Chapter VII · Printed Editions and Critical Editions.

It would be quite foreign to our present design, to attempt to notice all the editions of the New Testament in Greek which have appeared in the course of the last three centuries and a half, nor would a large volume suffice for such a labour. We will limit our attention, therefore, to those early editions which have contributed to form our commonly received text, and to such others of more recent date as not only exhibit a revised text, but contain an accession of fresh critical materials for its more complete emendation148.

Since the Latin or “Mazarin” Bible, printed between 1452 and 1456, was the first production of the new-born printing-press (see above, p. 61), and the Jews had published the Hebrew Bible in 1488, we must impute it to the general ignorance of Greek among divines in Western Europe, that although the two songs, Magnificat and Benedictus (Luke i), were annexed to a Greek Psalter which appeared first at Milan in 1481, without a printer's [pg 176] name; next at Venice in 1486, being edited by a Greek; again at Venice from the press of Aldus in 1496 or 1497: and although the first six chapters of St. John's Gospel were published at Venice by Aldus Manutius in 1504, and John vi. 1-14 at Tübingen in 1514, yet the first printed edition of the whole in N. T. the original is that contained in—

1. The Complutensian Polyglott149 (6 vols., folio), the munificent design of Francis Ximenes de Cisneros [1437-1517], Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and Regent of Castile (1506-1517). This truly eminent person, six years of whose humble youth were spent in a dungeon through the caprice of one of his predecessors in the Primacy of Spain, experienced what we have seen so conspicuously illustrated in other instances, that long imprisonment ripens the intellect which it fails to extinguish. Entering the Franciscan order in 1482, he carried the ascetic habit of his profession to the throne of Toledo and the palace of his sovereign. Becoming in 1492 Confessor to Queen Isabella the Catholic, and Primate three years later, he devoted to pure charity or to public purposes the enormous revenues of his see; founding the University at Alcalá de Henares in New Castile, where he had gone to school, and defraying the cost of an expedition which as Regent he led to Oran against the Moors. In 1502 he conceived the plan of the first Polyglott Bible, to celebrate the birth of him who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V, and gathered in his University of Alcalá (Complutum) as many manuscripts as he could procure, with men he deemed equal to the task, of whom James Lopez de Stunica (subsequently known for his controversy with Erasmus) was the principal: others being Æ. Antonio of Lebrixa, Demetrius Ducas of Crete, and Ferdinand of Valladolid (Pintianus). The whole outlay of Cardinal Ximenes on the Polyglott is stated to have exceeded 50,000 ducats or about £23,000, a vast sum in those days:—but his yearly income as Primate was four times as great. The first volume printed, Tom. v, contains the New Testament in two parallel columns, Greek and Latin, the latter being that modification of the Vulgate then current: the colophon on the last page of the Apocalypse states [pg 177] that it was completed January 10, 1514, the printer being Arnald William de Brocario. Tom. vi, comprising a Lexicon, indices, &c., bears date March 17, 1515; Tom. i-iv of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, 1517 (Tom. iv dated July 10), on November 8 of which year the Cardinal died, full of honours and good deeds. This event must have retarded the publication of the whole, since Pope Leo's licence was not granted until March 22, 1520, and Erasmus did not see the book before 1522. As not more than six hundred copies were printed, this Polyglott must from the first have been scarce and dear, and is not always met with in Public Libraries.

The Apocryphal books, like the N. T., are of course given only in two languages; in the Old Testament the Latin Vulgate holds the chief place in the middle, between the Hebrew and the Septuagint Greek150. The Greek type in the other volumes is of the common character, with the usual breathings and accents; in the fifth, or New Testament volume, it is quite different, being modelled after the fashion of manuscripts of about the thirteenth century, very bold and elegant (see Plate x, No. 26), without breathings, and accentuated according to a system defended and explained in a bilingual preface πρὸς τοὺς ἐντευξομένους, but never heard of before or since: monosyllables have no accent, while in other words the tone syllable receives the acute, the grave and circumflex being discarded. The Latin is in a noble church-character, references are made from the one text to the other by means of small letters, and where in either column there is a void space, in consequence of words omitted or otherwise, it is filled up by such curves as are seen in the bottom line of our specimen. The foreign matter in this volume consists of the short Preface in Latin and Greek, Eusebius Carpiano (but without the canons), Jerome's letter to Damasus, with the ordinary Latin Prologues [pg 178] and Arguments before each book. St. Paul's Epistles precede the Acts, as in Codd. א, 61, 69, 90, &c. and before them stand the ἀποδημία παύλου, Euthalii περὶ χρόνων, the ordinary ὑποθέσεις to all the twenty-one Epistles (grouped together), with Theodoret's prologues subjoined to thirteen of the ὑποθέσεις. By the side of the Latin text are numerous parallel passages, and there are also five marginal notes (on Matt. vi. 13; 1 Cor. xiii. 3; xv. 31; 51; 1 John v. 7, 8). The only divisions are the common Latin chapters, subdivided by the letters A, B, C, D, &c. Copies of laudatory verses151, an interpretation of Proper Names, and a Greek Lexicon of the N. T., close the volume.

It has long been debated among critics, what manuscripts were used by the Complutensian editors, especially in the N. T. Ximenes is reported to have spent 4,000 ducats in the purchase of such manuscripts; in the Preface to the N. T. we are assured that “non quevis exemplaria impressioni huic archetypa fuisse: sed antiquissima emendatissimaque: ac tante preterea vetustatis, ut fidem eis abrogare nefas videatur: Que sanctissimus in Christo pater et dominus noster Leo decimus pontifex maximus, huic instituto favere cupiens ex apostolica bibliotheca educta misit....” Yet these last expressions can hardly refer to the N. T., inasmuch as Leo X was not elected Pope till March 11, 1513, and the N. T. was completed Jan. 10 of the very next year152. Add to this that Vercellone, whose services to sacred literature have been spoken of above, brought to light the fact that only two manuscripts are recorded as having been sent to the Cardinal from the Vatican in the first year of Leo, and neither of them (Vat. 330, 346) contained any part of [pg 179] the N. T.153 The only one of the Complutensian codices specified by Stunica, the Cod. Rhodiensis (Act. 52), has entirely disappeared, and from a Catalogue of the thirty volumes of Biblical manuscripts once in the library at Alcalà, but now at Madrid, communicated in 1846 by Don José Gutierrez, the Librarian, we find that they consist exclusively of Latin and Hebrew books, with the exception of two which contain portions of the Septuagint in Greek154. Thus we seem cut off from all hope of obtaining direct information as to the age, character, and present locality of the materials employed for the Greek text of this edition.

