from the accretions which have gathered round it in the course of ages. Their motto, as true as it is simple, will be, "Bonus textuarius est bonus theologus."

And let us not suppose that the object, or the effect, of sacred criticism is to unsettle the text of Scripture. As Mr. Scrivener has forcibly put it,—

"Critics have not created the variations they have discovered in MSS. and versions. . . . Were the progress of the science less hopeful than we believe it to be, one great truth is admitted on all hands,— the almost complete freedom of Holy Scripture from the bare suspicion of wilful corruption; the absolute identity of the testimony of every known copy in respect to doctrine and spirit, and the main drift of every argument and every narrative through the entire volume of inspiration. Or take the well-known saying of the great Bentley Make your 30,000 [variations] as many more, if the number of copies can ever reach that sum ;... put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and yet, with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same.' Or take lastly the beautiful words of Dean Stanley: "The Koran prides itself on the perfection of its composition-on its freedom from all blemishes of diction or statement. Its pure Arabic style is regarded as a proof of its divinity. To translate it into other languages is esteemed by orthodox Mussulmen as impiety; and when it is translated, its beauty is lost. It is maintained to be in every word and point a transcript of the Divine original. Till quite recently it was forbidden to be printed even in Arabic, lest any of the sacred letters should be injured. Such is the strength of the Koran. In far other and opposite quarters lies the strength of the Bible. True its sacred text is uncertain; and this uncertainty is adduced by Mahometans as a cogent argument in their dispute with Christian missionaries. True; but the Christian missionary, if he be well instructed in his own religion, will reply that the Divine authority, which in the Koran is ascribed to the words and syllables, is in the Bible far more deeply rooted. The various readings, which in the Koran were suppressed once for all by the Caliph Othman, have broken out freely by thousands over the whole face of the Christian Scriptures; the stumbling-blocks here and there of faithless disciples, but the delight of Christian scholarship, the safeguards of Christian doctrine, the relics of Christian antiquity. True, we have been so free with the sacred words as to allow them to range through hundreds of versions, running the risk of false or partial readings, for the chance of their wider diffusion. Even the Apostles used the Septuagint instead of the original, in spite of its manifold deviations. But the Bible has stood the process. The New Testament alone, it is said, of ancient books, actually gains by its reappearance in the languages of England and Germany. So little does its force depend on its words, so mightily does its spirit work even through the sundry times and divers manners' of modern Gentile western nations.”

What then, we ask again, are the sources of our sacred text? They are three in number :

1. Manuscripts of the Greek Testament, or portions of it. 2. Ancient versions of the New Testament in various languages.

3. Citations from the Greek Testament, or its versions, made by early writers.

I. Of these, it is evident that the first class is by far the most important. Versions, and the writings of Fathers, being themselves contained in MSS., are liable to all the uncertainties that can affect the original Scriptures. It is at least as hard to arrive at their true readings as it is to find out the true readings of the Greek MSS. themselves; and of course, when found out, the result is far less trustworthy and valuable. The first and chief sources, therefore, of the text of the New Testament are the extant Greek MSS. themselves. These may be divided into two great classes :—

(a) Those written in uncial or capital letters.

(b) Those written in the cursive or running-hand of ordinary life.

All MSS. are known and indexed by various letters or numbers; the uncial MSS. being designated by capital letters, and the numerous cursive by small ones, and, when these are exhausted, by numbers. The custom arose, it is believed, from the accident that A was the first letter in the word Alexandrinus, which was the name of the earliest MS. of first-rate importance known to scholars.

Of the great MSS. of the Gospels, there are five of chief rank, though many fragments are, as far as they go, quite as valuable. These are,

1. The Codex Sinaiticus, the discovery of which we related at the beginning of this paper. It is known by the first letter in the Hebrew alphabets (Aleph), and is now at St. Petersburgh. This and the Vatican MS. (known as B), of which we shall speak presently, are certainly the oldest and the most valuable that are at present known. These alone are as old as the fourth century. An able and accurate scholar thus speaks of the two MSS. :

"The result of my investigation of the Codex Sinaiticus is perfectly conclusive, I think, (1) as to its genuineness; (2) as to its very near relationship to Cod. B (the Vatican MS.); but (3) its independence of B, in this sense at least, that it is neither a copy of B, nor a copy of any MS. from which B has been copied, mediately or immediately. The variations of & from B are enough to show this. The common origin of the text which they may be said (speaking broadly) to exhibit, must be sought, I think, some considerable way back from either. As this common origin cannot be placed later than the third

contain

century, it is evident that any reading which both B and must be regarded as having been at least a recognised reading in (say) the middle of the third century, i.e., as having the largest amount possible of documentary authority. Possibly a consensus of A (the Alexandrian MS.), C (the Paris Cod. Ephraemi), with the Latin and Syrian versions (when it can be proved), may give an almost equal authority to some other reading, as having been also known at an equally early date. If instances of this can be found, internal considerations must decide, or the reading be left doubtful."

This leads us naturally to a short account of the only other extant MS. of an equally early date, viz., the above-mentioned Codex Vaticanus-the great glory of the Vatican Library at Rome. Unfortunately for Biblical criticism, and for the credit of the papal government, it is so guarded by the zeal and caprice of its possessors, that it is impossible to make that use of it which is so much needed, and which scholars have long desired. It has indeed been edited by Cardinal Mai, but so carelessly and unskilfully that it can hardly be said to be of any use.

