in the Greek copies from which they were translated. From these sources, manuscripts, fathers, and versions, extensive collections of various readings have been made by different critics, and gradually augmented by their successors. Mill, in his edition of the Greek Testament, collected, it is said, about thirty thousand. Wetstein, who followed him, augmented the number, it is said, to near a hundred thousand; and now we are told that has been swelled, by the subsequent labours of various critics and editors, to a hundred and thirty, or a hundred and fifty thousand. It is not at all surprizing that, on the publication of Mill's edition, when the subject was little understood, the report of thirty thousand various readings of the New Testament should have caused something like an alarm for the integrity of the text, and the security of the christian faith. Whitby, a better commentator than critic, took the field against Mill, and contributed to spread the panic. Antony Collins, the free-thinker, immediately took advantage of Whitby's arguments, and applied them for the subversion of christianity. This called forth the accomplished critic and scholar Dr. Richard Bentley, who under the title of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, convincingly proved that there was no ground of alarm in the number of various readings, but that they were eminently useful in establishing the purity of the text. "If there had been but one manuscript of the Greek Testament at the restoration of learning about two centuries ago," says Dr. Bentley,* then we had no various readings at all. And would the text be in a better condition then, than now we have 30,000? So far from that, that in the best single copy extant, we should have had hundreds of faults, and some omissions irreparable. Besides, that the suspicions of fraud and foul play would have been increased immensely. It is good, therefore, you will allow, to have more anchors than one; and another MS. to join with the first, would give more authority, as well as security. Now choose the second where you will, there shall be a thousand variations from the first; and yet half or more of the faults shall still remain in them both. A third, therefore, and so a forth, and still on, are desirable; that by a joint and mutual help all the faults may be mended: some copy preserving the true reading in one place, and some in another. And yet the more copies you call to your assistance, the more do the various readings multiply upon you: every copy having its peculiar slips, though in a principal passage or two it do singular service. And this is a fact, not only in the New Testament,

* Remarks on Free-Thinking.

but in all ancient books whatever."-" It is a very ungrounded fear," says Michælis, "that the number of various readings, which either have been, or shall hereafter be collected of the New Testament, may diminish the certainty of the christian religion. Instead of being alarmed at their number, we ought rather to exult, as the probability of restoring the genuine text of an author increases with the increase of the copies, and the most inaccurate and mutilated editions of ancient writers are precisely those where the fewest manuscripts remain."* Similar to this, is the opinion of all the best critics, and of all men of learning. Experience has shewn, that all the various readings hitherto collected, so far from unsettling the text, or impeaching one article of faith, or one moral precept, serve essentially to establish the general integrity of the Scriptures, by evincing that manuscripts collected from all quarters of the world, however they may differ in minute particulars, agree in all material points of doctrine and morals. And this is, in our view, by far the most important service rendered to christianity by the labours of biblical critics: far more so thau the purging of the text itself from a few immaterial corruptions. Indeed, it is only necessary to inspect this vast mass of various readings, to discover how wholly unimportant the greater number are, in themselves, though not without their use for critical purposes; and their number is owing to the scrupulous fidelity and exactness of critics in noting even the most trifling variations of manuscripts. Every slip of the pen-every change of a word or a letter-every blunder of every transcriber for sixteen centuries, have been most laboriously and faithfully set down in these collections. We will give our readers a short specimen of the kind of various readings which are of most frequent occurrence. The mass are such as these ; Δαβιδ or Δαυίδ, Σολομώντα οι Σολομώνα, κάγω or και εγω, κύριος οι χριςτος, λέγων οι αποκριθείς, μαθηται οι αποστολοι, αναστηναι οι εγερθήναι, λέγει οι ειπόν, αυτών οι ἑαυτών, εαν or αν, μου or έμου, ελθοντος αυτού οι ελθόντι αυτῷ, the addition or omission of ἐστιν, or of the particles isı, xai, yag, de, ovv, and the like; which are just about as important as whether we should write author or authour, physic or physick, one and twenty or twenty-one, he said or he replied; and we make bold to assert that but a few thousand out of the whole do in any manner affect the sense, and the greater part would not even be discernible in a translation. And even of these the number is inconceivably small which even touch any point of faith or morals. "No emendation," says

* Marsh's Michælis' Introd. to the New Testament, vol. i. 263. VOL. VI.-No. 12.

