Colb.10 = Colb. 2Colb.11 = Colb. 1Cov.1 Evan. 65Cov.2 Act. 25Cov.3 Act. 26Cov.4 Act. 27Cov.5Sin.Act. 28Cypr.Evan. KEm.seeEvan. 64Eph.Evan. 71Gal.Evan. 66Ger.Paul. EGenev.Act. 29Go.Evan. 62Gon.Evan. 59Hunt.1 Act. 30Hunt.2 Evan. 67L.Evan. 69Laud.1 Evan. 50Laud.2 Evan. 51[pg 203]Laud. 3 Act. ELaud. 4 Evst. 20Laud. 5 Evan. 52Lin. Evan. 56Lin. 2 Act. 33Lu. Act. 21M. 1 Evan. 60M. 2 Evst. 4Magd. 1 Evan. 57Magd. 2 Paul. 42Med. Evan. 42Mont. Evan. 61N. 1 Evan. 58N. 1 Act. 36N. 2 Act. 37Per. Evan. 91Pet. 1 Act. 38Pet. 2 Act. 39Pet. 3 Act. 40Roe. 1 Evan. 49Roe. 2 Paul. 47Seld. 1 Evan. 53Seld. 2 Evan. 54Seld. 3 Evan. 55Seld. 4 Evst. 21Seld. 5 Evst. 22Steph. codicesxvi.videaspp. 190-191Trin. Apost. 3Trit. Evan. 96Vat. Cod. BVel. Evan. 111 (Wetstein)Vien. Evan. 76Usser. 1 Evan. 63Usser. 2 Evan. 64Wheel. 1 Evan. 68Wheel. 2 Evan. 95Wheel. 3 Evst. 3Wech. videasp. 191Mill merely drew from other sourcesBarb.,Steph.,Vel.,Wech.; the copies deposited abroad (B 1-3,Clar.,Colb.1-11,Cypr.,Genev.,Med.,Per.,Pet.1-3,Vat. Vien.), andTrin.or Apost. 3 he only knew from readings sent to him; all the rest, not being included in Walton's list, and several of them also, he collated for himself.The Prolegomena of Mill, divided into three parts—(1) on the Canon of the New Testament; (2) on the History of the Text, including the quotations of the Fathers and the early editions; and (3) on the plan and contents of his own work,—though by this time too far behind the present state of knowledge to bear reprinting, comprise a monument of learning such as the world has seldom seen, and contain much information the student will not even now easily find elsewhere. Although Mill perpetually pronounces his judgement on the character of disputed readings198, especially in his Prolegomena, which were printed long after some portions of the body of the work, yet he only aims at reproducing Stephen's text of 1550, though in a few places he departs from it, whether by accident or design199.In 1710 Ludolph Kuster, a Westphalian, republished Mill's[pg 204]Greek Testament, in folio, at Amsterdam and Rotterdam (or with a new title page, Leipsic, 1723, Amsterdam, 1746), arranging in its proper place the matter cast by Mill into his Appendix, as having reached him too late to stand in his critical notes, and adding to those notes the readings of twelve fresh manuscripts, one collated by Kuster himself, which he describes in a Preface well worth reading. Nine of these codices collated by, or under, the Abbé de Louvois are in the Royal Library at Paris (viz.Paris.1, which is Evan. 285;Paris.2 = Evan. M;Paris.3 = Evan. 9;Paris.4 = Evan. 11;Paris.5 = Evan. 119;Paris.6 = Evan. 13;Paris.7 = Evan. 14;Paris.8 = Evan. 15;Paris.9 = the great Cod. C): butLips.= Evan. 78 was collated by Boerner;Seidel.= Act. 42 by Westermann; Boerner. = Paul. G by Kuster himself. He keeps his own notes separate from Mill's by prefixing and affixing the marks [symbol], [symbol], and his collations both of his own codices and of early editions will be found more complete than his predecessor's.5. In the next year after Kuster's Mill (1711), appeared at Amsterdam, from the press of the Wetsteins, a small N. T., 8vo, containing all the critical matter of the Oxford edition of 1675, a collation of one Vienna manuscript (Caes.= Evan. 76), 43 canons“secundum quos variantes lectiones N. T. examinandae,”and discussions upon them, with other matter, especially parallel texts, forming a convenient manual, the whole by G. D. T. M. D., which being interpreted means Gerhard de Trajecto Mosae Doctor, this Gerhard von Mästricht being a Syndic of Bremen. The text is Fell's, except in Apoc. iii. 12, where the portentous erratum λαῷ for ναῷ of Stephen is corrected. A second and somewhat improved edition was published in 1735, but ere that date the book must have become quite superseded.6. We have to return to England once more, where the criticism of the New Testament had engrossed the attention ofRichard Bentley[1662-1742], whose elevation to the enviable post of Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1699, was a just recognition of his supremacy in the English world of letters. As early as 1691 he had felt a keen interest in sacred criticism, and in his“Epistola ad Johannem Millium”had urged that editor, in language fraught with eloquence and native vigour, to[pg 205]hasten on the work (whose accomplishment was eventually left to others) of publishing side by side on the opened leaf Codd. A, D (Bezae), D (Clarom.), E (Laud.). For many years afterwards Bentley's laurels were won on other fields, and it was not till his friend was dead, and his admirable labours were exposed to the obloquy of opponents (some honest though unwise, others hating Mill because they hated the Scriptures which he sought to illustrate), that our Aristarchus exerted his giant strength to crush the infidel and to put the ignorant to silence. In his“Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free Thinking in a letter to F[rancis] H[are] D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,”1713, Bentley displayed that intimate familiarity with the whole subject of various readings, their causes, extent, and consequences, which has rendered this occasional treatise more truly valued (as it was far more important) than the world-renowned“Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris”itself. As his years were now hastening on and the evening of life was beginning to draw nigh, it was seemly that the first scholar of his age should seek for his rare abilities an employment more entirely suited to his sacred office than even the most successful cultivation of classical learning; and so, about this time, he came to project what he henceforth regarded as his greatest effort, an edition of the Greek New Testament. In 1716 we find him in conference with J. J. Wetstein, then very young, and seeking his aid in procuring collations. In the same year he addressed his memorable“Letter”to Wm. Wake [1657-1737], Archbishop of Canterbury, whose own mind was full of the subject, wherein he explains, with characteristic energy and precision, the principles on which he proposed to execute his great scheme. As these principles must be reviewed afterwards, we will but touch upon them now. His theory was built upon the notion that the oldest manuscripts of the Greek original and of Jerome's Latin version resemble each other so marvellously, even in the very order of the words, that by this agreement he could restore the text as it stood in the fourth century,“so that there shall not be twenty words, or even particles, difference.”“By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope's [i.e. the Clementine] Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephen's [1550], I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine hundred[pg 206]years old, that shall so exactly agree word for word, and, what at first amazed me, order for order, that no two tallies, nor two indentures, can agree better200.”In 1720, some progress having been made in the task of collation, chiefly at Paris, by John Walker, Fellow of Trinity, who was designated by Bentley“overseer and corrector of the press,”but proved in fact a great deal more; Bentley published his Proposals for Printing201, a work which“he consecrates, as a κειμήλιων, a κτῆμα ἐσαεί, acharter, amagna charta, to the whole Christian Church; to last when all the ancient MSS. here quoted may be lost and extinguished.”Alas for the emptiness of human anticipations! Of this noble design, projected by one of the most diligent, by one of the most highly gifted men our dear mother Cambridge ever nourished, nothing now remains but a few scattered notices in treatises on Textual Criticism, and large undigested stores of various readings and random observations, accumulated in his College Library; papers which no real student ever glanced through, but with a heart saddened—almost sickened—at the sight of so much labour lost202. The specimen chapter (Apocalypse xxii) which accompanied his Proposals shows clearly how little had yet been done towards arranging the materials that had been collected; codices are cited there, and in many of his loose notes, not separately and by name, as in Mill's volume, but mostly as“Anglicus unus, tres codd. veterrimi, Gall. quatuor, Germ. unus,”&c., in the rough fashion of the Oxford N. T. of 1675203.[pg 207]It has been often alleged that Bentley seems to have worked but little on the Greek Testament after 1729: that his attention was diverted by his editions of Paradise Lost (1732) and of Manilius (1739), by his Homeric studies and College litigation, until he was overtaken by a paralytic stroke in 1739, and died in his eighty-first year in 1742. Walker's collations of cursive manuscripts at Christ Church (Evan. 506), however, obviously made for Bentley's use, bear the date of 1732204, and a closer examination of his papers, bequeathed in 1786 by his nephew Richard Bentley to Trinity College, shows that much more progress had been made by him than has been usually supposed. Besides full collations of the uncial Codd. AD (Gospels and Acts), of Cod. F (his θ) and G of St. Paul, of Arundel 547 (Evst. 257) executed by Bentley himself, of Codd. B and C by others at his cost, three volumes are found there full of critical materials, which have been described by Mr. Ellis, and digested by Dr. Westcott. One of these (B. xvii. 5) I was allowed by the Master and Seniors to study at leisure at home. It is a folio edition of the N. T., Greek and Latin (Paris, ap. Claud. Sonnium, 1628, the Greek text being that of Elzevir 1624), whose margin and spaces between the lines are filled with various readings in Bentley's hand, but not all of them necessarily the results of his own labour, collected out of ten Greek and thirty Latin manuscripts. The Greek are all cursives save Evst. 5, and his connexion with them has been referred to above under the Cursive MSS. They areEvan. 51 (γ),Evan. 54 (κ),Evan. 60 (ε),Evan. 113 (θ?),Evan. 440 (ο),Evan. 507 (τ),Evan. 508 (δ),Act. 23 (χ),Apoc. 28 (κ),Evst. 5 (α).The Latin copies, which alone are described by Bentley in the fly-leaves of the volume, may not be as easily identified, but[pg 208]some of them are of great value, and are described above in Chap.III. These arechad.(ξ),dunelm.(Κ),harl.3(Μ),lind.(η),mac-regol(χ),oxon.(Σ),oxon.(Paul. χ),seld.(Act. χ),vall.,Westcott addsharl.4(Η).A second mass of materials, all Latin, about twenty in number, and deposited in England, is contained in the first volume of the Benedictine edition of St. Jerome's works (Paris, 1693). In this book (B. xvii. 14) Dr. Westcott has pasted a valuable note, wherein he identifies the manuscripts used by Bentley by the means of his own actual collation. Those described above in Chap.IIIare the following:B. M. Harl. 1802 (W),B. M.harl.2(M. of Epistles, &c.),B. M. Addit. 5463 (F),B. M. King's Lib. I. A. 18 (O),B. M. King's Lib. I. B. VII. (H),B. M. King's Lib. I. E. VI. (P),B. M. C. C. C. Camb. 286 (B),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 5 (S),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 4 (T,ibid.),B. M.lind.(Y: as in B. XVII. 5),B. M. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. I. 24 (χ).Westcott further appropriates B. M. Cotton, Otho B. ix, as Bentley's D; Cotton Tib. A. ii (“the Coronation book”) as his ε; Cotton Otho C. v as his φ; C. C. C. Camb. 197 as his C; King's Library 1 D. ix as his A. His ξ in B. xvii. 14 seems unrecognized.These, of course, are no more than the rough materials of criticism. Another copy of the N. T. has been carefully and curiously made available for my use by the goodness of my friend Edwin Palmer, D.D., Archdeacon of Oxford. It is numbered B. xvii. 6, and is a duplicate copy (without its title-page) of the same printed book as B. xvii. 5. It is interleaved throughout, and was prepared very early in the course of this undertaking, inasmuch as Bentley describes it in an undated letter to Wetstein, which the latter answered Nov. 3, 1716. In the printed[pg 209]text itself, both Greek and Latin, as they stand in parallel columns, Bentley makes the corrections which he at that period was willing to adopt. There is no critical apparatus to justify his changes in the Latin version, but on the blank leaves of the book he sets down his Greek authorities, always cited by name, asAlex.,Cant.,Rom.(Cod. B.),Ox.in the Acts (Cod. E), θ in St. Paul for Cod. Augiensis (F), though this last did not reach him before 1718. Cod. C is sometimes calledEph., sometimes it is mixed up with Wetstein's other copies (1 Wetstein, 2 Wetstein, &c.). This most interesting volume, therefore, contains the first draft of Bentley's great design, and must have been nearly in its present state when the 'Proposals' were published in 1720, since the specimen chapter (Apoc. xxii) which accompanied them is takenverbatimfrom B. xvii. 6, save that authorities are added to vindicate the alterations of the Latin text, which is destitute of them in the printed book. Mr. Ellis too has printed the Epistle to the Galatians from the same source, and this specimen also produces much the same impression of meagreness and imperfection. It was doubtless in some degree to remedy an apparent crudeness that cursive copies were afterwards called in, as in B. xvii. 5 and in Walker's Oxford collections. The fact is that Bentley's main principle, as set forth by him from 1716 to 1720, that of substantial identity between the oldest Greek and Latin copies, is more favoured by Cod. A, which he knew soonest and best, than by any other really ancient documents, least of all by Cod. B, with which he obtained fuller acquaintance in or about 1720. Our Aristarchus then betook himself at intervals to cursive codices in the vain hope of getting aid from them, and so lost his way at last in that wide and pathless wilderness. We cannot but believe that nothing less than the manifest impossibility of maintaining the principles which his“Letter”of 1716 enunciated, and his 'Proposals' of 1720 scarcely modified, in the face of the evidence which his growing mass of collations bore against them205, could have had power enough to break off in the midst[pg 210]that labour of love from which he had looked for undying fame206.7. The anonymous text and version of William Mace, said to have been a Presbyterian minister (“The New Testament in Greek and English,”2 vols. 8vo, 1729), are alike unworthy of serious notice, and have long since been forgotten207. And now original research in the science of Biblical criticism, so far as the New Testament is concerned, seems to have left the shores of England, to return no more for upwards of a century208; and we must look to Germany if we wish to trace the further progress of investigations which our countrymen had so auspiciously begun. The first considerable effort made on the Continent was:—8. The New Testament of John Albert Bengel, 4to, Tübingen, 1734209: his“Prodromus N. T. Gr. rectè cautèque adornandi”had appeared as early as 1725. This devout and truly able man [1687-1752], who held the office (whatever might be its functions)[pg 211]of Abbot of Alpirspach in the Lutheran communion of Württemberg, though more generally known as an interpreter of Scripture from his invaluable“Gnomon Novi Testamenti,”yet left the stamp of his mind deeply imprinted on the criticism of the sacred volume. As a collator his merits were not high; nearly all his sixteen codices have required and obtained fresh examination from those who came after him210. His text, which he arranged in convenient paragraphs, as has been said, is the earliest important specimen of intentional departure from the received type; hence he imposes on himself the strange restriction of admitting into it no reading (excepting in the Apocalypse) which had not appeared in one or more of the editions that preceded his own. He pronounces his opinion on otherselectvariations by placing them in his lower margin with Greek numerals attached to them, according as he judged them decidedly better (α), or somewhat more likely (β), than those which stand in his text: or equal to them (γ); or a little (δ), or considerably (ε), inferior. This notation has advantages which might well have commended it to the attention of succeeding editors. In his“Apparatus Criticus”also, at the end of his volume, he set the example, now generally followed, of recording definitely the testimony in favour of a received reading, as well as that against it.But the peculiar importance of Bengel's N. T. is due to the critical principles developed therein. Not only was his native acuteness of great service to him, when weighing the conflicting probabilities of internal evidence, but in his fertile mind sprang up the germ of that theory offamiliesorrecensions, which was afterwards expanded by J. S. Semler [1725-91], and grew to such formidable dimensions in the skilful hands of Griesbach. An attentive student of the discrepant readings of the N. T., even in the limited extent they had hitherto been collected, could hardly fail to discern that certain manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers have a manifest[pg 212]affinity with each other; so that one of them shall seldom be cited in support of a variation (not being a manifest and gross error of the copyist), unless accompanied by several of its kindred. The inference is direct and clear, that documents which thus withdraw themselves from the general mass of authorities, must have sprung from some common source, distinct from those which in characteristic readings they but slightly resemble. It occurred, therefore, to Bengel as a hopeful mode of making good progress in the criticism of the N. T., to reduce all extant testimony into“companies, families, tribes, and nations,”and thus to simplify the process of settling the sacred text by setting class over against class, and trying to estimate the genius of each, and the relative importance they may severally lay claim to. He wished to divide all extant documents into two nations: theAsiatic, chiefly written in Constantinople and its neighbourhood, which he was inclined to disparage; and theAfrican, comprising the few of a better type (“Apparatus Criticus,”p. 669, 2nd edition, 1763). Various circumstances hindered Bengel from working out his principle, among which he condescends to set his dread of exposing his task to senseless ridicule211; yet no one can doubt that it comprehends the elements of what is both reasonable and true; however difficult it has subsequently proved to adjust the details of any consistent scheme. For the rest, Bengel's critical verdicts, always considered in relation to his age and opportunities, deserve strong commendation. He saw the paramount worth of Cod. A, the only great uncial then much known (N. T., Apparat. Crit., pp. 390-401). The high character of the Latin version, and the[pg 213]necessity for revising its text by means of manuscripts (ibid., p. 391), he readily conceded, after Bentley's example. His mean estimate of the Greek-Latin codices (Evan. Act. D; Act. E; Paul. DFG) may not find equal favour in the eyes of all his admirers; he pronounces them“re verâ bilingues;”which, for their perpetual and wilful interpolations,“non pro codicibus sed pro rhapsodiis, haberi debeant”(ibid., p. 386)212.9. The next step in advance was made by John James Wetstein [1693-1754], a native of Basle, whose edition of the Greek New Testament (“cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum, necnon Commentario pleniore ex scriptoribus veteribus, Hebraeis, Graecis, et Latinis, historiam et vim verborum illustrante”) appeared in two volumes, folio, Amsterdam, 1751-2. The genius, the character, and (it must in justice be added) the worldly fortunes of Wetstein were widely different from those of the good Abbot of Alpirspach. His taste for Biblical studies showed itself early. When ordained pastor at the age of twenty he delivered a disputation,“De variis N. T. lectionibus,”and zeal for this fascinating pursuit became at length with him a passion—the master-passion which consoled and dignified a roving, troubled, unprosperous life. In 1714 his eager search for manuscripts led him to Paris, in 1715-16 and again in 1720 he visited England, and was employed by Bentley in collecting materials for his projected edition, but he seems to have imbibed few of that great man's principles: the interval between them, both in age and station, almost forbade much sympathy. On his return home he gradually became suspected of Socinian tendencies, and it must be feared with too much justice; so that in the end he was deposed from the pastorate (1730), driven into exile, and after having been compelled to serve in a position the least favourable to the cultivation of learning, that of a military chaplain, he obtained at length (1733) a Professorship among the Remonstrants at Amsterdam (in succession to the celebrated Leclerc), and there continued till his death in 1754, having made his third visit to England in 1746. His“Prolegomena,”[pg 214]first published in 1730, and afterwards, in an altered form, prefixed to his N. T.213, present a painful image both of the man and of his circumstances. His restless energy, his undaunted industry, his violent temper, his love of paradox, his assertion for himself of perfect freedom of thought, his silly prejudice against Jesuits and bigots, his enmities, his wrongs, his ill-requited labours, at once excite our respect and our pity: while they all help to make his writings a sort of unconscious autobiography, rather interesting than agreeable.Non sic itur ad astra, whether morally or intellectually; yet Wetstein's services to sacred literature were of no common order. His philological annotations, wherein the matter and phraseology of the inspired writers are illustrated by copious—too copious—quotations from all kinds of authors, classical, Patristic, and Rabbinical, have proved an inexhaustible storehouse from which later writers have drawn liberally and sometimes without due acknowledgement; but many of the passages are of such a tenor as (to use Tregelles' very gentle language respecting them)“only to excite surprise at their being found on the same page as the text of the New Testament”(Account of Printed Text, p. 76). The critical portion of his work, however, is far more valuable, and in this department Wetstein must be placed in the very first rank, inferior (if to any) to but one or two of the highest names. He first cited the manuscripts under the notation by which they are commonly known, his list already embracing A-O, 1-112 of the Gospels; A-G, 1-58 of the Acts; A-H, 1-60 of St. Paul; A-C, 1-28 of the Apocalypse; 1-24 Evangelistaria; 1-4 of the Apostolos. Of these Wetstein himself collated about one hundred and two214; if not as fully or accurately as is now expected, yet with far greater care than had hitherto been usual: about eleven were examined for him by other hands. On the versions and early editions he has likewise bestowed great pains; and he improved upon quotations from the Fathers. His text is that of Elzevir (1633), not very exactly printed215, and immediately below it he[pg 215]placed such readings of his manuscripts as he judged preferable to those received. The readings thus approved by Wetstein (which do not amount to five hundred, and those chiefly in the Apocalypse) were inserted in the text of a Greek Testament published in London, 1763, 2 vols., by W. Bowyer, the learned printer, with a collection of critical conjectures annexed, which were afterwards published separately.Wetstein's Prolegomena have also been reproduced by J. S. Semler (Halle, 1764), with good notes and facsimiles of certain manuscripts, and more recently, in a compressed and modernized form, by J. A. Lotze (Rotterdam, 1831), a book which neither for design nor execution can be much praised. The truth is that both the style and the subject-matter of much that Wetstein wrote are things of the past. In his earlier edition of his Prolegomena (1730) he had spoken of the oldest Greek uncial copies as they deserve; he was even disposed to take Cod. A as the basis of his text. By the time his N. T. was ready, twenty years later, he had come to include it, with all the older codices of the original, under a general charge of being conformed to the Latin version. That such a tendency may be detected in some of the codices accompanied by a Latin translation, is both possible in itself, and not inconsistent with their general spirit; but he has scattered abroad his imputations capriciously and almost at random, so as greatly to diminish the weight of his own decisions. Cod. A, in particular, has been fully cleared of the charge of Latinizing by Woide, in his excellent Prolegomena (§ 6). His thorough contempt for that critic prevented Wetstein from giving adequate attention to Bengel's theory of[pg 216]families; indeed he can hardly be said to have rejected a scheme which he scorned to investigate with patience. On the other hand no portion of his labours is more valuable than the“Animadversiones et Cautiones ad examen variarum lectionum N. T. necessariae”(N. T., Tom. ii. pp. 851-74). In this tract his natural good sense and extensive knowledge of authorities of every class have gone far to correct that impetuous temperament which was ever too ready to substitute plausible conjecture in the room of ascertained facts.During the twenty years immediately ensuing on the publication of Wetstein's volumes, little was attempted in the way of enlarging or improving the domain he had secured for Biblical science. In England the attention of students was directed, and on the whole successfully, to the criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures; in Germany, the younger (J. D.) Michaelis [1717-91] reigned supreme, and he seems to have deemed it the highest effort of scholarship to sit in judgement on the labours of others. In process of time, however, the researches of John James Griesbach [1745-1812], a native of Hesse Darmstadt and a pupil of Semler, and J. A. Ernesti [1707-81] (whose manual,“Institutio Interpretis N. T.,”1761, has not long been superseded), began to attract general notice. Like Wetstein, he made a literary tour in England early in life (1769), and with far more profit; returning to Halle as a Professor, he published before he was thirty (1774-5) his first edition of the N. T., which contained the well-defined embryo of his future and more elaborate speculations. It will be convenient to reserve the examination of his views until we have described the investigations of several collators who unknowingly (and in one instance, no doubt unwillingly) were busy in gathering stores which he was to turn to his own use.10. Christian Frederick Matthaei, a Thuringian [1744-1811], was appointed, on the recommendation of his tutor Ernesti, to the Professorship of Classical Literature at Moscow: so far as philology is concerned, he probably merited Bp. Middleton's praise, as“the most accurate scholar who ever edited the N. T.”