THE RECENT HISTORY OF NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM.

The publication of Mr. Miller's defence of The Traditional Text of the Gospels has moved me to put on paper some thoughts on the criticism of the New Testament text. It seemed like waking up after fifteen years' sleep to find, on looking at the new theological publications, that the controversy, Burgon versus Westcott and Hort, was still raging. Mr. Miller has put Burgon's name on his title page, and when he does not give his very words he makes so successful an imitation of his tone and style that we are sometimes at a loss whether the voice is the master's or the disciple's.¹ And yet most readers will feel that they are asked to try again a ruled cause; and the general verdict is one which I have no desire to reverse. Burgon's work is dominated by the conviction that every word of the Scriptures was dictated by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; that it is inconceivable that the Author of such a gift would allow it to become unavailing, and would not providentially interfere to guard it from being corrupted or lost; that we may therefore rightly believe that He guided His Church through the course of ages to eliminate the errors which the frailty of man had introduced; and consequently that the text which has been used by the Church for centuries must be accepted as at least substantially correct.²

Accordingly Burgon tests the goodness of the ancient MSS. by comparison with the Received Text, and finds that in the passages which admit of comparison A seriously deviates from the Received Text 842 times, C 1,798, B 2,370, א 3,392, and D 4,697 times. It is true that he says that he compares these MSS. with the Received Text merely to show how much they differ among themselves, and that any other standard of comparison would answer the purpose equally well. However that may be, he ranges the merit of these MSS. exactly in the order of their closeness to the Textus Receptus. Within a few lines of the passage where he gives the figures just cited he estimates their authority as follows: " By far the most depraved text is that exhibited by Codex D; next to D the most untrustworthy codex is א; next in impurity comes B; then the fragmentary Codex C; our own A being beyond all doubt disfigured by the fewest blemishes of any." And Burgon gives an amusing explanation of how it comes to pass that the most ancient MSS. are among the worst. Their antiquity is due to their badness; they were known to be so bad that they were little used, and consequently remained untouched on their shelf, and so have survived when their betters have perished, and now live only in the transcripts made from them.

I think that the majority of any readers I am likely to have will not require me to state at length my reasons for being unable to accept Burgon's principles, and for feeling no confidence in an investigation conducted with such manifest resolve to bring out a predetermined result. And though some of the points which Burgon's learning and ingenuity have raised perhaps deserve more discussion than his adversaries have been inclined to give them, I feel that in the present state of the controversy there is more profit in speaking about Westcott and Hort's work than about Burgon's.

Westcott and Hort's Greek Testament has been described as an epoch-making book; and quite as correctly as the same phrase has been applied to the work done by Darwin. Before Darwin's time there had been speculations as to the mutability of species, which gained no general acceptance, because regarded as paradoxical, as resting on no scientific basis, and as apparently irreligious; but which when systematized by Darwin passed rapidly into the creed of men of science, and into the popular belief of the large outside world of persons interested in scientific speculations. In like manner, Westcott and Hort had many precursors in their assault on the authority of the received printed text, though it was only with respect to isolated passages that that authority was at first challenged. A hundred years before their time Gibbon had made widely known the defective authority of one of its readings—the text of the three heavenly witnesses. It was not disputed that the authority of the printed text must yield to that of MSS., but information as to the latter source of knowledge was very scanty. Any one who cares to look at the now forgotten controversy between Porson and Archdeacon Travis, will find that the controversy was made possible only by the want of information as to MS. evidence; the Archdeacon finding it impossible to believe that editors of the printed Greek Testament could have introduced the disputed text without good MSS. to warrant them.

But as research proceeded it became impossible to maintain this assumption, and the last serious defender of that text, Bishop Burgess, had been driven from the field half a century before Westcott and Hort's time. Still, though it had to be owned that there might be cases in which the evidence is such as to justify the displacement of the readings of the Textus Receptus, the feeling long prevailed that such a change involved something of irreverence, and ought not to be made without urgent necessity.

