When the advocates of the common version shall exert themselves to bring it into accordance with the true text, they will attack the Improved Version, from a safer position. But so long as they leave with this heretical work the sole praise, among British translations, of showing what the Evangelists and Apostles really wrote, and content themselves with circulating a version containing words and passages, without mark or warning, which they know to be spurious, and in more than one case, to be ancient theological allies of their creed, they are too much open to the charge of availing themselves of detected forgeries, to be entitled to read lectures to others, about reverence for the text. Dr. Tattershall enforces well “the duty of preserving the Canon of Scripture in its _integrity_.” Will he permit me to remind him of the duty of preserving it in its _simplicity_: or is there, in the _bare proposal of curtailment of the volume_, a sinfulness which does not exist in _the practical and persevering maintenance of known interpolation_? --------------------- B. _On the Ebionites and their Gospel._ The argument of Mr. Belsham against the authenticity of Matthew’s account of the miraculous conception appears to me very unsound: but Dr. Tattershall’s criticism upon it, I must think to be altogether unsuccessful; if at least, amid its intricate construction, I have really apprehended the points to which its force is applied. In rejecting this portion of Scripture, Mr. Belsham relies on the authority of the Nazarenes and Ebionites, or early Hebrew Christians: who are affirmed by Epiphanius and Jerome, to have used copies of Matthew’s Gospel, without the introductory passages in question. As the value of this argument depends altogether on the character of the attesting parties and documents, Dr. Tattershall calls in question the respectability of them all; and disparages, first, the ancient Nazarenes and Ebionites themselves; secondly, the testimony, in this matter, of Epiphanius and Jerome; thirdly, the Hebrew gospel or record, which they describe. The positions advanced under every one of these heads, appear to me to be erroneous. I. Nothing, it is said, can be more incorrect than to admit the claim of the Nazarenes and Ebionites to be regarded as the _original_, or main body of Hebrew Christians. They were a _sect_, at first united, then divided into two; successors of the Judaizing Christians; and after Adrian’s destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 132), they _separated_ from the general community of the Christian Church.