[8] Bp. Ellicott's strange notions about the Textus Receptus.

Your strangest mistakes and misrepresentations however are connected with the Textus Receptus. It evidently exercises you sorely that with the Quarterly Reviewer, the Received Text is a standard, by comparison with which all extant documents, however indisputable their antiquity, are measured.⁸⁷¹⁸⁷¹P. 12. But pray,—

(1) By comparison with what other standard, if not by the Received Text, would you yourself obtain the measure 384 of all extant documents, however ancient?... This first. And next,

(2) Why should the indisputable antiquity of a document be supposed to disqualify it from being measured by the same standard to which (but only for convenience) documents of whatever date,—by common consent of scholars, at home and abroad,—are invariably referred? And next,

(3) Surely, you cannot require to have it explained to you that a standard of comparison, is not therefore of necessity a standard of excellence. Did you ever take the trouble to collate a sacred manuscript? If you ever did, pray with what did you make your collation? In other words, what standard did you employ?... Like Walton and Ussher,—like Fell and Mill,—like Bentley, and Bengel, and Wetstein,—like Birch, and Matthæi, and Griesbach, and Scholz,—like Lachmann, and Tregelles, and Tischendorf, and Scrivener,—I venture to assume that you collated your manuscript,—whether it was of disputable or of indisputable antiquity,—with an ordinary copy of the Received Text. If you did not, your collation is of no manner of use. But, above all,

(4) How does it come to pass that you speak so scornfully of the Received Text, seeing that (at p. 12 of your pamphlet) you assure your readers that its pedigree may be traced back to a period perhaps antecedent to the oldest of our extant manuscripts? Surely, a traditional Text which (according to you) dates from about a.d. 300, is good enough for the purpose of Collation!

(5) At last you say,—

If there were reason to suppose that the Received Text represented verbatim et literatim the text which was current at Antioch in the days of Chrysostom, it would still be impossible to regard it as a standard from which there was no appeal.⁸⁷²⁸⁷²P. 13.

Really, my lord Bishop, you must excuse me if I declare plainly that the more I attend to your critical utterances, the more I am astonished. From the confident style in which you deliver yourself upon such matters, and especially from your having undertaken to preside over a Revision of the Sacred Text, one would suppose that at some period of your life you must have given the subject a considerable amount of time and attention. But indeed the foregoing sentence virtually contains two propositions neither of which could possibly have been penned by one even moderately acquainted with the facts of Textual Criticism. For first,

(a) You speak of representing verbatim et literatim the Text which was current at Antioch in the days of Chrysostom. Do you then really suppose that there existed at Antioch, at any period between a.d. 354 and a.d. 407, some one definite Text of the N. T. capable of being so represented?—If you do, pray will you indulge us with the grounds for such an extraordinary supposition? Your acquaintance (Dr. Tregelles) will tell you that such a fancy has long since been swept away at once and for ever. And secondly,

(b) You say that, even if there were reason to suppose that the Received Text were such-and-such a thing,—it would still be impossible to regard it as a standard from which there was no appeal.

But pray, who in his senses,—what sane man in Great Britain,—ever dreamed of regarding the Received,—aye, or any other known Text,—as a standard from which there shall be no appeal? Have I ever done so? Have I ever implied as much? If I have, show me where. You refer your readers to the following passage in my first Article:—

What precedes admits to some extent of further numerical illustration. It is discovered that, in 111 pages, ... the serious 386 deflections of a from the Textus Receptus amount in all to only 842: whereas in c they amount to 1798: in b, to 2370: in א, to 3392: in d, to 4697. The readings peculiar to a within the same limits are 133: those peculiar to c are 170. But those of b amount to 197: while א exhibits 443: and the readings peculiar to d (within the same limits), are no fewer than 1829.... We submit that these facts are not altogether calculated to inspire confidence in codices b א c d.—p. 14.

But, do you really require to have it explained to you that it is entirely to misunderstand the question to object to such a comparison of codices as is found above, (viz. in pages 14 and 17,) on the ground that it was made with the text of Stephanus lying open before me? Would not the self-same phenomenon have been evolved by collation with any other text? If you doubt it, sit down and try the experiment for yourself. Believe me, Robert Etienne in the XVIth century was not the cause why cod. b in the IVth and cod. d in the VIth are so widely discordant and divergent from one another: a and c so utterly at variance with both.⁸⁷³⁸⁷³See above, pp. 12: 30-3: 34-5: 46-7: 75: 94-6: 249: 262: 289: 319. We must have some standard whereby to test,—wherewith to compare,—Manuscripts. What is more, (give me leave to assure you,) to the end of time it will probably be the practice of scholars to compare MSS. of the N. T. with the Received Text. The hopeless discrepancies between our five old uncials, can in no more convenient way be exhibited, than by referring each of them in turn to one and the same common standard. And,—What standard more reasonable and more convenient than the Text which, by the good Providence of God, was universally employed throughout Europe for the first 300 years after the invention of printing? being practically identical with the Text which (as you yourself admit) was in popular use at the end of three centuries from the date of the sacred autographs themselves: in other word, being more than 1500 years old.