Rev A Brandram - No 69
Kingston, Jamaica, 15th May 1838
My Dear Friend,
Two days ago our packet arrived, bringing the London mails of the 2nd April. I had looked with full and much expectation for a letter, note or memo from Earl Street just to say at least how your funds stood on the 31st March. It was perhaps unreasonable in me to look for this, as you might not know yourselves at the time the packet sailed. You will know however to excuse this little anxiousness of mine on this thermometer point, by reflecting on the kindred feeling in your own minds about the same matter. Next packet will I expect to bring the message. I apprehend from some notices you are so kind as give me in your letter of 8th February that your general sum from all items taken together will be less than last year, whilst there is a real increase in the most important items, namely, foreign sales, and free contributions. If you have less from English sales, it is not to be wondered at, considering what you have been doing these 34 years. Yet England I fear is not yet supplied with Bibles, though it should be.
On the day I arrived in Kingston from the country, I called on our Governor, who was stopping here at the time, and not at Spanish Town. I called to thank him for his prompt interference in our case respecting the Bible seized in Cuba, and for the answers he had remitted me concerning them. I wished also to say, that I would be obliged to trouble him again on the subject, as I had lately had a letter from Cuba dated the 27th March stating that the books had not then been delivered up. The Governor readily offered to aid us all he could; and I may here say of him, that I have always found him friendly on the several occasions when I have called on him. He is also the Patron of our Society in Kingston, and subscribes £10.
Agreeable to my hint to the Governor, I drew up a second representation to be sent to the Governor General of Cuba. This together with a letter I wrote on the subject to the British Consul at the Havannah have been forwarded; and we now wait the result.
I suppose there is something good and pleasant in the extract from Mr. Graydon's letter which you offered me in the close of your February letter, and which Mr Jackson promised by the following packet, but which I have not yet seen. I hope it will be forthcoming, and will come soon.
Since my return to Kingston, I have had two letters from Mr. Watts. One of them was brought by the Rev. Mr. Stanton who accompanied him from London to Carthagena, and through some parts of New Granada. These two letters are dated at Carthagena 15th March and 16th April. In the first of these he mentions that the climate of Chocó had proved unfavourable to him, and had brought on a sharp fever which confined him to bed for a fortnight, and caused to him an illness more or less severe of two months. He had gone out to a village called Turbaco a few miles from Carthagena; and in his second letter he says he had there recovered strength, and was thinking of setting out for Bogotá.
The spirit in which these two letters of Mr. Watts are written is very pleasing; and I may say the same regarding all the preceding letters I have had from him. With the Rev. Mr. Stanton who accompanied Mr. Watts I have had a good deal of conversation since his arrival here; and it is but a mere justice to state to you, that Mr. Stanton gives a very favourable view of Mr. Watts is character, as formed from his private intimacy with him, and from observing his mode of performing his public duties. I would further add as bearing on the same subject, that in my correspondence with Mr. Watts I have taken the liberty which you and he gave me of mentioning my views to him, more or less in the way of disapproving of some little things, and of giving advice on others: and in all these cases and matters Mr. Watts has manifested a very pleasing disposition of mind, and an earnest desire to know what is right, and to do what is best. Encouraged by these manifestations I shall go on with frankness in my correspondence with Mr. Watts, agreeable to your wishes. I have full confidence that he will take in good part anything I say, and shall therefore not hesitate to communicate to him any little notices respecting a path and course through which Providence led me in former years, and which he is now pursuing. ―Mr. Watts seems full of spirit and courage in his work, but is not altogether free of some natural fears which the country he is in presents, and of which he has more than a memento immediately before him in the lamented fall of our late colleague Mr. Matthews. Pray all of you for our brother Watts, that all judgment may be given to him, that he may go on courageously and be delivered from all dangers, that he may be successful in the circulation of the holy Scriptures, and that in all his public and private ways he may be an open Bible unto all men. ―And please to remember poor me also at the throne of grace in the same terms, for I shall soon be I expect in a country similar to that in which Mr. Watts now is, and though God graciously gives me hopes in all my travels, he has never yet taken away all my fears.