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Griesbach himself, "which has been attempted by recent editors, either changes or overthrows any doctrine of sacred Scripture, and but a few affect the meaning."* In general, any reading might be safely adopted; and even the worst manuscript of the New Testament, now extant, would secure to us the christian faith in its general integrity without the loss or addition of a single doctrine, or the variation of a single material fact. In this, we believe, all critics are agreed; and the establishment of this important fact alone justly entitles their labours to the gratitude of the christian public. We shall beg leave to quote Griesbach again. "From the mass of various readings," he says, "which have been examined by many learned men, as well as myself, every one may now perceive how groundless are the suspicions raised by the adversaries of christianity against the integrity and certainty of the sacred text. And, if I am not mistaken, this will be considered as not the least of the benefits resulting from the art of criticism by those who value the integrity and unshaken authority of the sacred books. By the diligence of critics it is now reduced to certainty, that however the ancient copies and versions which were made in the earlier ages, and the commentaries of the Greek and Latin fathers, may differ among themselves in single words and phrases, or, as sometimes happens, in the order of sentences, yet in the sum of the matter-in narrating the origin of the christian religion, and delivering the rules of doctrine, and in setting forth the arguments by which Christ and his Apostles proved their doctrine, in these, there is the most perfect agreement among them all."

Still, however, it is surely a matter of no little interest, and worthy of no little labour, to redeem the Scriptures from the injuries of time, and to recover, as far as we possibly can, the very words of the inspired writers. And on this very ground, so far from objecting to the emendations of the received Greek text proposed by Griesbach and others, as if they were innovating on the sacred doctrine, and unsettling the foundations of our faith, the christian world is under great obligations to those learned men, who, like Mill and Wetstein, and the celebrated critic

* "Nulla einendatio a recentioribus editoribus tentata ullam scripturac sacrae doctrinam immutat aut evertit; paucae sensum sententiarum afficiunt.”—Prolemom. in N. Test. p. xxxvii.

"Joannes Millius accurata sua diligentia effecit, ut omnibus nunc apparere possit, discrepantiam codicum MSS. Novi Testamenti longe minoris esse momenti, quam non solum homines erga sanctam scripturam male animati ante jactitaverant, sed etiam multi forsan ex iis qui bene de religione sentirent sibi persuaserant.”—Kuster. Præf. N. T. Millian. 1710.

+ Prelogom. in N. T. p. xxxviii.

just named, have devoted their lives to indefatigable labours in the work of sacred criticism-in collecting and collating manuscripts, versions and fathers, and nicely weighing their several authorities, and finally sifting out from the whole multifarious mass of various readings the genuine text of Scripture. Their labours are of inestimable value, in the view we have stated above, to the cause of religious truth; though the christian world has not as yet reaped the lesser fruits of them, (nor do we think the time is yet come to do so,) by conforming the versions in common use to the standard of an amended text. There is, as we are aware—and we are heartily glad of it—an extreme, and as we think, a very wholesome jealousy existing in the christian community respecting alterations of the received text of Scripture. We cannot be too cautious on this head-we cannot be too vigilant in guarding the portals of the temple against every unhallowed invasion. But this vigilance is by no means inconsistent with a due regard for the labours of biblical critics in correcting the vulgar text; nor are we to regard these corrections, when made on sufficient grounds and good authority, as violating the integrity of the sacred Scriptures, for corruptions are no part of Scripture. Manuscripts vary. Now the simple question is, which is the genuine reading-which proceeded from the inspired writers-which is Scripture-what we read in this manuscript, or what we read in that? What we read in our bibles has no more authority because it is printed, and is no more entitled to be called Scripture, than a different reading found in any Greek manuscript. A printed edition merely represents the manuscript or manuscripts from which it was taken. Erasmus, and the Complutensian editors, printed the New Testament from such manuscripts as they could procure. From them chiefly we derive our present text. Had they fallen upon other manuscripts, we should have had a text, not materially, indeed, yet verbally different, which, of course, we would have held in as much veneration as we do the present, and been equally zealous to defend. This point has been well argued by Griesbach, in the first section of the Prolegomena to his New TestaWe need not pursue it further. The truth is, the ge

