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alluded to by the earliest writers of the Church; and probably there never was a century, after Christian doctrine came to be stated and defended by documentary evidence, when such discrepancies were not noticed. Who can tell whether the first transcripts of the sacred autographs did not lay the foundation of some of the vexatæ quæstiones of our day? Indeed, this scarcely admits of doubt, for by no course of argument can it be proved that the earliest copyists were specially guarded against error. Most probably those autographs attracted to themselves much less veneration than we should give them if we now had them, and the fact of their being all lost so as never to be once mentioned in early history, shews that before their full importance to dogmatic and apologetic theology was appreciated they had altogether disappeared. When we take a full and calm view of the early Churches, to which the Epistles were sent, as we find their characters portrayed in the New Testament, we see no reason to conclude that they would treasure the apostolic letters with any deep veneration. If the societies of Galatia and Corinth could so readily forget the teaching and example of St. Paul during his absence, it is clear that they saw, at least, as much of the human element in his character as of the divine; and the ideas they had of his person they would transfer to his letters. We are not, therefore, allowed to infer that in copying them any very peculiar sense of awe and responsibility would be felt by the scribes, even if they were Christians, which is, of course, a matter of doubt.

We do not present the question as an irrelevant one, and we are certain we are not deficient in proper reverence in so doing, when we ask, Have we reason to believe that the original codices of the Gospels and Epistles were perfectly free from clerical errors? It will be at once seen that the answer given will be in accordance with the opinions entertained of the nature and extent of Inspiration, and as that is an open question, it must ever remain undecided. It was never claimed by the sacred writers themselves that they never committed a verbal or literal error, and such a claim was never set up for them by others. But unless it can be shewn without any doubt that the first codices were perfect in every part, there must always be a serious impediment in the way of any attempt to restore our text to pristine integrity. A reading-we will concede that it is a minor one-which is now doubtful, may have taken its rise, if not from apostolic hands, yet from those of an apostolic amanuensis, and thus the restitution of what was intended to be written may be simply impossible.

A great outcry may meet such a hypothesis in some quar

ters, but if we contemplate it calmly it will be seen to be a very fair one, and that it involves no serious consequences. If it is granted, it only places the first readers of the Gospels and Epistles in the same state as the readers of the first transcripts, since we presume no one will contend for their miraculous freedom from the least error. Reasoning by analogy, we may conclude, that as Divine Providence never has interfered to give us perfect copies of the sacred autographs, so it did not interfere to make them altogether perfect. If it were necessary that such perfection should exist in the first instance, when the writers themselves were living, and could be appealed to in any doubtful case, it must have been still more so when they had left the world, and could not be consulted. The plain fact of the case is, that verbal exactness in the documents of the Christian faith has never been necessary, for if so it would have been granted and secured. The same Providence which raised up faithful men to succeed the apostles, because they were indispensable to the perpetuity of the Church, could as easily have secured perfect copies of the Scriptures; and the fact that such interference has not taken place, seems to lead to the conclusion that such freedom from all verbal error was not essential.

The bearing of the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament Scriptures is twofold, having a relation, in the first instance, to the history of the Church, and, secondly, to the responsibility of the Church as the "witness and keeper of Holy Writ." Considered from the first point of view, the subject is of little importance, for we find that religious truth has never been impeded by verbal discrepancies, but that in the midst of only a moral certainty as to what was written in every case by holy men, the orthodox faith has ever preserved a firm, undeviating, and consistent front. If we put together all the various readings which have been known to exist, from the times of Origen and Jerome to those of Wetstein and Tischendorf, how almost infinitesimal has their influence been on the success or the detriment of Christianity? Broad and catholic statements of Divine Truth, as we find them in the New Testament, and as they were clearly promulgated by the lips of Apostles, could not be made dependent on the small amount of transcriptional error which has been recognized from the beginning. The Word of God could not be bound to the niceties which form the staple of all collations, whether of the great codices A, B, and C, or of the numerous cursive manuscripts, whose value some persons estimate so lightly. We need not therefore attach much importance to Textual Criticism in its relation to the welfare of the Church at large, since it is plain that if the variations were even greater

than they are, they could have no important influence on the progress or purity of Divine Truth. Who can shew that the Church has ever really suffered by the marked discrepancies of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures of the Old Testament, or by the equally prominent variations of the Greek and Latin Vulgates of the New? It is natural that men should magnify their office, whatever it may be, and critics are not less jealous for their honour than other men; but with all due respect for them, and with the greatest possible desire to do them honour, as labouring in a field which we love to cultivate, we must protest against its being thought that their greatest exertions and triumphs contribute much, either to the spread or the purity of vital Christianity. Can it be thought that if the Textus Receptus of the Elzevirs had been taken as the unquestionable authority from the Reformation to this time, any perceptible effect would have been produced on Christianity at large? Or that there would have been less religious truth or less devout practice in the world?

none.

But the case is entirely altered when we come to consider the responsibility of the Church, either as a whole or in its individual members. Such is the high place occupied in the Christian system by the Holy Scriptures, and such the deep reverence which every good man is bound to pay them, that the preservation of their integrity ought to be considered a duty second to To be indifferent on such a subject must be a mark of a careless mind, or of a heart not sufficiently sensible of the claims of Divine Truth. Whatever may be the purposes of Divine Providence in relation to the exact measure of perfection attainable, it is our duty to try and make the Scriptures perfect. Whatever the lapse of time, or human frailty, or wilful misinterpretation may have omitted, we must endeavour to supply; whatever has been added we must aim at taking away. A particle more or less may have no appreciable effect on the truth, but as a portion of a Divine structure, we must strive to place it just where the artificer intended it to be in the building. We dare not add to the Word, we dare not subtract from it. Results such as we know nothing of may depend on literal correctness, or it may be of no importance; but our duty is plain. We must feel that to labour to remove from the Scriptures all excess, or defect, or error, is a most noble pursuit, and that what is said of it in the quotations given above is only a fair representation of its value and dignity.