It is obvious, however, that in the course of twelve years (1502-14), Ximenes may have obtained transcripts of codices he did not himself possess, and since some of the more remarkable readings of the Complutensian are found in but one or two manuscripts (e.g. Luke i. 64 in Codd. 140, 251; ii. 22 in Cod. 76), such copies should of course be narrowly watched. We have pointed out above the resemblance that Siedel's codex (Act. 42, Paul. 48, Apoc. 13) bears to this edition: so too Cod. 4 of the Gospels. Mill first noticed its affinity to Laud. 2 or Evan. 51, Act. 32, Paul. 38 (Evan. 51), and though this is somewhat remote in the Gospels, throughout the Acts and Epistles it is close and indubitable155. We see, therefore, [pg 180] no cause for believing that either Cod. B, or any manuscript much resembling it in character, or any other document of high antiquity or first-rate importance, was employed by the editors of this Polyglott. The text it exhibits does not widely differ from that of most codices written from the tenth century downwards.

That it was corrupted from the parallel Latin version was contended by Wetstein and others on very insufficient grounds. Even the Latinism βεελζεβούβ Matt. x. 25, seems a mere inadvertence, and is corrected immediately afterwards (xii. 24, 27), as well as in the four other places wherein the word is used. We need not deny that 1 John v. 7, 8 was interpolated, and probably translated from the Vulgate; and a few other cases have a suspicious look (Rom. xvi. 5; 2 Cor. v. 10; vi. 15; and especially Gal. iii. 19); the articles too are employed as if they were unfamiliar to the editor (e.g. Acts xxi. 4; 8): yet we must emphatically deny that on the whole the Latin Vulgate had an appreciable effect upon the Greek. This last point had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of Michaelis and of Marsh by Goeze156, in whose short tract many readings of Cod. Laud. 2 are also examined. In the more exact collation of the N. T., which we have made with the common text (Elzevir 1624), and which appeared in the first edition of the present work, out of 2,780 places in all, wherein the Complutensian edition differs from that of Elzevir (viz. 1,046 in the Gospels, 578 in the Pauline Epistles, 542 in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, 614 in the Apocalypse), in no less than 849 the Latin is at variance with the Greek; in the majority of the rest the difference cannot be expressed in another language. Since the Complutensian N. T. could only have been published from manuscripts, it deserves more minute examination than it has received from Mill or Wetstein; and it were much to [pg 181] be desired that minute collations could be made of several other early editions, especially the whole five of Erasmus.

Since this Polyglott has been said to be very inaccurately printed, it is necessary to state that we have noted just fifty pure errors of the press; in one place, moreover (Heb. vii. 3), part of the ninth Euthalian κεφάλαιον (εν ω ότι και του αβραάμ προετιμήθη) has crept into the text. All the usual peculiarities observable in later manuscripts are here, e.g. 224 itacisms (chiefly ω for ο, η for ει, ει for ι, υ for η, οι for ει, and vice versâ); thirty-two instances of ν ἐφελκυστικόν, or the superabundant ν, before a consonant; fifteen cases of the hiatus for the lack of ν before a vowel; ουτως is sometimes found before a consonant, but ουτω sixty-eight times; ουκ and ουχ are interchanged twelve times. The following peculiarities, found in many manuscripts, and here retained, may show that the grammatical forms of the Greek were not yet settled among scholars; παρήνγελεν Mark vi. 8; διάγγελε Luke ix. 60; καταγγέλειν Acts iv. 2; διαγγέλων Acts xxi. 26; καταγγέλων 1 Cor. ii. 1; παραγγέλω 1 Cor. vii. 10; αναγγέλλων 2 Cor. vii. 7; παραγγέλομεν 2 Thess. iii. 4; παράγγελε 1 Tim. iv. 11; v. 7; vi. 17. The augment is omitted nine times (Matt. xi. 17; Acts vii. 42; xxvi. 32; Rom. i. 2; Gal. ii. 13; 1 Tim. vi. 10; 2 Tim. i. 16; Apoc. iv. 8; xii. 17); the reduplication twice (John xi. 52; 1 Cor. xi. 5); μέλλω and μέλει are confounded, Mark iv. 38; Acts xviii. 17; Apoc. iii. 2; xii. 4. Other anomalous forms (some of them would be called Alexandrian) are παμπόλου Mark viii. 1; νηρέαν Rom. xvi. 15; εξαιρείτε 1 Cor. v. 13; αποκτένει 2 Cor. iii. 6, passim; στιχούμεν Gal. v. 25; είπα Heb. iii. 10; ευράμενος ibid. ix. 12; απεσχέσθαι 1 Pet. ii. 11; καταλειπόντες 2 Pet. ii. 15; περιβαλλείται Apoc. iii. 5; δειγνύντος ibid. xxii. 8. The stops are placed carelessly in the Greek, being (.), (,), rarely (·), never (;). In the Latin the stops are pretty regular, but the abbreviations very numerous, even such purely arbitrary forms as xps for Christus. In the Greek σ often stands at the end of a word for ς, ï and often ü or υ are set at the beginning of syllables: there are no instances of ι ascript or subscript, and no capital letters except at the beginning of a chapter, when they are often flourished. The following forms are also derived from the general practice of manuscripts, and occur perpetually: απάρτι, απάρχης, δαν (for δ᾽ ἂν), ειμή, εξαυτής, επιτοαυτό, εφόσον, εωσότου, καίτοιγε, καθημέραν, κατιδίαν, κατόναρ, μεθήμων, μέντοι, ουμή, τουτέστι; and for the most part διαπαντός, διατί, διατούτο, είτις, ουκέτι. Sometimes the preposition and its case make but a single word, as παραφύσιν, and once we find ευποιήσαι, Vulg. benefacere (Mark xiv. 7).