Before this time, however, scholars had come to acknowledge that it was not only that the authority of the printed text must yield to that of MSS., but also that the authority of later MSS., however numerous, must yield to that of more ancient evidence. Lachmann set the example of editing on these principles, but his materials did not suffice to enable him to carry out his work in such a way as to commend his method to general acceptance. If questions of priority were of importance, Tregelles might claim to have been in this country the founder of the school of criticism to which ascendency has been given by Westcott and Hort, who followed out their predecessor's methods with larger materials and in a more systematic way. But Tregelles was an isolated worker, and failed to gain any large number of adherents. Tischendorf, whose success in bringing new MSS. to light, and diligence in collating them, gave him more authority as an editor than he deserved, familiarized the public mind with the idea that the Textus Receptus must be freely departed from. It became notorious that the result of the new criticism would be to remove from the sacred text several passages which had been hallowed by the veneration of centuries. Yet those whose conservative feelings were shocked by the newly edited text could have no confidence that it rested on a really scientific basis. Tischendorf's vacillations in successive editions were such as to make students wish for a guide better able to choose for them between readings which in respect of antiquity of attestation had equal claims to acceptance, and who, it was hoped, might reverse some too hasty innovations. It was needful that such a guide should possess sound learning, immense industry, and great sobriety of judgment; and it was welcome news when the desired help was offered by the theological school of the University of Cambridge, of which the great triumvirate Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort were then the leading representatives; men the obligations of our Church to whom it would be hard to exaggerate. In Germany learned investigations had been made, impugning the authority of our sacred books; and in this country orthodox divines had too often thought it enough to reject their results with outcry, without giving them any real examination. Through a natural reaction many an intelligent student was predisposed to accept the new discoveries with as little examination and as little knowledge, believing that he was ranging himself on the side of learned progressive research against fossilized bigotry. But the Cambridge divines gave the new school of critics battle on their own ground, examining their alleged proofs with perfect candour, and with learning equal or superior to their own; and the result was, in the opinion of dispassionate judges, a decided defeat of the destructive school of criticism.

If the leaders of the Cambridge school deserved the gratitude of Churchmen who knew them only by their published works, much more was due to them from those who came within the range of their personal influence. By their honesty, sincerity, piety, zeal, and the absence of all self-seeking, they gained the love as well as the admiration of successive generations of students; and it is hard to say whether they benefited the Church more by their own works or by the learned scholars whom they trained, and who possibly may still outdo the performance of their masters. Surely these were men to whom the most timidly conservative of theologians might have trusted the work of textual revision in full confidence that its results would be such as they could gladly accept. So it was all the more surprising when these critics, who, with regard to the authority of the books, belong to the conservative school, proved to be, in respect of the criticism of the text, strongly radical and revolutionary. Authorities which Lachmann had admitted into his scanty list were depressed to an inferior place; readings which Tischendorf had received into his text were bracketed or removed altogether. Possibly it may be found on investigation that the strict orthodoxy of the Revisers had something to do with the stringency of their conditions for admission into their text, and that critics who ascribe less authority to the very words of the sacred writers may be more lenient in their acknowledgment of a claim to authority of the kind.

However this may be, it was from the conservative side that a storm of opposition arose which owed something of its violence to the fact that some of the most startling of the results of the new revision were made known without any explanation of the system through which these results were arrived at. It was through the publication of the Revised Version of the New Testament that English readers became generally aware of the exact degree to which their English New Testament was liable to be affected by learned criticism of the Greek text. Westcott and Hort were members of the Committee which prepared the Revised Version, and on the question of various readings they exercised a predominating influence. It was a study to which they had devoted their whole lives, while more than half of their brother members of the Committee had given no special attention to the subject, and could not without immodesty dissent from critics of such eminence.

