another impression of the Coptic New Testament, it is highly probable, that the verse will be thrust in. That it is not in the Ethiopic version, the reader may convince himself by referring to the London Polyglott, which contains the Ethiopic version of the New Testament; being, with the exception of typographical blunders, an exact reprint of that published at Rome by Petrus in 1548, the only Ethiopic New Testament that was ever printed in Europe.

In respect of the Armenian version, there is now lying before me a very splendid copy, edited at Venice, in 1789, by Lucas, an Armenian prelate; and that seemingly under circumstances highly favourable to the obtaining of a more corrected text than any which had appeared since the time of Uscan. In this impression the seventh and eighth verses are both included within a parenthesis, accompanied with a notice in the margin, that thus much is foreign to the original; in plain terms, that these two verses are both spurious. In his advertisement to the reader, placed at the end of the volume, the editor further declares, that upwards of ten Armenian manuscripts, ancient as well as modern, which he had then in his possession; besides an old Greek manuscript, together with the Syriac and the Arabic versions, all agreed in giving the text thus: For the spirit, indeed, is truth. These three there are, which bear testimony, the spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three are one. If, &c. That even those words of the eighth verse were at one time wanted in most of the manuscripts; and that it was only in one or two manuscripts, that so much could be found. That he had, therefore, included these verses within a parenthesis, as adding nothing to the illustration, but evidently obstructing the sense of St. John.

The Latin Vulgate, then, is the

only ancient version in Christendom in which this verse is contained on the authority of its manuscripts; and yet in some of the best and oldest of the Latin manuscripts it is not to be found. Nor is it cited by any of the Latin fathers down to the close of the fifth century: certainly not by Tertullian, as hath been rashly asserted; nor yet by St. Cyprian, if the matter be but duly and impartially considered. To me it is fully apparent, that his scriptural citation of, Tres unum sunt, is nothing else than the concluding part of what is now become the eighth verse of the chapter. If in his copy there had been any such words of the text as, There are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; as it would have been much to his purpose to have made them a direct part of his edition, so we may be sure, that he would have done so; and not have contented himself with citing the words, tres unum sunt, as so many words of Scripture only; and then applying them, on his own authority, to the three persons of the Godhead. Whereas, on the supposition, that the seventh verse was not at all in his copy, we easily discover the reason, why the words, Father, Son, and Spirit, form, directly, no part of his quotation; and can readily divine, how with Facundus, he would have insisted on the propriety of applying the words of the eighth verse to the doctrine of the Trinity, had he been required to explain himself.

To reduce this argument to its smallest shape. If the advocates of the verse can adduce from any genuine voucher of the first four hundred years of the Christian Church, the words: There are three that bear record in heaven, &c. Or, if they can point out to me, any one authentic and important passage of the New Testament, which has been equally passed over in silence by all the Greek and Latin fathers; I will acquiesce in the reasonable

ness of admitting the whole verse into the sacred canon. But if they can do neither of these things; nor yet deny, that the words, Tres unum sunt, are as much a part of the eighth as they are of their seventh verse; why do not they feel and acknowledge the force of the arguments against its authenticity, but still persist in maintaining it on grounds on which the Marcionite might have defended his canon of Scripture, at least as well as, if not better even than the orthodox Chris. tian.

To me the extraordinary explication of the eighth verse by Facundus is a full and adequate proof, that in the middle of the sixth century, the passage of the heavenly witnesses was as much unknown to the African Church as it was to the rest of Christendom. To this argument the common reply is, that Facundus had a copy in which the seventh verse happened not to be extant; and, therefore, that he has endeavoured to accommodate the terms of the eighth to the sense of the seventh. But what kind of trifling is this, I pray, in so serious a matter? Shall we suppose the celebrated Facundus to have been so illiterate and unfortunate a prelate as never to have seen any other copy of the first Epistle of St. John, except the one in his own possession? It is not possible, that a man of his learning and eloquence should have thus committed himself in a solution of the eighth verse; from which, on the supposition of the seventh being still extant in other copies, any fellow bishop of a neighbouring diocese must have been compelled to deride his ignorance and stupidity. God forbid, then, that we should be thus induced to disparage the testimony of the venerable Facundus; or to harbour the suspicion, that his copy of the New Testament was not as correct and as entire as that of any other of his African brethren. Besides, admitting the fact, that of

5

the African canon of the New Testament, some copies had the seventh verse, and some not; what right have its espousers to assume in its behalf, that the absence of it in any copy must needs have been a defect; and not rather, that its existence was a flagrant corruption of the sacred text, at once condemned by every version in Christendom?

I am not certain, whether what I am going to cite from Beaunier may not have been already noticed by others; but, since it bears on the question at issue, I shall present it to the reader in his own words. He is speaking of the library of the cathedral of Rheims. La Bibliotheque de la Cathedrale a conservé plus d'anciens monumens; on y voit encore plusieurs manuscrits tres anciens; entre autres un Texte des Evangiles ecrit sur du velin pourpré; et une Bible de l'Archevêque Hincmar, dans la quelle il y a ces paroles de l'Epitre de Saint Jean, Tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cœlo, pater, verbum, et spiritus; on ajoûte; Et hi tres unum sunt; paroles qui n'y etoient point du temps d' Hincmar; c'est pour quoi lors qu'il cite ce passage, il le cite toûjours sans cette addition. Recueil General, &c. Tom. II. p. 550. Hence it appears, that in the very Bible of Archbishop Hincmar, who filled the see of Rheims in 866, and was confessedly one of the most learned of the Gallican prelates, the passage of the heavenly witnesses was extant; but with the clause, Et hi tres unum sunt, added by a later hand; so as never to have been adduced by Hincmar in his citations of that passage. I could have wished, however, that our author had been a little more explicit as to the places in which the archbishop has cited the passage at all; as in the Hincmari Opuscula which I have, I can find no reference whatever, either to the seventh or the eighth verse, but only to the ninth; nor, indeed, considering the subject matter of these treatises, is