The Complutensian text has been followed in the main by only a few later editions, chiefly by Chr. Plantin's Antwerp Polyglott (1569-72)157.

[pg 182]

2. Erasmus' New Testament was by six years the earlier published, though it was printed two years later than the Complutensian. Its editor, both in character and fortunes, presents a striking contrast with Ximenes; yet what he lacked of the Castilian's firmness he more than atoned for by his true love of learning, and the cheerfulness of spirit that struggled patiently, if not boldly, with adversity. Desiderius Erasmus (ἐράσμιος, i.e. Gerald) was born at Rotterdam in 1465, or, perhaps, a year or two later, the illegitimate son of reputable and (but for that sin) of virtuous parents. Soon left an orphan, he was forced to take reluctantly the minor orders, and entered the priesthood in 1492. Thenceforward his was the hard life of a solitary and wandering man of letters, earning a precarious subsistence from booksellers or pupils158, now learning Greek at Oxford (but αὐτοδίδακτος)159, now teaching it at Cambridge (1510); losing by his reckless wit the friends his vast erudition had won; restless and unfrugal, perhaps, yet always labouring faithfully and with diligence. He was in England when John Froben, a celebrated publisher at Basle, moved by the report of the forthcoming Spanish Bible and eager to forestall it, made application to Erasmus, through a common friend, to undertake immediately an edition of the N. T.: “se daturum pollicetur, quantum alius quisquam,” is the argument employed. This proposal was sent on April 17, 1515, years before which time Erasmus had prepared numerous annotations to illustrate a revised Latin version he had long projected. On September 11 it was yet unsettled whether this, improved version should stand by the Greek in a parallel column (the plan actually adopted), or be printed separately: [pg 183] yet the colophon at the end of Erasmus' first edition, a large folio of 1,027 pages in all, is dated February, 1516; the end of the Annotations, March 1, 1516; Erasmus' dedication to Leo X, Feb. 1, 1516; and Froben's Preface, full of joyful hope and honest pride in the friendship of the first of living authors, Feb. 24, 1516. Well might Erasmus, who had besides other literary engagements to occupy his time, declare subsequently that the volume “praecipitatum fuit verius quam editum;” yet both on the title-page, and in his dedication to the Pope, he allows himself to employ widely different language160. When we read the assurance he addressed to Leo, “Novum ut vocant testamentum universum ad Graecae originis fidem recognovimus, idque non temere neque levi opera, sed adhibitis in consilium compluribus utriusque linguae codicibus, nec iis sane quibuslibet, sed vetustissimis simul et emendatissimis,” it is almost painful to be obliged to remember that a portion of ten months at the utmost could have been devoted to his task by Erasmus; while the only manuscripts he can be imagined to have constantly used are Codd. Evan. 2, Act. Paul. 2 and Paul. 7, with occasional reference to Evan. Act. Paul. 1 and Act. Paul. 4 (all still at Basle) for the remainder of the New Testament, to which add Apoc. 1, now happily recovered, alone for the Apocalypse. All these, excepting Evan. Act. Paul. 1, were neither ancient nor particularly valuable, and of Cod. 1 he professed to make but small account161. As Apoc. 1 was mutilated in the last six [pg 184] verses, Erasmus turned these into Greek from the Latin; and some portions of his self-made version, which are found (however some editors may speak vaguely) in no one known Greek manuscript whatever, still cleave to our received text162. Besides this scanty roll, however, he not rarely refers in his Annotations to other manuscripts he had seen in the course of his travels (e.g. on Heb. i. 3; Apoc. i. 4; viii. 13), yet too indistinctly for his allusions to be of much use to critics. Some such readings, as alleged by him, have not been found elsewhere (e.g. Acts xxiv. 23; Rom. xii. 20), and may have been cited loosely from distant recollection (comp. Col. iii. 3; Heb. iv. 12; 2 Pet. iii. 1; Apoc. ii. 18).

When Ximenes, in the last year of his life, was shown Erasmus' edition which had thus got the start of his own, and his editor, Stunica, sought to depreciate it, the noble old man replied, “would God that all the Lord's people were prophets! produce better, if thou canst; condemn not the industry of another163.” His generous confidence in his own work was not misplaced. He had many advantages over the poor scholar and the enterprising printer of Basle, and had not let them pass unimproved. The [pg 185] typographical errors of the Complutensian Greek have been stated; Erasmus' first edition is in that respect the most faulty book I know. Oecolampadius, or John Hausschein of Basle [1482-1531], afterwards of some note as a disputer with Luther on the Sacramentarian controversy, had undertaken this department for him; and was glad enough to serve under such a chief; but Froben's hot haste gave him little leisure to do his part. No less than 501 itacisms are imported from the manuscripts into his printed text, and the ν ἐφελκυστικόν is perpetually used with verbs, before a consonant beginning the next word. We must, however, impute it to design that ι subscript, which is elsewhere placed pretty correctly, is here set under η in the plural of the subjunctive mood active, but not in the singular (e.g. James ii. ἐπιβλέψῃτε, εἴπῃτε bis, but ver. 2 εἰσέλθη bis). With regard to the text, the difference between the two editions is very wide in the Apocalypse, the text of the Complutensian being decidedly preferable; elsewhere they resemble each other more closely, and while we fully admit the error of Stunica and his colleagues in translating from the Latin version into Greek, 1 John v. 7, 8, it would appear that Erasmus has elsewhere acted in the same manner, not merely in cases which for the moment admitted no choice, but in places where no such necessity existed: thus in Acts ix. 5, 6, the words from σκληρόν to πρὸς αὐτόν are interpolated from the Vulgate, partly by the help of Acts xxvi164.

