The Scripture Guide, a Familiar Introduction to the Study of the Bible [pp. 201-221]

1839.] Critical Studty of the English Bible.
in the very tongue selected by the Holy Spirit as the vehicle
of his communications, while the books of the Old Testament
are publicly recited in a version mnade before the birth of
Christ; a version disfigured, on the one hand, by innumerable errors and defects, but distinguished on the other, by its
authority derived from age, and by the references to it, and
the quotations from it, in the books of the New Testament.
It is true that the Greek of the New Testament and the Septuagint is no longer the vulgar tongue of Greece; but it is
also true, that the modern dialect is merely a corruption of
the ancient language, and that much of the latter is of course
intelligible to the modern Greek. It is true, moreover, that
the preservation of the language, even so far as it has been
preserved, is owing in a great degree to the possession and
perpetual use of the Greek scriptures in the oriental church.
Had this been wanting, the ancient tongue would have been
overwhelmed by floods of barbaric innovation, and amidst
the confusion of repeated revolutions, the very basis of the
language might have undergone a change. But by continual
repetition, the essential features of the Greek of the New
Testament have been impressed too strongly, even on the
vulgar mind, to be effaced or superseded by mere mixture or
corruption. The vernacular Greek of our own day is as
near to the Greek of the apostles as our English is to
that of Chaucer or Wiclif. Tile same conservative influence
on language has been exerted by the national versions of the
Bible in German and in English, but with this advantage on
the side of the Greeks, so far as the Newv Testament is concerned, that the standard writings which have thuspl)reserved
their language from extinction, are not a translation, but the
ipsissima verba of the holy men who spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost. While the oriental church eontinued, from age to age, to enjoy this great advantage, the
western church at an early period, began to lose it. With
them Greek was not a vernacular language, but, like the
French in later times, the language of foreign travel and diplomatic intercourse, of politeness, erudition, and the fine
arts. They soon, therefore, felt the need of a Latin version,
and as the learning of the priests declined, the faith of western Christians became more and more dependent on the
venerable Vulgate. Especially after the decline and downfall
of the western empire, when political and literary intercourse between the east and west became less frequent, and
the knowledge of Greek less indispensable to Latins, the ori VOL. XI. No. 2. 27
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