time of Ezra, of whom there are any remains, were successively
transformed into AUTOMATON compositors--so that the original text
should be in sentiment, image, word, syntax, and composition an exact
impression of the divine copy! In common consistency the
theologians, who impose this belief on their fellow Christians, ought
to insist equally on the superhuman origin and authority of the
Masora, and to use more respectful terms, than has been their wont of
late, in speaking of the false Aristeas's legend concerning the
Septuagint. And why the miracle should stop at the Greek Version,
and not include the Vulgate, I can discover no ground in reason. Or
if it be an objection to the latter, that this belief is actually
enjoined by the Papal Church, yet the number of Christians who road
the Lutheran, the Genevan, or our own authorised, Bible, and are
ignorant of the dead languages, greatly exceeds the number of those
who have access to the Septuagint. Why refuse the writ of
consecration to these, or to the one at least appointed by the
assertors' own Church? I find much more consistency in the
opposition made under pretext of this doctrine to the proposals and
publications of Kennicot, Mill, Bentley, and Archbishop Newcome.

But I am weary of discussing a tenet which the generality of divines
and the leaders of the religious public have ceased to defend, and
yet continue to assert or imply. The tendency manifested in this
conduct, the spirit of this and the preceding century, on which, not
indeed the tenet itself, but the obstinate adherence to it against
the clearest light of reason and experience, is grounded--this it is
which, according to my conviction, gives the venom to the error, and
justifies the attempt to substitute a juster view. As long as it was
the common and effective belief of all the Reformed Churches (and by
none was it more sedulously or more emphatically enjoined than by the