At the Reformation, attention was called to the Holy Scriptures, and the art of printing soon made more available the documents which before had existed only in manuscript. The New Testament was first printed by the editors of the Complu

tensian Polyglot, but first published by Erasmus in 1516, and numerous are the disquisitions to which those copies have given rise, as to the Codices used, and their value and authority. Of course, these editors knew well what was the text of the New Testament in general use, and they supplied one in print which came nearest, in their opinion, to the traditional one, and which, although much neglected, had always been in use by the learned. The multiplication of copies by the press, soon, however, caused attention to be drawn to various readings, and it became a worthy task for future editors to attempt the greatest possible correctness; and it was not long before certain sources of information were recognized as legitimate, the principal being manuscripts, versions, and quotations in Christian writers. At first conjecture was resorted to, but it is now given up by all sober critics, at least in the New Testament.

Manuscripts constitute the first and most legitimate source of information, as to what the text of the Greek Testament should be. These are of various ages, and of very different values, though on the latter point critics are not agreed. But we are not going to write on a subject so well understood by our readers, and we will now turn to the department of Biblical criticism to which Mr. Scrivener has contributed so valuable a portion in the volume the title of which we have already given. As manuscripts are perishable, and as they are scattered over the world, and are, therefore, not easy of access, it has always been the aim of scholars to get fac-similes executed, so that the precious documents may be perpetuated, and their collation made more

Mr. Scrivener, already well known as a labourer in the field of manuscript collation, has here furnished a splendid volume, in which the whole of the Codex Augiensis is printed in exact transcript, and we have to thank him for the successful termination of his arduous undertaking. We will now give some account of this document, as the means are furnished to us by the very valuable introduction of Mr. Scrivener.

The Codex Augiensis is a Greek and Latin manuscript of St. Paul's Epistles, written in uncial letters, probably of the ninth century, deposited in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (B. 17. 1). It is written on one hundred and thirty-six quarto leaves of fine vellum, 9 inches long by 74 broad, and has a rude binding in wood, such as was common in Germany and the Low Countries some centuries ago; on the leathern back are stamped the initials of one of its late owners (G. M. W.). Each page contains twenty-eight lines, and is divided into two columns, wherein the Latin version is set alongside of the Greek text, the Latin column being always placed outside.

κοσμου.

This copy commences Rom. iii. 19, μw λeryeɩ, and the Greek ends, Philem. v. 20, ev xpw. There also occur the following hiatus in the Greek; 1 Cor. iii. 8, to ver. 16, oikei ev vμiv; ibid. vi. 7. to the end of ver. 14; and Col. ii. 1, after λaodikia to ver. 8, коσμоν. In all these places, after Rom. iii. 19, the Latin version is complete, being carried on to the end of the Epistle to the Hebrews; but the very same hiatus are found in the Greek text and Latin Version of the CODEX BOERNERIANUS (Matthæi, 1791), although the latter document contains portions of the Epistle to the Romans before the place where the Codex Augiensis begins.

The recent history of the manuscript may be traced by means of the inscriptions and notes at its beginning and end. It was first the property of the monastery whence it derives its name, that of Augia Major, or Augia Dives, Richenau (rich meadow) in a fertile island in the lower part of Lake Constance, in Baden; not Augia Rheni, Rheinau (meadow of the Rhine) on an island near the cataract of Schaffhausen, as Michalis and others state (Reeves's edition of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, pref. p. xxii). Bentley's note, "Monasterium Augiæ, in Belgis, ubi institutus est Goddeschalchus," seems to point to Orbais, in the diocese of Soissons, and modern department ot the Marne, some thirty miles east of Paris. If Wetstein be right in supplying "Concilii" after "Basiliensis" [A.D. 1431] in the earliest inscription, p. 272, the book must have belonged to that monastery in the fifteenth century, whence it came into the possession of G. M. Wepfer, of Schaffhausen, and then of L. Ch. Mieg, who permitted Wetstein to examine it. Wetstein induced Bentley to purchase this Codex, at Heidelberg, in 1718, the German bookseller parting with it at cost price (250 Dutch florins), in consideration of the fame and learning of the prince of English scholars. Bentley, as is seen from his manuscript notes, formed a high estimate of the Codex Augiensis, and used it for his projected edition of the Greek Testament. Mr. Scrivener has compared Bentley's collation (consisting of the Greek text only) with his own transcript, and extracted the few notes interspersed with it from the margin of his copy of the Oxford Greek Testament, 1765, now preserved with his other papers and books in Trinity College Library. The first published collation of the manuscript was that of Wetstein, in whose notation it is marked F of the Pauline Epistles; but as this was easily seen to be very imperfect, it was again examined by Tischendorf in 1842, and by Dr. Tregelles in 1845, for their editions of the Greek Testament. The result of Tischendorf's labours appears in his manual N. T. of 1849; but it is obviously impossible, in so small a volume, to do

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