(Doctrine of the Greek Article, p. 244, 3rd edition.) At Moscow he found a large number of Greek manuscripts, both Biblical and Patristic, originally brought from Athos, quite uncollated,[pg 217]and almost entirely unknown in the west of Europe. With laudable resolution he set himself to examine them, and gradually formed the scheme of publishing an edition of the New Testament by the aid of materials so precious and abundant. All authors that deserve that honourable name may be presumed to learn not a little, even on the subject they know best, while preparing an important work for the public eye; but Matthaei was as yet ignorant of the first principles of the critical art; and beginning thus late, there was much, and that of a very elementary character, which he never understood at all. When he commenced writing he had not seen the volumes of Mill or Wetstein; and to this significant fact we must impute that inability which clave to him to the last, of discriminating the relative age and value of his own or others' codices. The palaeographical portion of the science, indeed, he gradually acquired from the study of his documents, and through the many facsimiles of them he represents in his edition; but what can be thought of his judgement, when he persisted in asserting the intrinsic superiority of Cod. 69 of the Acts to the great uncials AC (N. T., Tom. xii. p. 222)216? Hence it results that Matthaei's text, which of course he moulded on his own views, must be held in slight esteem: his services as a collator comprehend his whole claim (and that no trifling one) to our thankful regard. To him solely we are indebted for Evan. V; 237-259; Act. 98-107; Paul. 113-124; Apoc. 47-502(i.e. r); Evst. 47-57; Apost. 13-20; nearly all at Moscow: the whole seventy217, together[pg 218]with the citations of Scripture in thirty-four manuscripts of Chrysostom218, being so fully and accurately collated, that the reader need not be at a loss whether any particular copy supports or opposes the reading in the common text. Matthaei's further services in connexion with Cod. G Paul, and a few others (Act. 69, &c.) have been noticed in their proper places. To his Greek text was annexed the Latin Vulgate (the only version, in its present state, he professes to regard, Tom. xi. p. xii) from the Cod. Demidovianus. The first volume of this edition appeared in 1782, after it had been already eight years in preparation: this comprised the Catholic Epistles. The rest of the work was published at intervals during the next six years, in eleven more thin parts 8vo, the whole series being closed by SS. Matthew and Mark in 1788. Each volume has a Preface, much descriptive matter, and facsimiles of manuscripts (twenty-nine in all), the whole being in complete and almost hopeless disorder, and the general title-page absurdly long. Hence his critical principles (if such they may be termed) must be picked up piecemeal; and it is not very pleasant to observe the sort of influence which hostile controversy exercised over his mind and temper. While yet fresh at his task (1782), anticipating the fair fame his most profitable researches had so well earned, Matthaei is frank, calm, and rational: even at a later period J. D. Michaelis is, in his estimation, the keenest of living judges of codices, and he says so the rather“quod ille vir doctissimus multis modis me,quâ de causâ ipse ignoro, partim jocosè, partim seriò, vexavit”(Tom. ii, 1788, p. xxxi). Bengel, whose sentiments were very dissimilar from those of the Moscow Professor,“pro acumine, diligentiâ et religione suâ,”would have arrived at other conclusions, had his Augsburg codices been better (ibid., p. xxx). But for Griesbach and his recension-theory no terms of insult are strong enough;[pg 219]“risum vel adeo pueris debet ille Halensis criticus,”who never saw,“ut credibile est,”a manuscript even of the tenth century (ibid., p. xxiii), yet presumes to dictate to those who have collated seventy. The unhappy consequence was, that one who had taken up this employment in an earnest and candid spirit, possessed with the simple desire to promote the study of sacred literature, could devise no fitter commencement for his latest Preface than this:“Laborem igitur molestum invidiosum et infamem, inter convicia ranarum et latratus canum, aut ferreâ patientiâ aut invictâ pertinaciâ his quindecim annis vel sustinui, vel utcunque potui perfeci, vel denique et fastidio et taedio, ut fortasse non nulli opinantur, deposui et abjeci”(Tom. i, Praef. p. 1): he could find no purer cause for thankfulness, than (what we might have imagined but a very slight mercy) that he had never been commended by those“of whom to be dispraised is no small praise;”or (to use his own more vigorous language)“quod nemo scurra ... nemo denique de grego novorum theologorum, hanc qualemcunque operam meam ausus est ore impuro suo, laudeque contumeliosâ comprobare.”Matthaei's second edition in three volumes (destitute of the Latin version and most of the critical notes) bears date 1803-7219. For some cause, now not easy to understand, he hardly gave to this second edition the advantages of his studies during the fifteen years which had elapsed since he completed his first. We saw his labours bestowed on the Zittau N. T. in 1801-2 (Evan. 605). On the last leaf of the third volume of his second edition, writing from Moscow in May, 1805, he speaks of a book containing collations of no less than twenty-four manuscripts, partly fresh, partly corrected, which, when he returned into Russia, he delivered to Augustus Schumann, a bookseller at Ronneburg (in Saxe Altenburg), to be published in close connexion with his second edition against the Easter Fair at Leipzig in 1805. Another book contained extracts from St. Chrysostom with a commentary and index, to be published at the same time, and both at Schumann's risk.“Utrum isti libri jam prodierint necne,”our author adds pathetically,“nondum factus sum certior. Certe id vehementer opto.”But in 1805 evil times were hastening upon Germany,[pg 220]and so unfortunately for the poor man and for textual students these collections have disappeared and left no trace behind.10.aThe next, and a far less considerable contribution to our knowledge of manuscripts of the N. T., was made by Francis Karl Alter [1749-1804], a Jesuit, born in Silesia, and Professor of Greek at Vienna. His plan was novel, and, to those who are compelled to use his edition (N. T. Graecum, ad Codicem Vindobonensem Graecè expressum, 8vo, Vienna, 2 tom., 1786-7), inconvenient to the last degree. Adopting for his standard a valuable, but not very ancient or remarkable, manuscript in the Imperial Library (Evan. 218, Act. 65, Paul. 57, Apoc. 83), he prints this copy at full length, retaining even the ν ἐφελκυστικόν when it is found in his model, but not (as it would seem) all the itacisms or errors of the scribe, conforming in such cases to Stephen's edition of 1546. With this text he collates in separate Appendices twenty-one other manuscripts of the same great Library, comprising twelve copies of the Gospels (Codd. N, a fragment, 3, 76, 77, 108, 123, 124, 125, 219, 220, 224, 225); six of the Acts, &c. (3, 43, 63, 64, 66, 67); seven of St. Paul (3, 49, 67-71); three of the Apocalypse (34, 35, 36), and two Evangelistaria (45, 46). He also gives readings from Wilkins' Coptic version, four Slavonic codices and one Old Latin (i). In employing this ill-digested mass, it is necessary to turn to a different place for every manuscript to be consulted, and Alter's silence in any passages must be understood to indicate resemblance to his standard, Evan. 218, and not to the common text. As this silence is very often clearly due to the collator's mere oversight, Griesbach set the example of citing these manuscripts in such cases within marks of parenthesis: thus“218 (108, 220)”indicates that the reading in question is certainly found in Cod. 218, and (so far as we may inferex Alteri silentio) not improbably in the other two. Most of these Vienna codices were about the same time examined rather slightly by Andrew Birch.11. This eminent person, who afterwards bore successively the titles of Bishop of Lolland, Falster, and Aarhuus, in the Lutheran communion established in Denmark, was one of a company of learned men sent by the liberal care of Christian VII to examine Biblical manuscripts in various countries. Adler[pg 221]pursued his Oriental studies at Rome and elsewhere; D. G. Moldenhawer and O. G. Tychsen (the famous Orientalist of Rostock) were sent into Spain in 1783-4; Birch travelled on the same good errand in 1781-3 through Italy and Germany. The combined results of their investigations were arranged and published by Birch, whose folio edition of the Four Gospels (also in 4to) with Stephen's text of 1550220, and the various readings contributed by himself and his associates, full descriptive Prolegomena and facsimiles of seven manuscripts (Codd. S, 157 Evan.; and five in Syriac), appeared at Copenhagen in 1788. Seven years afterwards (1795) a fire destroyed the Royal Printing-house, the type, paper, and unsold stock of the first volume, the collations of the rest of the N. T. having very nearly shared the same fate. These poor fragments were collected by Birch into two small 8vo volumes, those relating to the Acts and Epistles in 1798, to the Apocalypse (with facsimiles of Codd. 37, 42) in 1800. In 1801 he revised and re-edited the various readings of the Gospels, in a form to correspond with those of the rest of the N. T. Nothing can be better calculated to win respect and confidence than the whole tone of Birch's several Prolegomena: he displays at once a proper sense of the difficulties of his task, and a consciousness that he had done his utmost to conquer them221. It is indeed much to be regretted that, for some cause he does not wish to explain, he accomplished but little for Cod. B; many of the manuscripts on his long list were beyond question examined but very superficially; yet he was almost the first to open to us the literary treasures of the Vatican, of Florence, and of Venice. He more or less inspected the uncials Cod. B, Codd. ST of the Gospels, Cod. L of the Acts and Epistles. His catalogue of cursives comprises Codd. 127-225 of the Gospels; Codd. 63-7, 70-96 of the Acts; Codd. 67-71, 77-112 of St. Paul; Codd. 33-4, 37-46[pg 222]of the Apocalypse; Evangelistaria 35-39; Apostolos 7, 8: in all 191 copies, a few of which were thoroughly collated (e.g. Evan. S, 127, 131, 157, Evst. 36). Of Adler's labours we have spoken already; they too are incorporated in Birch's work, and prefaced with a short notice (Birch, Proleg. p. lxxxv) by their author, a real and modest scholar. Moldenhawer's portion of the common task was discharged in another spirit. Received at the Escurial with courtesy and good-will, his colleague Tyschen and he spent four whole months in turning over a collection of 760 Greek manuscripts, of which only twenty related to the Greek Testament. They lacked neither leisure, nor opportunity, nor competent knowledge; but they were full of dislike for Spain and its religion, of overweening conceit, and of implicit trust in Griesbach and his recensions. The whole paper contributed by Moldenhawer to Birch's Prolegomena (pp. lxi-lxxxiv) is in substance very disappointing, while its arrogance is almost intolerable. What he effected for other portions of the N. T. I have not been able to trace (226, 228 Evan., which also contain the Acts and Epistles, are but nominally on Scholz's list for those books); the fire at Copenhagen may probably have destroyed his notes. Of the Gospels he collated eight codices (226-233), and four Evangelistaria (40-43), most of them being dismissed, after a cursory review, with some expression of hearty contempt. To Evann. 226, 229, 230 alone was he disposed to pay any attention; of the rest, whether“he soon restored them to their primitive obscurity”(p. lxxi), or“bade them sweet and holy rest among the reliques of Saints and Martyrs”(p. lxvii), he may be understood to say, once for all,“Omnino nemo, qui horum librorum rationem ac indolem ... perspectam habet, ex iis lectionis varietatem operose eruere aggredietur, nec, si quam inde conquisiverit, operae pretium fecisse a peritis arbitris existimabitur”(p. lxxiv). It was not thus that Matthaei dealt with the manuscripts at Moscow.12. Such were the materials ready for Griesbach's use when he projected his second and principal edition of the Greek Testament (vol. i. 1796, vol. ii. 1806). Not that he was backward in adding to the store of various readings by means of his own diligence. His“Symbolae Criticae222”(vol. i. 1785, vol. ii. 1793)[pg 223]contained, together with the readings extracted from Origen, collations, in whole or part, of many copies of various portions of the N. T., Latin as well as Greek. Besides inspecting Codd. AD (Evann.), and carefully examining Cod. C223, he consulted no less than twenty-six codices (including GL) of the Gospels, ten (including E) of the Acts, &c., fifteen (including DEH) of St. Paul, one of the Apocalypse (Cod. 29) twelve Lectionaries of the Gospels, and two of the Apostolos, far the greater part of them being deposited in England. It was not, however, his purpose to exhibit in his N. T. (designed, as it was, for general use) all the readings he had himself recorded elsewhere, much less the whole mass accumulated by the pains of Mill or Wetstein, Matthaei or Birch. The distinctive end at which he aims is to form such a selection from the matter their works contain, as to enable the theological student to decide for himself on the genuineness or corruption of any given reading, by the aid of principles which he devotes his best efforts to establish. Between the text (in which departures from the Elzevir edition of 1624 are generally indicated by being printed in smaller type224) and the critical notes at the foot of each page, intervenes a narrow space or inner margin, to receive those portions of the common text which Griesbach has rejected, and such variations of his authorities as he judges to be of equal weight with the received readings which he retains, or but little inferior to them. These decisions he intimates by several symbols, not quite so simple as those employed by Bengel, but conceived in a similar spirit; and he has carried his system somewhat further in his small or manual edition, published at Leipzig in 1805, which may be conceived to represent his last thoughts with regard to the recension of the Greek text of the N. T. But though we may trace some slight discrepancies of opinion between his earliest225and his latest works226, as might[pg 224]well be looked for in a literary career of forty years, yet the theory of his youth was maintained, and defended, and temperately applied by Griesbach even to the last. From Bengel and Semler he had taken up the belief that manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers divide themselves, with respect to the character of their testimony, into races or families. This principle he strove to reduce to practice by marshalling all his authorities under their respective heads, and then regarding the evidence, not of individuals, but of the classes to which they belong. The advantage of some such arrangement is sufficiently manifest, if only it could be made to rest on grounds in themselves certain, or, at all events, fairly probable. We should then possess some better guide in our choice between conflicting readings, than the very rough and unsatisfactory process of counting thenumberof witnesses produced on either side. It is not that such a mode of conducting critical enquiries would not be very convenient, that Griesbach's theory is universally abandoned by modern scholars, but because there is no valid reason for believing it to be true.At the onset of his labours, indeed, this acute and candid enquirer was disposed to divide all extant materials into five or six different families; he afterwards limited them to three, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine recensions. The standard of the Alexandrian text he conceived to be Origen; who, although his works were written in Palestine, was assumed to have brought with him into exile copies of Scripture, similar to those used in his native city. To this family would belong a few manuscripts of the earliest date, and confessedly of the highest character, Codd. ABC, Cod. L of the Gospels, the Egyptian and some lesser versions. The Western recension would survive in Cod. D of the Gospels and Acts, in the other ancient copies which contain a Latin translation, in the Old Latin and Vulgate versions, and in the Latin Fathers. The vast majority of manuscripts (comprising perhaps nineteen-twentieths of the whole), together with the larger proportion of versions and Patristic writings, were grouped into the Byzantine class, as having prevailed generally in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. To this last class Griesbach hardly professed to accord as much weight as to either of the others, nor, if he had done so, would the result have been materially different. The joint testimony[pg 225]of two classes was,ceteris paribus, always to prevail; and since the very few documents which comprise the Alexandrian and Western recensions seldom agree with the Byzantine even when at variance with each other, the numerous codices which make up the third family would thus have about as much share in fixing the text of Scripture, as the poor citizens whose host was included in one of Servius Tullius' lower classes possessed towards counterbalancing the votes of the wealthy few that composed his first or second227.Inasmuch as the manuscripts on which our received text was based must, beyond question, be referred to his Byzantine family, wide as were the variations of Griesbach's revised text from that of Elzevir228, had his theory been pushed to its legitimate consequences, the changes it required would have been greater still. The very plan of his work, however, seemed to reserve a slight preference for the received textas such, in cases of doubt and difficulty; and this editor, with a calmness and sagacity which may well be called judicial, was usually disposed to relax his stern mechanical law when persuaded by reasons founded on internal probabilities, which (as we cheerfully admit) few men have been found able to estimate with so much patience and discrimination. The plain fact is, that while disciples like Moldenhawer and persons who knew even less than he were regarding Griesbach's system as self-evidently true, their wiser master must have had many a misgiving as to the safety of that imposing structure his rare ingenuity had built upon the sand. The very essence of his theory consisted in there being not two[pg 226]distinct families, butthree; the majority deciding in all cases of dispute. Yet he hardly attempted, certainly neither he nor any one after him succeeded in the attempt, to separate the Alexandrian from the Western family, without resorting to arguments which would prove that there are as many classes as there are manuscripts of early date. The supposed accordance of the readings of Origen, so elaborately scrutinized for this purpose by Griesbach, with Cod. A, on which our editor lays the greatest stress, has been shown by Archbishop Laurence (Remarks on Griesbach's Systematic Classification, 1814) to be in a high degree imaginary229. It must have been in anticipation of some such researches, and in a partial knowledge of their sure results, that Griesbach was driven to that violent and most unlikely hypothesis, that Cod. A follows the Byzantine class of authorities in the Gospels, the Western in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, and the Alexandrian in St. Paul.It seems needless to dwell longer on speculations which, however attractive and once widely received, will scarcely again find an advocate. Griesbach's text can no longer be regarded as satisfactory, though it is far less objectionable than such a system as his would have made it in rash or unskilful hands. His industry, his moderation, his fairness to opponents, who (like Matthaei) had shown him little forbearance, we may all imitate to our profit. His logical acuteness and keen intellectual perception fall to the lot of few; and though they may have helped to lead him into error, and have even kept him from retracing his steps, yet on the whole they were worthily exercised in the good cause of promoting a knowledge of God's truth, and of keeping alive, in an evil and unbelieving age, an enlightened interest in Holy Scripture, and the studies which it serves to consecrate.13. Of a widely different order of mind was John Martin Augustine Scholz [d. 1852], Roman Catholic Dean of Theology in the mixed University of Bonn. It would have been well for the progress of sacred learning and for his own reputation had[pg 227]the accuracy and ability of this editor borne some proportion to his zeal and obvious anxiety to be useful. His first essay was his“Curae Criticae in historiam textûs Evangeliorum,”in two dissertations, Heidelberg, 4to, 1820, containing notices of forty-eight Paris manuscripts (nine of them hitherto unknown) of which he had fully collated seventeen: the second Dissertation is devoted to Cod. K of the Gospels. In 1823 appeared his“Biblisch-Kritische Reise,”Leipsic, 8vo, Biblio-Critical Travels in France, Switzerland, Italy, Palestine and the Archipelago, which Schulz laid under contribution for his improved edition of Griesbach's first volume230. Scholz's“N. T. Graece,”4to, was published at Leipsic, vol. i, 1830 (Gospels); vol. ii, 1836.The accession of fresh materials made known in these works is almost marvellous: Scholz was the first to indicate Codd. 260-469 of the Gospels; 110-192 of the Acts, &c.; 125-246 of St. Paul; 51-89 of the Apocalypse; 51-181 Evangelistaria; 21-58 Lectionaries of the Apostolos; in all 616 cursive codices. His additions to the list of the uncials comprise only the three fragments of the Gospels WaY and the Vatican leaves of N. Of those examined previously by others he paid most attention to Evan. KX (M also for its synaxaria), and G (now L) Act., Paul.; he moreover inspected slightly eighty-two cursive codices of the Gospels after Wetstein, Birch, and the rest; collated entire five (Codd. 4, 19, 25, 28, 33), and twelve in the greater part, adding much to our knowledge of the important Cod. 22. In the Acts, &c., he inspected twenty-seven of those known before, partially collated two; in St. Paul he collated partially two, slightly twenty-nine; in the Apocalypse sixteen, cursorily enough it would seem (seeCodd. 21-3): of the Lectionaries he touched more or less thirteen of the Gospels, four of the Apostolos. On turning to the 616 codices Scholz placed on the list for the first time, we find that he collated entire but thirteen (viz. five of the Gospels, three of the Acts, &c., three of St. Paul, one each of the Apocalypse and Evangelistaria): a few of the rest he examined throughout the greater part; many in only a few chapters; while some were set down from printed[pg 228]Catalogues, whose plenteous errors we have used our best endeavours to correct in the present volume, so far as the means were within our reach.
