"Save,

the mansions of his Father's house above; (John xiv. 2;) and when the people met our Saviour with acclamations, hailing him as having come to them in the name of the Lord, "the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David;" and, as if seeking the confirmation of their prayer, (N) we beseech thee,") they repeated, "Hosanna" ("save us") "in the highest ;" that is, in heaven. (Matt. xxi. 9.) And so Christ, using the same figure to express divine confirmation of divinely-authorized actions, tells his Apostles, that whose soever sins they forgive on earth shall be forgiven in heaven, and whose soever they retain, shall be retained there.

In short, the meaning of the memorable sentences with which this paper is headed, appears to be simply this: that the Apostles, being subjects of plenary inspiration, should be infallible masters in the Christian church, commissioned by Christ to perform all the functions of that necessary office; and that our submission to their instruction and decisions is challenged and justified by the declaration of Christ himself, that they are approved and confirmed in heaven. No other set of men so commissioned, or even pretending to write canonical Scriptures, has ever appeared in the church; so that, waiving argumentation, it is historically false to say that there is, or ever was, an apostolical succession.

The first two passages from the Gospel according to Matthew have been taken together in this comment, because they are parallel; but we must now proceed to the third, as recorded by St. John. It is very different in form, yet similar in purport; and is cited by those of the high sacerdotal school in support of their pretensions to ghostly power. The words are, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." That learned men, who cannot be ignorant of the rules by which the

Greek of the New Testament must be interpreted, should pass by the peculiar idiom of the original, and play on the surface of an English version, is extremely dishonest. It is not a whit less discreditable than the wretched trifling of those monastic scribblers who expound, after their manner, such sentences of the Vulgate Latin version as Hoc est corpus meum, and Sacramentum hoc magnum est; thinking to establish the fable of transubstantiation, and the abomination of clerical celibacy. It is grievous to be sent back again to the first elements of hermeneutics; but we must return to them, now that they are thrown aside by men who attach more value to patristical speculation, than to the common rules of language.

Be it premised, however, that the Holy Spirit was given to the Apostles, that they were qualified by plenary inspiration for the acts to be performed. To them, as thus inspired, the words before us were addressed; and to them, therefore, they must be restricted. Being thus qualified, they were to remit and retain sins; not as these words sound, but as they signify; for the remission is not potential, but declarative.

By a peculiarity of the Hebrew verb, transferred from that language into the Hebraized Greek, the distinction between an action and the declaration of an action effected, or to be effected, was obscured; but might be elicited by the plain common sense of the reader, when the first and more obvious meaning of the words involved an impossibility, an untruth, or an absurdity. Yet by us, who study the sacred originals in dead languages, and are prepossessed, beside, by inaccuracies of versions, and by popular misapprehensions, the faculty of discrimination can only be acquired by habitual study, not merely of the passages to be interpreted, but of the languages themselves. We must become familiarized with the idiomatic use, but apparent confusion, of the conjugations of Hebrew verbs. The kul, or simple indicative, for example, may be used for the pihel,

or intensive. Either of these may be substituted for the more powerful and explicit hiphil, causative or declarative. Hence a plain indicative form may be employed to declare that the action has taken place, although by an agent not named, or that some intended effect has been or shall be produced. Amidst all this latitude of meaning, there is little or no literal variety; and in addition to this fact must be taken into the account another, that the three conjugations here mentioned can only be expressed in Greek by the one active voice, corresponding to the Hebrew kal, simple and unchanged by any inflection whatever. Hence a literal version of a Hebrew or Hebraized Greek sentence often conveys a sense totally incorrect, and foreign from the meaning of the writer. Papists and Tractarians may take shelter under this ambiguity; and it is not very easy to disabuse the common English reader by a sufficiently popular exhibition of one of the most important philological facts which are presented to the professional student. To abbreviate the labour, in this instance, a few passages shall be transcribed, with brief notation of their meaning; so as to present a brief specimen of the very numerous class to which the one before us certainly belongs.

Exod. xx. 7.