My countryman, Dr. Hort, was a man of perfervidum ingenium, who held his opinions with an intensity of conviction which he could not fail to communicate to those who came in contact with him, while his singular skill as an advocate enabled him with small difficulty to dissipate all objections to his own views. I have often admired the remarkable independence of judgment exhibited by his colleague, Westcott, who, on several occasions, has expressed inability to adopt decisions of Hort's; knowing, as I do how difficult it was for any one to come within the sphere of his influence (not to say to carry on work in conjunction with him) without being made to adopt all his conclusions. As in what follows I shall have to criticise some of Dr. Hort's results, I must at the outset express my love and admiration for the man, of whose friendship I have been proud, and for whose readiness to give help and information when asked for I have often had occasion to be grateful. The admiration which our necessarily limited intercourse inspired has been greatly increased by the fascinating biography in which his son has judiciously allowed him principally to reveal his own character by his letters. He exhibits such a sincere love of truth, such a multiplicity of interests, such a determination to leave no scrap of time unemployed, that in his too short life he must have had twice as many hours of useful work as most other men of the same age. If there were any master to whose words I should be content to swear, I could desire no better guide, and I feel that there is a special perverseness in differing with him on points on which he could speak with infinitely more authority than I. But, lover of truth as he was, he was never desirous that his opinion should be accepted unquestioned. We had some small differences of opinion when he was alive, in which neither could he convince me, nor I him; and I feel that I can exercise equal freedom now. Ἐν ἄλλοις μὲν πολλοῖς ἀποδέχομαι καὶ ἆκγαπῶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τῆς τε πίστεως καὶτῆς φιλοπονίας καὶ τῆς ἐν ταῖς ’γραφαῖς διατριβῆς, καὶ πάνυ δι’ αἰδοῦς ἅνω τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ταύτῃ μᾶλλον ῃ προανεπαύσατο. Ἀλλὰ φίλη Γγὰρ καὶ προτιμωτάτη πάντων ἡ ἀλήθεια, ἐπαινεῖν τε χρῆ καὶ συναινεῖν ἀφθόνως, εἴτι ὀρθῶς λέγοιτο, ἐξετάζειν τε καὶ διευθύνειν εἴ τι μὴ φαίνοιτο ὑγιῶς ἀναγεγραμμένον. Καὶ πρὸς μὲν παρόντα καὶ ψιλῷ λόγῳ δοὙματίζοντα αὐτάρκης ἦν ἂν ἡ ἀγράφος ὁμιλία, «γραφῆς δὲ ἐκκειμένης, ὡς δοκεῖ τισὶ πιθανωτάτης, ἀνανγκαῖον καὶ ἡμᾶς, ὡς πρὸς ’παρόντα τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν διαλεχθῆναι.

I return from this digression to the subject of which I had been speaking—viz. the inconvenience arising from the fact that Westcott and Hort's results became known some time before the public had the means of knowing the process by which their conclusions had been arrived at. The company of the New Testament Revisers were indeed privately supplied with instalments of Westcott and Hort's Greek text⁴ as their work required them. But that text did not come into the hands of the public until a little after the appearance of the Revised English Testament; and those who took offence at the omission or alteration of certain familiar phrases or texts had to wait some time longer before they had the opportunity of learning, from Dr. Hort's Introduction, the principles on which the work of text-revision had been conducted.

The result was that, in the controversies which followed the appearance of the new text, there was a good deal of fighting in the dark, the combatants on both sides often contradicting what had not been asserted, and laboriously proving what had not been denied. It is well remembered what a vehement assault was made by Dean Burgon in an article in the Quarterly on the Revised English New Testament when it appeared; followed up by other articles on the publication of WH's Greek text. Indeed, a few years before the appearance of that text, Burgon had by anticipation attempted to demolish one of its important conclusions—viz. the rejection of the closing verses of St. Mark's Gospel. In this controversy Burgon took much pains to prove that passages which WH reject were acknowledged by Epiphanius, Basil, Chrysostom, and a whole host of other authorities. But he might have spared himself much of this trouble if he had known how freely the facts which he brings forward were acknowledged by WH. They allow that the text whose authority they assail had acquired predominance in Chrysostom's time, and had taken its origin probably a century earlier; consequently the great MS. known as Codex A which Lachmann had used in moulding his text was a witness too late to be admitted by WH as having authority to affect their conclusions.

