[654]. This version is printed by Anger, p. 170 sq.
[655]. See Anger, p. 149 sq., p. 166 sq.
[656]. These two versions are printed in Lewis’s New Testament translated by J. Wiclif (1731) p. 99 sq., and in Forshall and Madden’s Wycliffite Versions of the Holy Bible (1850) IV. p. 438 sq. They are also given by Anger p. 168 sq. (1843), who takes the rarer form from Lewis and the other from a Dresden MS. Dr Westcott also has printed the commoner version in his Canon, p. 457 (ed. 4), from Forshall and Madden.
Of one of these two versions Forshall and Madden give a collation of several MSS; the other is taken from a single MS (I. p. xxxii). Lewis does not state whence he derived the rarer of these two versions, but there can be little doubt that it came from the same MS Pepys. 2073 (belonging to Magd. Coll. Cambridge) from which it was taken by Forshall and Madden (I. p. lvii); since he elsewhere mentions using this MS (p. 104). The version is not known to exist in any other. Forshall and Madden give the date of the MS as about 1440.
[657]. From Forshall and Madden, IV. p. 438. The earliest MSS which contain the common version of the Laodicean Epistle (to which this prologue is prefixed) date about A.D. 1430.
[658]. Printed from Forshall and Madden l.c. I am assured by those who are thoroughly conversant with old English, that they can discern no difference of date in these two versions, and that they both belong probably to the early years of the 15th century. The rarer version is taken from a better Latin text than the other.
[659]. On Col. iv. 16. Erasmus is too hard upon the writer of this letter, when he charges him with such a mass of forgeries. He does not explain how this hypothesis is consistent with the condemnation of the Epistle to the Laodiceans in Hieron. Vir. Ill. 5 (quoted above p. 359).
[660]. Pauli Apostoli ad Laodicenses Epistola, Latine et Germanice, Hamburg, 1595, of which the preface is given in Fabricius Cod. Apocr. Nov. Test. II. p. 867. It is curious that the only two arguments against its genuineness which he thinks worthy of notice are (1) Its brevity; which he answers by appealing to the Epistle to Philemon; and (2) Its recommendation of works (‘quod scripsit opera esse facienda quæ sunt salutis æternæ’); which he explains to refer to works that proceed of faith.
[661]. See Bp. Davenant on Col. iv. 16: ‘Detestanda Stapletonis opinio, qui ipsius Pauli epistolam esse statuit, quam omnes patres ut adulterinam et insulsam repudiarunt: nec sanior conclusio, quam inde deducere voluit, posse nimirum ecclesiam germanam et veram apostoli Pauli epistolam pro sua authoritate e Canone excludere’. So also Whitaker Disputation on Scripture passim (see the references given above, p. 341, note [595]).
[662]. Ovid. Met. vii. 626 sq. ‘Jupiter huc, specie mortali, cumque parente Venit Atlantiades positis caducifer alis’ etc.