לא ינקה ה' את The - אשר ישא את שמו לשוא :

Lord will not make him innocent that taketh his name in vain." The Septuagint, being very literal in the Pentateuch, has, οὐ μὴ καθαρίσῃ, "will not purify." So the Itala, non mundabit, "will not cleanse." But the Vulgate gives the true sense, non habebit insontem, which agrees with the English, "will not hold him guiltless."

Lev. xiii. 6. The Priest shall examine the person said to be leprous; but if he find that he is not so,

then shall the Priest (וטהרו הבהן)

"make him clean," () " and he shall be clean." So say the old Latin versions, and the Septuagint; but St. Augustine, although not a linguist, judiciously interprets the Latin text by saying, Hoc est, pur

למה תתענו ה' - מדרכיך תקשיח לבנו מיראתך :

This remarkable example of the idiotism above described is literally translated in our English Bible: "O Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear?" The English words speak a doctrine which is denounced in other parts of Scripture as injurious to the divine Majesty. But the original does not, as it is rightly interpreted by Hebrew scholars, Dathe, for example: Quare permitteres, ut deflecteremus a viis tuis? ut in animis nostris sensus religionis occallesceret?" Why dost thou permit that we should depart from thy ways? that the sense of religion should become dull in our hearts?" The evidence of Jewish commentators in questions of mere grammar may be confidently adduced; and in this place, as far as they have been referred to, they agree in the same interpretation.

Psalm cxix. 10, is a parallel example.

Jer. i. 10. "See, I have this day set thee (b) over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, and to build, and to plant." No correct translation of this text could take another form; yet no candid expositor would affirm that God had invested the Prophet Jeremiah with authority to do these things, but that he appointed him to declare that they were done by God himself. That he did thus declare, his prophecies are proof.

Matt. x. 35. "I am come," said Christ, "to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-inlaw." It were superfluous to argue that this was not the end of Christ's coming into the world, and that he did not excite division, since no one,

except he be an infidel, can imagine that he did, the contrary being fact. But the passage is intelligible enough by aid of an established canon,that "active verbs are attributed even to those who do not properly, and by their immediate influence, do that which the verbs signify, but only concur in some manner," certa ratione. And the reader is referred to the author of this canon, as cited below.

Acts x. 15. "Α ὁ Θεὸς ἐκαθάρισε, σὺ μὴ κοίνου. “The things which God hath cleansed, do not thou pollute." The Itala, and most ancient versions, translate to this purport: Quæ Deus mundavit, tu commune ne feceris. But the Vulgate gives the sense by using the word dixeris, with which exactly agrees our version,-"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common."

These are a few examples out of a multitude collected by grammarians and scholiasts; and are such as may be found frequent throughout the sacred writings; and the words of Christ, "Whose soever sins ye remit," &c., are exactly of the same class. As the Priest purified him that was clean, or polluted him that, being a leper, was unclean; as Jeremiah set up the nations which God established, and rooted out and pulled down those whom God destroyed; so, being also Ministers of God, did the inspired authors of the Christian code pardon the forgiven, and condemn the guilty. In this sense, and in no other, can the passage be rightly explained. And if the ἂν τινων, "whose soever," be objected against this view of the sentence, as indicating a personal administration of pardon, immediately applied by the Minister to the penitent, the reply is ready. There are no traces of such an administration in the apostolic history; whence it is clear that either the Apostles did not understand the pardoning of confitents, or peni* Glassii Philologia Sacra, lib. i., tract. iii.,

can. 22.

tents, to be a part of their work, or did not conceive such acts as proper to be recorded for our imitation. But in every recorded case they proceeded in a totally different manner; and yet God never reproved them for withholding the precious boon of mercy, which he would assuredly have done, had they been unfaithful to their trust.