On the other hand, Burgon's attack on WH enlisted on the side of the Cambridge divines a certain number of critics with more zeal than accurate knowledge of the controversy. Burgon's way of estimating the goodness of the ancient MSS. by the amount of their deviation from Lloyd's Greek Testament certainly left him without any right to complain if his readers concluded that he counted the common printed text the model of perfection, and regarded Bishop Lloyd's Greek Testament as the authority which gave the closest representation of the evangelic autographs. Nevertheless it is true that the criticisms were beside the mark, when Burgon's opponents took pains to show on what slender authority the common printed text rests, having taken its origin in a haphazard way from the edition at first hastily scrambled together by Erasmus, and afterwards imperfectly amended by himself, by Stephens, and other editors on a quite insufficient collation or even knowledge of MSS. It must be borne in mind that the " received " text is such as it is because, as Hort freely acknowledges, it was substantially the received text of the MSS. current at the date when it was first printed and for many centuries before that date. The real point at issue between Burgon and WH is not what credit is due to the New Testament text of Erasmus, but what to the text used by St. Chrysostom.

This question evidently raises another: what credit is due to the authorities earlier than Chrysostom? Concerning these, Burgon and WH form widely different estimates; but there has been a good deal of misconception as to the ground of their difference. With WH the highest MS. authority is the accordance of the Vatican MS. (B) with the Sinaitic (א). Hort expresses his belief (p. 225) (1) that readings of א B should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary; and (2) that no readings of א B can safely be rejected absolutely, though it is sometimes right to place them only on an alternative footing, especially when they receive no support from versions or Fathers. Burgon, on the contrary, maintains that with the single exception of D, which exhibits the wildest text of all, the two MSS. honoured by WH are the most corrupt. He assures his readers,⁵ " without a particle of hesitation, that אBD are three of the most scandalously corrupt copies extant, exhibit the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with have become by whatever process (for their history is wholly unknown) depositories of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders, and intentional perversions of truth which are discernible in any known copies of the Word of God " (Revision Revised, p. 16).

On reading this condemnation of the oldest of our MSS. as containing a text far less pure than that current in the sixteenth century, it was a natural inference that the great difference between Hort and Burgon was that the one founded his text on the oldest authorities and the other on the latest. But it is by no means true that Hort made the age of a MS. the criterion of its goodness; on the contrary, he is quite at one with Scrivener in pronouncing some corruptions of the text to be as early as the second century. Some of my hesitations in following Hort are on points on which he agrees with Burgon; and I have my doubts whether both the one and the other do not pay too little respect to the antiquity of testimony which conflicts with their canons of probability. At any rate, we evidently cannot determine the dispute between Burgon and Hort as summarily as we might if the controversy were Which is more likely to be right, the oldest authority or the latest?

The questions raised by Westcott and Hort are such as cannot be decided offhand, nor is any one who is not an expert entitled to pass judgment on them. Scrivener's meritorious labours have done much to popularize the science of Biblical criticism. An ordinary well-informed clergyman may now be expected to know how to use a critical edition of the New Testament, and may easily suppose himself qualified to give some independent judgment of his own. By referring to Tregelles or Tischendorf he can learn what MSS. favour the one reading, what the other, and what Fathers quote the text in the first way, what in the second, and he may deem himself able to judge which reading makes the better sense. Yet the judgment formed by a person who tries to balance the evidence, external and internal, with regard to an isolated text may be quite different from that of an editor who has worked through the whole New Testament. In the course of such a work each witness must have come hundreds of times before the judge, who cannot help forming an opinion as to his character and credibility. If in a multitude of cases he finds one witness, or group of witnesses, attesting what he persuades himself to be the true reading, while the other is guilty of careless or licentious variations from it, it is inevitable that he will be disposed to believe the former rather than the latter, even in cases where, if the witnesses had come before him as entire strangers, he might have thought that the report of the latter had more probability to recommend it.