You have expressed regret once and again, that Mr. Watts and I had not an interview with each other in Carthagena, and in your last you say, "Whether you would have been in time to prevent his correspondence with the Bishops altogether, I do not at this moment distinctly recollect." ―The first letter I received from Mr. Watts was dated 24th August, and came into my hands on 4th September. On the 9th I wrote you, and stated that I purposed to sail about a week after for Carthagena and Santa Marta, or rather for Santa Marta and Carthagena, for everyone who visits both places, visits the windward one first. About the time I should have sailed I was informed of the decease of the Bishop of Santa Marta; and received some notices respecting the difficulties and expense of passing from the one place mentioned to the other. These changes presented things different from what I have thought of when I proposed going, and the slender advantages of a visit to Mr. Watts over correspondence with him, together with a loss of time from the Jamaica field and enlarged expenses led me to hesitate as to the propriety in duty of the step I had projected. Under these feelings and doubts I looked anew into your letter of the 31st May, and a copy of the Resolution of the Committee of the 12th & 29th of that same month. The Resolution is worded thus: – "That Mr. Thomson be requested to put himself in correspondence with Mr. Watts; and should it not interfere with his present arrangements, that he be authorized to visit Carthagena, for the purpose of conferring with Mr. Watts on the subject of his proposed visit." ―The re-reading and the wording of this Resolution settled the point in doubt with me. I saw that I was not requested to go, but simply permitted, and that in case my going would not impede business in Jamaica. I said, business does require me here, and especially after my absence in Cuba, and also in reference to my leaving of the Island altogether. Therefore because of the wording of the Resolution, because of the business on hand here, and because of the little advantage to be gained by going to Mr. Watts over writing him, because of all these taken together, I said, it is my duty not to go. Thus exactly things passed through my mind, and thus the matter was settled. Had the wording of your Resolution been "Go," I would have gone, leaving all other considerations.
And, had I gone to Carthagena, would I have been in time to prevent, etc. as you have noticed in the extract above given from your letter of 15 March? According to arrangements made I would have arrived in Carthagena most probably in the end of September. In Mr. Watts letter of the 12th September, he says "I opened the sale three days ago." This would be the 9th September, the very day I wrote you, and just five days after I received my first letter from Carthagena apprising me of Mr. Watts arrival there. Plain it is that I could not have been with him at the commencement of the sale, unless a vessel had offered me immediately, and I had gone in the same, and had had a voyage of three or four days. Four days is the shortest passage I recollect hearing of, and I was myself ten days in 1825 in coming from Carthagena to Jamaica. I thus draw your attention to the commencement of the sale, because of its connexion with the advertisement which I suppose to have appeared in the newspapers at precisely the same time, as it is natural it should. Notwithstanding of what I have said, I do not know that the advertisement naturally did appear on the first day or days of sale. The copy I have of the "Gaceta de Carthagena" in which it is, is dated 26th October, and the Bishop of Carthagena in his prohibition dated 30th October refers to this same date of the newspaper. If 26th October therefore was the first day on which the advertisement appeared, I could have been there before it issued. ―But, you will say, why am I saying so much about the advertisement, and its date? My reason is this: because the advertisement bears mainly and primarily on the subject before us; and the Bishop of Carthagena states expressly, that this said advertisement forced out his edict, and but for which it would not have appeared.
There are two or three oversights in this advertisement, in my humble view of it, and I have taken the liberty to notice these to our colleague Mr. Watts, who has, as before noticed, received in a very friendly manner what I ventured to say to him on the subject. The hints given therefore will I doubt not be kept in memory, and will probably be serviceable on future occasions; and in order that this may be the case, I should renew my observations in my correspondence with Mr. Watts, and shall add what else on the subject appears desirable.