It little concerns us to investigate how Fathers, Councils, and Reformers have understood difficult passages. Most of the Fathers were but mean critics. Jerome and Augustine, like Hillel and Shammai, are types of the dissension which ever rendered unity impossible. among them. The Councils were parties in ecclesiastical disputes; so that the decision cannot be with them. The Reformers nobly dashed away the fetters of ecclesiastical domination; but they may have been heated in dispute with the priest. hood of their day; and the writer of these observations humbly professes to believe that one honest exegesis of the sacred text is worth more than volumes in the present controversy; and he leaves the interminable polemic, conducted on other grounds, to more patient and more learned brethren. They who please can dispute ecclesiastically, while the reader of the Bible can enjoy the heavenly and forcible simplicity of God's own book. rules of grammar, the witnesses of biblical antiquity, and the analogy of faith, are the lamps which light his study; but he would presume into the sanctuary, and implore from the Father of lights the influences which are promised to guide him into all truth. Confident that his prayer is heard, he reposes while the turmoil of controversy rings around: he views his Bible with reverential satisfaction, and seems to read therein, as if an angel's finger had traced the words in characters brighter than any antique illumination, and lovelier than any rubric,

The

ΤΟΥΤΩ ΝΙΚΑ.

recourse to such methods, in no other light than that of cold-blooded barbarians. Suffice it to add, that the Council of the Supreme has often been obliged to forbid the repetition of the torture in the same process; but the Inquisitors, by an abominable sophism, have found means to render this prohibition almost useless, by giving the name of suspension to that cessation from torture which is imperiously demanded by the imminent danger to which the victim is exposed of dying in their hands. My pen refuses to trace the picture of these horrors; for I know nothing more opposed, than this conduct of the Inquisitors is, to the spirit of charity and compassion which Jesus Christ inculcates in the Gospel; and yet, in spite of the scandal which it has given, there is not, after the eighteenth century is closed, any law or decree abolishing the torture."

The Inquisition of Seville, in the course of the first year after its erection, committed two thousand persons alive to the flames, burnt as many in effigy, and condemned seventeen thousand to different penances. From the same date, up to the year 1517, when the Reformation commenced in Germany, there were, according to the careful and moderate calculations of the abovementioned Llorente, thirteen thousand persons who were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred who were burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-three who were condemned to penances; making in all, one hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and twentythree persons condemned by the several tribunals of Spain, in the course of thirty-six years. There is reason to think that this estimate falls below the truth; for, from 1481 to 1520, it is computed that, in Andalusia alone, thirty thousand persons informed against themselves, from the dread of being accused by others, or in hope of obtaining a mitigation of their sentence. And, down to the commencement of the

of absolution were so rare, that one is scarcely to be found in a thousand cases; the Inquisitors making it a point that, if possible, none should escape without bearing some mark of their censure. According to Puigblanch, another writer on the Inquisition, the number of persons reconciled and banished in Andalusia, from 1480 to 1520, was one hundred thousand; and forty-five thousand were burnt alive within the archbishopric of Seville.

Notwithstanding the vigorous efforts thus made to uphold Papal error and superstition throughout Spain, and to suppress all movements in favour of religious liberty, the Reformed opinions found their way into that kingdom, and continued for a time to prevail. One of the first who were active in spreading them was Juan Valdes, a man of a good family, and who had received a liberal education. Having attached himself to the court, he quitted Spain about 1535, in company with Charles V., who sent him to Naples, to act as Secretary to the Viceroy. That his mind was imbued with the leading tenets of the Protestant faith, even before this period, appears from a treatise drawn up by him, under the title of " Advice on the Interpreters of sacred Scripture." This tract, which was circulated privately among his acquaintance, was originally sent in the form of a letter to his friend Bartolomé Carranza, afterwards Archbishop of Toledo; but who had early incurred the suspicions of the Inquisitors, by the freedom of his opinions. It was found among the papers of that Prelate, when he was subsequently apprehended by order of the Inquisition, and formed one of the gravest charges against him. The tract contained the following propositions, among others:

That, in order to understand the sacred Scriptures, we must not rely on the interpretations of the Fathers; that we are justified by a lively faith in the passion and death of our Saviour; and that we may attain to certainty concerning our justification. Such sentiments render it