Colb.10 = Colb. 2Colb.11 = Colb. 1Cov.1 Evan. 65Cov.2 Act. 25Cov.3 Act. 26Cov.4 Act. 27Cov.5Sin.Act. 28Cypr.Evan. KEm.seeEvan. 64Eph.Evan. 71Gal.Evan. 66Ger.Paul. EGenev.Act. 29Go.Evan. 62Gon.Evan. 59Hunt.1 Act. 30Hunt.2 Evan. 67L.Evan. 69Laud.1 Evan. 50Laud.2 Evan. 51[pg 203]Laud. 3 Act. ELaud. 4 Evst. 20Laud. 5 Evan. 52Lin. Evan. 56Lin. 2 Act. 33Lu. Act. 21M. 1 Evan. 60M. 2 Evst. 4Magd. 1 Evan. 57Magd. 2 Paul. 42Med. Evan. 42Mont. Evan. 61N. 1 Evan. 58N. 1 Act. 36N. 2 Act. 37Per. Evan. 91Pet. 1 Act. 38Pet. 2 Act. 39Pet. 3 Act. 40Roe. 1 Evan. 49Roe. 2 Paul. 47Seld. 1 Evan. 53Seld. 2 Evan. 54Seld. 3 Evan. 55Seld. 4 Evst. 21Seld. 5 Evst. 22Steph. codicesxvi.videaspp. 190-191Trin. Apost. 3Trit. Evan. 96Vat. Cod. BVel. Evan. 111 (Wetstein)Vien. Evan. 76Usser. 1 Evan. 63Usser. 2 Evan. 64Wheel. 1 Evan. 68Wheel. 2 Evan. 95Wheel. 3 Evst. 3Wech. videasp. 191Mill merely drew from other sourcesBarb.,Steph.,Vel.,Wech.; the copies deposited abroad (B 1-3,Clar.,Colb.1-11,Cypr.,Genev.,Med.,Per.,Pet.1-3,Vat. Vien.), andTrin.or Apost. 3 he only knew from readings sent to him; all the rest, not being included in Walton's list, and several of them also, he collated for himself.The Prolegomena of Mill, divided into three parts—(1) on the Canon of the New Testament; (2) on the History of the Text, including the quotations of the Fathers and the early editions; and (3) on the plan and contents of his own work,—though by this time too far behind the present state of knowledge to bear reprinting, comprise a monument of learning such as the world has seldom seen, and contain much information the student will not even now easily find elsewhere. Although Mill perpetually pronounces his judgement on the character of disputed readings198, especially in his Prolegomena, which were printed long after some portions of the body of the work, yet he only aims at reproducing Stephen's text of 1550, though in a few places he departs from it, whether by accident or design199.In 1710 Ludolph Kuster, a Westphalian, republished Mill's[pg 204]Greek Testament, in folio, at Amsterdam and Rotterdam (or with a new title page, Leipsic, 1723, Amsterdam, 1746), arranging in its proper place the matter cast by Mill into his Appendix, as having reached him too late to stand in his critical notes, and adding to those notes the readings of twelve fresh manuscripts, one collated by Kuster himself, which he describes in a Preface well worth reading. Nine of these codices collated by, or under, the Abbé de Louvois are in the Royal Library at Paris (viz.Paris.1, which is Evan. 285;Paris.2 = Evan. M;Paris.3 = Evan. 9;Paris.4 = Evan. 11;Paris.5 = Evan. 119;Paris.6 = Evan. 13;Paris.7 = Evan. 14;Paris.8 = Evan. 15;Paris.9 = the great Cod. C): butLips.= Evan. 78 was collated by Boerner;Seidel.= Act. 42 by Westermann; Boerner. = Paul. G by Kuster himself. He keeps his own notes separate from Mill's by prefixing and affixing the marks [symbol], [symbol], and his collations both of his own codices and of early editions will be found more complete than his predecessor's.5. In the next year after Kuster's Mill (1711), appeared at Amsterdam, from the press of the Wetsteins, a small N. T., 8vo, containing all the critical matter of the Oxford edition of 1675, a collation of one Vienna manuscript (Caes.= Evan. 76), 43 canons“secundum quos variantes lectiones N. T. examinandae,”and discussions upon them, with other matter, especially parallel texts, forming a convenient manual, the whole by G. D. T. M. D., which being interpreted means Gerhard de Trajecto Mosae Doctor, this Gerhard von Mästricht being a Syndic of Bremen. The text is Fell's, except in Apoc. iii. 12, where the portentous erratum λαῷ for ναῷ of Stephen is corrected. A second and somewhat improved edition was published in 1735, but ere that date the book must have become quite superseded.6. We have to return to England once more, where the criticism of the New Testament had engrossed the attention ofRichard Bentley[1662-1742], whose elevation to the enviable post of Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1699, was a just recognition of his supremacy in the English world of letters. As early as 1691 he had felt a keen interest in sacred criticism, and in his“Epistola ad Johannem Millium”had urged that editor, in language fraught with eloquence and native vigour, to[pg 205]hasten on the work (whose accomplishment was eventually left to others) of publishing side by side on the opened leaf Codd. A, D (Bezae), D (Clarom.), E (Laud.). For many years afterwards Bentley's laurels were won on other fields, and it was not till his friend was dead, and his admirable labours were exposed to the obloquy of opponents (some honest though unwise, others hating Mill because they hated the Scriptures which he sought to illustrate), that our Aristarchus exerted his giant strength to crush the infidel and to put the ignorant to silence. In his“Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free Thinking in a letter to F[rancis] H[are] D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,”1713, Bentley displayed that intimate familiarity with the whole subject of various readings, their causes, extent, and consequences, which has rendered this occasional treatise more truly valued (as it was far more important) than the world-renowned“Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris”itself. As his years were now hastening on and the evening of life was beginning to draw nigh, it was seemly that the first scholar of his age should seek for his rare abilities an employment more entirely suited to his sacred office than even the most successful cultivation of classical learning; and so, about this time, he came to project what he henceforth regarded as his greatest effort, an edition of the Greek New Testament. In 1716 we find him in conference with J. J. Wetstein, then very young, and seeking his aid in procuring collations. In the same year he addressed his memorable“Letter”to Wm. Wake [1657-1737], Archbishop of Canterbury, whose own mind was full of the subject, wherein he explains, with characteristic energy and precision, the principles on which he proposed to execute his great scheme. As these principles must be reviewed afterwards, we will but touch upon them now. His theory was built upon the notion that the oldest manuscripts of the Greek original and of Jerome's Latin version resemble each other so marvellously, even in the very order of the words, that by this agreement he could restore the text as it stood in the fourth century,“so that there shall not be twenty words, or even particles, difference.”“By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope's [i.e. the Clementine] Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephen's [1550], I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine hundred[pg 206]years old, that shall so exactly agree word for word, and, what at first amazed me, order for order, that no two tallies, nor two indentures, can agree better200.”In 1720, some progress having been made in the task of collation, chiefly at Paris, by John Walker, Fellow of Trinity, who was designated by Bentley“overseer and corrector of the press,”but proved in fact a great deal more; Bentley published his Proposals for Printing201, a work which“he consecrates, as a κειμήλιων, a κτῆμα ἐσαεί, acharter, amagna charta, to the whole Christian Church; to last when all the ancient MSS. here quoted may be lost and extinguished.”Alas for the emptiness of human anticipations! Of this noble design, projected by one of the most diligent, by one of the most highly gifted men our dear mother Cambridge ever nourished, nothing now remains but a few scattered notices in treatises on Textual Criticism, and large undigested stores of various readings and random observations, accumulated in his College Library; papers which no real student ever glanced through, but with a heart saddened—almost sickened—at the sight of so much labour lost202. The specimen chapter (Apocalypse xxii) which accompanied his Proposals shows clearly how little had yet been done towards arranging the materials that had been collected; codices are cited there, and in many of his loose notes, not separately and by name, as in Mill's volume, but mostly as“Anglicus unus, tres codd. veterrimi, Gall. quatuor, Germ. unus,”&c., in the rough fashion of the Oxford N. T. of 1675203.[pg 207]It has been often alleged that Bentley seems to have worked but little on the Greek Testament after 1729: that his attention was diverted by his editions of Paradise Lost (1732) and of Manilius (1739), by his Homeric studies and College litigation, until he was overtaken by a paralytic stroke in 1739, and died in his eighty-first year in 1742. Walker's collations of cursive manuscripts at Christ Church (Evan. 506), however, obviously made for Bentley's use, bear the date of 1732204, and a closer examination of his papers, bequeathed in 1786 by his nephew Richard Bentley to Trinity College, shows that much more progress had been made by him than has been usually supposed. Besides full collations of the uncial Codd. AD (Gospels and Acts), of Cod. F (his θ) and G of St. Paul, of Arundel 547 (Evst. 257) executed by Bentley himself, of Codd. B and C by others at his cost, three volumes are found there full of critical materials, which have been described by Mr. Ellis, and digested by Dr. Westcott. One of these (B. xvii. 5) I was allowed by the Master and Seniors to study at leisure at home. It is a folio edition of the N. T., Greek and Latin (Paris, ap. Claud. Sonnium, 1628, the Greek text being that of Elzevir 1624), whose margin and spaces between the lines are filled with various readings in Bentley's hand, but not all of them necessarily the results of his own labour, collected out of ten Greek and thirty Latin manuscripts. The Greek are all cursives save Evst. 5, and his connexion with them has been referred to above under the Cursive MSS. They areEvan. 51 (γ),Evan. 54 (κ),Evan. 60 (ε),Evan. 113 (θ?),Evan. 440 (ο),Evan. 507 (τ),Evan. 508 (δ),Act. 23 (χ),Apoc. 28 (κ),Evst. 5 (α).The Latin copies, which alone are described by Bentley in the fly-leaves of the volume, may not be as easily identified, but[pg 208]some of them are of great value, and are described above in Chap.III. These arechad.(ξ),dunelm.(Κ),harl.3(Μ),lind.(η),mac-regol(χ),oxon.(Σ),oxon.(Paul. χ),seld.(Act. χ),vall.,Westcott addsharl.4(Η).A second mass of materials, all Latin, about twenty in number, and deposited in England, is contained in the first volume of the Benedictine edition of St. Jerome's works (Paris, 1693). In this book (B. xvii. 14) Dr. Westcott has pasted a valuable note, wherein he identifies the manuscripts used by Bentley by the means of his own actual collation. Those described above in Chap.IIIare the following:B. M. Harl. 1802 (W),B. M.harl.2(M. of Epistles, &c.),B. M. Addit. 5463 (F),B. M. King's Lib. I. A. 18 (O),B. M. King's Lib. I. B. VII. (H),B. M. King's Lib. I. E. VI. (P),B. M. C. C. C. Camb. 286 (B),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 5 (S),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 4 (T,ibid.),B. M.lind.(Y: as in B. XVII. 5),B. M. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. I. 24 (χ).Westcott further appropriates B. M. Cotton, Otho B. ix, as Bentley's D; Cotton Tib. A. ii (“the Coronation book”) as his ε; Cotton Otho C. v as his φ; C. C. C. Camb. 197 as his C; King's Library 1 D. ix as his A. His ξ in B. xvii. 14 seems unrecognized.These, of course, are no more than the rough materials of criticism. Another copy of the N. T. has been carefully and curiously made available for my use by the goodness of my friend Edwin Palmer, D.D., Archdeacon of Oxford. It is numbered B. xvii. 6, and is a duplicate copy (without its title-page) of the same printed book as B. xvii. 5. It is interleaved throughout, and was prepared very early in the course of this undertaking, inasmuch as Bentley describes it in an undated letter to Wetstein, which the latter answered Nov. 3, 1716. In the printed[pg 209]text itself, both Greek and Latin, as they stand in parallel columns, Bentley makes the corrections which he at that period was willing to adopt. There is no critical apparatus to justify his changes in the Latin version, but on the blank leaves of the book he sets down his Greek authorities, always cited by name, asAlex.,Cant.,Rom.(Cod. B.),Ox.in the Acts (Cod. E), θ in St. Paul for Cod. Augiensis (F), though this last did not reach him before 1718. Cod. C is sometimes calledEph., sometimes it is mixed up with Wetstein's other copies (1 Wetstein, 2 Wetstein, &c.). This most interesting volume, therefore, contains the first draft of Bentley's great design, and must have been nearly in its present state when the 'Proposals' were published in 1720, since the specimen chapter (Apoc. xxii) which accompanied them is takenverbatimfrom B. xvii. 6, save that authorities are added to vindicate the alterations of the Latin text, which is destitute of them in the printed book. Mr. Ellis too has printed the Epistle to the Galatians from the same source, and this specimen also produces much the same impression of meagreness and imperfection. It was doubtless in some degree to remedy an apparent crudeness that cursive copies were afterwards called in, as in B. xvii. 5 and in Walker's Oxford collections. The fact is that Bentley's main principle, as set forth by him from 1716 to 1720, that of substantial identity between the oldest Greek and Latin copies, is more favoured by Cod. A, which he knew soonest and best, than by any other really ancient documents, least of all by Cod. B, with which he obtained fuller acquaintance in or about 1720. Our Aristarchus then betook himself at intervals to cursive codices in the vain hope of getting aid from them, and so lost his way at last in that wide and pathless wilderness. We cannot but believe that nothing less than the manifest impossibility of maintaining the principles which his“Letter”of 1716 enunciated, and his 'Proposals' of 1720 scarcely modified, in the face of the evidence which his growing mass of collations bore against them205, could have had power enough to break off in the midst[pg 210]that labour of love from which he had looked for undying fame206.7. The anonymous text and version of William Mace, said to have been a Presbyterian minister (“The New Testament in Greek and English,”2 vols. 8vo, 1729), are alike unworthy of serious notice, and have long since been forgotten207. And now original research in the science of Biblical criticism, so far as the New Testament is concerned, seems to have left the shores of England, to return no more for upwards of a century208; and we must look to Germany if we wish to trace the further progress of investigations which our countrymen had so auspiciously begun. The first considerable effort made on the Continent was:—8. The New Testament of John Albert Bengel, 4to, Tübingen, 1734209: his“Prodromus N. T. Gr. rectè cautèque adornandi”had appeared as early as 1725. This devout and truly able man [1687-1752], who held the office (whatever might be its functions)[pg 211]of Abbot of Alpirspach in the Lutheran communion of Württemberg, though more generally known as an interpreter of Scripture from his invaluable“Gnomon Novi Testamenti,”yet left the stamp of his mind deeply imprinted on the criticism of the sacred volume. As a collator his merits were not high; nearly all his sixteen codices have required and obtained fresh examination from those who came after him210. His text, which he arranged in convenient paragraphs, as has been said, is the earliest important specimen of intentional departure from the received type; hence he imposes on himself the strange restriction of admitting into it no reading (excepting in the Apocalypse) which had not appeared in one or more of the editions that preceded his own. He pronounces his opinion on otherselectvariations by placing them in his lower margin with Greek numerals attached to them, according as he judged them decidedly better (α), or somewhat more likely (β), than those which stand in his text: or equal to them (γ); or a little (δ), or considerably (ε), inferior. This notation has advantages which might well have commended it to the attention of succeeding editors. In his“Apparatus Criticus”also, at the end of his volume, he set the example, now generally followed, of recording definitely the testimony in favour of a received reading, as well as that against it.But the peculiar importance of Bengel's N. T. is due to the critical principles developed therein. Not only was his native acuteness of great service to him, when weighing the conflicting probabilities of internal evidence, but in his fertile mind sprang up the germ of that theory offamiliesorrecensions, which was afterwards expanded by J. S. Semler [1725-91], and grew to such formidable dimensions in the skilful hands of Griesbach. An attentive student of the discrepant readings of the N. T., even in the limited extent they had hitherto been collected, could hardly fail to discern that certain manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers have a manifest[pg 212]affinity with each other; so that one of them shall seldom be cited in support of a variation (not being a manifest and gross error of the copyist), unless accompanied by several of its kindred. The inference is direct and clear, that documents which thus withdraw themselves from the general mass of authorities, must have sprung from some common source, distinct from those which in characteristic readings they but slightly resemble. It occurred, therefore, to Bengel as a hopeful mode of making good progress in the criticism of the N. T., to reduce all extant testimony into“companies, families, tribes, and nations,”and thus to simplify the process of settling the sacred text by setting class over against class, and trying to estimate the genius of each, and the relative importance they may severally lay claim to. He wished to divide all extant documents into two nations: theAsiatic, chiefly written in Constantinople and its neighbourhood, which he was inclined to disparage; and theAfrican, comprising the few of a better type (“Apparatus Criticus,”p. 669, 2nd edition, 1763). Various circumstances hindered Bengel from working out his principle, among which he condescends to set his dread of exposing his task to senseless ridicule211; yet no one can doubt that it comprehends the elements of what is both reasonable and true; however difficult it has subsequently proved to adjust the details of any consistent scheme. For the rest, Bengel's critical verdicts, always considered in relation to his age and opportunities, deserve strong commendation. He saw the paramount worth of Cod. A, the only great uncial then much known (N. T., Apparat. Crit., pp. 390-401). The high character of the Latin version, and the[pg 213]necessity for revising its text by means of manuscripts (ibid., p. 391), he readily conceded, after Bentley's example. His mean estimate of the Greek-Latin codices (Evan. Act. D; Act. E; Paul. DFG) may not find equal favour in the eyes of all his admirers; he pronounces them“re verâ bilingues;”which, for their perpetual and wilful interpolations,“non pro codicibus sed pro rhapsodiis, haberi debeant”(ibid., p. 386)212.9. The next step in advance was made by John James Wetstein [1693-1754], a native of Basle, whose edition of the Greek New Testament (“cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum, necnon Commentario pleniore ex scriptoribus veteribus, Hebraeis, Graecis, et Latinis, historiam et vim verborum illustrante”) appeared in two volumes, folio, Amsterdam, 1751-2. The genius, the character, and (it must in justice be added) the worldly fortunes of Wetstein were widely different from those of the good Abbot of Alpirspach. His taste for Biblical studies showed itself early. When ordained pastor at the age of twenty he delivered a disputation,“De variis N. T. lectionibus,”and zeal for this fascinating pursuit became at length with him a passion—the master-passion which consoled and dignified a roving, troubled, unprosperous life. In 1714 his eager search for manuscripts led him to Paris, in 1715-16 and again in 1720 he visited England, and was employed by Bentley in collecting materials for his projected edition, but he seems to have imbibed few of that great man's principles: the interval between them, both in age and station, almost forbade much sympathy. On his return home he gradually became suspected of Socinian tendencies, and it must be feared with too much justice; so that in the end he was deposed from the pastorate (1730), driven into exile, and after having been compelled to serve in a position the least favourable to the cultivation of learning, that of a military chaplain, he obtained at length (1733) a Professorship among the Remonstrants at Amsterdam (in succession to the celebrated Leclerc), and there continued till his death in 1754, having made his third visit to England in 1746. His“Prolegomena,”[pg 214]first published in 1730, and afterwards, in an altered form, prefixed to his N. T.213, present a painful image both of the man and of his circumstances. His restless energy, his undaunted industry, his violent temper, his love of paradox, his assertion for himself of perfect freedom of thought, his silly prejudice against Jesuits and bigots, his enmities, his wrongs, his ill-requited labours, at once excite our respect and our pity: while they all help to make his writings a sort of unconscious autobiography, rather interesting than agreeable.Non sic itur ad astra, whether morally or intellectually; yet Wetstein's services to sacred literature were of no common order. His philological annotations, wherein the matter and phraseology of the inspired writers are illustrated by copious—too copious—quotations from all kinds of authors, classical, Patristic, and Rabbinical, have proved an inexhaustible storehouse from which later writers have drawn liberally and sometimes without due acknowledgement; but many of the passages are of such a tenor as (to use Tregelles' very gentle language respecting them)“only to excite surprise at their being found on the same page as the text of the New Testament”(Account of Printed Text, p. 76). The critical portion of his work, however, is far more valuable, and in this department Wetstein must be placed in the very first rank, inferior (if to any) to but one or two of the highest names. He first cited the manuscripts under the notation by which they are commonly known, his list already embracing A-O, 1-112 of the Gospels; A-G, 1-58 of the Acts; A-H, 1-60 of St. Paul; A-C, 1-28 of the Apocalypse; 1-24 Evangelistaria; 1-4 of the Apostolos. Of these Wetstein himself collated about one hundred and two214; if not as fully or accurately as is now expected, yet with far greater care than had hitherto been usual: about eleven were examined for him by other hands. On the versions and early editions he has likewise bestowed great pains; and he improved upon quotations from the Fathers. His text is that of Elzevir (1633), not very exactly printed215, and immediately below it he[pg 215]placed such readings of his manuscripts as he judged preferable to those received. The readings thus approved by Wetstein (which do not amount to five hundred, and those chiefly in the Apocalypse) were inserted in the text of a Greek Testament published in London, 1763, 2 vols., by W. Bowyer, the learned printer, with a collection of critical conjectures annexed, which were afterwards published separately.Wetstein's Prolegomena have also been reproduced by J. S. Semler (Halle, 1764), with good notes and facsimiles of certain manuscripts, and more recently, in a compressed and modernized form, by J. A. Lotze (Rotterdam, 1831), a book which neither for design nor execution can be much praised. The truth is that both the style and the subject-matter of much that Wetstein wrote are things of the past. In his earlier edition of his Prolegomena (1730) he had spoken of the oldest Greek uncial copies as they deserve; he was even disposed to take Cod. A as the basis of his text. By the time his N. T. was ready, twenty years later, he had come to include it, with all the older codices of the original, under a general charge of being conformed to the Latin version. That such a tendency may be detected in some of the codices accompanied by a Latin translation, is both possible in itself, and not inconsistent with their general spirit; but he has scattered abroad his imputations capriciously and almost at random, so as greatly to diminish the weight of his own decisions. Cod. A, in particular, has been fully cleared of the charge of Latinizing by Woide, in his excellent Prolegomena (§ 6). His thorough contempt for that critic prevented Wetstein from giving adequate attention to Bengel's theory of[pg 216]families; indeed he can hardly be said to have rejected a scheme which he scorned to investigate with patience. On the other hand no portion of his labours is more valuable than the“Animadversiones et Cautiones ad examen variarum lectionum N. T. necessariae”(N. T., Tom. ii. pp. 851-74). In this tract his natural good sense and extensive knowledge of authorities of every class have gone far to correct that impetuous temperament which was ever too ready to substitute plausible conjecture in the room of ascertained facts.During the twenty years immediately ensuing on the publication of Wetstein's volumes, little was attempted in the way of enlarging or improving the domain he had secured for Biblical science. In England the attention of students was directed, and on the whole successfully, to the criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures; in Germany, the younger (J. D.) Michaelis [1717-91] reigned supreme, and he seems to have deemed it the highest effort of scholarship to sit in judgement on the labours of others. In process of time, however, the researches of John James Griesbach [1745-1812], a native of Hesse Darmstadt and a pupil of Semler, and J. A. Ernesti [1707-81] (whose manual,“Institutio Interpretis N. T.,”1761, has not long been superseded), began to attract general notice. Like Wetstein, he made a literary tour in England early in life (1769), and with far more profit; returning to Halle as a Professor, he published before he was thirty (1774-5) his first edition of the N. T., which contained the well-defined embryo of his future and more elaborate speculations. It will be convenient to reserve the examination of his views until we have described the investigations of several collators who unknowingly (and in one instance, no doubt unwillingly) were busy in gathering stores which he was to turn to his own use.10. Christian Frederick Matthaei, a Thuringian [1744-1811], was appointed, on the recommendation of his tutor Ernesti, to the Professorship of Classical Literature at Moscow: so far as philology is concerned, he probably merited Bp. Middleton's praise, as“the most accurate scholar who ever edited the N. T.”