revolting to human reason, as the following: "Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Luke xvi. 9. What is this Mammon?

But I perceive you are as little pleased with my interrogations as I should be with your catechism, and shall now conclude this first part of my address. In the next I shall attempt, in a brief manner, to shew the credibility of the mission of the great herald of the New Church, and the nature of his doctrines and disclosures, and their conformity with reason and the Word of God.

[A note is here added, containing the explanation of some of the circumstances above adverted to in the history of Jacob, from A. C. n. 3993. And here concludes, as stated above, the first part of Mr. Condy's excellent address; and whether the second part was ever published, is to us unknown. We have taken this part from the first six Numbers of "the New Jerusalem Missionary and Intellectual Repository," published at New York, from May to October, 1823; we have seen the subsequent Numbers, .but they contain no further notice of the subject.]

THE INQUIRY PURSUED:

WHETHER THE WORD IN ALL ITS INTEGRITY, THOUGH PRESERVED, AT PRESENT EXISTS IN ANY INDIVIDUAL COPY. [Continued from p. 237.]

IN prosecuting this Inquiry in our last Number, we took a survey of the labours of the Masorites for the preservation of the Hebrew Scriptures; with a view of shewing, that although it is unquestionable that they were raised up by Divine Providence for the purpose, and that, by their care, much was done for the accomplishment of the object, yet it by no means follows that they have secured the integrity of all the individual copies, nor even of any that might be taken as a standard. We have seen that they were men who had no claims whatever to infallibility, so that it is not at all certain that the readings which they pronounced authentic were such in reality. They professed to be guided by tradition, as the name of their body of comments,

"the Masorah," indicates: but we well know that the Jews are not always entitled to belief when they give this name to their assertions, and that they are charged, by the highest authority, with having, in some instances, "made the law of God of none effect by their tradition." Besides, the very circumstance of the existence of a body of critics to determine the true readings of the Scriptures, assumes as its basis the fact, that such depravations had by degrees crept into the copies as made their labours necessary. The Jews affirm, that at the return from the Babylonian captivity, the sacred books, having become much corrupted, were revised by Ezra and his associates, whom they call the men of the Great Synagogue; according to the extract from the Talmud, quoted in our last, "The men of the Great Synagogue restored the Magnificence [as they call the Scripture] to its ancient state." This, it is supposed, Ezra was well qualified to do, because he was an inspired person: but it seems that he did not confide implicitly in his own inspiration; wherefore, as the Jews assure us, he took the assistance of four other inspired persons, namely, the three last prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, with Nehemiah: and yet these, as it would appear, did not find their gifts adequate to the purpose; wherefore, they called in the aid of a hundred and fifteen uninspired men of learning. Now though the whole of this is a traditionary tale, of which no trace is to be found in the authentic books of Ezra and Nehemiah, or in those of the three prophets said to have been their co-adjutors, or in the writings of Josephus, or in any other author prior to the compilers of the Talmud, who lived between two and five hundred years after the Christian æra, being near a thousand years after the age of Ezra ;-yet it probably had thus much foundation in truth; that a necessity for revising the copies of the Scriptures existed at the return from Babylon, and that such revisal was accordingly made with care; thus it proves that errors had crept in, and that the labours of certain critics, to whom none but a Jew will ascribe infallibility, were exercised to weed them out. Suppose, however, the critics who undertook this task perfectly succeeded; and suppose, also, that the Masorites, afterwards, preserved some standard copies in a state of purity; (though as we have seen in our last, the highest purity to which they pretended admitted 848 various readings, under the names of the Keri and Ketib, upon the preferableness of

which they did not attempt to decide :) and suppose fürther, (what was far from being the case,) that they left, in the Masorah, a perfect Hedge or Fence for the Law, capable of preserving its integrity quite inviolate in future; yet we have seen that, as admitted by Leusden, the Masorah" is now itself corrupted, and full half of it lost; hence it cannot now be a certain and infallible guide to the true reading of Scripture." For eight hundred years past, the door has again been open, without any Masorites to guard it, for the admission of corruptions into the text: and it surely is assuming too much, to suppose that none have entered.

The truth of the case, then, respecting the preservation of the Word in its integrity by the care of the Masorites, appears to be this: That had not they, by the divine providence of the Lord, been raised up for its guardianship, the sacred text would have become deplorably corrupt indeed; that by their instrumentality it has been preserved in a great degree of purity: but that to suppose this purity to be perfectly immaculate, in any individual copy, is to suppose a case which it would have required the actual inspiration of the Masorites, and of a series of subsequent copyists, to produce.

