the aim proposed as to exchange the ideal for what they believed to be practical; others have endeavoured to choose from the whole number of manuscripts (to which must be added, as resources for the construction of a text, the evidence furnished by early versions of the New Testament in various languages, and by quotations in the Christian Fathers) certain which might prove in the main to be safe guides to the earliest attainable text. Thus Bentley was at one time persuaded that the correction by MS. authority of the Received Text, and of the Latin Vulgate, would establish such marvellous similarity between the two, that we might be sure that we had the text from which Jerome made his translation in the fourth century.

This point, and this only, Lachmann thought it was possible for criticism to attain, on the authority of a few selected uncials, selected MSS. of the old Latin and Vulgate versions, and selected Fathers: he promised no ideal text, but one as correct as a Christian living in the fourth century would be likely to buy, and no more. Almost equally subjective was Dr. Tregelles' selection of authorities, though it was far from being so narrow as Lachmann's, yet, involving as it did an almost wholesale rejection of the testimony of cursives, it was nearly as capricious. The result of these and similar endeavours at selection has been a general discrediting of "plans for abridging the labour of investigation," and the recent strong affirmation of the critical principle that "every element of evidence must be allowed its full weight." *

It is obvious that, however independent may be the labours of a critic in the present day, he has not to commence his work absolutely de novo. The experience of scholars has led to the tabulation of certain results, commonly called Canons of Textual Criticism, external and internal, which, as they are generalisations from observa

* Hammond. Outlines, p. 94.

tions made in various fields, are applicable, in some degree, to the investigation of any literature extant in manuscript. And further, the same kind of observation has led to the classification of errors found to be inseparable from the work of the copyist-unconscious errors of sight, hearing, memory (shown in the omission or repetition of a syllable, or the passing from a word in one line to the same word in the next, the intervening words being omitted)—which, when the copy in which they occurred came to be used as an exemplar by subsequent copyists, propagated themselves, and often led to fatal corruption of the text by prompting unintelligent correction. Thus it is plain that a comparison of only two MSS., provided one be not a copy of the other, and both be not copies of the same copy, would account for, and eliminate from further critical consideration a vast proportion of their variations, the probability that independent copyists would make the same error in the same place being infinitesimally small. Such comparison, carried forward on a more extensive scale, naturally leads to the attribution of a certain character to each MS.: it discovers a proneness to one class of clerical error, exemption from error of another kind. This character assumes positive features, and becomes more determined, when the conscious action of the scribe, as revealed in his work, is taken into account. He betrays, it may be, a mental tendency to amplify, even to paraphrase; or to draw parallel, but not identical, passages into uniformity; or again, we find him concise where others are diffuse, obscure where others are smooth and easy.

We are prepared, then, to pass from what our editors term Internal Evidence of Readings, to Internal Evidence of Documents.* We cannot deal conclusively with each textual variation as it meets us. If we should attempt to do so at this stage of our inquiry, it must be upon one of

* W. and H., I. 543, II. 30.

the following grounds :-(1) Preponderance of mere number among the available MS. authorities, a principle which might lead us to the absurdity of arraying MSS. of a common late type against the early texts, or of counting as independent witnesses copies which on examination betray a common origin.* (2) Deference to a select number of authorities; but the age of a MS. not being in itself a sufficient criterion of its critical value, we are not yet in a position to make effectually such a selection. Moreover, such a limitation might prove abortive (as it occasionally did in the widely different schemes of Griesbach and Lachmann), when the testimony of the selected authorities proves inconclusive or hopelessly at variance, and a determinant, confessedly of inferior authority in itself, has to be sought outside the judicial circle, to settle the difference. (3) Intrinsic Probability: the certainty, or presumption, in the mind of the critic that the author must have said. this, and could not have said that. Such moral or subjective consideration, while it cannot be banished from Biblical any more than from any other literary study, appears to be entirely outside the pale of purely textual criticism. To this, as to conjectural emendation, recourse must only be had in case of individual dissatisfaction with the best attainable reading; and in its application the scholar, however highly qualified, speaks only for himself. The application of such a canon of Internal Evidence as that laid down by Mr. McClellan‡-viz., That no reading can possibly be original which contradicts the context of the passage or the tenor of the writing, must in every case depend upon preconceived ideas concerning the writing and its author, and may open the doors to emendation at least as subjective as that of the text of Eschylus by Mr. George Burges. Only when documentary attestation has said its last word do + W. and H., II. 20. The New Testament, &c., Vol. I., 1875, p. xxxv.

