p. 207.
Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making the
observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. He
was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that the
mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his
own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with
great care:--"I have received," said he, "much spiritual comfort and
strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my
sufferings, equal to that good man's! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is
prayer in faith."
In connection with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long
before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he
had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorized version of the
expression, [Greek: pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os] in the Epistle to the
Colossians, i. 15.: [Greek: hos estin eik_on tou THeou tou aoratou,
pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os.] He rendered the verse in these words:--"Who
is the manifestation of God the invisible, the begotten antecedently to all
creation;" observing, that in [Greek: pr_ototokos] there was a double
superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of "_first-born of
every creature_,"--the language of our version,--afforded no premiss for
the causal [Greek: hoti] in the next verse.
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