make of the passage, which is that already referred to, Gen. xxix. 27, 28:"Fulfil HER week, and we will give thee THIS also: and Jacob did so, and fulfilled HER week; and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also." Now let the reader observe that HER in both verses, and THIS in verse 27, are precisely the same word in Hebrew; and as it is evident that "this also" in ver. 27, is Rachel also in ver. 28, so the "her" in the former part of each verse must of necessity be Leah, understood: it is with the daughter that ЛN (her) is construed, not with week. Observe what nonsense the new construing proposed would be: "Fulfil this week, and we will give thee this week also!!!" We have not patience to go on with such folly; but we are greatly surprised that Mr. M. had not one friend sufficiently acquainted with Hebrew to point out this blunder so glaring.

"3rd Error.-Your Reviewer asserts that 'seven, the uumeral, and its derivatives are always feminine.' Seven the numeral is not always feminine, but has a masculine and a feminine form. Every grammar that I have consulted

"שֶׁבַע and שִׁבְעָה gives the two forms

This charge would have had no foundation if we had inserted the Hebrew word yaw, which we consider as the only proper numeral. y or a properly denotes "by sevens," and is of the common gender; as Gen. vii. 2, "by sevens, male and female" and nya is construed with feminine nouns, Ezek.

xl. 26.

"4th Error.-Your Reviewer supposes that the seven in Dan. ix. 20 (' seven weeks') is feminine, because the 'seven' has the feminine termination; whereas it is masculine. Your Reviewer is ignorant of the fact, that, the genders of the numerals from 3-10 form an exception to the general rule about the feminine termination. See Gesenius (Lehrgeb. p. 610)."

The Reviewer did not suppose seven in Dan. ix. 20 to be feminine he could not so mistake, since it is there in concord with Dy, and as he immediately goes on to cite its concord with a feminine, nya, Deut. xvi. 9. this writer ought to have seen his meaning to be, that the ordinary feminine termination was no guide in nya, it being construed with both

,שבעים and שבוע masculine and feminine nouns; but that

being uniformly masculine, must have an uniform and different meaning.

The fifth charge of error is a combination of mistake, perversion, and sophistry, for which the severest terms of censure would not be too strong; and to it, as it is rather involved, we beg the particular attention of our readers: it runs thus in our manuscript copy:

“5th Error.—Your Reviewer supposes in Deut. xvi. 9, to be the plural of the numeral ya which is not the case; and his supposition implies an entire ignorance of the principles of the mutation of the vowel points, Your Reviewer says, speaking of the seven weeks Dan. ix. 25, and where, if it

been the words employed, as Deut. xvi. 9, niya

ya when though

weeks, it is properly sevens.' This is entirely erroneous;

with the שָׁבְעוֹת

punctuation which it has Deut. xvi. 9, cannot possibly be the plural of the numeral seven; for the Hebrew numeral seven

is a segolate שֶׁבַע (f or שִׁבְעָה)

noun, and must therefore if it had a feminine plural have a when the vowel points are essentially different. This mistake is curious, because your Reviewer by translating nya in Deut. xvi. 9, by 'sevens' does in fact give up his argument, and acknowledges that Mr. M. is in the right: for as we have are both plurals of the disputed word ya; so that, if the one means 'sevens,' the other also means 'sevens,' and Mr. M. is in the right."

שָׁבְעִים and שָׁבְעוֹת seen above

Now this charge grows out of the preceding, and is therefore false in its ground work: we never supposed my

to be the

,שבעים שבוע we gave a list of the texts where ; שבעה plural of

and nya occurred, p. 457; saying, "These are all the passages which can by possibility have any bearing on this inquiry;' as strong a proof as can be required that we thought ya had nothing to do with the inquiry, was not the singular of nya. But, passing this, and supposing the charge to be well founded, it would refute the hypothesis it is meant to support: for it asserts that the words in question do not come from seven the numeral, saying nya "cannot possibly be the plural of the numeral seven ; the very reverse of which Mr. M. maintains in an argument which this very writer has called, in the early part of this letter, "unanswerable!" But, passing this also, we now look at this charge seriatim; and, as it requires some effort of attention to disentangle the labyrinth and maze of error which it presents, we request our readers to follow us with great care, in our examination. The whole of this charge rests upon the writer's assuming that we derived from ; an assumption which he had no right to make, and which we reject and deny. Yet even with this false foundation he saw no way of convicting us of error but by printing with points words which we printed without points, thus adding injustice to mistake. But even this would not suffice, because the points of nya did not forbid such a derivation, while he thought that the points of yaw did: wherefore he makes a third assumption, which we cannot conceive to have been an unintentional mistake: for you only is segolate; such a punctuation only would serve his purpose; and he shuffled the two words together so that the

These words are written with the points in the letter sent to us, but without in the printed copy!

+ This word is inserted in the letter sent to us; it is omitted in the printed eopy!

unwary reader might let a pass for a segolate also. This result, however, has been marred by the person who corrected the press of the published letter, and who, perceiving that my was not pointed with segol, had the honesty to strike out that word, without perceiving that the whole charge against us rested upon its insertion; and this fifth charge of error now stands not only naked and detected, but pointless and absurd. If the above be an incorrect account of the procedure we shall be glad to receive any better explanation, for we can discover none. But if it be correct, we do say that the man who could persist in the determination to mislead, with the steadiness of purpose which this train of thought would require, without one rising of remorse strong enough to induce him to burn his paper and repent of his sinful intention, reveals the awful lengths to which the slave of a system may go, in order to crush an opponent. Such a slave may perhaps mock and deride what we are now about to say, because he knows not the stern principle in which it originates, but we do say, that we would rather suffer our right hand to be cut off than practise or connive at deceptions like that we have exposed above. And if our readers knew how often such instances have come to our knowledge in the different controversies which we have had to maintain, and practised by persons who are professors, and even ministers of the Gospel, they would not only forgive, but applaud, the honest indignation which sometimes bursts from us, though, it may be, expressed in terms which are thought rough and indiscreet and uncharitable by this smooth-tongued and fawning generation. But even if the argument had been all fair, and without trickery, in this charge against us, it could not be maintained: for the same word in Ezek. xlv. 21 is pointed with sheva under the first radical, though properly translated seven; and again in Jer. v. 24, translated weeks, the improper weeks of harvest.