Erasmus died at Basle in 1536, having lived to publish four editions besides that of 1516. The second has enlarged annotations, and very truly bears on its title the statement “multo quam antehac diligentius ab Er. Rot. recognitum;” for a large portion of the misprints, and not a few readings of the first edition, are herein corrected, the latter chiefly on the authority of a fresh codex, Evan. Act. Paul. 3; The colophon to the Apocalypse is dated 1518, Froben's Epistle to the reader, Feb. 5, 1519. In this edition ι subscript is for the most part set right; Carp., Eus. t., κεφ. t., τίτλοι, Am., Eus. are added [pg 186] in the Gospels; Dorotheus' “Lives of the Four Evangelists” (see Act. 89) stood before St. Matthew in 1516; but now the longer “Lives” by Sophronius, with Theophylact's “Prologues,” are set before each Gospel. Κεφάλαια (not the Euthalian) are given in both editions in Rom. 1, 2 Corinth. only, but the Latin chapters are represented in the margin throughout, with the subdivisions A, B, C, D. Of these two editions put together 3,300 copies were printed. The third edition (1522) is chiefly remarkable for its insertion of 1 John v. 7, 8 in the Greek text165, under the circumstances described above, Vol. I. p. 200, in consequence of Erasmus' controversy with Stunica and H. Standish, Bp. of St. Asaph (d. 1534), and with a much weaker antagonist, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, who objected to his omission of a passage which no Greek codex was then known to contain. This edition again was said to be “tertio jam ac diligentius ... recognitum,” and contains also “Capita argumentorum contra morosos quosdam ac indoctos,” which he subsequently found reason to enlarge. The fourth edition (dated March, 1527) contains the text in three parallel columns, the Greek, the Latin Vulgate, and Erasmus' recension of it. He had seen the Complutensian Polyglott in 1522, shortly after the publication of his third edition, and had now the good sense to avail himself of its aid in the improvement of the text, especially in the Apocalypse, wherein he amended from it at least ninety readings. His last edition of 1535 once more discarded the Latin Vulgate, and differs very little from the fourth as regards the text166.

A minute collation of all Erasmus' editions is a desideratum we may one day come to see supplied. The present writer hopes [pg 187] soon to publish a full comparison of his first and second editions with the Complutensian text167, as also with that of Stephen 1550, of Beza 1565, and of Elzevir 1624. All who have followed Mill over any portion of the vast field he endeavoured to occupy, will feel certain that his statements respecting their divergences are much below the truth: such as they are, we repeat them for want of more accurate information. He estimates that Erasmus' second edition contains 330 changes from the first for the better, seventy for the worse (N. T., Proleg. § 1134); that the third differs from the second in 118 places (ibid. § 1138)168; the fourth from the third in 106 or 113 places, ninety being those from the Apocalypse just spoken of (ibid. § 1141)169. The fifth he alleges to differ from the fourth only four times, so far as he noticed (ibid. § 1150): but we meet with as many variations in St. James' Epistle alone170.

3. In 1518 appeared the Graeca Biblia at Venice, from the celebrated press of Aldus: the work professes to be grounded on a collation of many most ancient copies171. However true this must be with regard to the Old Testament, which was now published in Greek for the first time, Aldus follows the first edition of Erasmus so closely in the New as to reproduce his very errors of the press (Mill, N. T., Proleg. § 1122), even those which Oecolampadius had corrected in the list of errata; though Aldus is stated to differ from Erasmus in about 200 places, for the better or worse172. If this edition was really [pg 188] revised by means of manuscripts (Cod. 131) rather than by mere conjecture, we know not what they were, or how far intelligently employed.

Another edition out of the many which now began to swarm, wherein the testimony of manuscripts is believed to have been followed, is that of Simon Colinaeus, Paris, 1534, in which the text is an eclectic mixture of the Complutensian and Erasmian173. Mill states (Proleg. § 1144) that in about 150 places Colinaeus deserts them both, and that his variations are usually supported by the evidence of known codices (Evan. 119, 120 at Paris, and Steph. ια᾽, i.e. Act. 8, Paul. 10, have been suggested), though a few still remain which may perhaps be deemed conjectural. Wetstein (N. T., Proleg. vol. i. p. 142) thinks that for Bogard's Paris edition of 1543 with various readings Evan. 120 or Steph. ιδ᾽ might have been used, but his own references hardly favour that notion.

