With regard to the former, no one, he said, could be more deeply convinced of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was, and being what it is.  In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly important in connection with a volume which naturally became a universally recognised standard of the language; for thus the fresh well of English undefiled was made a perennial blessing to the nation, in no slight degree conducive to the robust and manly thinking and character of its inhabitants.  He was satisfied, too, as to its general and most impartial accuracy, and its faithfulness in rendering not only the words but the style, the strength, and the spirit and the character of the original records.  He attached too the value one might suppose he would attach to the desirableness of leaving undisturbed the sacred associations which to the feelings of aged Christians belonged to the ipsissima verba which had been their support under the trials of life.

And so with regard to the Prayer Book, he reverenced and loved it as the Church’s precious heritage of primitive piety, equally admirable for its matter and its style.  It may be interesting to add, that in reference to this latter point I have heard him pronounce that many of the collects seemed to him examples of perfection, consisting, according to his impression, of words whose signification filled up without excess or defect the simple and symmetrical contour of some majestic meaning, and whose sound was a harmony of accordant simplicity and grandeur; a combination, he added, such as we enjoy in some of the best passages of Shakespeare.

But notwithstanding that he held these opinions, which will evince that he was not one who would lightly touch either sacred volume, he did not think that plain mistakes in the translation of the Bible, or obsolete words, or renderings commonly misunderstood, should be perpetually handed down in our authorised version of the volume of inspiration, or that similar blemishes in the Prayer Book, which, as being of human composition, would admit of freer though still reverential handling, should be permitted to continue as stumbling-blocks interfering with its acceptableness and usefulness.

The plan which he suggested as meeting the difficulties of the case was the following: