It has been owing to different comments on the Scriptures, that Christians have been divided into sectaries. Every commentator, who could influence a party to embrace his comment, put himself, at the head of a division of Christians; as Luther, Calvin, and Arminius, laid the foundation of the sectaries who bear their names; and the Socinians were called after the Scismatical Socinius; the same may be said of each of the sectaries. Thus it is that different commentaries or acceptations of the original meaning of the Scriptures, have divided the Christian world into divisions and subdivisions of which it consists at present. Nor was there ever a division or subdivision among Jews, Christians or Mahometans, respecting their notions or opinions of religion, but what was occasioned by commentating on the Scriptures, or else by latter pretended inspired revelations from God in addition thereto. The law of Moses was the first pretended immediate revelation from God, which respects the Bible, and after that in succession the several revelations of the prophets, and last of all (in the Christian system) the revelations of Jesus Christ and apostles, who challenged a right of abolishing the priesthood of Moses; Christ claiming to be the antitype of which the institution of sacrifices and ceremonial part of the law of Moses was emblematical; but this infringement of the prerogative of the Levitical priests gave such offence, not only to them, but to the Jews as a nation, that they rejected Christianity, and have not subscribed to the divine authority of it to this day, holding to the law of Moses and the prophets. However Christianity made a great progress in the world, and has been very much divided into sectaries, by the causes previously assigned.
"Mahomet taking notice of the numerous sects and divisions among Christians, in his journies to Palestine, &c, thought it would not be difficult to introduce a new religion, and make himself high priest and sovereign of the people." This he finally effected, prosecuting his scheme so far, that he new modelled the Scriptures, presenting them, (as he said,) in their original purity, and called his disciples after his own name. He gained great numbers of proselytes and became their sovereign in civil, military and spiritual matters, instituted the order of mystical priesthood, and gave the world a new Bible by the name of the Alcoran; which he gives us to understand was communicated to him from God, by the intermediate agency of the angel Gabriel, chapter by chapter. "His disciples at this day inhabit a great part of the richest countries in the world, and are supposed to be more numerous than the Christians," and are as much, if not more, divided into sectaries, from causes similar to those which produced the division of Christians, viz.: the different commentators on, and expositions of the Alcoran. The Mufti, or priests, represented the doctrines and precepts of the Alcoran in a variety of lights different from each other, each of them claiming the purity of the original and infallible truths prescribed to the world by Mahomet, their great reformer of Christianity. For though the several sectaries of Mahometans differ, respecting the meaning of their Alcoran, yet they all hold to the truth and divine authority thereof, the same as the Christian sectaries do concerning their Bible: so that all the different opinions which ever did, or at present do subsist, between Jews, Christians and Mahometans, may be resolved into one consideration, viz.: the want of a right understanding of the original of the Scriptures. All sat out at first, as they imagined, from the truth of God's word, (except the impostors,) concluded that they had an infallible guide, and have, by one means or other, been guided into as many opposite faiths as human Invention has been capa-ble of fabricating; each sect among the whole, exulting in their happy ignorance, believing that they are favored with an infallible revelation for their direction.
It alters not the present argument, whether the Scriptures were originally true or not; for though they be supposed to have been either true or false, or a mixture of both, yet they could never have been handed down entire and uncorrupted to the present time, through the various changes and perpetual refinements of learning and language; this is not merely a matter of speculative and argumentative demonstration, the palpable certainty of it stands confessed in every Jewish, Christian and Mahometan sectary.
SECTION III. ON THE COMPILING OP THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SCRIPTURES...
INTO ONE VOLUME, AND OF ITS SEVERAL TRANSLATIONS. THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPES, AND OF THEIR CHARTERED RIGHTS TO REMIT OR RETAIN SINS, AND OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF THEIR BEING TRUSTED WITH A REVELATION FROM GOD.
The manuscripts of Scripture, which are said to have been originally written on scrolls of bark, long before the invention of paper or printing, and are said to compose our present Bible, were in a loose and confused condition, scattered about in the world, deposited nobody knows how or where, and at different times were compiled into one volume. The four gospels are by the learned generally admitted to have been wrote many years after Christ, particularly that of St. John: and sundry other gospels in the primitive ages of Christianity were received as divine by some of its then sectaries, which have unfortunately not met with approbation in subsequent eras of the despotism of the church.
The translation of the Scriptures by Ptolemy Phila-delphus, king of Egypt, was before Christ, and therefore could not include the writings of the New Testament in his translation, and "whether by seventy-two interpreters, and in the manner as is commonly related, is justly questioned." But where, at what time, and by whom, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were first compiled into one volume, is what I do not understand: but was it a longer or shorter period after Christ, it alters not the present argument materially, since the scattered manuscripts were in a loose and confused condition for a long time; and the grand query is, when the compilers of those manuscripts collected them together in order to form them into one volume, how they could have understood the supposed divine writings, or symbolical figures, with the ideas originally connected with them, and distinguish them from those which were merely human, and in comparison of the others are called profane. To understand this distinction would require a new revelation, as much as may be supposed necessary for composing the original manuscripts themselves; but it is not pretended that the compilers or translators of the Bible were inspired by the divine spirit in the doing and completing their respective business; so that human reason, fancy, or some latent design, must needs have been substituted, in distinguishing the supposed divine and human writings apart, and in giving a perfect transcript of the original manuscripts. Now admitting that the compilers were really honest principled men, (which is more than we are certain of,) it would follow, that they would be obliged to cull out of the mixed mass of premised divine and human writings, such as to them appeared to be divine, which would make them to be the sole arbitrators of the divinity that they were compiling to be handed down to posterity as the infallible word of God, which is a great stretch of prerogative for mortal and fallible man to undertake, and as great a weakness in others to subscribe to it, as of divine authority.
Mr. Fenning, in his dictionary definition of the word Bible, subjoins the following history of its translations:
"The translation of this sacred volume was begun very early in this kingdom," [England,] "and some part of it was done by King Alfred. Adelmus translated the Psalms into Saxon in 709, other parts were done by Edfrid or Ecbert in 730, the whole by Bede in 731 Trevisa published the whole in English in 1357. Tindal's was brought higher in 1534, revised and altered in 1538, published with a preface of Cranmers in 1549. In 1551, another translation was published, which was revised by several bishops, was printed with their alterations in 1560. In 1607, a new translation was published by authority, which is that in present use." From this account it appears, that from the first translation of the Bible by Trevisa, into English, in 1357, it has been revised altered, and passed through six different publications, the last of which is said to have been done by authority, which I conclude means that of the king, whose prerogative in giving us a divine revelation, can no more be esteemed valid than that of other men, though he may be possessed of an arbitrary power within the limits of his realm to prevent any further correction and publication of it. As to the changes it underwent previous to Trevisa's translation, in which time it was most exposed to corruptions of every kind, we, will not at present particularly consider, but only observe that those translations could not, every one of them, be perfect, since they were diverse from each other, in consequence of their respective revisions and corrections; nor is it possible that the Bible, in any of its various editions could be perfect, any more than all and every one of those persons who have acted a part in transmitting them down to our time may be supposed to be so: for perfection does not pertain to man, but is the essential prerogative of God.