4. The editions of Robert Stephen (Estienne), mainly by reason of their exquisite beauty, have exercised a far wider influence than these, and Stephen's third or folio edition of 1550 is by many regarded as the received or standard text. This eminent and resolute man [1503-59], “whose Biblical work taken altogether had perhaps more influence than that of any other single man in the sixteenth century174,” early commenced his useful career as a printer at Paris, and, having incurred the enmity of the Doctors of the Sorbonne for his editions of the Latin Vulgate, was yet protected and patronised by Francis I [d. 1547] and his son Henry II. It was from the Royal Press that his three principal editions of the Greek N. T. were issued, the [pg 189] fourth and last being published in 1551 at Geneva, to which town he finally withdrew the next year, and made public profession of the Protestant opinions which had long been gathering strength in his mind. The editions of 1546, 1549 are small 12mo in size, most elegantly printed with type cast at the expense of Francis: the opening words of the Preface common to both, “O mirificam Regis nostri optimi et praestantissimi principis liberalitatem...” have given them the name by which they are known among connoisseurs. Erasmus and his services to sacred learning Stephen does not so much as name, nor indeed did he as yet adopt him for a model: he speaks of “codices ipsa vetustatis specie pene adorandos” which he had met with in the King's Library, by which, he boldly adds, “ita hunc nostrum recensuimus, ut nullam omnino literam secus esse pateremur quam plures, iique meliores libri, tanquam testes, comprobarent.” The Complutensian, as he admits, assisted him greatly, and he notes its close connexion with the readings of his manuscripts175. Mill assures us (Proleg. § 1220) that Stephen's first and second editions differ but in sixty-seven places. My own collation of the two books gives 139 cases of divergence in the text, twenty-eight in punctuation. They differ jointly from the third edition 334 times in the text, twenty-seven in punctuation. In the Apocalypse the first and second editions are close to the text of Erasmus, differing from each other but in eleven places, while the third edition follows the Complutensian or other authorities against the first in sixty-one places. In the folio or third edition of 1550 the various readings of the codices, obscurely referred to in the Preface to that of 1546, are entered in the margin. This fine volume (bearing on its title-page, in honour of Henry II, the inscription Βασιλεῖ τ᾽ ἀγαθῷ, κρατερῷ τ᾽ αἰχμητῇ) derives much importance from its being the earliest ever published with critical apparatus. In the Preface or Epistle to the Reader, written after the example of the Complutensian editors both in Greek and Latin, his authorities are declared to be sixteen; viz. α', the Spanish Polyglott; β', which we have already discussed (above, [pg 190] p. 124, note 3), γ᾽, δ᾽, ε᾽ ϛ᾽, ζ᾽, η᾽, ι᾽, ιε᾽ taken from King Henry II's Library; the rest (i.e. θ᾽, ια᾽, ιβ᾽, ιγ᾽, ιδ᾽, ιϛ᾽) are those ἂ αὐτοὶ πανταχόθεν συνηθροίσαμεν, or, as the Latin runs, “quae undique corrogare licuit:” these, of course, were not necessarily his own, one at least (ιγ᾽, Act. 9, Paul. 11) we are sure was not. Although Robert Stephen professed to have collated the whole sixteen for his two previous editions, and that too ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν ἐπιμελέστατα, this part of his work is now known to be due to his son Henry [1528-98], who in 1546 was only eighteen years old (Wetstein, N. T., Proleg., vol. i. pp. 143-4). The degree of accuracy attained in this collation may be estimated from the single instance of the Complutensian, a book printed in very clear type, widely circulated, and highly valued by Stephen himself. Deducting mere errata, itacisms, and such like, it differs from his third edition in more than 2,300 places, of which (including cases where π. or πάντες stands for all his copies) it is cited correctly 554 times (viz. 164 in the Gospels, ninety-four in St. Paul, seventy-six in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, 220 in the Apocalypse), and falsely no less than fifty-six times, again including errors from a too general use of πάντες176. I would not say with some that these authorities stand in the margin more for parade than use, yet the text is perpetually at variance with the majority of them, and in 119 places with them all177. If we trust ourselves once more to the guidance of Mill (Proleg. § 1228), the folio of 1550 departs from its smaller predecessors of 1546, 1549, in 284 readings178, chiefly to adopt the text of Erasmus' fifth [pg 191] edition, though even now the Complutensian is occasionally preferred (e.g. εὐλογήσας Matt. xxvi. 26), most often in the Apocalypse, and that with very good reason. Of his other fifteen authorities, ια᾽ (= Act. 8) and ιϛ᾽ (= Apoc. 3) have never been identified, but were among the six in private hands: β᾽ certainly is Cod. D or Bezae; the learned have tried, and on the whole successfully, to recognize the remainder, especially those in the Royal (or Imperial, or National) Library at Paris. In that great collection Le Long has satisfied us that γ᾽ is probably Evan. 4; δ᾽ is certainly Evan. 5; ε᾽ Evan. 6; ϛ᾽ Evan. 7; η᾽ Evan. L; ζ᾽ he rightly believed to be Evan. 8 (above, p. 191, note); ι᾽ appears to be Act. 7. Of those in the possession of individuals in Stephen's time, Bp. Marsh (who in his “Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis,” 1795, was led to examine this subject very carefully) has proved that ιγ᾽ is Act. 9; Wetstein thought θ᾽ was Evan. 38 (which however see); Scholz seems to approve of Wetstein's conjecture which Griesbach doubted (N. T., Proleg., Sect. 1. p. xxxviii), that ιβ᾽ is Evan. 9: Griesbach rightly considers ιδ᾽ to be Evan. 120; ιε᾽ was seen by Le Long to be Act. 10: these last four are now in the Royal Library. It has proved the more difficult to settle them, as Robert Stephen did not even print all the materials that Henry had gathered; many of whose various readings were published subsequently by Beza179 from the collator's own manuscript, which itself must have been very defective. With all its faults, however, the edition of 1550 was a foundation on which others might hereafter build, and was unquestionably of great use in directing the attention of students to the authorities on which alone the true text of Scripture is based. This standard edition contains the following supplementary matter besides the Epistle to the reader: Chrysostom's Hom. I in S. Matthaeum (then first [pg 192] published): Carp., Eus. t.: Πίναξ μαρτυριῶν of O. T. passages cited in the N. T. being (1) literal, (2) virtual: seventy-two Hexameter lines, headed Ερρικος ο Ρωβερτου Στεφανου, φιλοθεω παντι: prol. by Theophylact following “Lives” by Sophronius and Dorotheus of Tyre, with κεφ. t. before each Gospel: τίτλ., κεφ., Am., Eus. Before the Acts stand Ἀποδημία Παύλου and Euthalius περὶ τῶν χρόνων, κεφ. t. Before the Epistles is a new title-page. Chrysostom's prol. on the Pauline Epistles begins the new volume. Each separate Epistle has prefixed prol. (chiefly by Theodoret) and κεφ. t. The Acts and Epistles have κεφ., but the Apocalypse no prol. or κεφ., except the ordinary Latin chapters, which are given throughout the N. T., subdivided by letters.

R. Stephen's smaller edition (16mo), published in 1551 at Geneva, though that name is not on the title-page, is said to contain the Greek Text of 1550 almost unchanged180, set between the Vulgate and Erasmus' Latin versions. In this volume we first find our present division of the N. T. into verses: “triste lumen,” as Reuss calls it (p. 58), “nec posthac extinguendum.”

