Dangerous to meddle with that which has been well done

Is this “Christian Friend to Truth” from 1824 (over 100 years ahead of Benjamin Wilkinson) a “Textual Absolutist”? He anathemizes those who would meddle with the good translation made in King James’s time, and uses Psalm 12:6-7 as a proof text concerning the Scriptures.

“I will here remark, that seeing the Scriptures have been translated into so many languages at sundry times, and that many improvements have been made in the translations till the last one, it follows that they had very superior means of acquiring the right sense of the words in comparison with so many preceding translations; and the last number of translators being many who were good and learned men, could consult each other in the best manner, and with all the previous labours of the learned; and thus be under a check by all the learned translations, and by the talents of each other; and therefore if any translation could be good, that was by them; from which consideration I must without any reserve aver that all who have been in any way forward to decry the translation as from them in King James’s time, have so far been guilty of undue reflection, and have only exposed themselves to the views of the biblical critic and divine as wanting to evade the true meaning of the divine words as they are, by stating to the ignorant that such words are in a wrong translation. The translation is on as good a basis as it need be, for the aforesaid reasons; nor is there any thing of any moment. wrong in it, which is as clear as it need be, upon the circumstances of the said translation; and it is therefore dangerous to meddle with that which has been well done, and that because it is a species of adding to or taking from the words of the Lord, which is anathematised Revelations of St. John, xxii. 19. We then have the continued words of the Lord as represented, and in a proper intelligent manner, so that all may read and know them.

“I, in the fourth and last place, remark in further proof of the divine inspiration, and gift of the holy Scriptures to mankind, that they declare the same by their pure or holy kind...and as the Scriptures have in their very nature all pure and good to mankind and the divine Being, they have come from the source of good in order to be good and holy; and as there is only one source of good and holiness, who is God, then they must have come from him primarily, by his operations and teachings to good men, as aforesaid), and from them to all who have or may see or hear them; and thus as pure gold came from the same kind of mine; as pure diamonds came from its kind of stone; as the pure rays of the illuminating sun come from the same, and are the same sort of light and heat, or kind; or as the voice in words is as the thoughts of the mind, so the divine words came from, and are as the eternal mind towards his creatures, pare and holy, and therefore just and right in all they say and do in every respect, Psalm xii. 6,7; and St. Paul’s second Epistle to Timothy, iii. 15, 16, 17.

“Nor is it possible that the divine word or the Scriptures could have any cause but God, seeing they uniformly evince and produce all that is in any way proper or righteous; yea, as impossible is it as to prove that any object produced can in the production be different from that of which it is produced, without any change therefrom.”

The Theological Reasoner, or, The mysteries of Divinity Explained, by a Christian Friend to Truth, Liverpool: J. Hodgson, 1824, pp. 94-97