correctly, God Almighty will 

 punish you to all eternity. 



5. Out of all that precedes you have got a complicated creed, 

 on implicit belief in which you insist. I recommend you to follow 

 the plan adopted by Locke, when he wanted to ascertain what 

 the Christian religion was. He looked carefully through the 

 Acts of the Apostles, and collected every single instance in which 

 a Christian was made by the Apostles ; for, he argued and in so 

 doing he upset every church which has existed since A.D. 300 if 

 I can become as much of a Christian as the first converts of the 

 Apostles, I shall certainly obtain the essentials of Christianity. 

 Do this yourself. Construct a creed out of all which the Apostles 

 required, without adding a single word, and compare it with your 

 own. For what else was so precise an account given of so many 

 admissions into the Church ? And this not with a view to 

 changing your own opinions, for if your creed gives you comfort 

 I would not change a letter of it ; but with a view to the follow- 



