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the simplicity of Christ by the glory of its object, and led unconsciously to the adoption of a kind of worldly policy or expediency; that its benevolence may have been sometimes greater than the rigid principles of the Society's constitution permitted it to exercise; and that these things have occasioned the appearance of vacillation and changeableness, that Committee, we believe, will most readily acknowledge. Let it be found guilty, if necessary, of these delinquencies; but let it not be charged with offences of which it has not been guilty of breaking faith with the public, of deliberately violating the principles of honour and integrity, and of committing treason against the word of God and the salvation of men. Let those who know what it is to devote their days and hours to the management of the benevolent Institutions of this country, and particularly of the metropolis, and who believe that even the Bible Society can be conducted without indications of human imperfection, if such there be, rise up, and cast the first stone at the Committee. It is an easy thing to write letters, and make speeches, and frame remonstrances; it is a fine thing to make an attack, and to be signalized for courage in assailing Committees and demolishing Lords and Bishops. Some men have no opportunity for distinguishing themselves, except in war. They are weak as other men in time of peace. They have no taste for the plough, or the pruning-hook: it is too tame and dull employment for them. In the ordinary business of Societies and Committees they cannot take part; because there are no adversaries to rouse their wrath, and give edge to their sarcasm. Their element is contest; their life is opposition; their enjoyment, destruction. To wrangle in debate, and dip their pen in gall, are much more conge

nial with their feelings and habits, than to tug at the labouring oar, and look for the reward of services, unacknowledged and unrepaid by men, from their Father who is in heaven.

We believe that much of the reproach which has been heaped upon the Committee of the Bible Society has arisen from not attending to, or from not understanding, the peculiar circumstances by which it has been gradually drawn to countenance, or to promote the circulation of the Apocrypha. We wish to notice some of these circumstances particularly, as furnishing an apology, though not a complete vindication, of its conduct.

When the Bible Society was formed, the extent and success of its operations abroad were neither foreseen nor prepared for. The small number of persons who first met to frame its constitution, and to draw up its regulations, never contemplated such results as have taken place, by the divine blessing, on the labours of the Society. The state of the Continent was then imperfectly known, and scarcely accessible. The state of foreign versions of the Scriptures, the editions used by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Greeks, few of them knew any thing about; and none of them anticipated that the views and prejudices of these bodies would ever interfere with their own operations. The question about the Apocrypha, whether annexed or intermixed, was never agitated or discussed among them. To most of them, there is reason to believe, it never occurred. The churchmen who thought of it, thought it better not to meddle with it, lest it might call forth the prejudices of the Dissenters; and the Dissenters who thought of it, let it alone, to avoid exciting opposition from the church. Such were the circumstances in which the first law was

framed, about the meaning of which, and the animus of the framers, so much has been said.

But why, the Edinburgh Committee will demand, were not all these things understood and foreseen, and debated and determined? It is our business at present to record matter of history, not to answer such questions. Were we to answer, we should say, we suppose it was because they had not the assistance of the parties who drew up the second statement. Had they been of the number, we are sure there would have been no want of debate, no lack of full information, on all these points; no deficiency in the talent for detecting all possible means of evading laws and abusing trusts. Whether there would have been the British and Foreign Bible Society, is another question.

The connection of the Society with the circulation of the Apocrypha has chiefly been incidental, indirect, or owing to circumstances which the Committee believed they could not prevent or control. They have been charged, as we believe, most unjustly, with zeal-yea, "with more than ordinary zeal," for promoting the circulation of the Apocrypha. Never, we are assured, was a body of men more grossly libelled than by this charge. The noble President's own sentiments, in opposition to the distribution of the Apocrypha, are well known. In all our intercourse, in public or in private, with the officers of the Society, and members of the Committee, we never met with an individual who intimated a wish to circulate, on its own account, a single copy of this spurious and mischievous document. Such a feeling has, so far as we know, been universally disclaimed; and surely such a body of men are entitled to some

Second Statement.

credit, when they solemnly disavow a principle or disposition which has been attributed to them.

