1. I remember a time, when I believed that the Bible in which my father
read, came down direct from God out of heaven, just as it was. I looked
on it as simply and purely divine.
2. I afterwards learnt that the Bible was printed on earth, and that it
was a translation from other books which had been written in Greek and
Hebrew.
3. But I still supposed that the Greek and Hebrew Bible was wholly
divine, and that the translation was as perfect as the original.
4. I next learned that the translation was _not_ perfect,--that the
translators were sometimes in doubt as to the meaning of the original,
and put one meaning in the body of the page, and another in the
margin,--that in other cases they had misunderstood the original, and
given erroneous translations. I sometimes heard preachers correcting the
translation of passages, and when I came to read commentaries and other
theological works, I found the authors doing the same thing.
5. I then found that there were several translations of the Scriptures,
one by Wesley, one by Campbell, and others by other men, and that they
all differed from each other, and that none of them could be regarded as
wholly correct. When I read the Notes of Adam Clarke on the Bible, I
found that he often differed from all the translators, and that in some
cases he differed from them very widely.
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