This settles the first point of my observations to you on the subject before us, which observations you expressed a wish for, and which I promised in a former letter to give. The second point is the correspondence of Mr. Watts with the Bishops. I do not know that I could in point of time, nor that I would in point of duty, have prevented, if I could this correspondence. I would have avoided however the items in the advertisement that gave rise to some of it. Yet the Prohibitory of the Archbishop is dated in Bogotá the 29th September, and could not have been preceded or occasioned by the advertisement, though it might have been by the notice of Mr. Watts's arrival in Carthagena on the 15th August & bringing loads upon loads of Bibles with him.
Perhaps it is better, perhaps it is not, that all this correspondence has taken place. I do not know exactly what would have been my own action in the case. God will rule it, or overrule it for good. One thing is certain, we cannot well keep in terms and in understanding with the Roman Catholic Rulers of the Church. Our Principles are diverse, and diverse is our practice. Diverse therefore we must needs be in appearance as well as reality. First, their Bible, is not ours; for we exclude the Apocrypha. In the second place, a Roman Catholic priest is bound by his oath of office, and by his conscience, if he have any, not to allow, and less to recommend the general indiscriminate use of the Bible without notes, and our Bibles are without notes. Thirdly, we differ essentially as to the mode of studying the Bible. They read it, to follow the church only: we read to understand what God has said to us, according to the intellectual construction which he has given us, and according to his grace vouchsafed to mankind in Christ Jesus, and in answer to prayer. Fourthly, we cannot honestly state, that we do not wish and intend to destroy Roman Catholicism by the circulation of our Bibles; for we do in truth aim at this: and from a conviction that the Roman Catholic gospel is another gospel, we labour to circulate the word of God to make men take up Protestant principles, in which are involved the true and saving gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. On these Four Points then we are in fact diverse, and cannot and must not meet, nor agree. It comes then to this. Who is on the Lord side, who? We who circulate the Bibles, to lead men to the Pure Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they may receive it and be eternally saved, we are on the Lord's side. The others are not. But nevertheless I would not, like some, cast them with violence out of the window down upon the street. I would sap and undermine the foundations of their house by the word of God, and avowedly (though we need not always be saying so) to bring it down to the ground and to entire destruction. But this must be done in all wisdom and judgment, in truth and benevolence. May the Lord give unto us all, and richly, this wisdom, judgment, truth and benevolence, in all our work, in all countries, that so his blessed name may be magnified in us in the kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ, in which he has called us, and honoured us, to labour!
The breaking out therefore in Colombia, and elsewhere, between the Bible and the Priest is not to be wondered that, nor regretted. It is most likely therefore of God, that this correspondence and controversy have taken place in the case of the Bishops and our Brother Watts. But let this business in all its parts be conducted without guile and in the greatness of Christian character in the face of all men.
Our only apparently vulnerable point in this controversy which has taken place, as respects the Bible Society and Protestants, is the point in fact of the variations in the versions and editions. No doubt there are several and considerable variations in the different English versions and editions, from the first appearance of the first portion of the Bible in our native tongue until King James's Bible which we now use was issued. This has been brought to view and well trumpeted by the Archbishop of Bogotá and the Bishop of Carthagena in their published edicts which now lie before me. This, I say, appears our only vulnerable point. How shall we meet it? First, by showing up and forth that there are also great differences in wordings among the several Spanish versions of the Scriptures, and all published under full papal authority: and secondly, by showing forth the various readings in the Codices and early printed editions of the Vulgate, the Catholics own Bible; and by making visible and palpable the differences between this same Latin Vulgate Bible as published in all authority by Sixtus V in 1790, and by Clement VIII with equally full authority in 1792.
The pointing out of these variations will clear us of bad faith, or involve themselves in the same; and will bring us both to the true ground on which this matter rests. There are, as must needs have been, such and similar variations in the transcribing and in the translating of the Scriptures; but yet these variations cannot be properly charged against either of the two bodies, and they do not affect the authenticity of the word of God. By the way, could you procure for me, and for Mr. Watts, and others similarly situated, a copy of Korholti's work "De variis scripturae editionibus", or in preference, Thomas James's Bellum Papale, published in London in 1600? One of these two works and a copy of Sixtus's Bible would be of real service to us in your work. The smaller the editions, the more convenient for Travelers. Paris or Spanish edition of Sixtus's Bible would carry more weight than a London one. See Horne's Introduction Vol 2, page 203, of the 3rd edition. Please also to send us Thomas Ward's work on the variations of the English Bibles published in 1688, and which is referred to by the Bishop of Carthagena who says it was republished in Philadelphia in 1824.
