(Vol. iv. pp. 57. 125. 193. 196. 298.)
Your general readers have reason to be as much obliged as myself to your
correspondents CEPHAS and K. S. for the information contained in the
former's criticisms, and the latter's addition to what you had inserted
in my name on the subject of clerical marriages.
CEPHAS is very fair, for he does not find fault with other persons'
versions of the first part of Heb. xiii. 4. without giving his own
version to be compared; and he states the ground of his criticisms on my
reference to it. He has kindly told your readers, what they might have
conjectured from the Italics in our authorized version, that in
rendering [Greek: Timios ho gamos en pasi], "Marriage _is_ honourable in
all," they inserted _is_; and to show your readers an example of keeping
closer to the original, he himself renders it as follows: "Let (the laws
of) marriage be revered in all _things_, and the marriage bed be
undefiled."
Then comes his exposure of my unhappy mistake: "H. WALTER mistakes the
adjective _feminine_ [Greek: en pasi] as meaning _all men_." Really, had
I known that [Greek: pasi] was an adjective feminine, I could scarcely
have fallen into the mistake of supposing it to mean _all men_. But many
of your readers will be likely to feel some sympathy for my error, while
they learn from CEPHAS that the ordinary Greek grammars, in which they
can have proceeded but a very few pages before they read and were called
upon to repeat the cases of [Greek: pas, pasa, pan], were quite wrong in
teaching us that though [Greek: pasi] might be either masculine or
neuter, it must not be taken for a feminine form. But before we correct
this error in one of the first pages of our grammar, I presume that we
should all like to know from what recondite source CEPHAS has discovered
that [Greek: pasi], and not [Greek: pasais], is the feminine form of
this constantly-recurring adjective.
But farther, p. 193. will show that I did not give him a right to assume
that I should construe [Greek: pasi] "all _men_." For under my
_mistaken_ view of its being masculine, I thought the weaker sex was
included; and being myself a married man, I knew that marriage
comprehends women as well as men.
But there is still more to be learnt from the criticisms of CEPHAS,
which the learned world never knew before. For, having told us that
[Greek: pasi] is an adjective feminine, he adds, "it signifies here _in
all things_;" whereas the grammars have long taught that _things_ must
not be understood unless the adjective be neuter. Perhaps he had better
concede that the grammars have not been wrong in allowing that [Greek:
pasi] may be neuter; and then, as we know that it is also masculine, and
he knows it to be feminine, it must be admitted to be of all genders,
and so young learners will be spared all the trouble of distinguishing
between them. If it be admitted that [Greek: pasi] is neuter here, it
may signify _all things_.
My other mistake, he says, has been that of not perceiving that the
imperative _let_ should be supplied, instead of the indicative _be_.
This must be allowed to be open to debate; but as the proper meaning of
[Greek: timios] is "to be esteemed honourable," "had in reputation"
(Acts v. 34.), will it be a mistake to say, that the primitive
Christians would properly respect marriage, in their clergy as well as
in others, on the ground of the Scriptures saying, "Let marriage be
esteemed honourably in every respect?" Could they properly want ground
for allowing it to the clergy, when they could also read 1 Tim. iii. 2.
11., and Titus i. 6.? As CEPHAS quotes the Vulgate for authority in
favour of _enim_ in the next clause, he might have told your readers to
respect its authority in rendering the first clause, "Honorabile
connubium in omnibus." And if he has no new rules for correcting Syriac
as well as Greek, that very ancient version, though the gender of the
adjective be ambiguous in the equivalent to [Greek: pasi], renders the
next clause, "and _their_ couch _is_ pure," showing that _persons_ were
understood.
Next comes K. S., who tells your readers that Whiston quotes the
well-known _Doctor_ Wall for evidence as to the prohibition of second
marriages among the Greek clergy, before the Council of Nice. I should
like to know something of this _well-known Doctor_. There was a
well-known Mr. Wall, who wrote on baptism; and there was a Don Ricardo
Wall, a Spanish minister of state, well known in his day, and there was
a Governor Wall, too well known from his being hanged; but I cannot find
that any of these was a Doctor, so as to be the well-known Doctor Wall,
whose "authority no one would willingly undervalue," (p. 299.) As for
poor Whiston, his name was well known too, as a bye-word for a person
somewhat crazy, when he quitted those mathematical studies which
compelled him to fix his mind on his subject with steadiness whilst
pursuing them. K. S. has told us that he terms "the _Apostolic
Constitutions_ the most sacred of the canonical books of the New
Testament." Such an opinion is quite enough as a test of Whiston's power
of judging in such questions. After much discussion, the most learned of
modern investigators assigns the compilation of the first six books of
those _Constitutions_ to the end of the third century, and the eighth to
the middle of the fourth.
In the remarks to which CEPHAS has thus adverted, I gave some evidence
of marriages among ecclesiastics, at later dates than your correspondent
supposes such to have been allowed. Can he disprove that evidence? (See
Vol. iv., p. 194.)