(Doctrine of the Greek Article, p. 244, 3rd edition.) At Moscow he found a large number of Greek manuscripts, both Biblical and Patristic, originally brought from Athos, quite uncollated,[pg 217]and almost entirely unknown in the west of Europe. With laudable resolution he set himself to examine them, and gradually formed the scheme of publishing an edition of the New Testament by the aid of materials so precious and abundant. All authors that deserve that honourable name may be presumed to learn not a little, even on the subject they know best, while preparing an important work for the public eye; but Matthaei was as yet ignorant of the first principles of the critical art; and beginning thus late, there was much, and that of a very elementary character, which he never understood at all. When he commenced writing he had not seen the volumes of Mill or Wetstein; and to this significant fact we must impute that inability which clave to him to the last, of discriminating the relative age and value of his own or others' codices. The palaeographical portion of the science, indeed, he gradually acquired from the study of his documents, and through the many facsimiles of them he represents in his edition; but what can be thought of his judgement, when he persisted in asserting the intrinsic superiority of Cod. 69 of the Acts to the great uncials AC (N. T., Tom. xii. p. 222)216? Hence it results that Matthaei's text, which of course he moulded on his own views, must be held in slight esteem: his services as a collator comprehend his whole claim (and that no trifling one) to our thankful regard. To him solely we are indebted for Evan. V; 237-259; Act. 98-107; Paul. 113-124; Apoc. 47-502(i.e. r); Evst. 47-57; Apost. 13-20; nearly all at Moscow: the whole seventy217, together[pg 218]with the citations of Scripture in thirty-four manuscripts of Chrysostom218, being so fully and accurately collated, that the reader need not be at a loss whether any particular copy supports or opposes the reading in the common text. Matthaei's further services in connexion with Cod. G Paul, and a few others (Act. 69, &c.) have been noticed in their proper places. To his Greek text was annexed the Latin Vulgate (the only version, in its present state, he professes to regard, Tom. xi. p. xii) from the Cod. Demidovianus. The first volume of this edition appeared in 1782, after it had been already eight years in preparation: this comprised the Catholic Epistles. The rest of the work was published at intervals during the next six years, in eleven more thin parts 8vo, the whole series being closed by SS. Matthew and Mark in 1788. Each volume has a Preface, much descriptive matter, and facsimiles of manuscripts (twenty-nine in all), the whole being in complete and almost hopeless disorder, and the general title-page absurdly long. Hence his critical principles (if such they may be termed) must be picked up piecemeal; and it is not very pleasant to observe the sort of influence which hostile controversy exercised over his mind and temper. While yet fresh at his task (1782), anticipating the fair fame his most profitable researches had so well earned, Matthaei is frank, calm, and rational: even at a later period J. D. Michaelis is, in his estimation, the keenest of living judges of codices, and he says so the rather“quod ille vir doctissimus multis modis me,quâ de causâ ipse ignoro, partim jocosè, partim seriò, vexavit”(Tom. ii, 1788, p. xxxi). Bengel, whose sentiments were very dissimilar from those of the Moscow Professor,“pro acumine, diligentiâ et religione suâ,”would have arrived at other conclusions, had his Augsburg codices been better (ibid., p. xxx). But for Griesbach and his recension-theory no terms of insult are strong enough;[pg 219]“risum vel adeo pueris debet ille Halensis criticus,”who never saw,“ut credibile est,”a manuscript even of the tenth century (ibid., p. xxiii), yet presumes to dictate to those who have collated seventy. The unhappy consequence was, that one who had taken up this employment in an earnest and candid spirit, possessed with the simple desire to promote the study of sacred literature, could devise no fitter commencement for his latest Preface than this:“Laborem igitur molestum invidiosum et infamem, inter convicia ranarum et latratus canum, aut ferreâ patientiâ aut invictâ pertinaciâ his quindecim annis vel sustinui, vel utcunque potui perfeci, vel denique et fastidio et taedio, ut fortasse non nulli opinantur, deposui et abjeci”(Tom. i, Praef. p. 1): he could find no purer cause for thankfulness, than (what we might have imagined but a very slight mercy) that he had never been commended by those“of whom to be dispraised is no small praise;”or (to use his own more vigorous language)“quod nemo scurra ... nemo denique de grego novorum theologorum, hanc qualemcunque operam meam ausus est ore impuro suo, laudeque contumeliosâ comprobare.”Matthaei's second edition in three volumes (destitute of the Latin version and most of the critical notes) bears date 1803-7219. For some cause, now not easy to understand, he hardly gave to this second edition the advantages of his studies during the fifteen years which had elapsed since he completed his first. We saw his labours bestowed on the Zittau N. T. in 1801-2 (Evan. 605). On the last leaf of the third volume of his second edition, writing from Moscow in May, 1805, he speaks of a book containing collations of no less than twenty-four manuscripts, partly fresh, partly corrected, which, when he returned into Russia, he delivered to Augustus Schumann, a bookseller at Ronneburg (in Saxe Altenburg), to be published in close connexion with his second edition against the Easter Fair at Leipzig in 1805. Another book contained extracts from St. Chrysostom with a commentary and index, to be published at the same time, and both at Schumann's risk.“Utrum isti libri jam prodierint necne,”our author adds pathetically,“nondum factus sum certior. Certe id vehementer opto.”But in 1805 evil times were hastening upon Germany,[pg 220]and so unfortunately for the poor man and for textual students these collections have disappeared and left no trace behind.10.aThe next, and a far less considerable contribution to our knowledge of manuscripts of the N. T., was made by Francis Karl Alter [1749-1804], a Jesuit, born in Silesia, and Professor of Greek at Vienna. His plan was novel, and, to those who are compelled to use his edition (N. T. Graecum, ad Codicem Vindobonensem Graecè expressum, 8vo, Vienna, 2 tom., 1786-7), inconvenient to the last degree. Adopting for his standard a valuable, but not very ancient or remarkable, manuscript in the Imperial Library (Evan. 218, Act. 65, Paul. 57, Apoc. 83), he prints this copy at full length, retaining even the ν ἐφελκυστικόν when it is found in his model, but not (as it would seem) all the itacisms or errors of the scribe, conforming in such cases to Stephen's edition of 1546. With this text he collates in separate Appendices twenty-one other manuscripts of the same great Library, comprising twelve copies of the Gospels (Codd. N, a fragment, 3, 76, 77, 108, 123, 124, 125, 219, 220, 224, 225); six of the Acts, &c. (3, 43, 63, 64, 66, 67); seven of St. Paul (3, 49, 67-71); three of the Apocalypse (34, 35, 36), and two Evangelistaria (45, 46). He also gives readings from Wilkins' Coptic version, four Slavonic codices and one Old Latin (i). In employing this ill-digested mass, it is necessary to turn to a different place for every manuscript to be consulted, and Alter's silence in any passages must be understood to indicate resemblance to his standard, Evan. 218, and not to the common text. As this silence is very often clearly due to the collator's mere oversight, Griesbach set the example of citing these manuscripts in such cases within marks of parenthesis: thus“218 (108, 220)”indicates that the reading in question is certainly found in Cod. 218, and (so far as we may inferex Alteri silentio) not improbably in the other two. Most of these Vienna codices were about the same time examined rather slightly by Andrew Birch.11. This eminent person, who afterwards bore successively the titles of Bishop of Lolland, Falster, and Aarhuus, in the Lutheran communion established in Denmark, was one of a company of learned men sent by the liberal care of Christian VII to examine Biblical manuscripts in various countries. Adler[pg 221]pursued his Oriental studies at Rome and elsewhere; D. G. Moldenhawer and O. G. Tychsen (the famous Orientalist of Rostock) were sent into Spain in 1783-4; Birch travelled on the same good errand in 1781-3 through Italy and Germany. The combined results of their investigations were arranged and published by Birch, whose folio edition of the Four Gospels (also in 4to) with Stephen's text of 1550220, and the various readings contributed by himself and his associates, full descriptive Prolegomena and facsimiles of seven manuscripts (Codd. S, 157 Evan.; and five in Syriac), appeared at Copenhagen in 1788. Seven years afterwards (1795) a fire destroyed the Royal Printing-house, the type, paper, and unsold stock of the first volume, the collations of the rest of the N. T. having very nearly shared the same fate. These poor fragments were collected by Birch into two small 8vo volumes, those relating to the Acts and Epistles in 1798, to the Apocalypse (with facsimiles of Codd. 37, 42) in 1800. In 1801 he revised and re-edited the various readings of the Gospels, in a form to correspond with those of the rest of the N. T. Nothing can be better calculated to win respect and confidence than the whole tone of Birch's several Prolegomena: he displays at once a proper sense of the difficulties of his task, and a consciousness that he had done his utmost to conquer them221. It is indeed much to be regretted that, for some cause he does not wish to explain, he accomplished but little for Cod. B; many of the manuscripts on his long list were beyond question examined but very superficially; yet he was almost the first to open to us the literary treasures of the Vatican, of Florence, and of Venice. He more or less inspected the uncials Cod. B, Codd. ST of the Gospels, Cod. L of the Acts and Epistles. His catalogue of cursives comprises Codd. 127-225 of the Gospels; Codd. 63-7, 70-96 of the Acts; Codd. 67-71, 77-112 of St. Paul; Codd. 33-4, 37-46[pg 222]of the Apocalypse; Evangelistaria 35-39; Apostolos 7, 8: in all 191 copies, a few of which were thoroughly collated (e.g. Evan. S, 127, 131, 157, Evst. 36). Of Adler's labours we have spoken already; they too are incorporated in Birch's work, and prefaced with a short notice (Birch, Proleg. p. lxxxv) by their author, a real and modest scholar. Moldenhawer's portion of the common task was discharged in another spirit. Received at the Escurial with courtesy and good-will, his colleague Tyschen and he spent four whole months in turning over a collection of 760 Greek manuscripts, of which only twenty related to the Greek Testament. They lacked neither leisure, nor opportunity, nor competent knowledge; but they were full of dislike for Spain and its religion, of overweening conceit, and of implicit trust in Griesbach and his recensions. The whole paper contributed by Moldenhawer to Birch's Prolegomena (pp. lxi-lxxxiv) is in substance very disappointing, while its arrogance is almost intolerable. What he effected for other portions of the N. T. I have not been able to trace (226, 228 Evan., which also contain the Acts and Epistles, are but nominally on Scholz's list for those books); the fire at Copenhagen may probably have destroyed his notes. Of the Gospels he collated eight codices (226-233), and four Evangelistaria (40-43), most of them being dismissed, after a cursory review, with some expression of hearty contempt. To Evann. 226, 229, 230 alone was he disposed to pay any attention; of the rest, whether“he soon restored them to their primitive obscurity”(p. lxxi), or“bade them sweet and holy rest among the reliques of Saints and Martyrs”(p. lxvii), he may be understood to say, once for all,“Omnino nemo, qui horum librorum rationem ac indolem ... perspectam habet, ex iis lectionis varietatem operose eruere aggredietur, nec, si quam inde conquisiverit, operae pretium fecisse a peritis arbitris existimabitur”(p. lxxiv). It was not thus that Matthaei dealt with the manuscripts at Moscow.12. Such were the materials ready for Griesbach's use when he projected his second and principal edition of the Greek Testament (vol. i. 1796, vol. ii. 1806). Not that he was backward in adding to the store of various readings by means of his own diligence. His“Symbolae Criticae222”(vol. i. 1785, vol. ii. 1793)[pg 223]contained, together with the readings extracted from Origen, collations, in whole or part, of many copies of various portions of the N. T., Latin as well as Greek. Besides inspecting Codd. AD (Evann.), and carefully examining Cod. C223, he consulted no less than twenty-six codices (including GL) of the Gospels, ten (including E) of the Acts, &c., fifteen (including DEH) of St. Paul, one of the Apocalypse (Cod. 29) twelve Lectionaries of the Gospels, and two of the Apostolos, far the greater part of them being deposited in England. It was not, however, his purpose to exhibit in his N. T. (designed, as it was, for general use) all the readings he had himself recorded elsewhere, much less the whole mass accumulated by the pains of Mill or Wetstein, Matthaei or Birch. The distinctive end at which he aims is to form such a selection from the matter their works contain, as to enable the theological student to decide for himself on the genuineness or corruption of any given reading, by the aid of principles which he devotes his best efforts to establish. Between the text (in which departures from the Elzevir edition of 1624 are generally indicated by being printed in smaller type224) and the critical notes at the foot of each page, intervenes a narrow space or inner margin, to receive those portions of the common text which Griesbach has rejected, and such variations of his authorities as he judges to be of equal weight with the received readings which he retains, or but little inferior to them. These decisions he intimates by several symbols, not quite so simple as those employed by Bengel, but conceived in a similar spirit; and he has carried his system somewhat further in his small or manual edition, published at Leipzig in 1805, which may be conceived to represent his last thoughts with regard to the recension of the Greek text of the N. T. But though we may trace some slight discrepancies of opinion between his earliest225and his latest works226, as might[pg 224]well be looked for in a literary career of forty years, yet the theory of his youth was maintained, and defended, and temperately applied by Griesbach even to the last. From Bengel and Semler he had taken up the belief that manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers divide themselves, with respect to the character of their testimony, into races or families. This principle he strove to reduce to practice by marshalling all his authorities under their respective heads, and then regarding the evidence, not of individuals, but of the classes to which they belong. The advantage of some such arrangement is sufficiently manifest, if only it could be made to rest on grounds in themselves certain, or, at all events, fairly probable. We should then possess some better guide in our choice between conflicting readings, than the very rough and unsatisfactory process of counting thenumberof witnesses produced on either side. It is not that such a mode of conducting critical enquiries would not be very convenient, that Griesbach's theory is universally abandoned by modern scholars, but because there is no valid reason for believing it to be true.At the onset of his labours, indeed, this acute and candid enquirer was disposed to divide all extant materials into five or six different families; he afterwards limited them to three, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine recensions. The standard of the Alexandrian text he conceived to be Origen; who, although his works were written in Palestine, was assumed to have brought with him into exile copies of Scripture, similar to those used in his native city. To this family would belong a few manuscripts of the earliest date, and confessedly of the highest character, Codd. ABC, Cod. L of the Gospels, the Egyptian and some lesser versions. The Western recension would survive in Cod. D of the Gospels and Acts, in the other ancient copies which contain a Latin translation, in the Old Latin and Vulgate versions, and in the Latin Fathers. The vast majority of manuscripts (comprising perhaps nineteen-twentieths of the whole), together with the larger proportion of versions and Patristic writings, were grouped into the Byzantine class, as having prevailed generally in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. To this last class Griesbach hardly professed to accord as much weight as to either of the others, nor, if he had done so, would the result have been materially different. The joint testimony[pg 225]of two classes was,ceteris paribus, always to prevail; and since the very few documents which comprise the Alexandrian and Western recensions seldom agree with the Byzantine even when at variance with each other, the numerous codices which make up the third family would thus have about as much share in fixing the text of Scripture, as the poor citizens whose host was included in one of Servius Tullius' lower classes possessed towards counterbalancing the votes of the wealthy few that composed his first or second227.Inasmuch as the manuscripts on which our received text was based must, beyond question, be referred to his Byzantine family, wide as were the variations of Griesbach's revised text from that of Elzevir228, had his theory been pushed to its legitimate consequences, the changes it required would have been greater still. The very plan of his work, however, seemed to reserve a slight preference for the received textas such, in cases of doubt and difficulty; and this editor, with a calmness and sagacity which may well be called judicial, was usually disposed to relax his stern mechanical law when persuaded by reasons founded on internal probabilities, which (as we cheerfully admit) few men have been found able to estimate with so much patience and discrimination. The plain fact is, that while disciples like Moldenhawer and persons who knew even less than he were regarding Griesbach's system as self-evidently true, their wiser master must have had many a misgiving as to the safety of that imposing structure his rare ingenuity had built upon the sand. The very essence of his theory consisted in there being not two[pg 226]distinct families, butthree; the majority deciding in all cases of dispute. Yet he hardly attempted, certainly neither he nor any one after him succeeded in the attempt, to separate the Alexandrian from the Western family, without resorting to arguments which would prove that there are as many classes as there are manuscripts of early date. The supposed accordance of the readings of Origen, so elaborately scrutinized for this purpose by Griesbach, with Cod. A, on which our editor lays the greatest stress, has been shown by Archbishop Laurence (Remarks on Griesbach's Systematic Classification, 1814) to be in a high degree imaginary229. It must have been in anticipation of some such researches, and in a partial knowledge of their sure results, that Griesbach was driven to that violent and most unlikely hypothesis, that Cod. A follows the Byzantine class of authorities in the Gospels, the Western in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, and the Alexandrian in St. Paul.It seems needless to dwell longer on speculations which, however attractive and once widely received, will scarcely again find an advocate. Griesbach's text can no longer be regarded as satisfactory, though it is far less objectionable than such a system as his would have made it in rash or unskilful hands. His industry, his moderation, his fairness to opponents, who (like Matthaei) had shown him little forbearance, we may all imitate to our profit. His logical acuteness and keen intellectual perception fall to the lot of few; and though they may have helped to lead him into error, and have even kept him from retracing his steps, yet on the whole they were worthily exercised in the good cause of promoting a knowledge of God's truth, and of keeping alive, in an evil and unbelieving age, an enlightened interest in Holy Scripture, and the studies which it serves to consecrate.13. Of a widely different order of mind was John Martin Augustine Scholz [d. 1852], Roman Catholic Dean of Theology in the mixed University of Bonn. It would have been well for the progress of sacred learning and for his own reputation had[pg 227]the accuracy and ability of this editor borne some proportion to his zeal and obvious anxiety to be useful. His first essay was his“Curae Criticae in historiam textûs Evangeliorum,”in two dissertations, Heidelberg, 4to, 1820, containing notices of forty-eight Paris manuscripts (nine of them hitherto unknown) of which he had fully collated seventeen: the second Dissertation is devoted to Cod. K of the Gospels. In 1823 appeared his“Biblisch-Kritische Reise,”Leipsic, 8vo, Biblio-Critical Travels in France, Switzerland, Italy, Palestine and the Archipelago, which Schulz laid under contribution for his improved edition of Griesbach's first volume230. Scholz's“N. T. Graece,”4to, was published at Leipsic, vol. i, 1830 (Gospels); vol. ii, 1836.The accession of fresh materials made known in these works is almost marvellous: Scholz was the first to indicate Codd. 260-469 of the Gospels; 110-192 of the Acts, &c.; 125-246 of St. Paul; 51-89 of the Apocalypse; 51-181 Evangelistaria; 21-58 Lectionaries of the Apostolos; in all 616 cursive codices. His additions to the list of the uncials comprise only the three fragments of the Gospels WaY and the Vatican leaves of N. Of those examined previously by others he paid most attention to Evan. KX (M also for its synaxaria), and G (now L) Act., Paul.; he moreover inspected slightly eighty-two cursive codices of the Gospels after Wetstein, Birch, and the rest; collated entire five (Codd. 4, 19, 25, 28, 33), and twelve in the greater part, adding much to our knowledge of the important Cod. 22. In the Acts, &c., he inspected twenty-seven of those known before, partially collated two; in St. Paul he collated partially two, slightly twenty-nine; in the Apocalypse sixteen, cursorily enough it would seem (seeCodd. 21-3): of the Lectionaries he touched more or less thirteen of the Gospels, four of the Apostolos. On turning to the 616 codices Scholz placed on the list for the first time, we find that he collated entire but thirteen (viz. five of the Gospels, three of the Acts, &c., three of St. Paul, one each of the Apocalypse and Evangelistaria): a few of the rest he examined throughout the greater part; many in only a few chapters; while some were set down from printed[pg 228]Catalogues, whose plenteous errors we have used our best endeavours to correct in the present volume, so far as the means were within our reach.
