136 EEV. H. J. WHITE, M.A. ; OX CONNECTION BETWEEN VCLGATE 



in the case of printed editions, a good deal of alteration may be 

 made by carelessness, or by design, in the use of capital letters,, 

 marks of punctuation, etc. 



The Vulgate, take it all round, is a very good and honest 

 translation; yet we shall find these imperfections in it, and 

 others as well : and they have had not a little effect upon the 

 theology of the Western Church. 



To begin with, we noticed above that Jerome's revision of the 

 Pauline Epistles was very hasty, so hasty that some scholars 

 have doubted whether he revised them at alL Some years ago 

 the late Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. John Wordsworth, complained 

 of the injury done to Western theology by this hurried, super- 

 ficial revision : he said, that if St. Jerome ''had re-translated the 

 Xew Testament with that power of expression of which he was 

 a great master, he would have done a service to the Church 

 higher than we could easily estimate. He would not say that 

 the Eeformation would not have been necessary, but he would 

 say that St. Paul would have been understood by the early 

 Christians in the Western Church, and would have been 

 appreciated and loved and used when, owing to the fact that 

 St. Jerome only used a very imperfect translation of St. Paul's 

 Epistles, and did not properly revise the translation so made, 

 St. Paul was never properly understood in the Western Church 

 until the Reformation. He did not mean to say that there 

 were no great men who understood him : but St. Paul s 

 arguments and ideas did not penetrate into the masses of the 

 people as they might have done."* 



This, therefore, brings us to our first cause : when the Pauline 

 Epistles were first translated into Latin the translators were 

 not able to suggest adequate Latin equivalents for the Greek in 

 some quite important cases ; Jerome let much of their imperfect 

 work pass ; and Western theology was the loser in con- 

 sequence. 



As instances of this, we may note the translation of xapts 

 in St. Paul by a : we may perhaps be unable to think of 

 any more adequate rendering, but still the fact is clear ; they 

 do not surest the same things. Xapz? and the allied words 

 suggest above all things the general idea of God's favour 

 towards us, an atmosphere of kindness and benignity, resulting 

 in an answering feeling of love and confidence on the part of 



* Speech at Bristol Church Congress, October 16th, 1903 : quoted in 

 the L\ T \ IJ >'■-:'■ "i> J- -hn W>jrd*>r<.>rth, p. 152. 



