The Sun.
London, England, 1827-01-25 00:00:00

BIBLE SOCIETY.

DR. A. THOMSON'S LETTER TO LORD BEXLEY.
(From a Scotch Journal.)

This letter is admirably written, and well worth the attentive
perusal of all whose minds are at all wavering on the apocryphal
controversy; it abounds with good argument and excellent spirit
in an important cause. We have room only for a part of the first
paragraph, and the very eloquent conclusion of a long and power-
ful line of reasoning :

" My Lord—At the Anniversary of the Kent Auxiliary Bible
Society, your Lordship delivered a speech, the object of which
was to defend the conduct of the Earl-street Committee, and to
cherish in those who heard you a continued reliance on their wis-
dom and integrity—that speech soon found its way into the news-
papers. It has been printed in a separate form ; its circulation has
been forced through every corner of the empire ; and, from the
eagerness display'ed and the expence incurred, in giving it this ex-
tensive publicity, I cannot but draw one of two inferences ; either I
must infer that it is regarded by the persons for whom it pleads
as a conclusive and triumphal answer to all the charges which
have been brought against them, and that, if what your Lordship
has advanced in their behalf can be satisfactorily refuted, they
must be fou❑d guilty, and retire from office; or I must infer
that the Committee, perfectly aware of the badness of their cause,
are willing to shelter themselves under the respectability and in-
fluence of your Lordship's name, and to give us the opinion or
the authority of a Christian Nobleman as sufficient to disprove
every fact, and to rebut every argument by which their proceed-
ings have been arraigned. On perusing the speech itself, lam
compelled to declare, with all the deference which I entertain to-
wards its author, that the latter alternative appears to me the
most rational and probable."
" I shall not trouble your Lordship with recapitulating the
particulars of that indictment against the Earl-street Committee,
which I have distinctly brought forward, and fully substantiated.
—But I feel myself warranted, by all the principles of moral
judgment, and sound deduction, and human experience, to come
to this conclusion—that they are not entitled to that confidence
which is yet most clamourously demanded for them ; but that,
on the contrary, they are the objects of just disapprobation and
merited distrust, and should no longer hold the situation which
they have so unworthily occupied."
" If you have a Society which sets itself avowedly to circulate
the Bible and Apocrypha, our people will sincerely lament it ;
but they will not go beyond their sphere, and officiously inter-
middle with the abetters of such a scheme. But when a Society,
which so solemnly pledges itself before God and men to distribute
the Oracles of Truth, to the exclusion of everything else; which
repeats that solemn pledge year after year, and in every varied
form of expression ; and which stakes its credit and its pro-
sperity to a strict adherence to this grand principle; when
you have a Society which does all this, and yet is, all the while,
busily employed, by means of its Committee, in adulterating the
Scriptures which it circulates, and in artfully and dishonestly con-
cealing from the public the abominations which are ➢ractised—
for such a Society—for a Society riminitting such things, or ap-
proving of them, they can have no toleration ; and to ask them
to have fellowship With it, is to ask them to renounce their most
sacred principles--to violate their conscience—and to make ship-
wreck of their faith."