* W. and H., II. 42-3.

subjective considerations demand a respectful hearing; then the principle of congruity may make us legitimately doubt whether we have, in this passage or that, the ipsissima verba of Jesus or of Paul;* but, from the nature of the case, conclusive demonstration is impossible.

As we are now fairly within the domain of our editors' special and independent method, we will endeavour to mark the line of their procedure by frequent citation of Dr. Hort's own words. We have already seen the insufficiency of "Internal Evidence of Readings" :

A moment's consideration of the process of transmission shows how precarious it is to attempt to judge which of two or more readings is the most likely to be right, without considering which of the attesting documents or combinations of documents are the most likely to convey an unadulterated transcript of the original text; in other words, in dealing with matter purely traditional, to ignore the relative antecedent credibility of witnesses, and trust exclusively to our own inward power of singling out the true readings from among their counterfeits, wherever we see them. . . The comparative trustworthiness of documentary authorities constitutes a fresh class of facts at least as pertinent as any with which we have hitherto been dealing, and much less likely to be misinterpreted by personal surmises. The first step towards obtaining a sure foundation is a consistent application of the principle that KNOWLEDGE OF

DOCUMENTS SHOULD PRECEDE FINAL JUDGEMENT UPON READINGS

(II. 31).

To the required knowledge of a document both external evidence and internal character contribute. Under the first head comes the determination of the date, which, if the scribe has given no direct indication,t must be estimated from the style of writing, the material employed,

Of course, the sphere of the higher criticism is here entered, as, e.g., when we estimate the relation of the recorded discourses to the actua words of Jesus; the probability of his allusion to Gentiles, Matt. vi. 7, 32, or the appropriateness to its position of John iv. 22.

The earliest dated MS. of the New Testament (S of the Gospels) is of the year 949.

presence or absence of breathings, accents, punctuationmarks, division into lessons or sections, &c. But when the skill of the expert in this department has fixed an approximate date, it must be remembered still that relative antiquity, while furnishing a presumption as to the relative freedom of a MS. from the corruptions that seem inseparable from repeated copyings, is by no means a final ground of preference. An examination of readings must now be undertaken, not for the purpose of adjudicating upon them one by one, but for the sake of arriving at an estimate of the character of the scribe and his performance. Here, as in any inductive science, a majority of observed cases will furnish a generalisation which, when applied to the remaining minority of cases which did not seem at first to be contributing to its formation, will now be found to derive fresh exemplification from them. The application, however, of this threefold process brings us face to face with new elements of difficulty.

The use of Internal Evidence of Documents has uncertainties of its own, some of which can be removed or materially diminished by special care and patience in the second and third stages of the process, while others are inherent, and cannot be touched without the aid of a fresh kind of evidence. They all arise from the fact that texts are, in one sense or another, not absolutely homogeneous. Internal knowledge of documents that are compared with each other should include all their chief characteristics, and these can only imperfectly be summed up under a broad statement of comparative excellence. General estimates of comparative excellence are at once shown to be insufficient by the fact that excellence itself is of various kinds; a document may be 'good' in one respect and 'bad' in another. The distinction between soundness and correctness, for instance, lies on the surface. One MS. will transmit a substantially pure text disfigured by the blunders of a careless scribe, another will reproduce a deeply adulterated text with smooth faultlessness (II. 35, 36).

W. and H., II. 33.