5. Theodore de Bèze [1519-1605], a native of Vezelai in the Nivernois, after a licentious youth, resigned his ecclesiastical preferments at the age of twenty-nine to retire with the wife of his early choice to Geneva, that little city to which the genius of one man has given so prominent a place in the history of the sixteenth century. His noble birth and knowledge of the world, aided by the impression produced at the Conference at Poissy (1561) by his eloquence and learning, easily gained for Beza the chief place among the French Reformed on the death of their teacher Calvin in 1564. Of his services in connexion with the two Codd. D we have already spoken: he himself put forth at intervals, besides his own elegant Latin version published in 1556, ten editions of the N. T. (viz. four in folio in the years 1565, 1582, 1588, 1598, and six in octavo in 1565, 1567, 1580, 1591, 1604, and 1611), the Latin Vulgate, and Annotations181. A better [pg 193] commentator perhaps than a critic, but most conspicuous as the earnest leader of a religious party, Beza neither sought very anxiously after fresh materials for correcting the text, nor made any great use of what were ready at hand, namely, his own two great codices, the papers of Henry Stephen, and Tremellius' Latin version of the Peshitto. All his editions vary somewhat from Stephen and from each other, yet there is no material difference between any of them182. He exhibits a tendency, not the less blameworthy because his extreme theological views would tempt him thereto, towards choosing that reading out of several which might best suit his own preconceived opinions. Thus in Luke ii. 22 he adopts (and our Authorized English version condescends to follow his judgement) τοῦ καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῆς from the Complutensian, for which he could have known of no manuscript authority whatever: ejus of the Vulgate would most naturally be rendered by αὐτοῦ (see Campbell in loc.). Wetstein calculates that Beza's text differs from Stephen's in some fifty places (an estimate we shall find below the mark), and that either in his translation or his Annotations he departs from Stephen's Greek text in 150 passages (Wetst. N. T., Proleg., Tom. ii. p. 7).

6. The brothers Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir set up a printing-press at Leyden, which maintained its reputation for [pg 194] elegance and correctness throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century. One of their minute editions, so much prized by bibliomanists, was a Greek Testament, 24mo, 1624, alleging on the title-page (there is no Preface whatever) to be ex Regiis aliisque optimis editionibus cum curâ expressum: by Regiis, we presume, Stephen's editions are meant, and especially that of 1550. The supposed accuracy (for which its good name is not quite deserved) and the great neatness of this little book procured for it much popularity. When the edition was exhausted, a second appeared in 1633, having the verses broken up into separate sentences, instead of their numbers being indicated in the margin, as in 1624. In the Preface it seems to allude to Beza's N. T., without directly naming him: “Ex regiis ac ceteris editionibus, quae maxime ac prae ceteris nunc omnibus probantur.” To this edition is prefixed, as in 1624, a table of quotations (πίναξ μαρτυριῶν) from the Old Testament, to which are now added tables of the κεφάλαια of the Gospels, ἔκθεσις κεφαλαίων of the Acts and all the Epistles. Of the person entrusted with its superintendence we know nothing; nearly all his readings are found either in Stephen's or Beza's N. T. (he leans to the latter in preference183); but he speaks of the edition of 1624 as that “omnibus acceptam;” and boldly states, with a confidence which no doubt helped on its own accomplishment, “textum ergo habes nunc ab omnibus receptum, in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus.” His other profession, that of superior correctness, is also a little premature: “ut si quae vel minutissimae in nostro, aut in iis, quos secuti sumus libris, superessent mendae, cum judicio ac cura tollerentur.” Although some of the worst misprints of the edition of 1624 are amended in that of 1633 (Matt. vi. 34; Acts xxvii. 13; 1 Cor. x. 10; Col. ii. 13; 1 Thess. ii. 17; Heb. viii. 9; 2 Pet. i. 7), others just as gross are retained (Acts ix. 3; Rom. vii. 2; xiii. 5; 1 Cor. xii. 23; xiii. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 4; v. 19; viii. 8; Heb. xii. 9; Apoc. iii. 12; vii. 7; xviii. 16), to which much be added a few peculiar to itself (e.g. Mark iii. 10; Rom. xv. 3; 1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. i. 11; vi. 16; Col. i. 7; iv. 7; Apoc. xxii. 3): ἐθύθη in 1 Cor. v. 7 should not be reckoned as an [pg 195] erratum, since it was adopted designedly by Beza, and after him by both the Elzevir editions. Of real various readings between the two Elzevirs we mark but seven or eight instances (in six of which that of 1633 follows the Complutensian); viz. Mark iv. 18; viii. 24; Luke xi. 33; xii. 20; John iii. 6 bis; 2 Tim. i. 12; iv. 51184; Apoc. xvi. 5: and in 2 Pet. i. 1 (as also in ed. 1641) ἡμῶν is omitted after σωτῆρος185.

Since Stephen's edition of 1550 and that of the Elzevirs have been taken as the standard or Received text186, the former chiefly in England, the latter on the Continent, and inasmuch as nearly all collated manuscripts have been compared with one or the other of these, it becomes absolutely necessary to know the precise points in which they differ from each other, even to the minutest errors of the press. Mill (N. T., Proleg., 1307) observed but twelve such variations; Tischendorf gives a catalogue of 150 (N. T., Proleg., p. lxxxv, seventh edition). For the first edition of the present work a list of 287 was drawn up, which, it is hoped, will soon be reprinted, in a more convenient shape, in a volume now in preparation187.

[pg 196]

The Science of Sacred Textual Criticism was built up in successive Critical Editions of the Greek Testament, and to a brief description of those this chapter will be devoted. It will not include therefore any notice of editions like that of Valpy, or of Bloomfield, or Alford, or Wordsworth, in which the textual treatment did not assume prominence or involve advancement in this province. Still less is there space for such a list of general editions of the New Testament as the very valuable one compiled by Dr. Isaac H. Hall, and found in Schaffs “Companion to the New Testament,” to which notice has been already directed. The progress of Textual Science has involved two chief stages; the first, in which all evidence was accepted and registered, and the second, when a selection was made and the rest either partially or totally disregarded. Lachmann was the leader in the second stage, of which to some extent Griesbach was the pioneer. It is evident that in the future a return must be made, as has been already advocated by many, to the principles of the first stage188.