Any one then who dips into textual criticism in an unsystematic way, looking only into the evidence with regard to a few selected texts, must feel timid when his judgment is opposed to that of an expert. Suppose that we were inquiring into the real facts of some occurrence, and that two schoolboys gave us contradictory accounts of it, we might exercise our own judgment as to which story seemed more probable. But if the schoolmaster of the two boys came up and told us that the one was a notorious liar and the other a boy of honour on whose word we might implicitly trust, our judgment might be in a moment reversed, and we should believe the less probable account on the testimony of the more credible witness.

Thus when WH's edition appeared, though there were several of their results which startled me, I felt that it would be immodest to oppose my prepossessions to the deliberate judgment of men who had given as many years to the study as I had given months. Yet were I to form any 'opinion on the subject, I could not help differing from some who had every right to count as better judges than myself; for experts were ranged on opposite sides. Burgon, who rejected Hort's results with angry vituperation, was well entitled to rank as an expert, for he was familiar with all varieties of readings, and had probably handled and collated very many more MSS. than either Westcott or Hort. Burgon declares that " no person is competent to pronounce concerning the merits or demerits of cursive copies of the Gospel, who has not himself collated with great exactness at least a few of them," " of which labour if a man has had no experience at all he must submit to be assured that he really has no right to express himself confidently on this subject-matter." Scrivener, the scholar who was at the time at the head of all English collators of New Testament MSS., though by no means as bigoted a partisan of the Received Text as Burgon, yet in a number of important points sided with him against the new theories. Who then was to decide when doctors disagreed? Which experts were we to follow when experts were ranged on opposite sides?

The case, however, is one which constantly happens in courts of justice, when scientific men give evidence on opposite sides; and judge and jury are forced to decide as best they can which they will believe, sure that in either case they must reject the opinion of persons entitled to speak with much higher authority than they. And I found it hard to maintain the modest attitude of suspension of judgment, when I saw sides taken and opinions confidently expressed on this subject of Biblical criticism by a number of people who, I was sure, knew no more about the matter than myself, or, as Socrates might put it, who knew less, since they did not sufficiently know their own ignorance.

On the one hand it is easy to understand how strong was the inclination with many to reject the new edition with little examination. In the first place, hostility was excited by its omissions. The reader found passages rejected as no part of the genuine apostolic record, which had been endeared by the veneration of the Catholic Church for centuries. St. Mark's Gospel loses more than half its concluding chapter; from St. Luke's Gospel we are taught to erase the story of the Bloody Sweat, and the divine words on the cross, " Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." That is to say, we are not forbidden to believe that our Lord spoke these words, but only that we have Luke's authority for so believing. In these and several other cases of omission, a student who examines the evidence for himself, without having mastered WH's principles of dealing with it, would be likely to think that a bad reading had been adopted in the teeth of evidence, overpowering both in respect of the number and the antiquity of the witnesses in favour of the reading which the Church for many centuries had received. Nay, it would seem as if in the judgment of the new editors any evidence was good enough to justify an omission. There is no authority which, when it stands alone, finds less favour in the eyes of these editors than that of Codex D and of Western MSS. generally. Indeed, with them to describe a reading as Western is a note of contumely. Yet, when D omits what is attested by a consensus of other authorities, including those which WH count the highest, they are persuaded that this time D is in the right, and pronounce the reading to be a case of " Western non-interpolation."