it probable, that it should be found. There is one thing remarkable, certainly, to be collected from the Bible of Hincmar; and which well agrees with what I have constantly observed of the history of this passage, that the words Tres unum sunt, occurred but once in the Epistle of St. John, and that their proper place was at the close of the eighth, and not of the seventh verse.

But, perhaps, it will next be asked, if the passage be really spurious, how it has happened to be cited by Vigilius, Tapsensis, Ful

gentius, Pseudo-Jerome, and many
others after them; as well as ac-
tually inserted into so many of the
Latin manuscripts? To this I pur-
pose to reply in a future paper; as
also to what is termed the internal
evidence of its authenticity, and if
there be any thing else which may
require to be answered.
In the interim,

I remain, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
RECTOR OF SCAWTON.

Stonegrove Parsonage,
Dec. 15th, 1821.

Matt. xxvii. 9, 10.

"And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him that was valued,... and gave them for the potter's field."

Earthen pots are very common through all Asia, and by what we read concerning the potter's field," they seem to have been in use in India, where grounds were allotted for their manufacture. In India, the ground is furnished by the proprietor, and for this reason he is supplied at an inferior price. -Description of a Village in Benares, see Tennant's India.

Why a potter's field should be preferred to any other as a burial place, may be conjectured from the following extract from Parson's Travels in Asia and Africa, p. 113, as in all probability the same causes, which prevented its being convertible to arable or pasture ground, must have existed in an equal degree in Palestine, a burial ground was one of the few purposes to which an open space of ground could have been applied.

"We travelled eleven hours this day, and the last six without once

halting. The ground over which we travelled, seemed strewed over with small pieces of green earthenware, which were so plenty that many bushels could be gathered in the space of a mile. I inquired into the occasion of it. The information which we received from our Sheik and others in the caravan, was, that in former ages, the greatest part of this plain was inhabited by potters, as the soil abounded then, as it does at present, with clay fit for their use; that they moved their works from place to place, as they consumed the clay, or it suited their conveniency. They make now at Bagdad such kind of earthenware, with a green glazing upon it: when the sun shines it appears like green glass. They cannot plow this ground, as it would cut the feet of both men and oxen.”

Matt. xxvii. 6.

"And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for us to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood,” (τιμη αίματος.)

The hatred which the mountainous nations of Caucasus evince against

great to the farmers; whole fields are destroyed and eaten up in a few hours. The south-east wind is a great enemy to them, dispersing and driving them in vast numbers out to sea. I have, whilst at anchor, seen many come aboard, tired and exhausted. They are of a very beautiful colour. The Caffres and Hottentots, like the natives of Egypt, eat them for food at the season when they lose their wings, and are found in heaps on the ground.

Percival's Cape of Good Hope, p. 172.

The inhabitants of New Holland are also partial to certain insects as food; the larva perforates trees, hence it is in all probability of the cerambyx genus, a species of beetle which, though of a different class, in some respects resembles the locust.

Further references to the practice of eating locusts may be found in Parke's Africa, p. 76, and Salt's Abyssinia, p. 172.

tory of England.

No. 2. FROM THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY

INTO BRITAIN TO THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS. THE Ecclesiastical History of this island before the Saxon æra, may be told in few words. And it is not without some apprehension of appearing tedious, that a chapter is devoted to the subject. But the slightest and earliest traces of great events are not to be neglected by the inquisitive, and there are circumstances in the conversion of the Britons which render it peculiarly interesting at the present day.

It is impossible to give a detailed description of British manners before the introduction of Christianity. The accounts which have come down to us are short, and incomplete, and the best of them is disfigured by inconsistencies, and blunders. It is certain, however, that our ancestors were savages and idolators, and this is sufficient for practical purposes. There is no reason to suppose that the aboriginal Britons differed in any material degree from other barbarians, or other heathens. Their resistance to the invading Romans was brave, and persevering; but from first to last it was the re

skill and civilization: and from first to last it was rendered fruitless by the petty intrigues of kings, and chieftains,-by the mutual jealousy and mutual insincerity of men who preferred a foreign to a domestic master; and could not act in concert for a single campaign. Cæsar triumphed over Cassibelaunus in consequence of the defection of the Trinobantes, and Caractacus was delivered up to Ostorius the general of Claudius, by Cartismandua, queen of the Brijantes, beneath whose roof he had sought refuge after his defeat. The history of the subjugation of Britain by the Romans is the often repeated tale of the triumph of discipline and system over irregular and desultory valour. The ambush and the sally were the principal parts of British tactics, and the forest, the morass, and the mountain, their only entrenchments. It would argue a great want of national pride to forget that the long period of 140 years elapsed between the invasion, (not to say the repulse) of Julius Cæsar, and the conquest of Agricola. Even after Claudius landed on our island, the best generals and bravest armies of Rome, were resisted during forty years by half armed and naked Britons. But the entire course of