[5] Bp. Ellicott's and the Reviewer's respective methods, contrasted.

Waiving this however, (for it is beside the point,) I venture to ask,—With what show of reason can you pretend that I sustain my charges against codices א b c l, by a rough comparison of these ancient authorities with the Textus Receptus?⁸⁵⁸⁸⁵⁸P. 41, and so at p. 77.... Will you deny that it is a mere misrepresentation of the plain facts of the case, to say so? Have I not, on the contrary, on every occasion referred Readings in 376 dispute,—the reading of א b c l on the one hand, the reading of the Textus Receptus on the other,—simultaneously to one and the same external standard? Have I not persistently enquired for the verdict—so far as it has been obtainable—of consentient Antiquity? If I have sometimes spoken of certain famous manuscripts (א b c d namely,) as exhibiting fabricated Texts, have I not been at the pains to establish the reasonableness of my assertion by showing that they yield divergent,—that is contradictory, testimony?

The task of laboriously collating the five old uncials throughout the Gospels, occupied me for five-and-a-half years, and taxed me severely. But I was rewarded. I rose from the investigation profoundly convinced that, however important they may be as instruments of Criticism, codices א b c d are among the most corrupt documents extant. It was a conviction derived from exact Knowledge and based on solid grounds of Reason. You, my lord Bishop, who have never gone deeply into the subject, repose simply on Prejudice. Never having at any time collated codices א a b c d for yourself, you are unable to gainsay a single statement of mine by a counter-appeal to facts. Your textual learning proves to have been all obtained at second-hand,—taken on trust. And so, instead of marshalling against me a corresponding array of Ancient Authorities,—you invariably attempt to put me down by an appeal to Modern Opinion. The majority of modern Critics (you say) have declared the manuscripts in question not only to be wholly undeserving of such charges, but, on the contrary, to exhibit a text of comparative purity.⁸⁵⁹⁸⁵⁹P. 41.

The sum of the difference therefore between our respective methods, my lord Bishop, proves to be this:—that 377 whereas I endeavour by a laborious accumulation of ancient Evidence to demonstrate that the decrees of Lachmann, of Tischendorf and of Tregelles, are untrustworthy; your way of reducing me to silence, is to cast Lachmann, Tregelles and Tischendorf at every instant in my teeth. You make your appeal exclusively to them. It would be difficult (you say) to find a recent English Commentator of any considerable reputation who has not been influenced, more or less consistently, by one or the other of these three Editors:⁸⁶⁰⁸⁶⁰P. 5. (as if that were any reason why I should do the same!) Because I pronounce the Revised reading of S. Luke ii. 14, a grievous perversion of the truth of Scripture, you bid me consider that in so speaking I am censuring Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles. You seem in fact to have utterly missed the point of my contention: which is, that the ancient Fathers collectively (a.d. 150 to a.d. 450),—inasmuch as they must needs have known far better than Lachmann, Tregelles, or Tischendorf, (a.d. 1830 to a.d. 1880,) what was the Text of the New Testament in the earliest ages,—are perforce far more trustworthy guides than they. And further, that whenever it can be clearly shown that the Ancients as a body say one thing, and the Moderns another, the opinion of the Moderns may be safely disregarded.

When therefore I open your pamphlet at the first page, and read as follows:—A bold assault has been made in recent numbers of the Quarterly Review upon the whole fabric of Criticism which has been built up during the last fifty years by the patient labour of successive editors of the New Testament,⁸⁶¹⁸⁶¹P. 3.—I fail to discover that any practical inconvenience results to myself from your announcement. The same plaintive strain reappears at p. 39; where, having 378 pointed out that the text of the Revisers is, in all essential features, the same as that text in which the best critical editors, during the past fifty years, are generally agreed,—you insist that thus, any attack made on the text of the Revisers is really an attack on the critical principles that have been carefully and laboriously established during the last half-century. With the self-same pathetic remonstrance you conclude your labours. If, (you say) the Revisers are wrong in the principles which they have applied to the determination of the Text, the principles on which the Textual Criticism of the last fifty years has been based, are wrong also.⁸⁶²⁸⁶²P. 77.... Are you then not yet aware that the alternative which seems to you so alarming is in fact my whole contention? What else do you imagine it is that I am proposing to myself throughout, but effectually to dispel the vulgar prejudice,—say rather, to plant my heel upon the weak superstition,—which for the last fifty years has proved fatal to progress in this department of learning; and which, if it be suffered to prevail, will make a science of Textual Criticism impossible? A shallow empiricism has been the prevailing result, up to this hour, of the teaching of Lachmann, and Tischendorf, and Tregelles.