But even more repulsive to conservative instincts was the number of cases in which these editors attribute to the Evangelists themselves erroneous statements which their predecessors had regarded as copyists' blunders. There was indeed but a little rhetorical exaggeration in the statement that the canon of these editors was that Codex B was infallible and that the Evangelists were not. Nay, it seemed as if Hort regarded it as a note of genuineness if a reading implies error on the part of a sacred writer. In one case (Matt. xiii. 35), where B unites with every extant MS. but one in giving a text free from error, Hort is willing to accept the testimony of a single MS. that Matthew ascribed to Isaiah a passage really taken from the Psalms. This apparently perverse decision was suggested by the no doubt true principle that if an intelligent copyist found in his archetype what seemed a plain mistake he would be under a temptation to correct it in his transcript, whereas he would be very unlikely to impute to the sacred writer a mistake which he had not committed. Consequently the presumption would be that blunders had been made rather by the original author than by the transcribers; and that a text free from blunders would be likely to have owed its correctness to its copyists. At all events, there was much in the new edition to stagger even one who takes a very liberal view of the possibility of error in the evangelic narrative.

I will not lay over-much stress on such cases as that WH make St. Mark say, not that David ate the shewbread in the time of Abiathar, who was afterwards high priest, but in the high priesthood of Abiathar, which was not the case; that the girl who danced before Herod was not, as Josephus and other authorities tell us, the daughter of Herodias by a former husband, but Herod's own daughter, Herodias; that it makes St. Luke call the miraculous darkness at the Crucifixion an eclipse of the sun, a thing impossible at the time of full moon. For myself, though my prepossessions certainly would have led me to expect absolute accuracy, I own that my expectations are no rule to measure the degree in which the Holy Spirit would interfere to guard the Evangelists from error, and that in the absence of any assertion, either by the Evangelist himself, or by any other sacred writer for him, that such a lapse on his part was absolutely impossible, I must allow my belief to be determined by evidence. If it can be proved that St. Mark said " the high priesthood of Abiathar," when in strict accuracy he ought to have said " the time of Abiathar," that need not one whit affect the credence we give to his testimony concerning the miraculous life and death of our Lord.

Yet if we admit it to be possible that an Evangelist might come short of perfect accuracy in his references to Old Testament history, at least we should expect him to know his Old Testament fairly well, and not to make bad mistakes. But in the very first chapter of St. Matthew, according to WH, the Evangelist makes the name of one King of Judah Asaph instead of Asa, and of another Amos instead of Amon. If a Sunday-school child thus mixed up the names of two prophets and two kings, we should not be satisfied with his answering; and it seems hard to believe that St. Matthew knew no better.⁶ And an unskilled critic might easily imagine that there was a preponderance of MS. evidence in favour of the Received Text.

Enough has been said to explain why there should have been many prepared to take sides against WH; yet with many others of those unable to pronounce a skilled judgment of their own, the apparent strength of the case for the Received Text was felt to be a reason for accepting the unfavourable verdict of the recent editors. For they were men of known sincere piety and orthodoxy, who would not have accepted conclusions at first sight so disagreeable unless they had felt themselves constrained to follow honestly to its legitimate end the path of scientific investigation. It was to be expected that this honest boldness should provoke an outcry from old-fashioned critics with whom the claims of custom find more favour than those of truth; but such outcry might safely be disregarded. The personal qualifications of the new editors were such that a student could feel it safe to follow their guidance, and consider that he was ranging himself on the side of enlightened progress against old-fashioned bigotry.

