Moses is very dry and concise, which, however, our Pere Berruyer is not.  His histories of Joseph, and of King David, are relishing morsels, and were devoured eagerly in all the boudoirs of Paris.  Take a specimen of the style.  “Joseph combined, with a regularity of features and a brilliant complexion, an air of the noblest dignity; all which contributed to render him one of the most amiable men in Egypt.”  At length “she declares her passion, and pressed him to answer her.  It never entered her mind that the advances of a woman of her rank could ever be rejected.  Joseph at first only replied to all her wishes by his cold embarrassments.  She would not yet give him up.  In vain he flies from her; she was too passionate to waste even the moments of his astonishment.”  This good father, however, does ample justice to the gallantry of the Patriarch Jacob.  He offers to serve Laban, seven years for Rachel.  “Nothing is too much,” cries the venerable novelist, “when one really loves;” and this admirable observation he confirms by the facility with which the obliging Rachel allows Leah for one night to her husband!  In this manner the patriarchs are made to speak in the tone of the tenderest lovers; Judith is a Parisian coquette, Holofernes is rude as a German baron; and their dialogues are tedious with all the reciprocal politesse of metaphysical French lovers!  Moses in the desert, it was observed, is precisely as pedantic as Pere Berruyer addressing his class at the university.  One cannot but smile at the following expressions:—­“By the easy manner in which God performed miracles, one might easily perceive they cost no effort.”  When he has narrated an “Adventure of the Patriarchs,” he proceeds, “After such an extraordinary, or curious, or interesting adventure,” &c.  This good father had caught the language of the beau monde, but with such perfect simplicity that, in employing it on sacred history, he was not aware of the ludicrous style in which he was writing.

A Gothic bishop translated the Scriptures into the Goth language, but omitted the Books of Kings! lest the wars, of which so much is there recorded, should increase their inclination to fighting, already too prevalent.  Jortin notices this castrated copy of the Bible in his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History.

As the Bible, in many parts, consists merely of historical transactions, and as too many exhibit a detail of offensive ones, it has often occurred to the fathers of families, as well as to the popes, to prohibit its general reading.  Archbishop Tillotson formed a design of purifying the historical parts.  Those who have given us a Family Shakspeare, in the same spirit may present us with a Family Bible.

In these attempts to recompose the Bible, the broad vulgar colloquial diction, which has been used by our theological writers, is less tolerable than the quaintness of Castalion and the floridity of Pere Berruyer.