book exists which corresponds throughout to its proposed archetype, or which, in other words, is wholly free from errata. There is no hazard in saying that the variations in the printed copies of King James's version of the Bible, such variations as are noted in the manuscripts of the New Testament, are to be reckoned by thousands; and if, as in the case of the Greek text of the New Testament, we were to take the quotations of different writers into account, by tens of thousands. But in producing copies by transcription, the number of errors resulting will be vastly greater than in producing the same number of copies by the press; since far more liability to error will

or risk their own reputation, by an useless list of every small slip committed by a lazy or ignorant scribe. What is thought commendable in an edition of Scripture, and has the name of fairness and fidelity, would in them be deemed impertinence and trifling. Hence the reader not versed in ancient manuscripts is deceived into an opinion, that there were no more variations in the copies than what the editor has communicated. Whereas, if the like scrupulousness was observed in registering the smallest changes in profane authors, as is allowed, nay required, in sacred, the now formidable number of thirty thousand would appear a very trifle.

"It is manifest that books in verse are not near so obnoxious to variations as those in prose; the transcriber, if he is not wholly ignorant and stupid, being guided by the measures, and hindered from such alterations as do not fall in with the laws of numbers. And yet even in poets the variations are so very many as can hardly be conceived without use and experience. In the late edition of Tibullus by the learned Mr. Broukhuise, you have a register of various lections in the close of that book; where you may see at the first view that they are as many as the lines. The same is visible in Plautus set out by Pareus. I myself, during my travels, have had the opportunity to examine several manuscripts of the poet Manilius;

exist in the case of every particular copy transcribed, than exists in regard to a whole edition of printed copies. With these general views, it is not necessary to dwell on the particular causes of mistakes and errors in ancient manuscripts, which are more numerous than may at first thought be supposed. They have been often pointed out by different writers.

"I proceed, then, to observe, that, of the various readings of the New Testament, nineteen out of twenty, at least, are to be dismissed at once from consideration,

of their intrinsic unimportance,

not on account

that is a separate consid

eration, but because they are found in so few authorities,

and can assure you that the variations I have met with are twice as many as all the lines of the book."'

- pp. 93–95, 8th Edition.

"To take a few books immediately at hand, I perceive by a loose computation from a table at the end of Wakefield's Lucretius, that he has collected about twelve thousand various readings of that author (exclusive of mere differences of orthography), from five printed copies only. Weiske's edition of Longinus presents more than three thousand various readings of the Treatise on the Sublime, a work of about the length of the Gospel of Mark, collected from eight manuscripts and two early editions. And Bekker has published variations from his text of the writings contained in his edition of Plato, which fill seven hundred and seventy-eight crowded octavo pages, and amount to I know not how many more than sixty thousand; the manuscripts used on each of the different writings being on an average about thirteen. The various readings of the New Testament, it is to be remembered, have been collected from a very great number of manuscripts of the original, from manuscripts of numerous ancient versions, in which it is not to be supposed that the translator always rendered in a manner scrupulously literal, and also from the citations of a long series of Fathers, who, we know, were commonly not attentive to verbal accuracy in quoting."

and their origin is so easily explained, that no critic would regard them as having any claim to be inserted in the text. Of those which remain, a very great majority are entirely unimportant. They consist in different modes of spelling; in different tenses of the same verb, or different cases of the same noun, not affecting the essential meaning; in the use of the singular for the plural, or the plural for the singular, where one or the other expression is equally suitable; in the insertion or omission of particles, such as av and dé, not affecting the sense, or of the article in cases equally unimportant; in the introduction of a proper name, where, if not inserted, the personal pronoun is to be understood, or of some other word or words expressive of a sense which would be distinctly implied without them; in the addition of 'Jesus' to 'Christ,' or 'Christ' to 'Jesus'; in the substitution of one synonymous or equivalent term for another; in the transposition of words, leaving their signification the same; in the use of an uncompounded verb, or of the same verb compounded with a preposition, the latter differing from the former, if at all, only in a shade of meaning; and in a few short passages, liable to the suspicion of having been copied into the Gospel where we find them from some other Evangelist. Such various readings, and others equally unimportant, compose far the greater part of all concerning which there may be, or has been, a question whether they are to be admitted into the text or not; and it is therefore of no consequence in which way the question has been, or may be, determined.

"But after deducting from the whole amount of various readings, first those of no authority, and next those of no importance, a number will remain which are objects of a certain degree of curiosity and interest. To three of them an extravagant importance has been attached, from their supposed bearing

upon the theological doctrine of the Trinity. But the principal of these, the famous passage in the First Epistle of John (v. 7), is a manifest interpolation. In the case of this and of most other passages, where the true reading is a matter of any interest, we may commonly arrive at a satisfactory judgment concerning it; and in regard to the cases in which we cannot, it is clear that no opinion, nor any inference whatever, respecting the meaning of the writer, is to be founded on an uncertain reading.

"The Received Text, as it has been called, of the New Testament, that is, the text which for almost two centuries, till after the time of Griesbach, was found with little variation in the common editions of the New Testament, was formed during the sixteenth century, with comparatively few helps, and in the exercise of no great critical judgment. But the chief value of the immense amount of labor which has since been expended upon the text of the New Testament does not consist in its having effected improvements in the Received Text. Its chief and great value consists in establishing the fact, that the text of the New Testament has been transmitted to us with remarkable integrity; that far the greater part of the variations among different copies are of no authority or of no importance; and that it is a matter scarcely worth consideration, as regards the study of our religion and its history, whether, after making a very few corrections, we take the Received Text formed as it was, or the very best which the most laborious and judicious criticism might produce." - Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. I. Additional Note A, Section III. pp. xxxv. - xl.

For illustration of these statements see what follows the passage just quoted, pp. xl. - xliv. See also the Appendix to Vol. I. of the present work.

II.

ON THE CORRESPONDENCES AMONG

THE FIRST THREE

GOSPELS.

THIS subject is fully discussed in the Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. I. Additional Note D, pp. cvi. - ccxiii. A portion of the "Concluding Remarks" may here be quoted.

"It has been my purpose to show, that, when we consider the agreements and differences among the first three Gospels, we find their character to be such as cannot be accounted for by the supposition, that the Evangelists copied either one from another, or all from common written documents. Some common archetype, however, they must have had; the corresponding passages which we find in them, if they did not previously exist in a determinate written form, must have existed orally in forms nearly resembling those which they now present; and this supposition of a model, partly fixed, by a regard to truth and by frequent repetition, and partly fluctuating, through the changes of oral narration, is the only one that accounts satisfactorily for the phenomena presented.

"But the narratives which the Evangelists have thus transmitted to us were the original accounts of the Apostles and first preachers of Christianity. This appears from the accordance of the Gospels with each other in the view which they present of the marvellous character and ministry of Christ. Accounts so wonderful, especially if one fancy them unfounded in truth, would have been distorted in many different ways, with or without some dishonest purpose, if abandoned to oral