This confidence was increased and felt to be justified as acquaintance was gained with the principles on which the new editors had worked. In the progress of Biblical criticism, naturally the work of collecting the evidence came before that of putting it in order and weighing the value of each part; and it is not to be assumed that those who had been most successful in gathering the materials would also be the persons able to make the best use of them. WH did not count it their special work to add to the abundant store of materials which their predecessors had brought together; but, sensible that authorities must not be counted but weighed, they set themselves to test the different testimonies, examine into their independence, and try to appreciate their relative value. The scientific character of their methods was soon perceived, and the difference between their predecessors and them seemed to be like that between the old school of prescientific historians, who, without discrimination, incorporated in their narrative all that chroniclers had told, and the modern method of first carefully weighing the trustworthiness of each authority, and building nothing on the statements of those which were found to be unworthy of credit. Even if some of the decisions made by these editors may hereafter be modified or even rejected, their methods must be admired and imitated.

For myself, though I carried a systematic examination of the text but a little way, yet, as far as I went, I found myself repeatedly making the same decisions as WH, even in cases where they were opposed to my prepossessions. For example, in the case just mentioned—Asa or Asaph—I found that if I looked only to the earliest witnesses there was a decided preponderance for the faulty reading; the best witnesses on the other side making themselves suspected by having in other places tampered with the text in order to remove what seemed to them an inaccuracy.⁷ So I am disposed to believe that a New Testament editor, bound to produce the text as given by the most ancient witnesses, would feel himself constrained to edit the faulty reading, leaving it for commentators to account for the error, whether by attributing it to the carelessness of one of the first transcribers, who produced the parent of what are now the most ancient copies, or to an error in the ancient family genealogy which the Evangelist faithfully copied when he incorporated it with his Gospel.

Yet great as has been my veneration for Hort, and my admiration of the good work that he has done, I have never been able to feel that his work was final, and I have disliked the servility with which his history of the text has been accepted, and even his nomenclature adopted, as if now the last word had been said on the subject of New Testament criticism. Not that I expect Burgon ever to be set on his legs again, but I think that in Hort's work will be found some rash decisions which calmer followers will regard as at least doubtful. There is no immodesty if one who is not an expert himself attempts to form some judgment of his own between the views of those who are. It is, as has been said, what judges and juries are daily obliged to do. If experts on opposite sides use arguments, outsiders can form an opinion which is the more cautious and logical reasoner. If Burgon's violence and confidence carried many with him, many more were repelled by the suspicions raised by his deficiency in calm impartiality of judgment. That which gained Hort so many adherents had some adverse influence with myself I mean his extreme cleverness as an advocate; for I have felt as if there were no reading so improbable that he could not give good reasons for thinking it to be the only genuine. He is in his way even more confident than Burgon, and is just as resolved not to allow his antagonists to score a single point. This has generated in my mind a certain sympathy for the witnesses whose testimony he rejects, who seem to me to be hardly dealt with. I do not say they do not deserve the bad treatment they get. Dr. Hort knew them much better than I; and the likings and dislikings which he exhibits are doubtless not prejudices taken up before investigation, but impressions produced by investigation. All the same, a reader who has not gone through the same process is not always prepared to sympathize with him. I said a little before that we should readily accept the report of a schoolmaster as to the character of his boys. Still if we heard him snub one boy every time he opened his lips, and bid him hold his tongue for a liar, while he swallowed the most improbable tales on the word of another, an uneasy suspicion might come over us: Does this good man make favourites? Is it quite certain that he does not allow one boy to humbug him, and that he is not thus led to be unjust to the other?

What made me hesitate in following Hort was a certain exaggeration of judgment. When he has satisfied himself that of two alternative views one is much more probable than the other, he dismisses the less probable as absolutely unworthy of consideration, the more probable as so demonstrated as to afford a firm foundation for further theories. Yet when propositions, each separately no more than probable, are combined, the resulting conclusion has but a lower degree of probability. Notwithstanding these causes for doubt, I know that the divinations of an expert will not always bear to be tested by strict rules of logic; and that an expert may often have just confidence in the certainty of judgments of which, when he tries to give an account to an outsider, his reasons may seem to come much short of logical proof. Hort's conclusions, therefore, cannot be overthrown until they have been tested by another expert who shall have devoted to the study an equal amount of skilled labour. And though I have decided not to carry to the grave with me doubts that I have long entertained as to the soundness of some of his decisions, yet I express those doubts with great timidity, and not as asking a reversal of the rulings which I have not seen my way to accept, but merely as requesting a new trial by well-qualified judges.

