CORRESPONDENCE.-CHURCH REForm.

case be referred to the archbishop and the other bishops of the province, who ought to have the legal right of sitting in judgment, and finally deciding thereon. Should the decision of this episcopal council be in favour of the patron, I would suggest that the bishop be compelled to institute, as at present; but if the decision be in favour of the bishop, then let the patron be allowed an additional six months wherein to present another spiritual person to the vacant living. But should not the patron within that period present a person properly qualified, in the opinion of the bishop or of the episcopal council, then let the living lapse either to the bishop or the council. All abuse of church patronage will be thus effectually prevented without the commission of any act that can fairly be deemed either oppressive or unjust.

And, with respect to appointments in all cathedrals and collegiate churches, I would submit that pluralities ought so far to be abolished immediately, and that all such dignities should be conferred, with a few exceptions, on the clergy of the respective dioceses. For in this way I apprehend that the original intention of the founders of those venerable establishments would be effectually promoted.

Should the above hints on the very important subject of church reform be deemed worthy of your attention, I shall feel amply gratified; and, in concluding my letter, I shall take the liberty of adding a word of advice, which I am persuaded that every true reformer either in church or state will acknowledge it to be his duty to follow:

Be just, and fear not :

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's.

I am, Sir, with much consideration, your obedient servant, M.

CORONATION OATH.

SIR,-To bring the whole subject of the coronation oath, as affecting the church, under the attention of your readers, I would propose to their serious consideration the whole chapter in Blackstone, which is a very short one, "Of the King's Duties"-the 6th chapter of the 1st book.

The oath relating to the church, in which a distinction is drawn between the rights of the clergy and the rights of the churches committed to their charge, is explained by Burn, in his Ecclesiastical Law, on the article of "Tithes;" with respect to their origin in England, he says, that "tithes were before paid by way of offerings, but the law of Offa, about the year 794, was that which first gave to the church a civil right in tithes, by way of property and inheritance, and enabled the clergy to gather and recover them as their legal due, by the coercion of the civil power."

The words in the coronation oath, therefore, that "the King shall preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as do or shall by law appertain unto them or any of them," mean that the King

shall preserve unto the churches committed to the charge of the clergy the right which appertains to those churches in tithes, by way of property and inheritance. Now how is this obligation observed in the Tithes Commutation Bill? The church is passed over in utter silence, and that right thus extinguished. Tithes are not commuted-the commutation is of private compositions existing between clergymen and their parishioners the right which the church has in tithes, by way of property and inheritance, is not only never estimated, but the existence of the church not acknowledged; there is not, throughout the bill, a single reference to the church-judgment has gone against her by default.

When a clergyman prosecuted his right of gathering and recovering tithes as his legal due, he pleaded jure ecclesiæ; he had no personal right in tithes, he was persona ecclesiæ, the representative of the church, for the purpose of defending her right in tithes "by way of property and inheritance."

After the enactment of this bill, that right being extinguished, the church in its national or civil character has ceased to exist. A clergyman, in recovering the rent charge left in lieu of tithes, will not have to appear as representative of the church, persona ecclesiæ, or in right of the church, jure ecclesiæ; the provision left to the clergy is wholly of a secular kind, depending merely on the authority of an act of parliament; and the probability is, that the commission for the commutation of tithes will become a permanent board for the redemption of the corn rent, when all classes of religion will be equally provided for out of the annual supplies-the proportion to each class being determined by a vote of the House of Commons.

The church of England is now reduced to the provinces of Canterbury and of York; that is our present position; and our whole attention should be turned to securing that position, not spent in vain struggles of keeping up a false character: we are a sect left to the maintenance of our glebe and of this odious rent charge.

