rather have been Ani hinneni, if I even I had been intended. I even I do bring a flood, is not Ani, Ani, but Ani hinneni." For these reasons, ought we not to translate the words of Moses literally? Ani Ani Hua ve ein Elohim nimmadi, I, I, He, but not Gods with me. The verb substantive, here understood, speaks itself to be, there are; I and I and He, are three personal pronouns and the whole sentence is verbally rendered, there are I, and I, and He, but

b See Gen. vi. 17. Behold I even I do bring a flood-is,

אני הנני מביא את־־ המביל

and it is by some thought that "here should be writwithout the suffix pronoun, as in Exod. xxxi. 6.

ten

i

ואין אלהים עמדי
הוא
אוי
אני

mecum Dii at non Ille Ego Ego

A like expression, I think, is found in Isaiah xliii. 25.

אנכי אנכי הוא מחה פשעיד

and in a like signification. It was God, who is anochi, anochi, hua; or ani, ani, hua, that blotted out the transgressions of his people.

* The comma in English supplies the copulative, which cannot but be understood in the Hebrew, though not inserted.

not Gods with me. It was a doctrine before taught by Moses, that there were more persons than one called Jehovah, God, whom no man hath seen at any time, nor can see; and the Lord, who had appeared unto Abraham!' And yet he strictly charges Israel to hear, i. e. to observe it to be their faith, that Jehovah, their Elohim, was one Jehovah." May we not suppose him in the text before us, declaring in the terms of the same faith, that the three persons he here speaks of were not Elohim, Gods in the plural number;" for, to use the words of scripture, they were one Jehovah.

If what I have thus offered may be admitted, it must surely be a vain labour for any to endeavour to strike the words which they desire to contest, out of the New Testament; unless they could really put the

'See Connect. vol. ii. b. ix.

m See Deut. vi. 4. Connect. ibid. The Hebrew

והוה אלהינו והוה אחר,words in Deut. vi. 4. are

n

The word

is often used as a noun plural in scripture; see n. 2 Sam. vii. 22. See Deut,

yi, 13, &c.

doctrine intended in them out of the old. But such is the harmony of Scripture, that nothing in it is really ιδίας επιλύσεως, of a private interpretation, so peculiarly differing from all other scriptures, as not to have such a coincidence with them, as may warrant it to be true. Rather, oftentimes, what the prophets of a later age have said, when considered, discovers its having such a foundation in what had been said before, though the speakers had evidently no intention of speaking one from the other; that herein. appears some signature that what is said is. of God."

There remain to be considered some other variations of copies of the sacred books from one another. The books of the New Testament have, it seems, been collated with so scrupulous an exactness, that we have it marked as a various reading, if there be in different copies, or versions from copies, or in citations of texts by subsequent writers

for near five hundred years, the least difference of writing, the smallest particle or article of speech; or if the order and collocation of words minutely differ, though the meaning is exactly, and most clearly the same; and with all this indefatigable preciseness, the variations in the New Testament only are said to be 30,000.

But let us consider:

can we think of any book, if it had been published so many years, and there were so many different copies of it, translations into different tongues, citations made from it in divers languages, and all these were to be ransacked, and it were remarked as a different reading, wherever the word and was written in three letters, or in the character &,

ولو

&c.

this was written, that therefore "fore other such' minutenesses; might

with

many

not abundance of variations beyond number

See Phileleuth Lips.

We might gather many of this kind of variations from books printed in the old black letter, wherein are numbers of abbreviations different from any now in

use.

be amassed in this manner? Our learned critic assures us, upon his own knowledge, that there is hardly a classic author, which, if thus examined, would not afford more various readings than the scriptures.' I may perhaps be allowed to say very safely, that of the 30,000 variations in the New Testament, not near one in a thousand are in themselves worthy to be in the least regarded'; though the learned and laborious do well to collect them, that those who know how to use them may have full materials to shew, that all the fancies and surmises, of which the opposers of religion are ever pregnant in their imagination, are rash, groundless, frivolous, and vain. And, respecting the few that are of any moment in either the Old Testament or the New; so far as my little enquiry has been able to proceed, I never could see one, but such an account may be given of it as will shew that it neither deprives me of the instruction of any page of the sacred writings, nor destroys any article

Phil. Lips. p. 97, 99.