The fact is that the foundations of WH's system are buried out of sight of ordinary readers of their work. Their theories are based on immense inductions, in the course of which they must, with enormous labour, have tabulated comparative lists of the peculiarities of MSS., or groups of MSS. These tables no doubt have been preserved, and will probably be available for use by any competent person who may hereafter take up the work of New Testament editing; but they would manifestly be too voluminous for incorporation in Dr. Hort's Introduction. There he had to content himself with giving specimens of his proofs. These specimens were challenged by his opponents, and plausible reasons were given for not accepting them as sufficient proofs of what they were intended to establish. And yet, supposing that we tried to form an independent judgment on this controversy, it would be very unsafe to reject Hort's conclusions, even if it appeared to us that in these particular cases his opponents had the best of the argument, because we have reason for thinking that the evidence that he produced is small in comparison with that which he kept in reserve. I have, therefore, myself been content to accept on faith, at least provisionally, conclusions of Hort's, even when the arguments which he advanced in support of them left in my mind room for a good deal of doubt.

Nevertheless, if no one but an expert is entitled to pass an unfavourable judgment on WH's work, it follows conversely that the adherence of those who are not experts must be founded rather on faith than on knowledge. On this account I am not deterred by the general adoption of WH's decisions from expressing my opinion that their work has been too readily accepted as final, and that students have been too willing to accept as their motto, " Rest and be thankful." There is no such enemy to progress as the belief that perfection has been already attained. Therefore I think it will be more useful, if, instead of dwelling on the excellencies of WH's work, I state, with unfeigned modesty, doubts as to some of their decisions, which I have long entertained, and which the progress of years has rather confirmed than dissipated. If what I write has no other use, it may perhaps direct the attention of some future investigator to points on which WH's positions need to be strengthened if not corrected.

1) In the second volume, published since the above was written, it is much more easy to distinguish the parts that claim Burgon's direct authorship.

2) I think Burgon's views of the history of the text are fairly represented in the following sentences from Miller's work: " Demonstrable it is that the text of the Gospels at an early period underwent a process of revision at the hands of men who apparently were as little aware of the foolishness as of the sinfulness of all they did; and that mutilation was their favourite method. And, what is very remarkable, the same kind of infatuation which is observed to attend the commission of crime, and often leads to its detection, is largely recognisable here. But the Eye which never sleeps has watched over the deposit and provided Himself with witnesses" (p. 211).

"The settlement of the text, though mainly made in the fourth century, was not finally accomplished till the eighth century at the earliest; and the later uncials, not the oldest, together with the cursives, express, not singly, not in small batches or companies, but in their main agreement, the decisions which had grown up in the Church " (p. 224).

"We trust to the Church of all the ages as the keeper and witness of Holy Writ; we bow to the teaching of the Holy Ghost as conveyed in all wisdom by facts and evidence, and we are certain that, following no preconceived notions of our own, but led under such guidance, moved by principles so reasonable and comprehensive, and observing rules and instructions appealing to us with such authority, we are in all main respects standing upon the Rock " (p. 239).

3) Euseb., H. E., vii. 24.

4) In speaking of the Greek text I use the abbreviation WH; when I refer to the Introduction I generally say Hort, that being his composition, though, no doubt, his colleague willingly shares the responsibility.

5) The italics are Burgon's.

6) The confusion was not likely to be made by any one who used a Hebrew Bible, in which the first letters of Amos and Amon are different.

7) I refer in particular to the case (Matt, xxvii. 9) where, even according to the Received Text, the Evangelist ascribes to Jeremiah a prophecy really due to Zechariah.