Colb.10 = Colb. 2Colb.11 = Colb. 1Cov.1 Evan. 65Cov.2 Act. 25Cov.3 Act. 26Cov.4 Act. 27Cov.5Sin.Act. 28Cypr.Evan. KEm.seeEvan. 64Eph.Evan. 71Gal.Evan. 66Ger.Paul. EGenev.Act. 29Go.Evan. 62Gon.Evan. 59Hunt.1 Act. 30Hunt.2 Evan. 67L.Evan. 69Laud.1 Evan. 50Laud.2 Evan. 51[pg 203]Laud. 3 Act. ELaud. 4 Evst. 20Laud. 5 Evan. 52Lin. Evan. 56Lin. 2 Act. 33Lu. Act. 21M. 1 Evan. 60M. 2 Evst. 4Magd. 1 Evan. 57Magd. 2 Paul. 42Med. Evan. 42Mont. Evan. 61N. 1 Evan. 58N. 1 Act. 36N. 2 Act. 37Per. Evan. 91Pet. 1 Act. 38Pet. 2 Act. 39Pet. 3 Act. 40Roe. 1 Evan. 49Roe. 2 Paul. 47Seld. 1 Evan. 53Seld. 2 Evan. 54Seld. 3 Evan. 55Seld. 4 Evst. 21Seld. 5 Evst. 22Steph. codicesxvi.videaspp. 190-191Trin. Apost. 3Trit. Evan. 96Vat. Cod. BVel. Evan. 111 (Wetstein)Vien. Evan. 76Usser. 1 Evan. 63Usser. 2 Evan. 64Wheel. 1 Evan. 68Wheel. 2 Evan. 95Wheel. 3 Evst. 3Wech. videasp. 191Mill merely drew from other sourcesBarb.,Steph.,Vel.,Wech.; the copies deposited abroad (B 1-3,Clar.,Colb.1-11,Cypr.,Genev.,Med.,Per.,Pet.1-3,Vat. Vien.), andTrin.or Apost. 3 he only knew from readings sent to him; all the rest, not being included in Walton's list, and several of them also, he collated for himself.The Prolegomena of Mill, divided into three parts—(1) on the Canon of the New Testament; (2) on the History of the Text, including the quotations of the Fathers and the early editions; and (3) on the plan and contents of his own work,—though by this time too far behind the present state of knowledge to bear reprinting, comprise a monument of learning such as the world has seldom seen, and contain much information the student will not even now easily find elsewhere. Although Mill perpetually pronounces his judgement on the character of disputed readings198, especially in his Prolegomena, which were printed long after some portions of the body of the work, yet he only aims at reproducing Stephen's text of 1550, though in a few places he departs from it, whether by accident or design199.In 1710 Ludolph Kuster, a Westphalian, republished Mill's[pg 204]Greek Testament, in folio, at Amsterdam and Rotterdam (or with a new title page, Leipsic, 1723, Amsterdam, 1746), arranging in its proper place the matter cast by Mill into his Appendix, as having reached him too late to stand in his critical notes, and adding to those notes the readings of twelve fresh manuscripts, one collated by Kuster himself, which he describes in a Preface well worth reading. Nine of these codices collated by, or under, the Abbé de Louvois are in the Royal Library at Paris (viz.Paris.1, which is Evan. 285;Paris.2 = Evan. M;Paris.3 = Evan. 9;Paris.4 = Evan. 11;Paris.5 = Evan. 119;Paris.6 = Evan. 13;Paris.7 = Evan. 14;Paris.8 = Evan. 15;Paris.9 = the great Cod. C): butLips.= Evan. 78 was collated by Boerner;Seidel.= Act. 42 by Westermann; Boerner. = Paul. G by Kuster himself. He keeps his own notes separate from Mill's by prefixing and affixing the marks [symbol], [symbol], and his collations both of his own codices and of early editions will be found more complete than his predecessor's.5. In the next year after Kuster's Mill (1711), appeared at Amsterdam, from the press of the Wetsteins, a small N. T., 8vo, containing all the critical matter of the Oxford edition of 1675, a collation of one Vienna manuscript (Caes.= Evan. 76), 43 canons“secundum quos variantes lectiones N. T. examinandae,”and discussions upon them, with other matter, especially parallel texts, forming a convenient manual, the whole by G. D. T. M. D., which being interpreted means Gerhard de Trajecto Mosae Doctor, this Gerhard von Mästricht being a Syndic of Bremen. The text is Fell's, except in Apoc. iii. 12, where the portentous erratum λαῷ for ναῷ of Stephen is corrected. A second and somewhat improved edition was published in 1735, but ere that date the book must have become quite superseded.6. We have to return to England once more, where the criticism of the New Testament had engrossed the attention ofRichard Bentley[1662-1742], whose elevation to the enviable post of Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1699, was a just recognition of his supremacy in the English world of letters. As early as 1691 he had felt a keen interest in sacred criticism, and in his“Epistola ad Johannem Millium”had urged that editor, in language fraught with eloquence and native vigour, to[pg 205]hasten on the work (whose accomplishment was eventually left to others) of publishing side by side on the opened leaf Codd. A, D (Bezae), D (Clarom.), E (Laud.). For many years afterwards Bentley's laurels were won on other fields, and it was not till his friend was dead, and his admirable labours were exposed to the obloquy of opponents (some honest though unwise, others hating Mill because they hated the Scriptures which he sought to illustrate), that our Aristarchus exerted his giant strength to crush the infidel and to put the ignorant to silence. In his“Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free Thinking in a letter to F[rancis] H[are] D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,”1713, Bentley displayed that intimate familiarity with the whole subject of various readings, their causes, extent, and consequences, which has rendered this occasional treatise more truly valued (as it was far more important) than the world-renowned“Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris”itself. As his years were now hastening on and the evening of life was beginning to draw nigh, it was seemly that the first scholar of his age should seek for his rare abilities an employment more entirely suited to his sacred office than even the most successful cultivation of classical learning; and so, about this time, he came to project what he henceforth regarded as his greatest effort, an edition of the Greek New Testament. In 1716 we find him in conference with J. J. Wetstein, then very young, and seeking his aid in procuring collations. In the same year he addressed his memorable“Letter”to Wm. Wake [1657-1737], Archbishop of Canterbury, whose own mind was full of the subject, wherein he explains, with characteristic energy and precision, the principles on which he proposed to execute his great scheme. As these principles must be reviewed afterwards, we will but touch upon them now. His theory was built upon the notion that the oldest manuscripts of the Greek original and of Jerome's Latin version resemble each other so marvellously, even in the very order of the words, that by this agreement he could restore the text as it stood in the fourth century,“so that there shall not be twenty words, or even particles, difference.”“By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope's [i.e. the Clementine] Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephen's [1550], I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine hundred[pg 206]years old, that shall so exactly agree word for word, and, what at first amazed me, order for order, that no two tallies, nor two indentures, can agree better200.”In 1720, some progress having been made in the task of collation, chiefly at Paris, by John Walker, Fellow of Trinity, who was designated by Bentley“overseer and corrector of the press,”but proved in fact a great deal more; Bentley published his Proposals for Printing201, a work which“he consecrates, as a κειμήλιων, a κτῆμα ἐσαεί, acharter, amagna charta, to the whole Christian Church; to last when all the ancient MSS. here quoted may be lost and extinguished.”Alas for the emptiness of human anticipations! Of this noble design, projected by one of the most diligent, by one of the most highly gifted men our dear mother Cambridge ever nourished, nothing now remains but a few scattered notices in treatises on Textual Criticism, and large undigested stores of various readings and random observations, accumulated in his College Library; papers which no real student ever glanced through, but with a heart saddened—almost sickened—at the sight of so much labour lost202. The specimen chapter (Apocalypse xxii) which accompanied his Proposals shows clearly how little had yet been done towards arranging the materials that had been collected; codices are cited there, and in many of his loose notes, not separately and by name, as in Mill's volume, but mostly as“Anglicus unus, tres codd. veterrimi, Gall. quatuor, Germ. unus,”&c., in the rough fashion of the Oxford N. T. of 1675203.[pg 207]It has been often alleged that Bentley seems to have worked but little on the Greek Testament after 1729: that his attention was diverted by his editions of Paradise Lost (1732) and of Manilius (1739), by his Homeric studies and College litigation, until he was overtaken by a paralytic stroke in 1739, and died in his eighty-first year in 1742. Walker's collations of cursive manuscripts at Christ Church (Evan. 506), however, obviously made for Bentley's use, bear the date of 1732204, and a closer examination of his papers, bequeathed in 1786 by his nephew Richard Bentley to Trinity College, shows that much more progress had been made by him than has been usually supposed. Besides full collations of the uncial Codd. AD (Gospels and Acts), of Cod. F (his θ) and G of St. Paul, of Arundel 547 (Evst. 257) executed by Bentley himself, of Codd. B and C by others at his cost, three volumes are found there full of critical materials, which have been described by Mr. Ellis, and digested by Dr. Westcott. One of these (B. xvii. 5) I was allowed by the Master and Seniors to study at leisure at home. It is a folio edition of the N. T., Greek and Latin (Paris, ap. Claud. Sonnium, 1628, the Greek text being that of Elzevir 1624), whose margin and spaces between the lines are filled with various readings in Bentley's hand, but not all of them necessarily the results of his own labour, collected out of ten Greek and thirty Latin manuscripts. The Greek are all cursives save Evst. 5, and his connexion with them has been referred to above under the Cursive MSS. They areEvan. 51 (γ),Evan. 54 (κ),Evan. 60 (ε),Evan. 113 (θ?),Evan. 440 (ο),Evan. 507 (τ),Evan. 508 (δ),Act. 23 (χ),Apoc. 28 (κ),Evst. 5 (α).The Latin copies, which alone are described by Bentley in the fly-leaves of the volume, may not be as easily identified, but[pg 208]some of them are of great value, and are described above in Chap.III. These arechad.(ξ),dunelm.(Κ),harl.3(Μ),lind.(η),mac-regol(χ),oxon.(Σ),oxon.(Paul. χ),seld.(Act. χ),vall.,Westcott addsharl.4(Η).A second mass of materials, all Latin, about twenty in number, and deposited in England, is contained in the first volume of the Benedictine edition of St. Jerome's works (Paris, 1693). In this book (B. xvii. 14) Dr. Westcott has pasted a valuable note, wherein he identifies the manuscripts used by Bentley by the means of his own actual collation. Those described above in Chap.IIIare the following:B. M. Harl. 1802 (W),B. M.harl.2(M. of Epistles, &c.),B. M. Addit. 5463 (F),B. M. King's Lib. I. A. 18 (O),B. M. King's Lib. I. B. VII. (H),B. M. King's Lib. I. E. VI. (P),B. M. C. C. C. Camb. 286 (B),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 5 (S),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 4 (T,ibid.),B. M.lind.(Y: as in B. XVII. 5),B. M. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. I. 24 (χ).Westcott further appropriates B. M. Cotton, Otho B. ix, as Bentley's D; Cotton Tib. A. ii (“the Coronation book”) as his ε; Cotton Otho C. v as his φ; C. C. C. Camb. 197 as his C; King's Library 1 D. ix as his A. His ξ in B. xvii. 14 seems unrecognized.These, of course, are no more than the rough materials of criticism. Another copy of the N. T. has been carefully and curiously made available for my use by the goodness of my friend Edwin Palmer, D.D., Archdeacon of Oxford. It is numbered B. xvii. 6, and is a duplicate copy (without its title-page) of the same printed book as B. xvii. 5. It is interleaved throughout, and was prepared very early in the course of this undertaking, inasmuch as Bentley describes it in an undated letter to Wetstein, which the latter answered Nov. 3, 1716. In the printed[pg 209]text itself, both Greek and Latin, as they stand in parallel columns, Bentley makes the corrections which he at that period was willing to adopt. There is no critical apparatus to justify his changes in the Latin version, but on the blank leaves of the book he sets down his Greek authorities, always cited by name, asAlex.,Cant.,Rom.(Cod. B.),Ox.in the Acts (Cod. E), θ in St. Paul for Cod. Augiensis (F), though this last did not reach him before 1718. Cod. C is sometimes calledEph., sometimes it is mixed up with Wetstein's other copies (1 Wetstein, 2 Wetstein, &c.). This most interesting volume, therefore, contains the first draft of Bentley's great design, and must have been nearly in its present state when the 'Proposals' were published in 1720, since the specimen chapter (Apoc. xxii) which accompanied them is takenverbatimfrom B. xvii. 6, save that authorities are added to vindicate the alterations of the Latin text, which is destitute of them in the printed book. Mr. Ellis too has printed the Epistle to the Galatians from the same source, and this specimen also produces much the same impression of meagreness and imperfection. It was doubtless in some degree to remedy an apparent crudeness that cursive copies were afterwards called in, as in B. xvii. 5 and in Walker's Oxford collections. The fact is that Bentley's main principle, as set forth by him from 1716 to 1720, that of substantial identity between the oldest Greek and Latin copies, is more favoured by Cod. A, which he knew soonest and best, than by any other really ancient documents, least of all by Cod. B, with which he obtained fuller acquaintance in or about 1720. Our Aristarchus then betook himself at intervals to cursive codices in the vain hope of getting aid from them, and so lost his way at last in that wide and pathless wilderness. We cannot but believe that nothing less than the manifest impossibility of maintaining the principles which his“Letter”of 1716 enunciated, and his 'Proposals' of 1720 scarcely modified, in the face of the evidence which his growing mass of collations bore against them205, could have had power enough to break off in the midst[pg 210]that labour of love from which he had looked for undying fame206.7. The anonymous text and version of William Mace, said to have been a Presbyterian minister (“The New Testament in Greek and English,”2 vols. 8vo, 1729), are alike unworthy of serious notice, and have long since been forgotten207. And now original research in the science of Biblical criticism, so far as the New Testament is concerned, seems to have left the shores of England, to return no more for upwards of a century208; and we must look to Germany if we wish to trace the further progress of investigations which our countrymen had so auspiciously begun. The first considerable effort made on the Continent was:—8. The New Testament of John Albert Bengel, 4to, Tübingen, 1734209: his“Prodromus N. T. Gr. rectè cautèque adornandi”had appeared as early as 1725. This devout and truly able man [1687-1752], who held the office (whatever might be its functions)[pg 211]of Abbot of Alpirspach in the Lutheran communion of Württemberg, though more generally known as an interpreter of Scripture from his invaluable“Gnomon Novi Testamenti,”yet left the stamp of his mind deeply imprinted on the criticism of the sacred volume. As a collator his merits were not high; nearly all his sixteen codices have required and obtained fresh examination from those who came after him210. His text, which he arranged in convenient paragraphs, as has been said, is the earliest important specimen of intentional departure from the received type; hence he imposes on himself the strange restriction of admitting into it no reading (excepting in the Apocalypse) which had not appeared in one or more of the editions that preceded his own. He pronounces his opinion on otherselectvariations by placing them in his lower margin with Greek numerals attached to them, according as he judged them decidedly better (α), or somewhat more likely (β), than those which stand in his text: or equal to them (γ); or a little (δ), or considerably (ε), inferior. This notation has advantages which might well have commended it to the attention of succeeding editors. In his“Apparatus Criticus”also, at the end of his volume, he set the example, now generally followed, of recording definitely the testimony in favour of a received reading, as well as that against it.But the peculiar importance of Bengel's N. T. is due to the critical principles developed therein. Not only was his native acuteness of great service to him, when weighing the conflicting probabilities of internal evidence, but in his fertile mind sprang up the germ of that theory offamiliesorrecensions, which was afterwards expanded by J. S. Semler [1725-91], and grew to such formidable dimensions in the skilful hands of Griesbach. An attentive student of the discrepant readings of the N. T., even in the limited extent they had hitherto been collected, could hardly fail to discern that certain manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers have a manifest[pg 212]affinity with each other; so that one of them shall seldom be cited in support of a variation (not being a manifest and gross error of the copyist), unless accompanied by several of its kindred. The inference is direct and clear, that documents which thus withdraw themselves from the general mass of authorities, must have sprung from some common source, distinct from those which in characteristic readings they but slightly resemble. It occurred, therefore, to Bengel as a hopeful mode of making good progress in the criticism of the N. T., to reduce all extant testimony into“companies, families, tribes, and nations,”and thus to simplify the process of settling the sacred text by setting class over against class, and trying to estimate the genius of each, and the relative importance they may severally lay claim to. He wished to divide all extant documents into two nations: theAsiatic, chiefly written in Constantinople and its neighbourhood, which he was inclined to disparage; and theAfrican, comprising the few of a better type (“Apparatus Criticus,”p. 669, 2nd edition, 1763). Various circumstances hindered Bengel from working out his principle, among which he condescends to set his dread of exposing his task to senseless ridicule211; yet no one can doubt that it comprehends the elements of what is both reasonable and true; however difficult it has subsequently proved to adjust the details of any consistent scheme. For the rest, Bengel's critical verdicts, always considered in relation to his age and opportunities, deserve strong commendation. He saw the paramount worth of Cod. A, the only great uncial then much known (N. T., Apparat. Crit., pp. 390-401). The high character of the Latin version, and the[pg 213]necessity for revising its text by means of manuscripts (ibid., p. 391), he readily conceded, after Bentley's example. His mean estimate of the Greek-Latin codices (Evan. Act. D; Act. E; Paul. DFG) may not find equal favour in the eyes of all his admirers; he pronounces them“re verâ bilingues;”which, for their perpetual and wilful interpolations,“non pro codicibus sed pro rhapsodiis, haberi debeant”(ibid., p. 386)212.9. The next step in advance was made by John James Wetstein [1693-1754], a native of Basle, whose edition of the Greek New Testament (“cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum, necnon Commentario pleniore ex scriptoribus veteribus, Hebraeis, Graecis, et Latinis, historiam et vim verborum illustrante”) appeared in two volumes, folio, Amsterdam, 1751-2. The genius, the character, and (it must in justice be added) the worldly fortunes of Wetstein were widely different from those of the good Abbot of Alpirspach. His taste for Biblical studies showed itself early. When ordained pastor at the age of twenty he delivered a disputation,“De variis N. T. lectionibus,”and zeal for this fascinating pursuit became at length with him a passion—the master-passion which consoled and dignified a roving, troubled, unprosperous life. In 1714 his eager search for manuscripts led him to Paris, in 1715-16 and again in 1720 he visited England, and was employed by Bentley in collecting materials for his projected edition, but he seems to have imbibed few of that great man's principles: the interval between them, both in age and station, almost forbade much sympathy. On his return home he gradually became suspected of Socinian tendencies, and it must be feared with too much justice; so that in the end he was deposed from the pastorate (1730), driven into exile, and after having been compelled to serve in a position the least favourable to the cultivation of learning, that of a military chaplain, he obtained at length (1733) a Professorship among the Remonstrants at Amsterdam (in succession to the celebrated Leclerc), and there continued till his death in 1754, having made his third visit to England in 1746. His“Prolegomena,”[pg 214]first published in 1730, and afterwards, in an altered form, prefixed to his N. T.213, present a painful image both of the man and of his circumstances. His restless energy, his undaunted industry, his violent temper, his love of paradox, his assertion for himself of perfect freedom of thought, his silly prejudice against Jesuits and bigots, his enmities, his wrongs, his ill-requited labours, at once excite our respect and our pity: while they all help to make his writings a sort of unconscious autobiography, rather interesting than agreeable.Non sic itur ad astra, whether morally or intellectually; yet Wetstein's services to sacred literature were of no common order. His philological annotations, wherein the matter and phraseology of the inspired writers are illustrated by copious—too copious—quotations from all kinds of authors, classical, Patristic, and Rabbinical, have proved an inexhaustible storehouse from which later writers have drawn liberally and sometimes without due acknowledgement; but many of the passages are of such a tenor as (to use Tregelles' very gentle language respecting them)“only to excite surprise at their being found on the same page as the text of the New Testament”(Account of Printed Text, p. 76). The critical portion of his work, however, is far more valuable, and in this department Wetstein must be placed in the very first rank, inferior (if to any) to but one or two of the highest names. He first cited the manuscripts under the notation by which they are commonly known, his list already embracing A-O, 1-112 of the Gospels; A-G, 1-58 of the Acts; A-H, 1-60 of St. Paul; A-C, 1-28 of the Apocalypse; 1-24 Evangelistaria; 1-4 of the Apostolos. Of these Wetstein himself collated about one hundred and two214; if not as fully or accurately as is now expected, yet with far greater care than had hitherto been usual: about eleven were examined for him by other hands. On the versions and early editions he has likewise bestowed great pains; and he improved upon quotations from the Fathers. His text is that of Elzevir (1633), not very exactly printed215, and immediately below it he[pg 215]placed such readings of his manuscripts as he judged preferable to those received. The readings thus approved by Wetstein (which do not amount to five hundred, and those chiefly in the Apocalypse) were inserted in the text of a Greek Testament published in London, 1763, 2 vols., by W. Bowyer, the learned printer, with a collection of critical conjectures annexed, which were afterwards published separately.Wetstein's Prolegomena have also been reproduced by J. S. Semler (Halle, 1764), with good notes and facsimiles of certain manuscripts, and more recently, in a compressed and modernized form, by J. A. Lotze (Rotterdam, 1831), a book which neither for design nor execution can be much praised. The truth is that both the style and the subject-matter of much that Wetstein wrote are things of the past. In his earlier edition of his Prolegomena (1730) he had spoken of the oldest Greek uncial copies as they deserve; he was even disposed to take Cod. A as the basis of his text. By the time his N. T. was ready, twenty years later, he had come to include it, with all the older codices of the original, under a general charge of being conformed to the Latin version. That such a tendency may be detected in some of the codices accompanied by a Latin translation, is both possible in itself, and not inconsistent with their general spirit; but he has scattered abroad his imputations capriciously and almost at random, so as greatly to diminish the weight of his own decisions. Cod. A, in particular, has been fully cleared of the charge of Latinizing by Woide, in his excellent Prolegomena (§ 6). His thorough contempt for that critic prevented Wetstein from giving adequate attention to Bengel's theory of[pg 216]families; indeed he can hardly be said to have rejected a scheme which he scorned to investigate with patience. On the other hand no portion of his labours is more valuable than the“Animadversiones et Cautiones ad examen variarum lectionum N. T. necessariae”(N. T., Tom. ii. pp. 851-74). In this tract his natural good sense and extensive knowledge of authorities of every class have gone far to correct that impetuous temperament which was ever too ready to substitute plausible conjecture in the room of ascertained facts.During the twenty years immediately ensuing on the publication of Wetstein's volumes, little was attempted in the way of enlarging or improving the domain he had secured for Biblical science. In England the attention of students was directed, and on the whole successfully, to the criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures; in Germany, the younger (J. D.) Michaelis [1717-91] reigned supreme, and he seems to have deemed it the highest effort of scholarship to sit in judgement on the labours of others. In process of time, however, the researches of John James Griesbach [1745-1812], a native of Hesse Darmstadt and a pupil of Semler, and J. A. Ernesti [1707-81] (whose manual,“Institutio Interpretis N. T.,”1761, has not long been superseded), began to attract general notice. Like Wetstein, he made a literary tour in England early in life (1769), and with far more profit; returning to Halle as a Professor, he published before he was thirty (1774-5) his first edition of the N. T., which contained the well-defined embryo of his future and more elaborate speculations. It will be convenient to reserve the examination of his views until we have described the investigations of several collators who unknowingly (and in one instance, no doubt unwillingly) were busy in gathering stores which he was to turn to his own use.10. Christian Frederick Matthaei, a Thuringian [1744-1811], was appointed, on the recommendation of his tutor Ernesti, to the Professorship of Classical Literature at Moscow: so far as philology is concerned, he probably merited Bp. Middleton's praise, as“the most accurate scholar who ever edited the N. T.”