1. R. Stephen was the first to bring together any considerable body of manuscript evidence, however negligently or capriciously he may have applied it to the emendation of the sacred text. A succession of English scholars was now ready to follow him in the same path, the only direct and sure one in criticism; and for about eighty years our countrymen maintained the foremost place in this important branch of Biblical learning. Their van [pg 197] was led by Brian Walton [1600-61], afterwards Bishop of Chester, who published in 1657 the London Polyglott, which he had planned twelve years before, as at once the solace and meet employment of himself and a worthy band of colleagues during that sad season when Christ's Church in England was for a while trodden in the dust, and its ministers languished in silence and deep poverty. The fifth of his huge folios was devoted to the New Testament in six languages, viz. Stephen's Greek text of 1550189, the Peshitto-Syriac, the Latin Vulgate, the Ethiopic, Arabic, and (in the Gospels only) the Persic. The exclusively critical apparatus, with which alone we are concerned, consists of the readings of Cod. A set at the foot of the Greek text, and, in the sixth or supplementary volume, of Lucas Brugensis' notes on various readings of the Gospels in Greek and Latin; of those given by the Louvain divines in their edition of the Vulgate (Walton, Polygl., Tom. vi. No. xvii); and especially of a collation of sixteen authorities, whereof all but three, viz. Nos. 1, 15, 16190, had never been used before (Walton, Tom. vi. No. xvi). These various readings had been gathered by the care and diligence of Archbishop Ussher [1580-1656], then living in studious and devout retirement near London191. They are as follows:—(1) Steph. the sixteen copies extracted from Stephen's margin: (2) Cant. or Evan. D: (3) Clar. or Paul. D: (4) Gon. or Evan. 59: (5) Em. or Evan. 64, and also Act. 53: (6) Goog. or Evan. 62: (7) Mont. or Evan. 61: (8) Lin. or Evan. 56, and also Act. 33: (9) Magd. 1 or Evan. 57: (10) Magd. 2 or Paul. 42: (11) Nov. 1 or Evan. 58: (12) Nov. 2 or Act. 36: (13) Bodl. 1 or Evan. 47: (14) Trit. or Bodl. 2, Evan. 96: (15) March. Veles., the Velesian readings, described above, Vol. i. p. 209: (16) Bib. Wech., the Wechelian readings, which deserve no more regard than the Velesian. They were derived [pg 198] from the margin of a Bible printed at Frankfort, 1597, by the heirs of And. Wechel. It is indifferent whether they be referred to Francis Junius or F. Sylburg as editors, since all the readings in the New Testament are found in Stephen's margin, or in the early editions.

Walton was thus enabled to publish very extensive additions to the existing stock of materials. That he did not try by their means to form thus early a corrected text, is not at all to be regretted; the time for that attempt was not yet arrived. He cannot, however, be absolved from the charge to which R. Stephen had been before amenable, of suppressing a large portion of the collations which had been sent him. The Rev. C. B. Scott, Head Master of Westminster School, found in the Library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the readings of Codd. D. 59, 61, 62, prepared for Walton (Dobbin, Cod. Montfort., Introd. p. 21), which Mill had access to, and in his N. T. made good use of, as well as of Ussher's other papers (Mill, Proleg. § 1505).

2. Steph. Curcellaeus or Courcelles published his N. T. at Amsterdam in 1658, before he had seen Walton's Polyglott. The peculiar merit of his book arises from his marginal collection of parallel texts, which are more copious than those of his predecessors, yet not too many for convenient use: later editors have been thankful to take them as a basis for their own192. There are many various readings193 (some from two or three fresh manuscripts) at the foot of each page, or thrown into an appendix, mingled with certain rash conjectures which betray a Socinian bias: but since the authorities are not cited for each separate reading, these critical labours were as good as wasted194.

[pg 199]

3. A more important step in advance was taken in the Greek Testament in 8vo, issued from the Oxford University Press in 1675. This elegant volume (whose Greek text is mainly that of Elzevir 1633195) was superintended by John Fell [1625-86], Dean of Christ Church, soon afterwards Bishop of Oxford, the biographer of saint-like Hammond, himself one of the most learned and munificent, if not quite the most popular Prelate, of that golden age of the English Church, in whose behalf Anthony à Wood designates him “the most zealous man of his time.” His brief yet interesting Preface not only discusses the causes of various readings196, and describes the materials used for his edition, but touches on that weak and ignorant prejudice which had been already raised against the collection of such variations in the text of Scripture; and that too sometimes by persons like John Owen197 the Puritan, intrusive Dean of Christ Church under Cromwell, who, but that we are loth to doubt his integrity, would hardly be deemed a victim of the panic he sought to spread. In reply to all objectors the Bishop pleads the comparative insignificance of the change produced by various readings in the general sense of Holy Writ, and especially urges that God hath dealt so bountifully with His people “ut necessaria quaeque et ad salutis summam facientia in S. literis saepius repeterentur; ita ut si forte quidpiam minus commode alicubi expressum, id damnum aliunde reparari possit” (Praef. p. 1). [pg 200] On this assurance we may well rest in peace. This edition is more valuable for the impulse it gave to subsequent investigators than for the richness of its own stores of fresh materials, although it is stated on the title-page to be derived “ex plus 100 MSS. Codicibus.” Patristic testimony, as we have seen, Bishop Fell rather undervalued: the use of versions he clearly perceived, yet of those at that time available, he only attends to the Gothic and Coptic as revised by Marshall: his list of manuscripts hitherto untouched is very scanty. To those used by Walton we can add only R, the Barberini readings, then just published (see p. 210); B, twelve Bodleian codices “quorum plerique intacti prius,” in no-wise described, and cited only by the number of them which may countenance each variation; U, the two Ussher manuscripts Evan. 63, 64 as collated by H. Dodwell; P, three copies from the Library of Petavius (Act. 38, 39, 40); Ge., another from St. Germains (Paul. E): the readings of the last four were furnished by Joh. Gachon. Yet this slight volume (for so we must needs regard it) was the legitimate parent of one of the noblest works in the whole range of Biblical literature, of which we shall speak next.

