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

[4] (Which be “the recognized principles of Textual Criticism”?—a question asked in passing.)

But give me leave to ask in passing,—Which, pray, are “the recognized principles of Criticism” to which you refer? I profess I have never met with them yet; and I am sure it has not been for want of diligent enquiry. You have publicly charged me before your Diocese with being “innocently ignorant of the now established principles of Textual Criticism.”[854] But why do you not state which those principles are? I am surprised. You are for ever vaunting “principles which have been established by the investigations and reasonings” of Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles:[855]—“the principles of Textual Criticism which are accepted and recognized by the great majority of modern Textual Critics:”[856]—“the principles on which the Textual Criticism of the last fifty years has been based:”[857]—but you never condescend to explain which be the “principles” you refer to. For the last time,—Who established those “Principles”? and, Where are they to be seen “established”?

I will be so candid with you as frankly to avow that the only two “principles” with which I am acquainted as held, with anything like consent, by “the modern Textual Critics” to whom you have surrendered your judgment, are—(1st) A robust confidence in the revelations of their own inner consciousness: and (2ndly) A superstitious partiality for two codices written in the uncial character,—for which partiality they are able to assign no intelligible reason. You put the matter as neatly as I could desire at page 19 of your Essay,—where you condemn, with excusable warmth, “those who adopt the easy method of using some favourite Manuscript,”—or of exercising “some supposed power of divining the original Text;”—as if those were “the only necessary agents for correcting the Received Text.” Why the evidence of codices b and א,—and perhaps the evidence of the VIth-century codex d,—(“the singular codex” as you call it; and it is certainly a very singular codex indeed:)—why, I say, the evidence of these two or three codices should be thought to outweigh the evidence of all other documents in existence,—whether Copies, Versions, or Fathers,—I have never been able to discover, nor have their admirers ever been able to tell me.