(Doctrine of the Greek Article, p. 244, 3rd edition.) At Moscow he found a large number of Greek manuscripts, both Biblical and Patristic, originally brought from Athos, quite uncollated,[pg 217]and almost entirely unknown in the west of Europe. With laudable resolution he set himself to examine them, and gradually formed the scheme of publishing an edition of the New Testament by the aid of materials so precious and abundant. All authors that deserve that honourable name may be presumed to learn not a little, even on the subject they know best, while preparing an important work for the public eye; but Matthaei was as yet ignorant of the first principles of the critical art; and beginning thus late, there was much, and that of a very elementary character, which he never understood at all. When he commenced writing he had not seen the volumes of Mill or Wetstein; and to this significant fact we must impute that inability which clave to him to the last, of discriminating the relative age and value of his own or others' codices. The palaeographical portion of the science, indeed, he gradually acquired from the study of his documents, and through the many facsimiles of them he represents in his edition; but what can be thought of his judgement, when he persisted in asserting the intrinsic superiority of Cod. 69 of the Acts to the great uncials AC (N. T., Tom. xii. p. 222)216? Hence it results that Matthaei's text, which of course he moulded on his own views, must be held in slight esteem: his services as a collator comprehend his whole claim (and that no trifling one) to our thankful regard. To him solely we are indebted for Evan. V; 237-259; Act. 98-107; Paul. 113-124; Apoc. 47-502(i.e. r); Evst. 47-57; Apost. 13-20; nearly all at Moscow: the whole seventy217, together[pg 218]with the citations of Scripture in thirty-four manuscripts of Chrysostom218, being so fully and accurately collated, that the reader need not be at a loss whether any particular copy supports or opposes the reading in the common text. Matthaei's further services in connexion with Cod. G Paul, and a few others (Act. 69, &c.) have been noticed in their proper places. To his Greek text was annexed the Latin Vulgate (the only version, in its present state, he professes to regard, Tom. xi. p. xii) from the Cod. Demidovianus. The first volume of this edition appeared in 1782, after it had been already eight years in preparation: this comprised the Catholic Epistles. The rest of the work was published at intervals during the next six years, in eleven more thin parts 8vo, the whole series being closed by SS. Matthew and Mark in 1788. Each volume has a Preface, much descriptive matter, and facsimiles of manuscripts (twenty-nine in all), the whole being in complete and almost hopeless disorder, and the general title-page absurdly long. Hence his critical principles (if such they may be termed) must be picked up piecemeal; and it is not very pleasant to observe the sort of influence which hostile controversy exercised over his mind and temper. While yet fresh at his task (1782), anticipating the fair fame his most profitable researches had so well earned, Matthaei is frank, calm, and rational: even at a later period J. D. Michaelis is, in his estimation, the keenest of living judges of codices, and he says so the rather“quod ille vir doctissimus multis modis me,quâ de causâ ipse ignoro, partim jocosè, partim seriò, vexavit”(Tom. ii, 1788, p. xxxi). Bengel, whose sentiments were very dissimilar from those of the Moscow Professor,“pro acumine, diligentiâ et religione suâ,”would have arrived at other conclusions, had his Augsburg codices been better (ibid., p. xxx). But for Griesbach and his recension-theory no terms of insult are strong enough;[pg 219]“risum vel adeo pueris debet ille Halensis criticus,”who never saw,“ut credibile est,”a manuscript even of the tenth century (ibid., p. xxiii), yet presumes to dictate to those who have collated seventy. The unhappy consequence was, that one who had taken up this employment in an earnest and candid spirit, possessed with the simple desire to promote the study of sacred literature, could devise no fitter commencement for his latest Preface than this:“Laborem igitur molestum invidiosum et infamem, inter convicia ranarum et latratus canum, aut ferreâ patientiâ aut invictâ pertinaciâ his quindecim annis vel sustinui, vel utcunque potui perfeci, vel denique et fastidio et taedio, ut fortasse non nulli opinantur, deposui et abjeci”(Tom. i, Praef. p. 1): he could find no purer cause for thankfulness, than (what we might have imagined but a very slight mercy) that he had never been commended by those“of whom to be dispraised is no small praise;”or (to use his own more vigorous language)“quod nemo scurra ... nemo denique de grego novorum theologorum, hanc qualemcunque operam meam ausus est ore impuro suo, laudeque contumeliosâ comprobare.”Matthaei's second edition in three volumes (destitute of the Latin version and most of the critical notes) bears date 1803-7219. For some cause, now not easy to understand, he hardly gave to this second edition the advantages of his studies during the fifteen years which had elapsed since he completed his first. We saw his labours bestowed on the Zittau N. T. in 1801-2 (Evan. 605). On the last leaf of the third volume of his second edition, writing from Moscow in May, 1805, he speaks of a book containing collations of no less than twenty-four manuscripts, partly fresh, partly corrected, which, when he returned into Russia, he delivered to Augustus Schumann, a bookseller at Ronneburg (in Saxe Altenburg), to be published in close connexion with his second edition against the Easter Fair at Leipzig in 1805. Another book contained extracts from St. Chrysostom with a commentary and index, to be published at the same time, and both at Schumann's risk.“Utrum isti libri jam prodierint necne,”our author adds pathetically,“nondum factus sum certior. Certe id vehementer opto.”But in 1805 evil times were hastening upon Germany,[pg 220]and so unfortunately for the poor man and for textual students these collections have disappeared and left no trace behind.10.aThe next, and a far less considerable contribution to our knowledge of manuscripts of the N. T., was made by Francis Karl Alter [1749-1804], a Jesuit, born in Silesia, and Professor of Greek at Vienna. His plan was novel, and, to those who are compelled to use his edition (N. T. Graecum, ad Codicem Vindobonensem Graecè expressum, 8vo, Vienna, 2 tom., 1786-7), inconvenient to the last degree. Adopting for his standard a valuable, but not very ancient or remarkable, manuscript in the Imperial Library (Evan. 218, Act. 65, Paul. 57, Apoc. 83), he prints this copy at full length, retaining even the ν ἐφελκυστικόν when it is found in his model, but not (as it would seem) all the itacisms or errors of the scribe, conforming in such cases to Stephen's edition of 1546. With this text he collates in separate Appendices twenty-one other manuscripts of the same great Library, comprising twelve copies of the Gospels (Codd. N, a fragment, 3, 76, 77, 108, 123, 124, 125, 219, 220, 224, 225); six of the Acts, &c. (3, 43, 63, 64, 66, 67); seven of St. Paul (3, 49, 67-71); three of the Apocalypse (34, 35, 36), and two Evangelistaria (45, 46). He also gives readings from Wilkins' Coptic version, four Slavonic codices and one Old Latin (i). In employing this ill-digested mass, it is necessary to turn to a different place for every manuscript to be consulted, and Alter's silence in any passages must be understood to indicate resemblance to his standard, Evan. 218, and not to the common text. As this silence is very often clearly due to the collator's mere oversight, Griesbach set the example of citing these manuscripts in such cases within marks of parenthesis: thus“218 (108, 220)”indicates that the reading in question is certainly found in Cod. 218, and (so far as we may inferex Alteri silentio) not improbably in the other two. Most of these Vienna codices were about the same time examined rather slightly by Andrew Birch.11. This eminent person, who afterwards bore successively the titles of Bishop of Lolland, Falster, and Aarhuus, in the Lutheran communion established in Denmark, was one of a company of learned men sent by the liberal care of Christian VII to examine Biblical manuscripts in various countries. Adler[pg 221]pursued his Oriental studies at Rome and elsewhere; D. G. Moldenhawer and O. G. Tychsen (the famous Orientalist of Rostock) were sent into Spain in 1783-4; Birch travelled on the same good errand in 1781-3 through Italy and Germany. The combined results of their investigations were arranged and published by Birch, whose folio edition of the Four Gospels (also in 4to) with Stephen's text of 1550220, and the various readings contributed by himself and his associates, full descriptive Prolegomena and facsimiles of seven manuscripts (Codd. S, 157 Evan.; and five in Syriac), appeared at Copenhagen in 1788. Seven years afterwards (1795) a fire destroyed the Royal Printing-house, the type, paper, and unsold stock of the first volume, the collations of the rest of the N. T. having very nearly shared the same fate. These poor fragments were collected by Birch into two small 8vo volumes, those relating to the Acts and Epistles in 1798, to the Apocalypse (with facsimiles of Codd. 37, 42) in 1800. In 1801 he revised and re-edited the various readings of the Gospels, in a form to correspond with those of the rest of the N. T. Nothing can be better calculated to win respect and confidence than the whole tone of Birch's several Prolegomena: he displays at once a proper sense of the difficulties of his task, and a consciousness that he had done his utmost to conquer them221. It is indeed much to be regretted that, for some cause he does not wish to explain, he accomplished but little for Cod. B; many of the manuscripts on his long list were beyond question examined but very superficially; yet he was almost the first to open to us the literary treasures of the Vatican, of Florence, and of Venice. He more or less inspected the uncials Cod. B, Codd. ST of the Gospels, Cod. L of the Acts and Epistles. His catalogue of cursives comprises Codd. 127-225 of the Gospels; Codd. 63-7, 70-96 of the Acts; Codd. 67-71, 77-112 of St. Paul; Codd. 33-4, 37-46[pg 222]of the Apocalypse; Evangelistaria 35-39; Apostolos 7, 8: in all 191 copies, a few of which were thoroughly collated (e.g. Evan. S, 127, 131, 157, Evst. 36). Of Adler's labours we have spoken already; they too are incorporated in Birch's work, and prefaced with a short notice (Birch, Proleg. p. lxxxv) by their author, a real and modest scholar. Moldenhawer's portion of the common task was discharged in another spirit. Received at the Escurial with courtesy and good-will, his colleague Tyschen and he spent four whole months in turning over a collection of 760 Greek manuscripts, of which only twenty related to the Greek Testament. They lacked neither leisure, nor opportunity, nor competent knowledge; but they were full of dislike for Spain and its religion, of overweening conceit, and of implicit trust in Griesbach and his recensions. The whole paper contributed by Moldenhawer to Birch's Prolegomena (pp. lxi-lxxxiv) is in substance very disappointing, while its arrogance is almost intolerable. What he effected for other portions of the N. T. I have not been able to trace (226, 228 Evan., which also contain the Acts and Epistles, are but nominally on Scholz's list for those books); the fire at Copenhagen may probably have destroyed his notes. Of the Gospels he collated eight codices (226-233), and four Evangelistaria (40-43), most of them being dismissed, after a cursory review, with some expression of hearty contempt. To Evann. 226, 229, 230 alone was he disposed to pay any attention; of the rest, whether“he soon restored them to their primitive obscurity”(p. lxxi), or“bade them sweet and holy rest among the reliques of Saints and Martyrs”(p. lxvii), he may be understood to say, once for all,“Omnino nemo, qui horum librorum rationem ac indolem ... perspectam habet, ex iis lectionis varietatem operose eruere aggredietur, nec, si quam inde conquisiverit, operae pretium fecisse a peritis arbitris existimabitur”(p. lxxiv). It was not thus that Matthaei dealt with the manuscripts at Moscow.12. Such were the materials ready for Griesbach's use when he projected his second and principal edition of the Greek Testament (vol. i. 1796, vol. ii. 1806). Not that he was backward in adding to the store of various readings by means of his own diligence. His“Symbolae Criticae222”(vol. i. 1785, vol. ii. 1793)[pg 223]contained, together with the readings extracted from Origen, collations, in whole or part, of many copies of various portions of the N. T., Latin as well as Greek. Besides inspecting Codd. AD (Evann.), and carefully examining Cod. C223, he consulted no less than twenty-six codices (including GL) of the Gospels, ten (including E) of the Acts, &c., fifteen (including DEH) of St. Paul, one of the Apocalypse (Cod. 29) twelve Lectionaries of the Gospels, and two of the Apostolos, far the greater part of them being deposited in England. It was not, however, his purpose to exhibit in his N. T. (designed, as it was, for general use) all the readings he had himself recorded elsewhere, much less the whole mass accumulated by the pains of Mill or Wetstein, Matthaei or Birch. The distinctive end at which he aims is to form such a selection from the matter their works contain, as to enable the theological student to decide for himself on the genuineness or corruption of any given reading, by the aid of principles which he devotes his best efforts to establish. Between the text (in which departures from the Elzevir edition of 1624 are generally indicated by being printed in smaller type224) and the critical notes at the foot of each page, intervenes a narrow space or inner margin, to receive those portions of the common text which Griesbach has rejected, and such variations of his authorities as he judges to be of equal weight with the received readings which he retains, or but little inferior to them. These decisions he intimates by several symbols, not quite so simple as those employed by Bengel, but conceived in a similar spirit; and he has carried his system somewhat further in his small or manual edition, published at Leipzig in 1805, which may be conceived to represent his last thoughts with regard to the recension of the Greek text of the N. T. But though we may trace some slight discrepancies of opinion between his earliest225and his latest works226, as might[pg 224]well be looked for in a literary career of forty years, yet the theory of his youth was maintained, and defended, and temperately applied by Griesbach even to the last. From Bengel and Semler he had taken up the belief that manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers divide themselves, with respect to the character of their testimony, into races or families. This principle he strove to reduce to practice by marshalling all his authorities under their respective heads, and then regarding the evidence, not of individuals, but of the classes to which they belong. The advantage of some such arrangement is sufficiently manifest, if only it could be made to rest on grounds in themselves certain, or, at all events, fairly probable. We should then possess some better guide in our choice between conflicting readings, than the very rough and unsatisfactory process of counting thenumberof witnesses produced on either side. It is not that such a mode of conducting critical enquiries would not be very convenient, that Griesbach's theory is universally abandoned by modern scholars, but because there is no valid reason for believing it to be true.At the onset of his labours, indeed, this acute and candid enquirer was disposed to divide all extant materials into five or six different families; he afterwards limited them to three, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine recensions. The standard of the Alexandrian text he conceived to be Origen; who, although his works were written in Palestine, was assumed to have brought with him into exile copies of Scripture, similar to those used in his native city. To this family would belong a few manuscripts of the earliest date, and confessedly of the highest character, Codd. ABC, Cod. L of the Gospels, the Egyptian and some lesser versions. The Western recension would survive in Cod. D of the Gospels and Acts, in the other ancient copies which contain a Latin translation, in the Old Latin and Vulgate versions, and in the Latin Fathers. The vast majority of manuscripts (comprising perhaps nineteen-twentieths of the whole), together with the larger proportion of versions and Patristic writings, were grouped into the Byzantine class, as having prevailed generally in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. To this last class Griesbach hardly professed to accord as much weight as to either of the others, nor, if he had done so, would the result have been materially different. The joint testimony[pg 225]of two classes was,ceteris paribus, always to prevail; and since the very few documents which comprise the Alexandrian and Western recensions seldom agree with the Byzantine even when at variance with each other, the numerous codices which make up the third family would thus have about as much share in fixing the text of Scripture, as the poor citizens whose host was included in one of Servius Tullius' lower classes possessed towards counterbalancing the votes of the wealthy few that composed his first or second227.Inasmuch as the manuscripts on which our received text was based must, beyond question, be referred to his Byzantine family, wide as were the variations of Griesbach's revised text from that of Elzevir228, had his theory been pushed to its legitimate consequences, the changes it required would have been greater still. The very plan of his work, however, seemed to reserve a slight preference for the received textas such, in cases of doubt and difficulty; and this editor, with a calmness and sagacity which may well be called judicial, was usually disposed to relax his stern mechanical law when persuaded by reasons founded on internal probabilities, which (as we cheerfully admit) few men have been found able to estimate with so much patience and discrimination. The plain fact is, that while disciples like Moldenhawer and persons who knew even less than he were regarding Griesbach's system as self-evidently true, their wiser master must have had many a misgiving as to the safety of that imposing structure his rare ingenuity had built upon the sand. The very essence of his theory consisted in there being not two[pg 226]distinct families, butthree; the majority deciding in all cases of dispute. Yet he hardly attempted, certainly neither he nor any one after him succeeded in the attempt, to separate the Alexandrian from the Western family, without resorting to arguments which would prove that there are as many classes as there are manuscripts of early date. The supposed accordance of the readings of Origen, so elaborately scrutinized for this purpose by Griesbach, with Cod. A, on which our editor lays the greatest stress, has been shown by Archbishop Laurence (Remarks on Griesbach's Systematic Classification, 1814) to be in a high degree imaginary229. It must have been in anticipation of some such researches, and in a partial knowledge of their sure results, that Griesbach was driven to that violent and most unlikely hypothesis, that Cod. A follows the Byzantine class of authorities in the Gospels, the Western in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, and the Alexandrian in St. Paul.It seems needless to dwell longer on speculations which, however attractive and once widely received, will scarcely again find an advocate. Griesbach's text can no longer be regarded as satisfactory, though it is far less objectionable than such a system as his would have made it in rash or unskilful hands. His industry, his moderation, his fairness to opponents, who (like Matthaei) had shown him little forbearance, we may all imitate to our profit. His logical acuteness and keen intellectual perception fall to the lot of few; and though they may have helped to lead him into error, and have even kept him from retracing his steps, yet on the whole they were worthily exercised in the good cause of promoting a knowledge of God's truth, and of keeping alive, in an evil and unbelieving age, an enlightened interest in Holy Scripture, and the studies which it serves to consecrate.13. Of a widely different order of mind was John Martin Augustine Scholz [d. 1852], Roman Catholic Dean of Theology in the mixed University of Bonn. It would have been well for the progress of sacred learning and for his own reputation had[pg 227]the accuracy and ability of this editor borne some proportion to his zeal and obvious anxiety to be useful. His first essay was his“Curae Criticae in historiam textûs Evangeliorum,”in two dissertations, Heidelberg, 4to, 1820, containing notices of forty-eight Paris manuscripts (nine of them hitherto unknown) of which he had fully collated seventeen: the second Dissertation is devoted to Cod. K of the Gospels. In 1823 appeared his“Biblisch-Kritische Reise,”Leipsic, 8vo, Biblio-Critical Travels in France, Switzerland, Italy, Palestine and the Archipelago, which Schulz laid under contribution for his improved edition of Griesbach's first volume230. Scholz's“N. T. Graece,”4to, was published at Leipsic, vol. i, 1830 (Gospels); vol. ii, 1836.The accession of fresh materials made known in these works is almost marvellous: Scholz was the first to indicate Codd. 260-469 of the Gospels; 110-192 of the Acts, &c.; 125-246 of St. Paul; 51-89 of the Apocalypse; 51-181 Evangelistaria; 21-58 Lectionaries of the Apostolos; in all 616 cursive codices. His additions to the list of the uncials comprise only the three fragments of the Gospels WaY and the Vatican leaves of N. Of those examined previously by others he paid most attention to Evan. KX (M also for its synaxaria), and G (now L) Act., Paul.; he moreover inspected slightly eighty-two cursive codices of the Gospels after Wetstein, Birch, and the rest; collated entire five (Codd. 4, 19, 25, 28, 33), and twelve in the greater part, adding much to our knowledge of the important Cod. 22. In the Acts, &c., he inspected twenty-seven of those known before, partially collated two; in St. Paul he collated partially two, slightly twenty-nine; in the Apocalypse sixteen, cursorily enough it would seem (seeCodd. 21-3): of the Lectionaries he touched more or less thirteen of the Gospels, four of the Apostolos. On turning to the 616 codices Scholz placed on the list for the first time, we find that he collated entire but thirteen (viz. five of the Gospels, three of the Acts, &c., three of St. Paul, one each of the Apocalypse and Evangelistaria): a few of the rest he examined throughout the greater part; many in only a few chapters; while some were set down from printed[pg 228]Catalogues, whose plenteous errors we have used our best endeavours to correct in the present volume, so far as the means were within our reach.