4. Novum Testamentum Graecum of Dr. John Mill, Oxford, 1707, in folio. This able and laborious critic, born in 1645, quitted his native village in Westmoreland at sixteen for Queen's College, Oxford, of which society he became a Fellow, and was conspicuous there both as a scholar and as a ready extemporary preacher. In 1685 his College appointed him Principal of its affiliated Hall, St. Edmund, so honourably distinguished for the Biblical studies of its members; but Mill had by that time made good progress in his Greek Testament, on which he gladly spent the last thirty years of his life, dying suddenly in 1707, a fortnight after its publication. His attention was first called to the subject by his friend, Dr. Edward Bernard, the Savilian Professor at Oxford, whom he vividly represents as setting before him an outline of the work, and encouraging him to attempt its accomplishment. “Vides, Amice mi, opus ... omnium, mihi crede, longè dignissimum, cui in hoc aetatis tuae flore, robur animi tui, vigilias ac studia, liberaliter impendas” (Proleg. § 1417). Ignorant as yet both of the magnitude and difficulty of his task, [pg 201] Mill boldly undertook it about 1677, and his efforts soon obtained the countenance of Bishop Fell, who promised to defray the expense of printing, and, mindful of the frailty of life, urged him to go to press before his papers were quite ready to meet the public eye. When about twenty-four chapters of St. Matthew had been completed, Bishop Fell died prematurely in 1686, and the book seems to have languished for many following years from lack of means, though the editor was busy all the while in gathering and arranging his materials, especially for the Prolegomena, which well deserve to be called “marmore perenniora.” As late as 1704 John Sharp [1644-1714], Archbishop of York, whose remonstrances to Queen Anne some years subsequently hindered the ribald wit that wrote “A Tale of a Tub” from polluting the episcopal throne of an English see, obtained from her for Mill a stall at Canterbury, and the royal command to prosecute his New Testament forthwith. The preferment came just in time. Three years afterwards the volume was given to the Christian world, and its author's course was already finished: his life's work well ended, he had entered upon his rest. He was spared the pain of reading the unfair attack alike on his book and its subject by our eminent Commentator, Daniel Whitby (“Examen Variantium Lectionum,” 1710), and of witnessing the unscrupulous use of Whitby's arguments made by the sceptic Anthony Collins in his “Discourse of Free Thinking,” 1713.

Dr. Mill's services to Biblical criticism surpass in extent and value those rendered by any other, except perhaps one or two men of our own time. A large proportion of his care and pains, as we have seen already, was bestowed on the Fathers and ancient writers of every description who have used or cited Scripture. The versions are usually considered his weakest point, although he first accorded to the Vulgate and to its prototype the Old Latin the importance they deserve. His knowledge of Syriac was rather slight, and for the other Eastern tongues, if he was not more ignorant than his successors, he had not discovered how little Latin translations of the Ethiopic, &c., can be trusted. As a collator of manuscripts the list subjoined will bear full testimony to his industry: without seeking to repeat details we have entered into before under the Cursive MSS., it is right to state that he either himself re-examined, or otherwise [pg 202] represented more fully and exactly, the codices that had been previously used for the London Polyglott and the Oxford N. T. of 1675. Still it would be wrong to dissemble the fact that Mill's style of collation is not such as the strictness of modern scholarship demands. He seldom notices at all such various readings as arise from the transposition of words, the insertion or omission of the Greek article, from homoeoteleuta, or itacisms, or from manifest errors of the pen; while in respect to general accuracy he is as much inferior to those who have trod in his steps, as he rises above Stephen and Ussher, or the persons employed by Walton and Fell. It has been my fortune to collate not a few manuscripts after this great critic, and I have elsewhere been obliged to notice these plain facts, I would fain trust in no disparaging temper. During the many years that Mill's N. T. has been my daily companion, my reverence for that diligent and earnest man has been constantly growing: the principles of internal evidence which guided his choice between conflicting authorities were simple (as indeed they ought to be), but applied with rare judgement, sagacity, and moderation: his zeal was unflagging, his treatment of his sacred subject deeply reverential. Of the criticism of the New Testament in the hands of Dr. John Mill it may be said, that he found the edifice of wood, and left it marble.

The following Catalogue of the manuscripts known to Mill exhibits the abridged form in which he cites them, together with the more usual notation, whereby they are described in this work, and will tend, it is believed, to facilitate the use of Mill's N. T.

Alex. Cod. A

Barb. Evan. 112 (Wetstein)

Baroc. Act. 23

B. 1 Evan. E

B. 2 Act. 2

B. 3 Act. 4

Bodl. 1 Evan. 45

Bodl. 2 Evan. 46

Bodl. 3 Evst. 5

Bodl. 4 Evst. 18

Bodl. 5 Evst. 19

Bodl. 6 Evan. 47

Bodl. 7 Evan. 48

Bu. Evan. 70

Cant. Evan. Act. D

Cant. 2 Act. 24

Cant. 3 Act. 53

Clar. Paul. D

Colb. 1 Evan. 27

Colb. 2 Evan. 28

Colb. 3 Evan. 29

Colb. 4 Evan. 30, 31

Colb. 5 Evan. 32

Colb. 6 Act. 13

Colb. 7 Paul. 17

Colb. 8 Evan. 33

Colb. 9 = Colb. 1

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. 5 Sin. Act. 28

Cypr. Evan. K

Em. see Evan. 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

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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. codices xvi. videas pp. 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. videas p. 191

Mill merely drew from other sources Barb., Steph., Vel., Wech.; the copies deposited abroad (B 1-3, Clar., Colb. 1-11, Cypr., Genev., Med., Per., Pet. 1-3, Vat. Vien.), and Trin. 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): but Lips. = 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 of Richard 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, a charter, a magna 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 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).

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 adds harl.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. III are 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, as Alex., 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 called Eph., 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 taken verbatim from 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 other select variations 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 of families or recensions, 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: the Asiatic, chiefly written in Constantinople and its neighbourhood, which he was inclined to disparage; and the African, 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.a The 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 infer ex 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 earliest225 and 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 the number of 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.