That the coronation oath has been for the first time broken in the enactment of the "Tithes Commutation Bill," there is the authority of Lord Kenyon, in his letter to George III.: "So long as the King's supremacy, and the main fabric of the act of uniformity, the doctrine, discipline, and government of the church of England are preserved as the national church, and the provision for its ministers kept as an appropriated fund, it seems that any ease given to sectarists would not militate against the coronation oath, or the act of union." According to this sound interpretation, "the preservation of the church of England as the national church, and the provision for its ministers being kept as an appropriated fund," are essential parts of the coronation oath, "in which," says Blackstone, "are now couched the terms of the original contract." A clergyman may commute his own rights as stated above, but not those of the church; a voluntary, permanent commutation of tithes is a surrender of the rights of the church, which surrender the persona ecclesiæ is not competent to make (a trustee cannot part with the funds of his trust)—a forcible commutation (like that of Naboth's vineyard) he cannot resist. No clergyman who has a

proper sense of his duty will be a party to what (in your own just and forcible language) is "a permanent robbery of the church, tofa most ruinous extent," which must "throw the clergy of the English establishment wholly out of the condition in which they now move." PERSONA ECCLESIÆ.

SUGGESTIONS RESPECTING THE SEPTUAGINT GREEK VERSION, AND THE HEBREW TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

SIR, AS some time may possibly elapse before I can become acquainted with the answers which may be given to my inquiry in the number of the "British Magazine" for June last, respecting the date of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, I deem it advisable not to defer until then the giving of publicity to my own ideas in connexion with the subject. I have, therefore, to request that the present paper may be inserted in an early number of the "British Magazine;" and in making that request I must be permitted to state that I have written it without, at the moment, possessing the means of general reference, and consequently without being able to determine positively to what extent its contents may be deficient in novelty, and even in value. Still I trust that it will be found not unworthy of publication, and it will, at all events, serve to draw the attention of biblical scholars to the important subject to which it relates.

The account of the composition of the Septuagint Greek version by seventy-two learned Jews at the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, is in the present day justly considered to be a mere fable; but the prevalent notion still appears to be that the translation was made at Alexandria, by different persons, and at different periods, between the time of that monarch and the commencement of the Christian era, but altogether before the latter date; and that previously to our Lord's advent it was, in consequence of the prevalence of the language in which it is written, generally received and employed in the Jewish synagogues, not merely of Alexandria and Egypt, but also of Jerusalem and throughout Judea; and further, that it was known to our Saviour and his disciples, and referred to by them; and that, in fact, it is from this identical version that the quotations from the Scriptures of the Old Testament were made by the evangelists and apostles.

But such an opinion must surely be without any real foundation; for (without touching upon, or even giving occasion for the agitation of, the question as to whether or not any of the books of the New Testament are only translations into Greek from a Jewish original,) in the first place it stands to reason that the language ordinarily used in Judea, and consequently spoken by our Lord and his disciples, would have been, not the Greek, however prevalent it may have become, but the vernacular tongue of the country; and that such was actually the case is, indeed, evidenced by various texts of the sacred history itself (see Matt. xvi. 17, 18; xxvii. 46; Mark, v. 41; xv. 34; John, i. 38, 41, 42, &c.; and see also Luke, xxiii. 38; John, xix. 20.) And secondly, however small may have been the knowledge retained by

the Jews of the original language in which their scriptures were written, (which had, in fact, become a dead language,) and however little the congregations in the temple and the synagogues, generally, may have understood those scriptures when read, so that, in fact, it was necessary to have them expounded to them, (see Neh. viii. 7, 8,) it is not at all to be imagined that in the public reading of the law and the prophets that exclusive people would have allowed the text in the "holy tongue" to be superseded by a version in another language, and that too one which was not vernacular in the country. And, indeed, it is clear from the statements of the historian Josephus, that the Hebrew Scriptures, in the original tongue, continued to be used in Jerusalem, even in his time; for he repeatedly refers to his study and familiar knowledge of them, and he besides expressly records the fact that the "Holy Books" were preserved by Titus when the temple was destroyed.