V. It being then so evident that there has been ample oppor tunity for errors to insinuate themselves into the copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, and that the care which has been exercised could not, in the nature of things, be sufficient to keep them entirely out; thus it being reasonable to expect, a priori, that the received text of the present day is not altogether faultless; we are now to proceed to shew, that the fact is as might naturally be expected, and that the best Masoretic text, as now existing, does actually contain some indubitable errors.

It is not without reluctance that we enter upon this branch of our inquiry. It would be far more agreeable to our feelings, could we, without violating our own convictions of the truth,convictions which have been forced on us in spite of our own wishes and preconceived opinions,-undertake the defence of the opposite side of the question. We have no doubt, also, that this would be more agreeable to our readers in general as well as to ourselves; and we shall not be surprised if some should be found, who, unwilling to open their eyes to the evidence which bas convinced us, will be displeased with us for laying it before them.

But let no member of the New Church imitate the spirit of the Romish priesthood, when they pronounced the doctrine of the motion of the earth round the sun a false and pernicious heresy, incarcerated Galileo for maintaining it, and pretended to regulate the laws of nature by a papal bull. Equally vain will it be for us to deny facts which the progress of science has brought to light. Sooner or later they will be universally admitted: and it will be. found eventually, that the acknowledging it to be true, that some mistakes have been introduced by the transcribers into the sacred text, no more invalidates the essential doctrine of the New Church, that the Holy Word is written by plenary divine inspiration as to every word and syllable, than the acknowledging the sun, and not the earth, to be the centre of this mundane system, invalidates the truth of the Scriptures in general.

We again, however, intreat that it may be remembered, "that we by no means affirm the errors in the common copies to be very great:or numerous: we deny their absolute perfection: but, as we remarked in our first paper on the subject, no doubt the received text contains the sacred original in a great degree of purity.'" [p. 140.]

We proceed then to adduce a few instances, in which, as it appears to us, the common editions, following the decisions of the Jews and their Masorites, have admitted errors: and let it be recollected, that if in any one instance an error evidently exists, the point we have undertaken to establish is proved :—it proves that the text deemed authentic by the Jews is not infallible; and, by consequence, as none will affirm any other copy to be, throughout, better than the received text, that the Word in all its integrity is not at present to be found in any individual copy. Let it also be recollected, that if whatever errors exist in some copics may be corrected by the help of others, our other position is true; -that, among all the copies, the Word in all its integrity is still preserved.

The evidences by which we propose to decide upon the passages which we conceive to be erroneous, are, 1, Other copies; 2. The ancient versions; 3. Evident reason; and, 4. The spiritual sense.

1. The use of Other Copies of the Hebrew text, in settling ques+ tions of this nature, is evident. In the same class of evidence must be mentioned the Samaritan Pentateuch, which seems to be of higher authority than any version, being the books of Moses, in the

original Hebrew tongue, but handed down by the Samaritans instead of the Jews. The Samaritans were the mixed nations who were settled by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, in the land of Israel, when he carried away the original inhabitants, and who embraced the Jewish religion, but received as divine the writings of Moses only without those of the prophets. [See 2 Kings xvii. and John iv.] These continued in the country, amalgamated with the remains of the Israelites, while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon and some of their descendants remain there still, and still read and venerate the law of Moses. The comparison of the Samaritan and Jewish Pentateuchs thus becomes a matter of great interest; as, owing to the hatred which has always subsisted between the two nations, their sacred books have been kept quite separate, and the copies quite uninfluenced by each other, since the first planting of the Samaritans in the land, above two thousand five hundred years ago; if not since the first revolt of the ten tribes from Rehoboam, nearly three hundred years before: and having thus come down to us through distinct channels for so long a period, it is wonderful to find that their agreement is still so great. Their greatest difference consists in their being written in different characters; and the general opinion now is, that the Samaritan letters are the original Hebrew ones, while those which we now call Hebrew are properly Chaldee, introduced from Chaldæa on the return of the Jews from their captivity in that country: which idea seems to be countenanced by Swedenborg, who says, that "the letters of the Hebrew language, in ancient times, were all inflected, and not, as at this day, terminated as lines;” [H. H. n. 260;]-in other words, were not what are called the square characters, now in use.

2. The use of the Ancient Versions, is equally evident. Those which are usually applied to this purpose are chiefly these: (1.) The Greek translation, commonly called the Septuagint, or version of the Seventy interpreters. It was made by Jews of Alexandria, from the Hebrew original, nearly 300 years before the era of the Incarnation: of course it exhibits the state of the Hebrew text, as possessed by the Jews of Alexandria, at that time; and it may reasonably be supposed, that, for the purpose of translation, copies esteemed the most correct would be procured. According to Josephus and others, the copy for translation was sent from Jerusalem by the High Priest and Sanhedrim; and the transla