The Revision Revised / Three Articles Reprinted from the "Quarterly Review." I. The New Greek Text. II. The New English Version. III. Westcott and Hort's New Textual Theory. To Which is Added a Reply to Bishop Ellicott's Pamphlet in Defence of the Revisers and Their Greek Text of the New Testament: Including a Vindication of the Traditional Reading of 1 Timothy III. 16.

by John William Burgon

[2] The Bishop's pamphlet was anticipated and effectually disposed of, three weeks before it appeared, by the Reviewer's Third Article.

I am bound, at the same time, to acknowledge that you have been singularly unlucky. While you were penning your Defence, (namely, throughout the first four months of 1882,) I was making a fatal inroad into your position, by showing how utterly without foundation is the “Textual Theory” to which you and your co-Revisers have been so rash as to commit yourselves.[848] This fact I find duly recognized in your “Postscript.” “Since the foregoing pages were in print” (you say,) “a third article has appeared in the Quarterly Review, entitled ‘Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory.’ ”[849] Yes. I came before the public on the 16th of April; you on the 4th of May, 1882. In this way, your pamphlet was anticipated,—had in fact been fully disposed of, three weeks before it appeared. “The Reviewer,” (you complain at page 4,) “censures their [Westcott and Hort's] Text: in neither Article has he attempted a serious examination of the arguments which they allege in its support.” But, (as explained,) the “serious examination” which you reproach me with having hitherto failed to produce,—had been already three weeks in the hands of readers of the Quarterly before your pamphlet saw the light. You would, in consequence, [pg 372] have best consulted your own reputation, I am persuaded, had you instantly recalled and suppressed your printed sheets. What, at all events, you can have possibly meant, while publishing them, by adding (in your “Postscript” at page 79,)—“In this controversy it is not for us to interpose:” and again,—“We find nothing in the Reviewer's third article to require further answer from us:”—passes my comprehension; seeing that your pamphlet (page 11 to page 29) is an elaborate avowal that you have made Westcott and Hort's theory entirely your own. The Editor of the Speaker's Commentary, I observe, takes precisely the same view of your position. “The two Revisers” (says Canon Cook) “actually add a Postscript to their pamphlet of a single short page noticing their unexpected anticipation by the third Quarterly Review article; with the remark that ‘in this controversy (between Westcott and Hort and the Reviewer) it is not for us to interfere:’—as if Westcott and Hort's theory of Greek Revision could be refuted, or seriously damaged, without cutting the ground from under the Committee of Revisers on the whole of this subject.”[850]