ment.

nuine text of the New Testament is not to be found entire in any one manuscript, but must be carefully sifted out of them all. Of several various readings, in any given place, but one can be the true, and which that is must be, and in most cases of any importance, (which, however, we repeat, are extremely few,) may be with tolerable certainty, or a greater or less degree of probability, determined by the aid of critical rules founded upon

observation and experience. This is what has been attempted by Griesbach and other editors of the New Testament. In order to form an estimate of the merit of his labours, with which we are chiefly concerned, it is necessary for us to take a preliminary view of what had been done by his predecessors, and of the existing state of the text which he undertook to correct. This we shall endeavour to do as briefly as possible.

The first printed edition of the whole New Testament in Greek, forms a part of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, which was printed at Complutum, now Alcala, in Spain, under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, between 1514 and 1517.‡ The New Testament bears date January 10, 1514. It was not, however, delivered to the public before 1522. The editors professed to have followed ancient manuscripts; but as those which they used have unhappily perished, their fidelity, and the authority of the text, rest on a conjectural foundation. This edition was highly esteemed by Mill, and Michalis likewise speaks of it in favourable terms. Wetstein, on the contrary, depreciated it, though a great many of the readings found in it were preferred by him to the vulgar text. Griesbach, in his Prolegomena, gives his reasons at length for esteeming this, as well as the subsequent editions of Erasmus, Stephens, Beza and Elzevir, as of little authority. His reasons are, generally, the want on the part of the editors, of a sufficient number of ancient and good manuscripts of critical judgment, and of the critical aids which later researches have accumulated. T

Erasmus is entitled to the honour of having first given the Greek Testament to the world. Before the Complutensian editors could procure from Pope Leo X. a license for the publication of their work, he had published two editions, and a third appeared simultaneously with it. The first was printed at Basle, in 1516, the second in 1519, and the third in 1522, with

* "Nec ea, in quibus codices versiones at Patres inter se dissonant, sic esse incerta, ut quid preferas plane nescias; verum ex criticae artis regulis alia certo, alia probabili ratione posse definiri; quæ autem restant dubia-illius fere esse monumenti."-Griesb. Prolegom. in N. T. p. xxxix.

The first six chapters of St. John's Gospel were printed at Venice, by Aldus Manutius, in 1504, 4to.; and the whole of St. John's Gospel, in Greek and Latin, at Tubigen, 1512, 4to. See Le Long, Bibliotheca Sacra. ed. Masch. P. ii. vol. iii. p. 624.

Ibid, P. i. vol. i. pp. 332–339.

Marsh's Michælis, vol. ii. p. 431, sqq.

"Iam si transferas hæc ad Novi Testamenti editiones, intelliges, nec Complutensem, nec Erasmicas, neque compilatas ex his Stephanicas, Bezanas et Elzivirianas editiones ulla per se pollere auctoritate."-Griesb. Prolegom. in N. T. p. xxxv. ¶Between 1764 and 1769, a warm controversy was carried on between Semler, against, and Goeze in defence of the Complutensian Bible. Marsh gives the titles of the several publications in his notes to Michalis, vol. ii. p. 851.