How is it, then, that the Society has got into its present difficulties? On the formation of a Society on the Continent, it has been usual for the Committee to vote a sum of money at its commencement, or to promise assistance in the publication of an edition of the Bible. The arrangements have usually been left to the persons on the spot. Those persons, of course, never thought of printing any thing but their own edition of the Bible; and, as among the Protestants, these editions invariably have the Apocrypha annexed, and among the Catholics, the same thing intermixed, the Bible Societies abroad have brought out their editions accordingly. Observing that the law of the British and Foreign Society required that the inhabitants of the United Kingdom should be furnished with the authorised public version, it was natural for them to construct their Societies on the same principle. That the Committee of 1813 were partly under the influence of the same views and feelings, seems evident, from a resolution then passed, after certain communications had been made in regard to foreign versions which included the Apocrypha. "That the manner of printing the Holy Scriptures by the Foreign Societies be left to their discretion, provided they be printed without note or comment.' We are not vindicating this construction of the fundamental law of the Society, nor will the Committee justify it, after its last decision; we are only accounting for the imperceptible way in which the Society has been led into its present circumstances. Not zeal for the Apocrypha, be it observed, but an idea, whether correct or incorrect does not signify to our statement, that only the estab

lished versions of different churches could be brought into circulation; that the Committee, at the time, thought themselves warranted to extend the law of the Society thus far; and that the Society here could not be held responsible for all the acts of the Societies abroad which it assisted, has produced the effects which are now so much deplored or denounced.

Into this conduct the Committee, or, rather, Committees, (for it should not be forgotten, in this controversy, that the Committee is an elective body, and that many persons have a right to attend and vote who are not elected) have been led, not by their own wishes in favour of the Apocrypha, but by the strong representations of men on whose information they were bound to place the fullest reliance. They have been charged with "obsequiousness." To whom, gentle reader? To the Professors, and Masters of Arts, at Cambridge, forsooth with whom, therefore, the Doctors of Edinburgh must break a lance. This is another of the rubs of the controversy. But these were not the parties which occasioned any of the Apocryphal undertakings. That the representations of such men as Count Rosenbladt, Leander Van Ess, Professor Keiffer, Drs. Pinkerton, Paterson, and Henderson, should have produced some effect, is not wonderful. In regard to the two last, we have to say, from personal knowledge, that they detest, on principle and conviction, the Apocrypha as much as any gentleman of the Edinburgh Committee; yet they found, and still believe, that nothing worth speaking of could be done in the north of Europe, and particularly in Russia, were the controversy about the Apocrypha mooted. No Bible Society could have been established in Russia, had it been hinted there that the Apocrypha must be

cut off; and that, not because the poor people would not receive the Scriptures otherwise, but because a despotic and bigotted government would permit nothing to appear but according to the established faith. We ask again, is it wonderful that such representations, from such men and many others, should have impressed the Committee, and that its zeal for the word of God, and benevolent regards for the souls of men, should have occasioned a transgression of the strict letter of its law? Cold must be that heart which can say, let Russia remain in midnight darkness, rather than we should aid in the formation of a Society which shall circulate apocryphal books with the word of God.

In

We can go farther yet on the subject of influence. What will our readers think, if the Committee has been led into the measures complained of partly by some of its present and bitterest accusers? The first person who appeared in print against it was the writer of the two pamphlets first on our list, the one of which has the date of 1822, the other, of 1825. these productions, the author, under the assumed name of Micaiah, endeavours to prove the sinfulness, the mischievousness, and folly of circulating the Apocrypha, and also the impropriety of the Bible Society doing so, it being a breach of its constitution. In the last of them, which he calls a Preface to his first, in a style of rudeness and levity, alike unbecoming the author and the subject, he deals out his censures, and thus closes his castigation of the Committee:"It is, no doubt, very gratifying to be assured of receiving absolution from Mr. Simeon; but he should remember that there are some persons who will demur, notwithstanding, to holding a candle to the devil; and who have read, that to see a thief, and to consent unto him, and to be partaker

with the adulteraters, is the mark of an unrighteous man, and of the enemies of the word of God." In such blessed company is this gentleman pleased to place the London Committee. Be it so. We have heard of accessaries before the fact: whether Micaiah deserves to be thus brought in, we shall leave our readers to judge from the following extract of a letter from that gentlemen to the Committee of the Bible Society. It is dated Geneva, 5th Sept.,

1817:

66

I think you are unjust towards the Catholics, and employing yourselves uselessly to attempt to force translations unauthorised by their church. What would you say to such an attempt in England? Do you not give way to all the prejudices of the sectarianism of the Church of England on all occasions, and force into the service all the names of new bishops and grandees for that purpose? You have assisted the Bible Societies of Germany, which publish the Bible of Luther with the Apocrypha; why then refuse that to the Catholics which you grant to Protestants ?"*