Colb.10 = Colb. 2
Colb.11 = Colb. 1
Cov.1 Evan. 65
Cov.2 Act. 25
Cov.3 Act. 26
Cov.4 Act. 27
Cov.5Sin.Act. 28
Cypr.Evan. K
Em.seeEvan. 64
Eph.Evan. 71
Gal.Evan. 66
Ger.Paul. E
Genev.Act. 29
Go.Evan. 62
Gon.Evan. 59
Hunt.1 Act. 30
Hunt.2 Evan. 67
L.Evan. 69
Laud.1 Evan. 50
Laud.2 Evan. 51
Laud. 3 Act. E
Laud. 4 Evst. 20
Laud. 5 Evan. 52
Lin. Evan. 56
Lin. 2 Act. 33
Lu. Act. 21
M. 1 Evan. 60
M. 2 Evst. 4
Magd. 1 Evan. 57
Magd. 2 Paul. 42
Med. Evan. 42
Mont. Evan. 61
N. 1 Evan. 58
N. 1 Act. 36
N. 2 Act. 37
Per. Evan. 91
Pet. 1 Act. 38
Pet. 2 Act. 39
Pet. 3 Act. 40
Roe. 1 Evan. 49
Roe. 2 Paul. 47
Seld. 1 Evan. 53
Seld. 2 Evan. 54
Seld. 3 Evan. 55
Seld. 4 Evst. 21
Seld. 5 Evst. 22
Steph. codicesxvi.videaspp. 190-191
Trin. Apost. 3
Trit. Evan. 96
Vat. Cod. B
Vel. Evan. 111 (Wetstein)
Vien. Evan. 76
Usser. 1 Evan. 63
Usser. 2 Evan. 64
Wheel. 1 Evan. 68
Wheel. 2 Evan. 95
Wheel. 3 Evst. 3
Wech. videasp. 191
Mill merely drew from other sourcesBarb.,Steph.,Vel.,Wech.; the copies deposited abroad (B 1-3,Clar.,Colb.1-11,Cypr.,Genev.,Med.,Per.,Pet.1-3,Vat. Vien.), andTrin.or Apost. 3 he only knew from readings sent to him; all the rest, not being included in Walton's list, and several of them also, he collated for himself.
The Prolegomena of Mill, divided into three parts—(1) on the Canon of the New Testament; (2) on the History of the Text, including the quotations of the Fathers and the early editions; and (3) on the plan and contents of his own work,—though by this time too far behind the present state of knowledge to bear reprinting, comprise a monument of learning such as the world has seldom seen, and contain much information the student will not even now easily find elsewhere. Although Mill perpetually pronounces his judgement on the character of disputed readings198, especially in his Prolegomena, which were printed long after some portions of the body of the work, yet he only aims at reproducing Stephen's text of 1550, though in a few places he departs from it, whether by accident or design199.
In 1710 Ludolph Kuster, a Westphalian, republished Mill's[pg 204]Greek Testament, in folio, at Amsterdam and Rotterdam (or with a new title page, Leipsic, 1723, Amsterdam, 1746), arranging in its proper place the matter cast by Mill into his Appendix, as having reached him too late to stand in his critical notes, and adding to those notes the readings of twelve fresh manuscripts, one collated by Kuster himself, which he describes in a Preface well worth reading. Nine of these codices collated by, or under, the Abbé de Louvois are in the Royal Library at Paris (viz.Paris.1, which is Evan. 285;Paris.2 = Evan. M;Paris.3 = Evan. 9;Paris.4 = Evan. 11;Paris.5 = Evan. 119;Paris.6 = Evan. 13;Paris.7 = Evan. 14;Paris.8 = Evan. 15;Paris.9 = the great Cod. C): butLips.= Evan. 78 was collated by Boerner;Seidel.= Act. 42 by Westermann; Boerner. = Paul. G by Kuster himself. He keeps his own notes separate from Mill's by prefixing and affixing the marks [symbol], [symbol], and his collations both of his own codices and of early editions will be found more complete than his predecessor's.
5. In the next year after Kuster's Mill (1711), appeared at Amsterdam, from the press of the Wetsteins, a small N. T., 8vo, containing all the critical matter of the Oxford edition of 1675, a collation of one Vienna manuscript (Caes.= Evan. 76), 43 canons“secundum quos variantes lectiones N. T. examinandae,”and discussions upon them, with other matter, especially parallel texts, forming a convenient manual, the whole by G. D. T. M. D., which being interpreted means Gerhard de Trajecto Mosae Doctor, this Gerhard von Mästricht being a Syndic of Bremen. The text is Fell's, except in Apoc. iii. 12, where the portentous erratum λαῷ for ναῷ of Stephen is corrected. A second and somewhat improved edition was published in 1735, but ere that date the book must have become quite superseded.
6. We have to return to England once more, where the criticism of the New Testament had engrossed the attention ofRichard Bentley[1662-1742], whose elevation to the enviable post of Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1699, was a just recognition of his supremacy in the English world of letters. As early as 1691 he had felt a keen interest in sacred criticism, and in his“Epistola ad Johannem Millium”had urged that editor, in language fraught with eloquence and native vigour, to[pg 205]hasten on the work (whose accomplishment was eventually left to others) of publishing side by side on the opened leaf Codd. A, D (Bezae), D (Clarom.), E (Laud.). For many years afterwards Bentley's laurels were won on other fields, and it was not till his friend was dead, and his admirable labours were exposed to the obloquy of opponents (some honest though unwise, others hating Mill because they hated the Scriptures which he sought to illustrate), that our Aristarchus exerted his giant strength to crush the infidel and to put the ignorant to silence. In his“Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free Thinking in a letter to F[rancis] H[are] D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,”1713, Bentley displayed that intimate familiarity with the whole subject of various readings, their causes, extent, and consequences, which has rendered this occasional treatise more truly valued (as it was far more important) than the world-renowned“Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris”itself. As his years were now hastening on and the evening of life was beginning to draw nigh, it was seemly that the first scholar of his age should seek for his rare abilities an employment more entirely suited to his sacred office than even the most successful cultivation of classical learning; and so, about this time, he came to project what he henceforth regarded as his greatest effort, an edition of the Greek New Testament. In 1716 we find him in conference with J. J. Wetstein, then very young, and seeking his aid in procuring collations. In the same year he addressed his memorable“Letter”to Wm. Wake [1657-1737], Archbishop of Canterbury, whose own mind was full of the subject, wherein he explains, with characteristic energy and precision, the principles on which he proposed to execute his great scheme. As these principles must be reviewed afterwards, we will but touch upon them now. His theory was built upon the notion that the oldest manuscripts of the Greek original and of Jerome's Latin version resemble each other so marvellously, even in the very order of the words, that by this agreement he could restore the text as it stood in the fourth century,“so that there shall not be twenty words, or even particles, difference.”“By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope's [i.e. the Clementine] Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephen's [1550], I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine hundred[pg 206]years old, that shall so exactly agree word for word, and, what at first amazed me, order for order, that no two tallies, nor two indentures, can agree better200.”In 1720, some progress having been made in the task of collation, chiefly at Paris, by John Walker, Fellow of Trinity, who was designated by Bentley“overseer and corrector of the press,”but proved in fact a great deal more; Bentley published his Proposals for Printing201, a work which“he consecrates, as a κειμήλιων, a κτῆμα ἐσαεί, acharter, amagna charta, to the whole Christian Church; to last when all the ancient MSS. here quoted may be lost and extinguished.”Alas for the emptiness of human anticipations! Of this noble design, projected by one of the most diligent, by one of the most highly gifted men our dear mother Cambridge ever nourished, nothing now remains but a few scattered notices in treatises on Textual Criticism, and large undigested stores of various readings and random observations, accumulated in his College Library; papers which no real student ever glanced through, but with a heart saddened—almost sickened—at the sight of so much labour lost202. The specimen chapter (Apocalypse xxii) which accompanied his Proposals shows clearly how little had yet been done towards arranging the materials that had been collected; codices are cited there, and in many of his loose notes, not separately and by name, as in Mill's volume, but mostly as“Anglicus unus, tres codd. veterrimi, Gall. quatuor, Germ. unus,”&c., in the rough fashion of the Oxford N. T. of 1675203.
It has been often alleged that Bentley seems to have worked but little on the Greek Testament after 1729: that his attention was diverted by his editions of Paradise Lost (1732) and of Manilius (1739), by his Homeric studies and College litigation, until he was overtaken by a paralytic stroke in 1739, and died in his eighty-first year in 1742. Walker's collations of cursive manuscripts at Christ Church (Evan. 506), however, obviously made for Bentley's use, bear the date of 1732204, and a closer examination of his papers, bequeathed in 1786 by his nephew Richard Bentley to Trinity College, shows that much more progress had been made by him than has been usually supposed. Besides full collations of the uncial Codd. AD (Gospels and Acts), of Cod. F (his θ) and G of St. Paul, of Arundel 547 (Evst. 257) executed by Bentley himself, of Codd. B and C by others at his cost, three volumes are found there full of critical materials, which have been described by Mr. Ellis, and digested by Dr. Westcott. One of these (B. xvii. 5) I was allowed by the Master and Seniors to study at leisure at home. It is a folio edition of the N. T., Greek and Latin (Paris, ap. Claud. Sonnium, 1628, the Greek text being that of Elzevir 1624), whose margin and spaces between the lines are filled with various readings in Bentley's hand, but not all of them necessarily the results of his own labour, collected out of ten Greek and thirty Latin manuscripts. The Greek are all cursives save Evst. 5, and his connexion with them has been referred to above under the Cursive MSS. They are
Evan. 51 (γ),Evan. 54 (κ),Evan. 60 (ε),Evan. 113 (θ?),Evan. 440 (ο),Evan. 507 (τ),Evan. 508 (δ),Act. 23 (χ),Apoc. 28 (κ),Evst. 5 (α).
Evan. 51 (γ),
Evan. 54 (κ),
Evan. 60 (ε),
Evan. 113 (θ?),
Evan. 440 (ο),
Evan. 507 (τ),
Evan. 508 (δ),
Act. 23 (χ),
Apoc. 28 (κ),
Evst. 5 (α).
The Latin copies, which alone are described by Bentley in the fly-leaves of the volume, may not be as easily identified, but[pg 208]some of them are of great value, and are described above in Chap.III. These are
chad.(ξ),dunelm.(Κ),harl.3(Μ),lind.(η),mac-regol(χ),oxon.(Σ),oxon.(Paul. χ),seld.(Act. χ),vall.,Westcott addsharl.4(Η).
chad.(ξ),
dunelm.(Κ),
harl.3(Μ),
lind.(η),
mac-regol(χ),
oxon.(Σ),
oxon.(Paul. χ),
seld.(Act. χ),
vall.,
Westcott addsharl.4(Η).
A second mass of materials, all Latin, about twenty in number, and deposited in England, is contained in the first volume of the Benedictine edition of St. Jerome's works (Paris, 1693). In this book (B. xvii. 14) Dr. Westcott has pasted a valuable note, wherein he identifies the manuscripts used by Bentley by the means of his own actual collation. Those described above in Chap.IIIare the following:
B. M. Harl. 1802 (W),B. M.harl.2(M. of Epistles, &c.),B. M. Addit. 5463 (F),B. M. King's Lib. I. A. 18 (O),B. M. King's Lib. I. B. VII. (H),B. M. King's Lib. I. E. VI. (P),B. M. C. C. C. Camb. 286 (B),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 5 (S),B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 4 (T,ibid.),B. M.lind.(Y: as in B. XVII. 5),B. M. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. I. 24 (χ).
B. M. Harl. 1802 (W),
B. M.harl.2(M. of Epistles, &c.),
B. M. Addit. 5463 (F),
B. M. King's Lib. I. A. 18 (O),
B. M. King's Lib. I. B. VII. (H),
B. M. King's Lib. I. E. VI. (P),
B. M. C. C. C. Camb. 286 (B),
B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 5 (S),
B. M. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. X. 4 (T,ibid.),
B. M.lind.(Y: as in B. XVII. 5),
B. M. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. I. 24 (χ).
Westcott further appropriates B. M. Cotton, Otho B. ix, as Bentley's D; Cotton Tib. A. ii (“the Coronation book”) as his ε; Cotton Otho C. v as his φ; C. C. C. Camb. 197 as his C; King's Library 1 D. ix as his A. His ξ in B. xvii. 14 seems unrecognized.
These, of course, are no more than the rough materials of criticism. Another copy of the N. T. has been carefully and curiously made available for my use by the goodness of my friend Edwin Palmer, D.D., Archdeacon of Oxford. It is numbered B. xvii. 6, and is a duplicate copy (without its title-page) of the same printed book as B. xvii. 5. It is interleaved throughout, and was prepared very early in the course of this undertaking, inasmuch as Bentley describes it in an undated letter to Wetstein, which the latter answered Nov. 3, 1716. In the printed[pg 209]text itself, both Greek and Latin, as they stand in parallel columns, Bentley makes the corrections which he at that period was willing to adopt. There is no critical apparatus to justify his changes in the Latin version, but on the blank leaves of the book he sets down his Greek authorities, always cited by name, asAlex.,Cant.,Rom.(Cod. B.),Ox.in the Acts (Cod. E), θ in St. Paul for Cod. Augiensis (F), though this last did not reach him before 1718. Cod. C is sometimes calledEph., sometimes it is mixed up with Wetstein's other copies (1 Wetstein, 2 Wetstein, &c.). This most interesting volume, therefore, contains the first draft of Bentley's great design, and must have been nearly in its present state when the 'Proposals' were published in 1720, since the specimen chapter (Apoc. xxii) which accompanied them is takenverbatimfrom B. xvii. 6, save that authorities are added to vindicate the alterations of the Latin text, which is destitute of them in the printed book. Mr. Ellis too has printed the Epistle to the Galatians from the same source, and this specimen also produces much the same impression of meagreness and imperfection. It was doubtless in some degree to remedy an apparent crudeness that cursive copies were afterwards called in, as in B. xvii. 5 and in Walker's Oxford collections. The fact is that Bentley's main principle, as set forth by him from 1716 to 1720, that of substantial identity between the oldest Greek and Latin copies, is more favoured by Cod. A, which he knew soonest and best, than by any other really ancient documents, least of all by Cod. B, with which he obtained fuller acquaintance in or about 1720. Our Aristarchus then betook himself at intervals to cursive codices in the vain hope of getting aid from them, and so lost his way at last in that wide and pathless wilderness. We cannot but believe that nothing less than the manifest impossibility of maintaining the principles which his“Letter”of 1716 enunciated, and his 'Proposals' of 1720 scarcely modified, in the face of the evidence which his growing mass of collations bore against them205, could have had power enough to break off in the midst[pg 210]that labour of love from which he had looked for undying fame206.
7. The anonymous text and version of William Mace, said to have been a Presbyterian minister (“The New Testament in Greek and English,”2 vols. 8vo, 1729), are alike unworthy of serious notice, and have long since been forgotten207. And now original research in the science of Biblical criticism, so far as the New Testament is concerned, seems to have left the shores of England, to return no more for upwards of a century208; and we must look to Germany if we wish to trace the further progress of investigations which our countrymen had so auspiciously begun. The first considerable effort made on the Continent was:—
8. The New Testament of John Albert Bengel, 4to, Tübingen, 1734209: his“Prodromus N. T. Gr. rectè cautèque adornandi”had appeared as early as 1725. This devout and truly able man [1687-1752], who held the office (whatever might be its functions)[pg 211]of Abbot of Alpirspach in the Lutheran communion of Württemberg, though more generally known as an interpreter of Scripture from his invaluable“Gnomon Novi Testamenti,”yet left the stamp of his mind deeply imprinted on the criticism of the sacred volume. As a collator his merits were not high; nearly all his sixteen codices have required and obtained fresh examination from those who came after him210. His text, which he arranged in convenient paragraphs, as has been said, is the earliest important specimen of intentional departure from the received type; hence he imposes on himself the strange restriction of admitting into it no reading (excepting in the Apocalypse) which had not appeared in one or more of the editions that preceded his own. He pronounces his opinion on otherselectvariations by placing them in his lower margin with Greek numerals attached to them, according as he judged them decidedly better (α), or somewhat more likely (β), than those which stand in his text: or equal to them (γ); or a little (δ), or considerably (ε), inferior. This notation has advantages which might well have commended it to the attention of succeeding editors. In his“Apparatus Criticus”also, at the end of his volume, he set the example, now generally followed, of recording definitely the testimony in favour of a received reading, as well as that against it.
But the peculiar importance of Bengel's N. T. is due to the critical principles developed therein. Not only was his native acuteness of great service to him, when weighing the conflicting probabilities of internal evidence, but in his fertile mind sprang up the germ of that theory offamiliesorrecensions, which was afterwards expanded by J. S. Semler [1725-91], and grew to such formidable dimensions in the skilful hands of Griesbach. An attentive student of the discrepant readings of the N. T., even in the limited extent they had hitherto been collected, could hardly fail to discern that certain manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers have a manifest[pg 212]affinity with each other; so that one of them shall seldom be cited in support of a variation (not being a manifest and gross error of the copyist), unless accompanied by several of its kindred. The inference is direct and clear, that documents which thus withdraw themselves from the general mass of authorities, must have sprung from some common source, distinct from those which in characteristic readings they but slightly resemble. It occurred, therefore, to Bengel as a hopeful mode of making good progress in the criticism of the N. T., to reduce all extant testimony into“companies, families, tribes, and nations,”and thus to simplify the process of settling the sacred text by setting class over against class, and trying to estimate the genius of each, and the relative importance they may severally lay claim to. He wished to divide all extant documents into two nations: theAsiatic, chiefly written in Constantinople and its neighbourhood, which he was inclined to disparage; and theAfrican, comprising the few of a better type (“Apparatus Criticus,”p. 669, 2nd edition, 1763). Various circumstances hindered Bengel from working out his principle, among which he condescends to set his dread of exposing his task to senseless ridicule211; yet no one can doubt that it comprehends the elements of what is both reasonable and true; however difficult it has subsequently proved to adjust the details of any consistent scheme. For the rest, Bengel's critical verdicts, always considered in relation to his age and opportunities, deserve strong commendation. He saw the paramount worth of Cod. A, the only great uncial then much known (N. T., Apparat. Crit., pp. 390-401). The high character of the Latin version, and the[pg 213]necessity for revising its text by means of manuscripts (ibid., p. 391), he readily conceded, after Bentley's example. His mean estimate of the Greek-Latin codices (Evan. Act. D; Act. E; Paul. DFG) may not find equal favour in the eyes of all his admirers; he pronounces them“re verâ bilingues;”which, for their perpetual and wilful interpolations,“non pro codicibus sed pro rhapsodiis, haberi debeant”(ibid., p. 386)212.
9. The next step in advance was made by John James Wetstein [1693-1754], a native of Basle, whose edition of the Greek New Testament (“cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum, necnon Commentario pleniore ex scriptoribus veteribus, Hebraeis, Graecis, et Latinis, historiam et vim verborum illustrante”) appeared in two volumes, folio, Amsterdam, 1751-2. The genius, the character, and (it must in justice be added) the worldly fortunes of Wetstein were widely different from those of the good Abbot of Alpirspach. His taste for Biblical studies showed itself early. When ordained pastor at the age of twenty he delivered a disputation,“De variis N. T. lectionibus,”and zeal for this fascinating pursuit became at length with him a passion—the master-passion which consoled and dignified a roving, troubled, unprosperous life. In 1714 his eager search for manuscripts led him to Paris, in 1715-16 and again in 1720 he visited England, and was employed by Bentley in collecting materials for his projected edition, but he seems to have imbibed few of that great man's principles: the interval between them, both in age and station, almost forbade much sympathy. On his return home he gradually became suspected of Socinian tendencies, and it must be feared with too much justice; so that in the end he was deposed from the pastorate (1730), driven into exile, and after having been compelled to serve in a position the least favourable to the cultivation of learning, that of a military chaplain, he obtained at length (1733) a Professorship among the Remonstrants at Amsterdam (in succession to the celebrated Leclerc), and there continued till his death in 1754, having made his third visit to England in 1746. His“Prolegomena,”[pg 214]first published in 1730, and afterwards, in an altered form, prefixed to his N. T.213, present a painful image both of the man and of his circumstances. His restless energy, his undaunted industry, his violent temper, his love of paradox, his assertion for himself of perfect freedom of thought, his silly prejudice against Jesuits and bigots, his enmities, his wrongs, his ill-requited labours, at once excite our respect and our pity: while they all help to make his writings a sort of unconscious autobiography, rather interesting than agreeable.Non sic itur ad astra, whether morally or intellectually; yet Wetstein's services to sacred literature were of no common order. His philological annotations, wherein the matter and phraseology of the inspired writers are illustrated by copious—too copious—quotations from all kinds of authors, classical, Patristic, and Rabbinical, have proved an inexhaustible storehouse from which later writers have drawn liberally and sometimes without due acknowledgement; but many of the passages are of such a tenor as (to use Tregelles' very gentle language respecting them)“only to excite surprise at their being found on the same page as the text of the New Testament”(Account of Printed Text, p. 76). The critical portion of his work, however, is far more valuable, and in this department Wetstein must be placed in the very first rank, inferior (if to any) to but one or two of the highest names. He first cited the manuscripts under the notation by which they are commonly known, his list already embracing A-O, 1-112 of the Gospels; A-G, 1-58 of the Acts; A-H, 1-60 of St. Paul; A-C, 1-28 of the Apocalypse; 1-24 Evangelistaria; 1-4 of the Apostolos. Of these Wetstein himself collated about one hundred and two214; if not as fully or accurately as is now expected, yet with far greater care than had hitherto been usual: about eleven were examined for him by other hands. On the versions and early editions he has likewise bestowed great pains; and he improved upon quotations from the Fathers. His text is that of Elzevir (1633), not very exactly printed215, and immediately below it he[pg 215]placed such readings of his manuscripts as he judged preferable to those received. The readings thus approved by Wetstein (which do not amount to five hundred, and those chiefly in the Apocalypse) were inserted in the text of a Greek Testament published in London, 1763, 2 vols., by W. Bowyer, the learned printer, with a collection of critical conjectures annexed, which were afterwards published separately.