I have thus, you see, treated of this subject at full length; and hope that where you do not agree with my observations, you will generously excuse them, though of course, I should be glad to learn that we agree. You observe in your last letter, that, "In one respect the correspondence does Mr. Watts much credit, being conducted on his part with evident ability." I think with you that it has been creditably managed by him; and I speak as you do, of the portion I have seen, and which passed through my hands. Another voluminous packet has just been forwarded to you, as I learn by his last letter. This I have not seen. He promised in his penultimate letter to send it to me, but has forwarded it to you direct through I suppose some favourable conveyance which presented itself to him. I should think that now at least, he had better lie on his oars, so far as writing is concerned, to see how the currents and the winds move. I shall write him to that effect by the mail which will be in made up here for Carthagena in a few days. The only thing I would recommend him to write or publish would be a brief, moderate and judicious statement on the subject of the variations in our Bibles, and in their own, accompanied with an open declaration of the Bible you publish and circulate is printed verbatim with the utmost fidelity from the Madrid edition, the notes and the Apocrypha being wanting. ―Please always to put into the title page the place where the Bible is printed. We are accused of not doing so in some instances, and I believe fairly. Also in printing new editions, let double treble care be taken in correcting the press, for a slight variation in a letter or two might much perplex us by the error it might make, and would affect our declaration of fidelity. I think I recollect seeing in your first edition of the Spanish Bible an n changed into a y, and which in fact changed the word from no to I.
I cannot conclude this letter though already long, without saying how glad I am that you have appointed an agent in Bengal, and are looking out for one for Madras. This is really good news to me. But pray add a third for Bombay. These three are the fewest you should have for British India. The Lord will soon show you the good of these appointments. You will recollect that I spoke particularly upon the subject in my letter No. 44. The appointment of your agent for Canada was also truly gratifying to me. You want one still in that quarter, namely, for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland. I shall soon hear, I doubt not, of an appointment for that district. My reasons I gave at large in the letter referred to.
Your agent for China will I dare say soon find plenty of work either in China proper, or among the emigrated Chinese in the South, and through them he may move the Celestial Empire itself without even setting foot upon it. ―Take the map into your hand, and look on the West of the Indus and on to the Mediterranean. Might not an agent of the Bible Society find work there? ―Lastly on this score: I am rejoiced to hear what you say about the distribution of the Scriptures in Brazil. Look at the whole East side of South America, and see who whether it does not claim some messenger from you.
Since returning to Kingston from the West End of the Island, I visited the parish of St. Thomas in the East. Things are doing well there, and of likely to do better. All the funds of that Society are paid in to the Jamaica Bible society in Kingston, and therefore it is that you get no direct remittances from it. It should however have its own merits for itself. We had advertised for a public meeting, and had a wonderful number of Ministers and other Bible speaking men. But down came the rain before the hour of assembly, and continued, and so prevented our anniversary. ―Not to lose all, the friends present made me get up and go over Cuba to them, and tell them of all the state in all things, and of all that happened to me there.
We had a meeting of our committee in Kingston, and had arranged for another, and for a Bible meeting at port Royal. But these attempts were frustrated, by the very sudden removal from life to death of one of our number. The Rev. Mr. Gardner, one of the Baptist missionaries, and the ablest Minister perhaps in Kingston, aged only 31, sat at table to breakfast on the Friday, took fever on that day, and on the Wednesday following was buried. How sudden the stroke! how warning and how instructive to us all! The Lord make us, and keep us always ready, with our loins girded and our lamps burning! So may it be with you, My Dear Friend, and so with all your colleagues in the Society. Pray that it may be so with ―
Your Brother and Fellow Labourer,
James Thomson.