This being then the case, it becomes necessary to consider what was the character of the Hebrew Text, which thus continued to exist in Jerusalem until the commencement of the Christian era. Now if Josephus' quotations from that text, and his representations of the scriptural history generally, as derived by him therefrom, be compared with the Septuagint version, it is manifest that the greatest similarity, if not a perfect identity, existed between the text known by the Jewish historian and the text from which that version was made. And this is shewn, not so much even by their agreement in various matters of fact in which they are opposed to the statements of the Hebrew text of the present day, and by their containing many particulars which are omitted in this latter, as by their entire coincidence in mere verbal and literal errors, such for instance as the remarkable one in 1 Sam. xix. 13, 16, in which the expression "a pillow" (or, more correctly, either a quilt or net work) "of goats' hair," is read by them both чуn ma, žπаρ Twν aiyшv"goats' liver;" a ridiculous story being related by Josephus (in accordance, no doubt, with the vulgar notions of his time), to explain how the goats' liver would have been taken for David by Saul's messengers! Hence it is perfectly intelligible how the Hebrew text of the Scriptures, which was used by the evangelists and apostles, should correspond, as it does, with the Septuagint Greek version, without there being the least necessity for imagining that in our Saviour's time that version was in common use in Jerusalem and Judea.

But what then is become of this Hebrew text which was thus known in Judea and Alexandria in the first century of the Christian era? This question would, perhaps, be answered by the allegation of the occurrence of circumstances similar to those which are considered to have taken place with respect to the repudiation by the Jews of the Septuagint version itself; namely, that those unbelievers, seeing that it was referred to by the early Christians in evidence of the truth of the new faith, took upon themselves to vary the original text to the form in which it is found in the received Masoretic copies. But this, again, surely cannot have been the case if the Chaldee Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, which represent that Masoretic text, be of so

CORRESPONDENCE.

early a date as is usually attributed to them, that is to say, contemporaneous with, or even anterior to, the commencement of the Christian

era.

From the fact of these paraphrases of the text having been made in Babylon at so early a period, it appears, indeed, that no other conclusion can be come to than that there existed contemporaneously two distinct exemplars of the Hebrew text; the one being that which was used in Judea and Egypt, and which consequently was known to the early Christians and to Josephus, and from which the Septuagint version was made; the other being that which was used by the Jews who remained in Babylon after the return of their nation from captivity, and which served as the basis of the Chaldee Paraphrase. The former of these may, for distinction' sake, be styled the Jerusalem Exemplar; the latter, that of Babylon.

Admitting then the fact of the contemporaneous existence of these two Exemplars at the early period above alluded to, and proceeding (as we may next do) to compare the state of desolation to which Judea was subjected upon its final subjugation by the Romans, with the security which continued to be enjoyed by the Jews who remained in Babylon and the east, we shall have no reason to be surprised at finding that, upon the annihilation of the Rabbinical school at Jerusalem, the exemplar of that city should have fallen into neglect and disuse neither will it appear to us otherwise than in entire accordance with the usual conduct of erring man that subsequently, as the literature of Judea was revived by offsets from the school of Babylon, the Exemplar of this latter city should have superseded in that country the one which had previously been received there, and that the authority of the same school should have been exerted to suppress a text which its disciples would, not unnaturally, have regarded as heterodox and incorrect. The circumstance that the Jerusalem Exemplar furnished the text which was referred to by the early Christian church would doubtless have afforded to the intolerant Jews an additional motive-though from the fact of the previous existence of the Babylonian Exemplar, unquestionably not the primary onefor its suppression; whilst, from the multiplication of the copies of the favoured text, from the Greek translation made by the renegade Aquila, and subsequently from the labours of the Masorites, the result would ultimately have been brought about that the Babylonian Exemplar alone remained as the received orthodox text of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Thus much as to the separate existence of these two distinct Exemplars of the text: it may now be permitted to offer a conjecture as to their separate origin.

From the knowledge which we happily possess of the Samaritan text of the Pentateuch,-which, as it is the most ancient, so (doubtless) it is on the whole the most genuine and correct representative of that portion of the written Word of God,-it may be inferred that, previously to the Babylonian captivity, the text of Scripture, as far as it would then have been composed, existed in a state of purity corresponding, generally, with that of the Samaritan Pentateuch itself.