"When once it is stated," says Mr. Scrivener, "that the type was set from some printed Greek Testament, the readings of the Codex itself being inserted as corrections, and the whole revised by means of an assistant, who read the proof-sheets to the Cardinal while he inspected the manuscript, no one will look for accuracy from a method which could not possibly lead to it. Critics of every shade of opinion are unanimous on one point, that a new edition of the Codex Vaticanus is as imperatively needed as ever; one which shall preserve with accuracy all that the first hand has written, and wherever any of the previous collators is in error, shall expressly state the true reading."

But though the MS. is not, alas! as available as it might be, its general character is well known. It contains the New Testament complete down to Hebrews ix. 14; the rest of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with the Pastoral Epistles; and the Book of Revelation, being written in a considerably later hand, and being comparatively worthless.

There are several marks of great antiquity in the MS. The fineness of the vellum, the simplicity and elegance of the penmanship, the total absence of capital letters, the absence also of the usual divisions, and the substitution of another scheme of its own, the peculiar arrangement of three columns on a page, or six on the opened leaf of the volume, the formation of various letters, which were differently made in different ages-all serve, in the opinion of scholars, to point to the fourth century as the date of this venerable MS. Would that the Roman Church would follow the liberality of the Greek! Would that the Vatican MS. could take its place by the side of the Sinaitic not only in the shelves of the learned, but in the hands of all who

care to investigate the sources whence our own New Testament springs, and who desire, as far as may be, to see for themselves the very words in which God has spoken in time past unto our fathers.

England has the honour of being the home of the two next MSS. which comes under our notice. The Codex Alexandrinus (known as "A") is in the British Museum, where the open volume of the New Testament is publicly shown in the Manuscript Room. It came into this country from Constantinople, as a gift to Charles I., and was the earliest MS. of firstrate importance known to scholars. With a few gaps, the New Testament is complete in this copy from Matt. xxv. 6 onward. Mr. Scrivener concludes his review of it by saying, "This MS. is of the very greatest importance to the critic, inasmuch as it exhibits a text more nearly approaching that found in later copies, than is read in others of its high antiquity." In other words, it is the progenitor of our received text.

It is always an ungracious thing to differ from one to whom we are under such great obligations as we are to Mr. Scrivener. His work is most accurate, scholarly, and clear; but there is one point on which we are obliged to dissent from him, and that is, his excessive attachment to the received text. That text has hardly any claim to our regard, except such as custom gives; it is simply the text which was formed by Erasmus and Robert Stephens from most imperfect sources. Not one of the great MSS. was so much as known in their days. Mr. Scrivener himself confesses the inferiority of their materials. As the MS. which alone Erasmus used in the Apocalypse was deficient in the last six verses, he turned these into Greek from the Latin, and some portions of his version, which are found in no one known Greek MS. whatever, still cleave to our received text. "Similarly," as Mr. Scrivener says, "there is no cause for believing that either Codex B, or any MS. much resembling it in character, or any other document of high antiquity or firstrate importance, was employed by the editors of the earliest printed edition of the Greek Testament-the Complutensian Polyglot."

We may indeed thankfully admit that our received text might have been much worse. Had it followed our other English MS., known as "Beza," or "D," and now at Cambridge, we should have had some strange additions and variations; but, on the other hand, it might now be superseded by something much better; and to cling to it, instead of accepting thankfully the new and better treasures which God in His mercy has given to the Church of these latter days, seems to us a mistaken course, not only as regards scholarship, but also as regards practical usefulness.

Those who think highly of our received text, (which is, roughly speaking, the text of the cursive MSS.,) do so on the supposition that these MSS. contain a text much older than themselves; one running parallel, as it were, with that of the great Uncials, but somehow not committed to writing till a considerably later date. But if this be assumed, why may we not suppose that the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. also contain a text very much older than even they are, which would bring us to a very high antiquity indeed? However valuable the testimony of the later MSS. may be, when the earlier are divided in their readings, anything like a consensus of the old-" those title deeds," as Mr. Scrivener finely calls them, "of Christianity"—would, we believe, be adopted by such scholars as Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford, without any hesitation at all.

But this is a digression from the account of the Cambridge MS., "D." It was presented to the University by the famous Beza, in 1581, and is now to be seen in the new building of the Library. Its text is unique. No other MS. contains such bold and extensive interpolations (six hundred, it is said, in the Acts alone) countenanced, where they are supported at all, by the old Latin and some of the Syriac versions. It is by far the least valuable of the great Uncials, but curious and interesting in its divergences, as well as in its agreement with the old Latin.

MS. "C.," Codex Ephraemi, is the only other one we shall notice in this paper. It is in the Imperial Library at Paris, and contains fragments-alas! only fragments-of every part of the New Testament. The ancient writing is barely legible, having been removed about the 12th century to receive some Greek works of St. Ephraem, the great Syrian father. It is said that none but those who have seen Codex "C." can appreciate the difficulty of deciphering some parts of it. The full collation of this (as of so many of the Greek MSS.) we owe to Dr. Tischendorf. Its date is at least as early as that of the Alexandrian MS., i.e. probably some time in the fifth century.

We have spoken hitherto only of MSS. of the Gospels. There are just a few of the Acts and Epistles worthy of our attention. Of course, some of the great MSS. already mentioned contain the larger part of the New Testament. The Alexandrian, for instance, with two or three defects, is complete from the 25th chapter of St. Matthew; but it is the singular good fortune of the Codex Sinaiticus alone to have the whole of the New Testament unmutilated from first to last.

In most of the older MSS., the Catholic Epistles precede the Pauline; so that the usual division for these purposes is -(1) Gospels, (2) Acts and Catholic Epistles, (3) Pauline Epistles, (4) Apocalypse.