defective in that grace of speech which consists in harmonious
152 ON CnRISTIAN DOCTRINE. [bOOK IV.
were translated thus, " et carnis providentiam ne in concupiscentiis feceritis,"^ the ear would no doubt be gratified with a more harmonious ending ; but our translator, with more strictness, preferred to retain even the order of the words. And how this sounds in the Greek language, in which the apostle spoke, those wlio are better skilled in that tongue may determine. My opinion, however, is, that what has been translated to us in the same order of words does not run very harmoniously even in the original tongue.
41. And, indeed, I must confess that our authors are veiy defective in that grace of speech which consists in harmonious endings. Whether this be the fault of the translators, or whether, as I am more inclined to believe, the authors designedly avoided such ornaments, I dare not affirm ; for I confess I do not know. This I know, however, that if any one who is skilled in this species of harmony would take the closing sentences of these writers and arrange them according to tlie law of harmony (which he could very easily do by changing some words for words of equivalent meaning, or by retaining the words he finds and altering their arrangement), he will learn that these divinely-inspired men are not defective in any of those points which he has been taught in the schools of the grammarians and rhetoricians to consider of importance; and he will find in them many kinds of speech of great beauty,—beautiful even in our language, but especially beautiful in the original,—none of which can be found in those writings of which tliey boast so much. But care must be taken that, wliile adding harmony, we take away none of the weiglit from these divine and authoritative utterances. Xow our propliets were so far from being deficient in the musical training from which this harmony we speak of is most fully learnt, that Jerome, a very learned man, describes even the metres employed by some of them,''^ in the Hebrew language at least ; though, in order to give an accurate rendering of the words, he has not preserved these in his translation.
I, however (to speak of my own feeling, which is better known
' Instead of ** ne feceritls in concujii^ccntiis," which is the translation as quoted 1)}' Au^Lstine.
^ 111 his prcfiicc to Job.