the birth of Christ in the forty-first of Augustus; therefore taking forty-one from one hundred and eleven, there will remain seventy for the time between the birth of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem; and then supposing this destruction, according to the common account, to have been about forty years after the passion, Christ must have suffered at near thirty years of age. Or, to give the matter shorter, the Scriptures assure us Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate; now he governed Judæa no longer than Tiberius reigned, and not so long; and Tiberius, according to Josephus, reigned twenty years; to which if we add the fourteen years Christ lived under Augustus, they amount to no more than thirty-four years, if Christ had lived as long as Tiberius did. Or again, if Tiberius reigned but twenty years, and Christ was about thirty in Tiberius' fifteenth, as St. Luke assures us; then he could not be above four or five and thirty at most when he died but as he died under Pilate, who was dismissed the government a year sooner, so Christ must have died a year younger. So that it was not possible for St. Irenæus, which way soever he went to work, to stretch the time of our Lord's life upon earth to near forty, much less fifty years, as the author of the latter part of the chapter, out of which the pædobaptists cite the words they build on, has inconsiderately done. Mr. Dodwell, it is true, has endeavoured to make the opinion, of Christ's being toward fifty years old, the more excusable, and likely to have been St. Irenæus', by shewing, that he was nearer forty than is generally believed': but if his calculation be ever 1 Dissert. i. in Irenæum, sect. 46. p. 82, &c. so exact, it can signify nothing in the present case, because he agrees with us, that the time of the passion was the nineteenth of Tiberius, and only sets the time of his birth something backwarder than we do; which is not to be allowed in this case, because St. Irenæus himself has determined the time of his birth to the forty-first of Augustus; from which to the nineteenth of Tiberius is but thirty-three years, according to Mr. Dodwell himself. From all this therefore I think it must necessarily follow, that St. Irenæus cannot be reasonably thought the author of this part of that chapter; for it cannot fairly be imagined that a man of his learning and. integrity was either incapable of making the necessary computations, or so intolerably careless as to neglect them, especially when he was professedly treating the matter, and did not speak of it by the by. 2. But in the second place it is doubtful whether St. Irenæus said as our adversaries understand the passage now; because we have not his own words, but only a translation of them, which may give them a quite different face from what they had in the original and therefore, if the words be allowed to have any weight at all, it can be but very little. And translators very often took a great latitude, as several among the ancients have complained. But as to this translation of St. Irenæus in particular, it is a very scandalous one, and altogether unworthy the original. And this all learned men confess, since it has been known to be a translation: the great Scaliger says, 'the translator was an ass, and had even less learning than Ruffinus m' and yet m Scaligerana, p. 213. L'interprète d'Irenée est bien asne, il est plus indocte encore que Ruffin. 6 one would think no man could abuse his original more than it is known Ruffinus was wont to do. Monsieur Du Pin calls it a barbarous version": and a little after, says, the version of the five books concerning the heresies, though barbarous-and 'full of faults,' &c. And in a note he has added, he says, 'It was certainly composed by a man who ' understood neither language as he ought";' that is, neither the Greek in which St. Irenæus wrote, nor the Latin, into which he pretended to translate. The learned Mr. Dodwell calls it a foolish translation P ;' and the author of it, a barbarous, unskilful translator,' who, he says, has several times mistaken ' one word for another, so as even to alter the sense very much from what the author intended¶:' and he gives several instances of it. 6 Dr. Grabe, the learned editor of this Father, in the prolegomena he has prefixed to the late edition, reckons it but a bad translation; and says, they who fancy St. Irenæus to have been the translator as well as the author 'make that great man unacquainted with his own thoughts, or else they must say he has expressed them very aukwardly".' 6 But besides the judgment of learned men, the badness of the version may be seen by comparing it with those fragments of the Greek which are still preserved. In one places where the original and the version disagree, Dr. Grabe thinks the copy the translator made use of was corrupt: which however could not Hist. Eccles. p. 67, 68; [or, p. 60 of the second edition of the first volume, fol. 1693.] • Page 71. letter K. r Sect. 2. §. 3. q Ibid. sect. 5. p Dissert. v. sect. 4. well be so early as the doctor (without any ground) supposes the translation to be made, namely, in St. Irenæus' time, or soon after. I should rather impute the variation to the translator's ignorance or carelessness; especially since we have other undoubted instances how unequal he was to the work he undertook. In another placet, the doctor thinks some words, which had been noted in the margin, are now crept into the text itself: and elsewhere he very frequently finds fault with the translation. In the twenty-fifth chapter of the third book, instead of ποιήσαντος τοῦ Θεοῦ ὅπερ ἐβ., the interpreter seems to have read, not without very great negligence to be sure, ποιήσοντας τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐβούλετο ; entirely perverting the author's sense, as the doctor has noted". Again, St. Irenæus had said, 'For since by a tree we lost it, (viz. the word of God,) by a tree we ' have received it again;' [but the translator falsely renders it, by a tree it was again made manifest unto all,] shewing the height, and length, and breadth, ' and depth' [this last word is omitted in the translation] which is in it; for' [the translator turns it and, and adds, as some of the ancients have said] by ' a divine' [this word the translator omits] stretching out of the hands, he gathered two people under ' one head, even the Father;' [the translator renders it, two people under one God; and then adds, of his own, two hands, because there were two people scattered to the ends of the earth; but one middle head] for 'God is one, who is over all, and through all, and in 'all.' The translation is different in this last clause 6 Ad lib. iii. cap. 19. note b. p. 245. u Page 255. note b. * Lib. v. cap. 17. p. 426. 6 6 too for it runs, for one God is over all, through all, and in us all.' In this one short passage, you see, there is abundance of liberty taken, and that several times the sense is changed. 6 6 In another place, to give but one instance more, the translator has altered the sense of the Greek very much. St. Irenæus reckons up the four covenants God had made with men in this manner : One after the flood of Noah, in the bow; the second, that of Abraham, in the sign of circum'cision; the third, the giving of the law by Moses; and the fourth, that of the Gospel, by our Lord Jesus Christ. But the translator reckons them up thus: One with Adam before the flood; the second 'with Noah after the flood; the third, the giving of the Law under Moses; the fourth renews the man, and comprehends all in it, which is by the Gospel, giving men wings, and raising them up into the heavenly kingdom.' One would think this could not be pretended to be a translation of St. Irenæus' sense, it is so different from it. But you may see what strange work has been made with this book, and how much the translator, through ignorance, negligence, and too much liberty, has corrupted and abused this great man's work. And can any body, after all this, be satisfied barely from such a transaction, that he has, in any case, the true sense of St. Irenæus, without any alteration? And much less should any ground an argument upon it. It must appear therefore very doubtful, at least, whether St. Irenæus ever spoke as the present translation makes him do: for I have shewn, I think more 6 y Lib. iii. cap. 11. p. 223. |