Wetstein's Prolegomena have also been reproduced by J. S. Semler (Halle, 1764), with good notes and facsimiles of certain manuscripts, and more recently, in a compressed and modernized form, by J. A. Lotze (Rotterdam, 1831), a book which neither for design nor execution can be much praised. The truth is that both the style and the subject-matter of much that Wetstein wrote are things of the past. In his earlier edition of his Prolegomena (1730) he had spoken of the oldest Greek uncial copies as they deserve; he was even disposed to take Cod. A as the basis of his text. By the time his N. T. was ready, twenty years later, he had come to include it, with all the older codices of the original, under a general charge of being conformed to the Latin version. That such a tendency may be detected in some of the codices accompanied by a Latin translation, is both possible in itself, and not inconsistent with their general spirit; but he has scattered abroad his imputations capriciously and almost at random, so as greatly to diminish the weight of his own decisions. Cod. A, in particular, has been fully cleared of the charge of Latinizing by Woide, in his excellent Prolegomena (§ 6). His thorough contempt for that critic prevented Wetstein from giving adequate attention to Bengel's theory of[pg 216]families; indeed he can hardly be said to have rejected a scheme which he scorned to investigate with patience. On the other hand no portion of his labours is more valuable than the“Animadversiones et Cautiones ad examen variarum lectionum N. T. necessariae”(N. T., Tom. ii. pp. 851-74). In this tract his natural good sense and extensive knowledge of authorities of every class have gone far to correct that impetuous temperament which was ever too ready to substitute plausible conjecture in the room of ascertained facts.
During the twenty years immediately ensuing on the publication of Wetstein's volumes, little was attempted in the way of enlarging or improving the domain he had secured for Biblical science. In England the attention of students was directed, and on the whole successfully, to the criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures; in Germany, the younger (J. D.) Michaelis [1717-91] reigned supreme, and he seems to have deemed it the highest effort of scholarship to sit in judgement on the labours of others. In process of time, however, the researches of John James Griesbach [1745-1812], a native of Hesse Darmstadt and a pupil of Semler, and J. A. Ernesti [1707-81] (whose manual,“Institutio Interpretis N. T.,”1761, has not long been superseded), began to attract general notice. Like Wetstein, he made a literary tour in England early in life (1769), and with far more profit; returning to Halle as a Professor, he published before he was thirty (1774-5) his first edition of the N. T., which contained the well-defined embryo of his future and more elaborate speculations. It will be convenient to reserve the examination of his views until we have described the investigations of several collators who unknowingly (and in one instance, no doubt unwillingly) were busy in gathering stores which he was to turn to his own use.
10. Christian Frederick Matthaei, a Thuringian [1744-1811], was appointed, on the recommendation of his tutor Ernesti, to the Professorship of Classical Literature at Moscow: so far as philology is concerned, he probably merited Bp. Middleton's praise, as“the most accurate scholar who ever edited the N. T.”(Doctrine of the Greek Article, p. 244, 3rd edition.) At Moscow he found a large number of Greek manuscripts, both Biblical and Patristic, originally brought from Athos, quite uncollated,[pg 217]and almost entirely unknown in the west of Europe. With laudable resolution he set himself to examine them, and gradually formed the scheme of publishing an edition of the New Testament by the aid of materials so precious and abundant. All authors that deserve that honourable name may be presumed to learn not a little, even on the subject they know best, while preparing an important work for the public eye; but Matthaei was as yet ignorant of the first principles of the critical art; and beginning thus late, there was much, and that of a very elementary character, which he never understood at all. When he commenced writing he had not seen the volumes of Mill or Wetstein; and to this significant fact we must impute that inability which clave to him to the last, of discriminating the relative age and value of his own or others' codices. The palaeographical portion of the science, indeed, he gradually acquired from the study of his documents, and through the many facsimiles of them he represents in his edition; but what can be thought of his judgement, when he persisted in asserting the intrinsic superiority of Cod. 69 of the Acts to the great uncials AC (N. T., Tom. xii. p. 222)216? Hence it results that Matthaei's text, which of course he moulded on his own views, must be held in slight esteem: his services as a collator comprehend his whole claim (and that no trifling one) to our thankful regard. To him solely we are indebted for Evan. V; 237-259; Act. 98-107; Paul. 113-124; Apoc. 47-502(i.e. r); Evst. 47-57; Apost. 13-20; nearly all at Moscow: the whole seventy217, together[pg 218]with the citations of Scripture in thirty-four manuscripts of Chrysostom218, being so fully and accurately collated, that the reader need not be at a loss whether any particular copy supports or opposes the reading in the common text. Matthaei's further services in connexion with Cod. G Paul, and a few others (Act. 69, &c.) have been noticed in their proper places. To his Greek text was annexed the Latin Vulgate (the only version, in its present state, he professes to regard, Tom. xi. p. xii) from the Cod. Demidovianus. The first volume of this edition appeared in 1782, after it had been already eight years in preparation: this comprised the Catholic Epistles. The rest of the work was published at intervals during the next six years, in eleven more thin parts 8vo, the whole series being closed by SS. Matthew and Mark in 1788. Each volume has a Preface, much descriptive matter, and facsimiles of manuscripts (twenty-nine in all), the whole being in complete and almost hopeless disorder, and the general title-page absurdly long. Hence his critical principles (if such they may be termed) must be picked up piecemeal; and it is not very pleasant to observe the sort of influence which hostile controversy exercised over his mind and temper. While yet fresh at his task (1782), anticipating the fair fame his most profitable researches had so well earned, Matthaei is frank, calm, and rational: even at a later period J. D. Michaelis is, in his estimation, the keenest of living judges of codices, and he says so the rather“quod ille vir doctissimus multis modis me,quâ de causâ ipse ignoro, partim jocosè, partim seriò, vexavit”(Tom. ii, 1788, p. xxxi). Bengel, whose sentiments were very dissimilar from those of the Moscow Professor,“pro acumine, diligentiâ et religione suâ,”would have arrived at other conclusions, had his Augsburg codices been better (ibid., p. xxx). But for Griesbach and his recension-theory no terms of insult are strong enough;[pg 219]“risum vel adeo pueris debet ille Halensis criticus,”who never saw,“ut credibile est,”a manuscript even of the tenth century (ibid., p. xxiii), yet presumes to dictate to those who have collated seventy. The unhappy consequence was, that one who had taken up this employment in an earnest and candid spirit, possessed with the simple desire to promote the study of sacred literature, could devise no fitter commencement for his latest Preface than this:“Laborem igitur molestum invidiosum et infamem, inter convicia ranarum et latratus canum, aut ferreâ patientiâ aut invictâ pertinaciâ his quindecim annis vel sustinui, vel utcunque potui perfeci, vel denique et fastidio et taedio, ut fortasse non nulli opinantur, deposui et abjeci”(Tom. i, Praef. p. 1): he could find no purer cause for thankfulness, than (what we might have imagined but a very slight mercy) that he had never been commended by those“of whom to be dispraised is no small praise;”or (to use his own more vigorous language)“quod nemo scurra ... nemo denique de grego novorum theologorum, hanc qualemcunque operam meam ausus est ore impuro suo, laudeque contumeliosâ comprobare.”Matthaei's second edition in three volumes (destitute of the Latin version and most of the critical notes) bears date 1803-7219. For some cause, now not easy to understand, he hardly gave to this second edition the advantages of his studies during the fifteen years which had elapsed since he completed his first. We saw his labours bestowed on the Zittau N. T. in 1801-2 (Evan. 605). On the last leaf of the third volume of his second edition, writing from Moscow in May, 1805, he speaks of a book containing collations of no less than twenty-four manuscripts, partly fresh, partly corrected, which, when he returned into Russia, he delivered to Augustus Schumann, a bookseller at Ronneburg (in Saxe Altenburg), to be published in close connexion with his second edition against the Easter Fair at Leipzig in 1805. Another book contained extracts from St. Chrysostom with a commentary and index, to be published at the same time, and both at Schumann's risk.“Utrum isti libri jam prodierint necne,”our author adds pathetically,“nondum factus sum certior. Certe id vehementer opto.”But in 1805 evil times were hastening upon Germany,[pg 220]and so unfortunately for the poor man and for textual students these collections have disappeared and left no trace behind.
10.aThe next, and a far less considerable contribution to our knowledge of manuscripts of the N. T., was made by Francis Karl Alter [1749-1804], a Jesuit, born in Silesia, and Professor of Greek at Vienna. His plan was novel, and, to those who are compelled to use his edition (N. T. Graecum, ad Codicem Vindobonensem Graecè expressum, 8vo, Vienna, 2 tom., 1786-7), inconvenient to the last degree. Adopting for his standard a valuable, but not very ancient or remarkable, manuscript in the Imperial Library (Evan. 218, Act. 65, Paul. 57, Apoc. 83), he prints this copy at full length, retaining even the ν ἐφελκυστικόν when it is found in his model, but not (as it would seem) all the itacisms or errors of the scribe, conforming in such cases to Stephen's edition of 1546. With this text he collates in separate Appendices twenty-one other manuscripts of the same great Library, comprising twelve copies of the Gospels (Codd. N, a fragment, 3, 76, 77, 108, 123, 124, 125, 219, 220, 224, 225); six of the Acts, &c. (3, 43, 63, 64, 66, 67); seven of St. Paul (3, 49, 67-71); three of the Apocalypse (34, 35, 36), and two Evangelistaria (45, 46). He also gives readings from Wilkins' Coptic version, four Slavonic codices and one Old Latin (i). In employing this ill-digested mass, it is necessary to turn to a different place for every manuscript to be consulted, and Alter's silence in any passages must be understood to indicate resemblance to his standard, Evan. 218, and not to the common text. As this silence is very often clearly due to the collator's mere oversight, Griesbach set the example of citing these manuscripts in such cases within marks of parenthesis: thus“218 (108, 220)”indicates that the reading in question is certainly found in Cod. 218, and (so far as we may inferex Alteri silentio) not improbably in the other two. Most of these Vienna codices were about the same time examined rather slightly by Andrew Birch.
11. This eminent person, who afterwards bore successively the titles of Bishop of Lolland, Falster, and Aarhuus, in the Lutheran communion established in Denmark, was one of a company of learned men sent by the liberal care of Christian VII to examine Biblical manuscripts in various countries. Adler[pg 221]pursued his Oriental studies at Rome and elsewhere; D. G. Moldenhawer and O. G. Tychsen (the famous Orientalist of Rostock) were sent into Spain in 1783-4; Birch travelled on the same good errand in 1781-3 through Italy and Germany. The combined results of their investigations were arranged and published by Birch, whose folio edition of the Four Gospels (also in 4to) with Stephen's text of 1550220, and the various readings contributed by himself and his associates, full descriptive Prolegomena and facsimiles of seven manuscripts (Codd. S, 157 Evan.; and five in Syriac), appeared at Copenhagen in 1788. Seven years afterwards (1795) a fire destroyed the Royal Printing-house, the type, paper, and unsold stock of the first volume, the collations of the rest of the N. T. having very nearly shared the same fate. These poor fragments were collected by Birch into two small 8vo volumes, those relating to the Acts and Epistles in 1798, to the Apocalypse (with facsimiles of Codd. 37, 42) in 1800. In 1801 he revised and re-edited the various readings of the Gospels, in a form to correspond with those of the rest of the N. T. Nothing can be better calculated to win respect and confidence than the whole tone of Birch's several Prolegomena: he displays at once a proper sense of the difficulties of his task, and a consciousness that he had done his utmost to conquer them221. It is indeed much to be regretted that, for some cause he does not wish to explain, he accomplished but little for Cod. B; many of the manuscripts on his long list were beyond question examined but very superficially; yet he was almost the first to open to us the literary treasures of the Vatican, of Florence, and of Venice. He more or less inspected the uncials Cod. B, Codd. ST of the Gospels, Cod. L of the Acts and Epistles. His catalogue of cursives comprises Codd. 127-225 of the Gospels; Codd. 63-7, 70-96 of the Acts; Codd. 67-71, 77-112 of St. Paul; Codd. 33-4, 37-46[pg 222]of the Apocalypse; Evangelistaria 35-39; Apostolos 7, 8: in all 191 copies, a few of which were thoroughly collated (e.g. Evan. S, 127, 131, 157, Evst. 36). Of Adler's labours we have spoken already; they too are incorporated in Birch's work, and prefaced with a short notice (Birch, Proleg. p. lxxxv) by their author, a real and modest scholar. Moldenhawer's portion of the common task was discharged in another spirit. Received at the Escurial with courtesy and good-will, his colleague Tyschen and he spent four whole months in turning over a collection of 760 Greek manuscripts, of which only twenty related to the Greek Testament. They lacked neither leisure, nor opportunity, nor competent knowledge; but they were full of dislike for Spain and its religion, of overweening conceit, and of implicit trust in Griesbach and his recensions. The whole paper contributed by Moldenhawer to Birch's Prolegomena (pp. lxi-lxxxiv) is in substance very disappointing, while its arrogance is almost intolerable. What he effected for other portions of the N. T. I have not been able to trace (226, 228 Evan., which also contain the Acts and Epistles, are but nominally on Scholz's list for those books); the fire at Copenhagen may probably have destroyed his notes. Of the Gospels he collated eight codices (226-233), and four Evangelistaria (40-43), most of them being dismissed, after a cursory review, with some expression of hearty contempt. To Evann. 226, 229, 230 alone was he disposed to pay any attention; of the rest, whether“he soon restored them to their primitive obscurity”(p. lxxi), or“bade them sweet and holy rest among the reliques of Saints and Martyrs”(p. lxvii), he may be understood to say, once for all,“Omnino nemo, qui horum librorum rationem ac indolem ... perspectam habet, ex iis lectionis varietatem operose eruere aggredietur, nec, si quam inde conquisiverit, operae pretium fecisse a peritis arbitris existimabitur”(p. lxxiv). It was not thus that Matthaei dealt with the manuscripts at Moscow.
12. Such were the materials ready for Griesbach's use when he projected his second and principal edition of the Greek Testament (vol. i. 1796, vol. ii. 1806). Not that he was backward in adding to the store of various readings by means of his own diligence. His“Symbolae Criticae222”(vol. i. 1785, vol. ii. 1793)[pg 223]contained, together with the readings extracted from Origen, collations, in whole or part, of many copies of various portions of the N. T., Latin as well as Greek. Besides inspecting Codd. AD (Evann.), and carefully examining Cod. C223, he consulted no less than twenty-six codices (including GL) of the Gospels, ten (including E) of the Acts, &c., fifteen (including DEH) of St. Paul, one of the Apocalypse (Cod. 29) twelve Lectionaries of the Gospels, and two of the Apostolos, far the greater part of them being deposited in England. It was not, however, his purpose to exhibit in his N. T. (designed, as it was, for general use) all the readings he had himself recorded elsewhere, much less the whole mass accumulated by the pains of Mill or Wetstein, Matthaei or Birch. The distinctive end at which he aims is to form such a selection from the matter their works contain, as to enable the theological student to decide for himself on the genuineness or corruption of any given reading, by the aid of principles which he devotes his best efforts to establish. Between the text (in which departures from the Elzevir edition of 1624 are generally indicated by being printed in smaller type224) and the critical notes at the foot of each page, intervenes a narrow space or inner margin, to receive those portions of the common text which Griesbach has rejected, and such variations of his authorities as he judges to be of equal weight with the received readings which he retains, or but little inferior to them. These decisions he intimates by several symbols, not quite so simple as those employed by Bengel, but conceived in a similar spirit; and he has carried his system somewhat further in his small or manual edition, published at Leipzig in 1805, which may be conceived to represent his last thoughts with regard to the recension of the Greek text of the N. T. But though we may trace some slight discrepancies of opinion between his earliest225and his latest works226, as might[pg 224]well be looked for in a literary career of forty years, yet the theory of his youth was maintained, and defended, and temperately applied by Griesbach even to the last. From Bengel and Semler he had taken up the belief that manuscripts, versions, and ecclesiastical writers divide themselves, with respect to the character of their testimony, into races or families. This principle he strove to reduce to practice by marshalling all his authorities under their respective heads, and then regarding the evidence, not of individuals, but of the classes to which they belong. The advantage of some such arrangement is sufficiently manifest, if only it could be made to rest on grounds in themselves certain, or, at all events, fairly probable. We should then possess some better guide in our choice between conflicting readings, than the very rough and unsatisfactory process of counting thenumberof witnesses produced on either side. It is not that such a mode of conducting critical enquiries would not be very convenient, that Griesbach's theory is universally abandoned by modern scholars, but because there is no valid reason for believing it to be true.
At the onset of his labours, indeed, this acute and candid enquirer was disposed to divide all extant materials into five or six different families; he afterwards limited them to three, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine recensions. The standard of the Alexandrian text he conceived to be Origen; who, although his works were written in Palestine, was assumed to have brought with him into exile copies of Scripture, similar to those used in his native city. To this family would belong a few manuscripts of the earliest date, and confessedly of the highest character, Codd. ABC, Cod. L of the Gospels, the Egyptian and some lesser versions. The Western recension would survive in Cod. D of the Gospels and Acts, in the other ancient copies which contain a Latin translation, in the Old Latin and Vulgate versions, and in the Latin Fathers. The vast majority of manuscripts (comprising perhaps nineteen-twentieths of the whole), together with the larger proportion of versions and Patristic writings, were grouped into the Byzantine class, as having prevailed generally in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. To this last class Griesbach hardly professed to accord as much weight as to either of the others, nor, if he had done so, would the result have been materially different. The joint testimony[pg 225]of two classes was,ceteris paribus, always to prevail; and since the very few documents which comprise the Alexandrian and Western recensions seldom agree with the Byzantine even when at variance with each other, the numerous codices which make up the third family would thus have about as much share in fixing the text of Scripture, as the poor citizens whose host was included in one of Servius Tullius' lower classes possessed towards counterbalancing the votes of the wealthy few that composed his first or second227.
Inasmuch as the manuscripts on which our received text was based must, beyond question, be referred to his Byzantine family, wide as were the variations of Griesbach's revised text from that of Elzevir228, had his theory been pushed to its legitimate consequences, the changes it required would have been greater still. The very plan of his work, however, seemed to reserve a slight preference for the received textas such, in cases of doubt and difficulty; and this editor, with a calmness and sagacity which may well be called judicial, was usually disposed to relax his stern mechanical law when persuaded by reasons founded on internal probabilities, which (as we cheerfully admit) few men have been found able to estimate with so much patience and discrimination. The plain fact is, that while disciples like Moldenhawer and persons who knew even less than he were regarding Griesbach's system as self-evidently true, their wiser master must have had many a misgiving as to the safety of that imposing structure his rare ingenuity had built upon the sand. The very essence of his theory consisted in there being not two[pg 226]distinct families, butthree; the majority deciding in all cases of dispute. Yet he hardly attempted, certainly neither he nor any one after him succeeded in the attempt, to separate the Alexandrian from the Western family, without resorting to arguments which would prove that there are as many classes as there are manuscripts of early date. The supposed accordance of the readings of Origen, so elaborately scrutinized for this purpose by Griesbach, with Cod. A, on which our editor lays the greatest stress, has been shown by Archbishop Laurence (Remarks on Griesbach's Systematic Classification, 1814) to be in a high degree imaginary229. It must have been in anticipation of some such researches, and in a partial knowledge of their sure results, that Griesbach was driven to that violent and most unlikely hypothesis, that Cod. A follows the Byzantine class of authorities in the Gospels, the Western in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, and the Alexandrian in St. Paul.
It seems needless to dwell longer on speculations which, however attractive and once widely received, will scarcely again find an advocate. Griesbach's text can no longer be regarded as satisfactory, though it is far less objectionable than such a system as his would have made it in rash or unskilful hands. His industry, his moderation, his fairness to opponents, who (like Matthaei) had shown him little forbearance, we may all imitate to our profit. His logical acuteness and keen intellectual perception fall to the lot of few; and though they may have helped to lead him into error, and have even kept him from retracing his steps, yet on the whole they were worthily exercised in the good cause of promoting a knowledge of God's truth, and of keeping alive, in an evil and unbelieving age, an enlightened interest in Holy Scripture, and the studies which it serves to consecrate.
13. Of a widely different order of mind was John Martin Augustine Scholz [d. 1852], Roman Catholic Dean of Theology in the mixed University of Bonn. It would have been well for the progress of sacred learning and for his own reputation had[pg 227]the accuracy and ability of this editor borne some proportion to his zeal and obvious anxiety to be useful. His first essay was his“Curae Criticae in historiam textûs Evangeliorum,”in two dissertations, Heidelberg, 4to, 1820, containing notices of forty-eight Paris manuscripts (nine of them hitherto unknown) of which he had fully collated seventeen: the second Dissertation is devoted to Cod. K of the Gospels. In 1823 appeared his“Biblisch-Kritische Reise,”Leipsic, 8vo, Biblio-Critical Travels in France, Switzerland, Italy, Palestine and the Archipelago, which Schulz laid under contribution for his improved edition of Griesbach's first volume230. Scholz's“N. T. Graece,”4to, was published at Leipsic, vol. i, 1830 (Gospels); vol. ii, 1836.
The accession of fresh materials made known in these works is almost marvellous: Scholz was the first to indicate Codd. 260-469 of the Gospels; 110-192 of the Acts, &c.; 125-246 of St. Paul; 51-89 of the Apocalypse; 51-181 Evangelistaria; 21-58 Lectionaries of the Apostolos; in all 616 cursive codices. His additions to the list of the uncials comprise only the three fragments of the Gospels WaY and the Vatican leaves of N. Of those examined previously by others he paid most attention to Evan. KX (M also for its synaxaria), and G (now L) Act., Paul.; he moreover inspected slightly eighty-two cursive codices of the Gospels after Wetstein, Birch, and the rest; collated entire five (Codd. 4, 19, 25, 28, 33), and twelve in the greater part, adding much to our knowledge of the important Cod. 22. In the Acts, &c., he inspected twenty-seven of those known before, partially collated two; in St. Paul he collated partially two, slightly twenty-nine; in the Apocalypse sixteen, cursorily enough it would seem (seeCodd. 21-3): of the Lectionaries he touched more or less thirteen of the Gospels, four of the Apostolos. On turning to the 616 codices Scholz placed on the list for the first time, we find that he collated entire but thirteen (viz. five of the Gospels, three of the Acts, &c., three of St. Paul, one each of the Apocalypse and Evangelistaria): a few of the rest he examined throughout the greater part; many in only a few chapters; while some were set down from printed[pg 228]Catalogues, whose plenteous errors we have used our best endeavours to correct in the present volume, so far as the means were within our reach.