We say nothing of the courtesy of this paragraph; and we do not blame the writer for changing his mind. But when he attacked the Committee in public, ought he not to have confessed candidly that he had formerly been guilty of the very evil himself; had endeavoured to persuade the Committee to publish an intermixed Bible; and that for refusing, or being averse to this measure, he had, in no very civil terms, charged them with injustice? Yet this gentleman, after throwing stumbling-blocks in the way of the Committee, instead

We are informed that, about this time, this gentleman himself published an edition of the Italian Bible, containing an intermixed Apocrypha!

of taking a portion of blame to
himself for its fall, denounces it to
the world as
66 a self-elected oli-
garchy, flattered by the possession
of power and patronage, with large
funds at their disposal; and con-
sequently linked in with various
interests and parties." We trust
never to meet with Micaiah again
in the Apocryphal controversy.

Some of the opponents of
the Committee have done it the
justice to acknowledge, that it
cares nothing for the Apocry-
pha itself, and has only coun-
tenanced it by a strong desire
to promote the circulation of
the
the Scriptures, where the ex-
clusion of the Apocrypha ap-
peared to place an almost insu-
perable bar in the way of their
diffusion. "It is due," says Mr.
Gorham, "to those persons who
apologize for the practice, which
we disapprove, to make the can-
did admission that their attach-
ment to the Scriptures of truth is
no less steady than that by which
we ourselves are influenced. We
admit that their apology for an un-
distinguished Apocrypha is founded
on their anxious desire, that those
who will not receive the pure ca-
non of the Old Testament should
be supplied by us with THE
WHOLE VOLUME of the Bible,
even in an adulterated form, rather
than exclusively with the NEW
TESTAMENT.

We cannot subscribe to their opinions; but we have no wish to misrepresent their views."* The same candid acknowledgment has been made by several of the other writers in this controversy.

If this be admitted, which we are persuaded every candid mind will admit, then, whatever may be thought of the wisdom of the Committee, in the measures which have been complained of, there will remain but one opinion as to

* Gorham's Statement, Second Edit.

P. 6.

the motives by which it has been influenced, and its claim to the confidence of the Society. It will also be perceived that, now that the Committee finds the general voice of the subscribers requires that it should abandon the Apocrypha in toto, it can have no motive for persevering in a line of conduct which may have promoted the influence of the Society abroad, but which has been injurious to its peace and its influence at home.

Great complaints have been made of the vacillation of the Committee in regard to the Apocrypha, and of the hard struggle which it has made for the Apocrypha; till, it is alleged, all confidence in the resolutions of the Committee is completely shaken. Our readers cannot expect that we should enumerate, far less attempt to defend, or even explain, all the measures connected with this perplexing question. We

must suppose that they are, in some measure, acquainted with the history of the controversy; and we can only, therefore, attempt to account for the apparent changeableness of the conduct of the Committee, in consistency with the view we have given of their principles.

None can more regret than we some of the resolutions of the Committee, or more sincerely deplore that it should be open to the charge of unsteadiness or insincerity. But some of these indications of changeableness do honour rather than discredit to that body. They show that it has been open to conviction, and that no party has gained such an ascendency over it, as to be able to carry any unconstitutional or sectarian measure. It has been asserted by the Edinburgh statement, that "the Committee have forgotten that they are the executive, and not the legislative branch of the Institution."

The very reverse is the fact; and because the Committee ever felt that they were merely the executive, that they had no right to make the laws of the Society, or to give authoritative interpretations of those laws, they have uniformly avoided all enactments and declarations that appeared to be of this nature. They found that they were not perfectly of one mind among themselves on the construction of the general law of the Society respecting foreign versions; that among the members of the Society at home a similar diversity of opinion prevailed to a very considerable extent; that abroad their operations were subject to a variety of perplexing and harassing difficulties; and that their foreign correspondents were exceedingly clamorous on this subject. From all these circumstances, together with an aversion to break the peace of the Society, either in the United Kingdom or among other nations, have arisen the various resolutions which, at different times, have emanated from that body; every one of which we believe to be capable of a satisfactory explanation, were all the circumstances under which it was adopted known. If perseverance in one line of public conduct is necessary for the maintenance of integrity, and the claim to confidence in profession, some of the accusers in this case would do well to look to themselves. From them we shall only say it comes with an ill grace.

The chief business of the public is now with the last resolution of the Committee. Admitting that its past conduct has been wrong, that its zeal has not been according to knowledge, if it consists of men of christian principle and christian integrity, it is now entitled to a fair trial for the future. If, considering the circumstances in which that resolution was adopted, and what we hold to be

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