[16] The calamity of the New Greek Text traced to its source.

There is no difficulty in accounting for the most serious of the foregoing phenomena. They are the inevitable consequence of your having so far succumbed at the outset to Drs. Westcott and Hort as to permit them to communicate bit by bit, under promise of secrecy, their own outrageous Revised Text of the N. T. to their colleagues, accompanied by a printed disquisition in advocacy of their own peculiar critical views. One would have expected in the Chairman of the Revising body, that the instant he became aware of any such manœuvre on the part of two of the society, he would have remonstrated with them somewhat as follows, or at least to this effect:—

This cannot be permitted, Gentlemen, on any terms. We have not been appointed to revise the Greek Text of the N. T. Our one business is to revise the Authorized English Version,—introducing such changes only as are absolutely necessary. The Resolutions of Convocation are express on this head: and it is my duty to see that they are faithfully carried out. True, that we shall be obliged to avail ourselves of our skill in Textual Criticism—(such as it is)—to correct plain and clear errors in the Greek: but there we shall be obliged to stop. I stand pledged to Convocation on this point by my own recent utterances. That two of our members should be solicitous (by a side-wind) to obtain for their own singular Revision of the Greek Text the sanction of our united body,—is 414 intelligible enough: but I should consider myself guilty of a breach of Trust were I to lend myself to the promotion of their object. Let me hope that I have you all with me when I point out that on every occasion when Dr. Scrivener, on the one hand, (who in matters of Textual Criticism is facile princeps among us,) and Drs. Westcott and Hort on the other, prove to be irreconcileably opposed in their views,—there the Received Greek Text must by all means be let alone. We have agreed, you will remember, to make the current Textus Receptus the standard; departing from it only when critical or grammatical considerations show that it is clearly necessary.⁹¹⁴⁹¹⁴Bp. Ellicott on Revision, p. 30. It would be unreasonable, in my judgment, that anything in the Received Text should be claimed to be a clear and plain error, on which those who represent the two antagonistic schools of Criticism find themselves utterly unable to come to any accord. In the meantime, Drs. Westcott and Hort are earnestly recommended to submit to public inspection that Text which they have been for twenty years elaborating, and which for some time past has been in print. Their labours cannot be too freely ventilated, too searchingly examined, too generally known: but I strongly deprecate their furtive production here. All too eager advocacy of the novel Theory of the two accomplished Professors, I shall think it my duty to discourage, and if need be to repress. A printed volume, enforced by the suasive rhetoric of its two producers, gives to one side an unfair advantage. But indeed I must end as I began, by respectfully inviting Drs. Westcott and Hort to remember that we meet here, not in order to fabricate a new Greek Text, but in order to revise our Authorized English Version.... Such, in substance, is the kind of Allocution which it was to have been expected that the Episcopal Chairman of a Revising body would address to 415 his fellow-labourers the first time he saw them enter the Jerusalem chamber furnished with the sheets of Westcott and Hort's N. T.; especially if he was aware that those Revisers had been individually talked over by the Editors of the work in question, (themselves Revisionists); and perceived that the result of the deliberations of the entire body was in consequence, in a fair way of becoming a foregone conclusion,—unless indeed, by earnest remonstrance, he might be yet in time to stave off the threatened danger.

But instead of saying anything of this kind, my lord Bishop, it is clear from your pamphlet that you made the Theory of Drs. Westcott and Hort your own Theory; and their Text, by necessary consequence, in the main your own Text. You lost sight of all the pledges you had given in Convocation. You suddenly became a partizan. Having secured the precious advocacy of Bp. Wilberforce,—whose sentiments on the subject you had before adopted,—you at once threw him and them overboard.⁹¹⁵⁹¹⁵The Bp. attended only one meeting of the Revisers. (Newth, p. 125.)... I can scarcely imagine, in a good man like yourself, conduct more reckless,—more disappointing,—more unintelligible. But I must hasten on.