“6th Error.—Your Reviewer speaks of nya in Ezek. xlv. 25, omitting the 1, whereas a very slight knowledge of the points would have taught him that never had, and never can have,

the status constructus of) שִׁבְעַת שִׁבְעָה

a) to omit."

This last allegation is a mere catch at a word: we never said, or meant to say, that the word in Ezek. xlv. 26 had a to omit, but, on the contrary, said the word was "different." If, instead of saying "omitting 1," we had said being written without 1, as the context clearly shews us to have meant, this carper at a word would have had no handle for his perversion.

And now we leave our readers to decide what right this writer has to charge us with error, and how far any thing which he has said is serviceable to Mr. Maitland and his hypothesis.

246

REPLY TO MR. VAUGHAN, AUTHOR OF THE NATURE AND DURATION OF THE PAPAL APOSTASY."

MR. Vaughan, the gentleman whose sermon we reviewed last summer (see No. VII. of the MORNING WATCH), has made a few strictures upon our article in the last Evangelical Magazine, in which the only thing material to notice is his denial of the genuineness of the Epistles attributed to Ignatius.

That the Papists, who corrupted every thing, should have corrupted, and added to the number of, these ancient Epistles, is no wonder. But we quoted only from those seven which have been both proved genuine and purified from all interpolation. Calvin denied the authenticity of them (as did Luther that of the Epistle of St. James), but Archbishop Usher has, since_ Calvin's time, finally settled the question. "Usher," says Du Pin, "found two manuscripts of the original Epistles of St. Ignatius in England: one in the University of Cambridge (in Caius College library), and another in a private library of one Richard Montague, which contained an ancient version of those Epistles very different from the vulgar: and afterwards, having compared this translation with the passages recited by the Fathers, he perceived that it exactly agreed with them quite through. Not long after the learned Isaac Vossius found, in the library of Florence, a Greek manuscript of the same Epistle, which had been perused about an hundred years before by Turrianus, wherein the Greek text perfectly answered to the version published by Usher; and so he published this Greek original." "I am persuaded," says the pious Dean Milner in his Church History, vol. i. p. 156, "that the strong manner in which submission to the bishop is inculcated has been the most weighty argument with several persons to encourage themselves in doubts of the authority of these pieces. But to doubt the genuineness of these Epistles on this account, is to be the slaves of prejudice. Usher, and after him Vossius, have sufficiently distinguished the genuine from the false and interpolated; and the testimony of antiquity, and the agreement of the Epistles, as thus purified, with the quotations of the ancients, render them superior to all exceptions."

With regard to the question on which Mr. Vaughan toucheswhether the late Mr. Roby of Manchester was more like an ancient bishop than what we now call a bishop-we will (waving a comparison which might give pain to some friends of the deceased, and would little avail in the argument) only say, that, as in all the appointments of the Apostles with regard to church government there was inherent reason for such appointments in the nature of things, it is no wonder that some who deny the name should find themselves slipping into the power and substance of the thing. Whether men will have it or not, the

Declaration from the National Scotch Church, London. 247

church cannot flourish without episcopacy, in some modification or other. The power of orders, ordination, confirmation, and jurdisdiction, are neither more nor less than as they are stated in the canons of the Council of Nice. One element alone is wanting to make our Bishops what the primitive ones were, Love; and that is not the product of any system of church polity: we must seek it from God; and the Dissenters will allow that they are in as much need of it as the Churchmen whom they condemn.

DECLARATION FROM THE NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH,

LONDON.

To the Editor of the Morning Watch.

DEAR SIR, I send you the copy of a Declaration set forth by the office-bearers of the church of which I am Minister, for the end of contradicting and counteracting the false reports which have been circulated through a thousand channels, to prevent good Christian people from waiting on my ministry. It had become absolutely necessary also for the assurance of the friends and families of the Scottish youth, whereof my flock is principally composed, who were continually, as well as others, receiving urgent entreaty to separate themselves from one held up to public detestation as a blasphemer of the Saviour of the world. Yet, much as I have suffered from the reproaches of men, for the truth's sake, I was content to have borne in silence, and therefore had no hand whatever in originating, nor yet in penning, this document, which came forth spontaneously from the hearts and minds of those honest and honourable men whose names it bears. They could no longer be silent, knowing from week to week, and from day to day, my conversation in the midst of them. The document is a simple denial of certain charges of heretical doctrine laid against me by the tongue of common slander and it is made by those who have, with one only exception, been with me from the beginning; who for many years have publicly and privately had every opportunity of knowing my doctrine thoroughly. That it will not satisfy those who desire that I should be found a heretic, and, desiring it, have caught at single words, disjointed expressions, half-sentences, misquotations, misrepresentations, in order to conclude me so, I can well believe; but that the testimony of twelve men, heads of the congregation, unreproached and irreproachable, will have weight, and should have weight, with all God-fearing and right-minded men, I feel fully assured: and with respect to my printed works, I solemnly, before Almighty God, and his church in heaven and earth, declare, that, however they may be tortured by ingenious and critical men to speak another language than the language of this Declaration, they never were intended by me to do so;