But then, delay would have been fatal. I saw plainly that unless a sharp blow was delivered immediately, the Citadel would be in the enemy's hands. I knew also that it was just possible to condense into 60 or 70 closely-printed pages what must logically prove fatal to the “Revision.” So I set to work; and during the long summer days of 1881 (June to September) the foremost of these three Articles was elaborated. When the October number of “the Quarterly” appeared, I comforted myself with the secret consciousness that enough was by this time on record, even had my life been suddenly brought to a close, to secure the ultimate rejection of the “Revision” of 1881. I knew that the “New Greek Text,” (and therefore the “New English Version”), [pg xi] had received its death-blow. It might for a few years drag out a maimed existence; eagerly defended by some,—timidly pleaded for by others. But such efforts could be of no avail. Its days were already numbered. The effect of more and yet more learned investigation,—of more elaborate and more extended inquiry,—must be to convince mankind more and yet more thoroughly that the principles on which it had been constructed were radically unsound. In the end, when partisanship had cooled down, and passion had evaporated, and prejudice had ceased to find an auditory, the “Revision” of 1881 must come to be universally regarded as—what it most certainly is,—the most astonishing, as well as the most calamitous literary blunder of the Age.
I. I pointed out that “the New Greek Text,”—which, in defiance of their instructions,[1] the Revisionists of “the Authorized English Version” had been so ill-advised as to spend ten years in elaborating,—was a wholly untrustworthy performance: was full of the gravest errors from beginning to end: had been constructed throughout on an entirely mistaken Theory. Availing myself of the published confession of one of the Revisionists,[2] I explained the nature of the calamity which had befallen the Revision. I traced the mischief home to its true authors,—Drs. Westcott and Hort; a copy of whose unpublished Text of the N. T. (the most vicious in existence) had been confidentially, and under pledges of the strictest secrecy, placed in the hands of every [pg xii] member of the revising Body.[3] I called attention to the fact that, unacquainted with the difficult and delicate science of Textual Criticism, the Revisionists had, in an evil hour, surrendered themselves to Dr. Hort's guidance: had preferred his counsels to those of Prebendary Scrivener, (an infinitely more trustworthy guide): and that the work before the public was the piteous—but inevitable—result. All this I explained in the October number of the “Quarterly Review” for 1881.[4]
II. In thus demonstrating the worthlessness of the “New Greek Text” of the Revisionists, I considered that I had destroyed the key of their position. And so perforce I had: for if the underlying Greek Text be mistaken, what else but incorrect must the English Translation be? But on examining the so-called “Revision of the Authorized Version,” I speedily made the further discovery that the Revised English would have been in itself intolerable, even had the Greek been let alone. In the first place, to my surprise and annoyance, it proved to be a New Translation (rather than a Revision of the Old) which had been attempted. Painfully apparent were the tokens which met me on every side that the Revisionists had been supremely eager not so much to correct none but “plain and clear errors,”—as to introduce as many changes into the English of the New Testament Scriptures as they conveniently could.[5] A skittish impatience of the admirable work before them, and a strange inability [pg xiii] to appreciate its manifold excellences:—a singular imagination on the part of the promiscuous Company which met in the Jerusalem Chamber that they were competent to improve the Authorized Version in every part, and an unaccountable forgetfulness that the fundamental condition under which the task of Revision had been by themselves undertaken, was that they should abstain from all but “necessary” changes:—this proved to be only part of the offence which the Revisionists had committed. It was found that they had erred through defective Scholarship to an extent, and with a frequency, which to me is simply inexplicable. I accordingly made it my business to demonstrate all this in a second Article which appeared in the next (the January) number of the “Quarterly Review,” and was entitled “The New English Translation.”[6]
III. Thereupon, a pretence was set up in many quarters, (but only by the Revisionists and their friends,) that all my labour hitherto had been thrown away, because I had omitted to disprove the principles on which this “New Greek Text” is founded. I flattered myself indeed that quite enough had been said to make it logically certain that the underlying “Textual Theory” must be worthless. But I was not suffered to cherish this conviction in quiet. It was again and again cast in my teeth that I had not yet grappled with Drs. Westcott and Hort's “arguments.” “Instead of condemning their Text, why do you not disprove their Theory?” It was tauntingly insinuated that I knew better than to cross swords [pg xiv] with the two Cambridge Professors. This reduced me to the necessity of either leaving it to be inferred from my silence that I had found Drs. Westcott and Hort's “arguments” unanswerable; or else of coming forward with their book in my hand, and demonstrating that in their solemn pages an attentive reader finds himself encountered by nothing but a series of unsupported assumptions: that their (so called) “Theory” is in reality nothing else but a weak effort of the Imagination: that the tissue which these accomplished scholars have been thirty years in elaborating, proves on inspection to be as flimsy and as worthless as any spider's web.
I made it my business in consequence to expose, somewhat in detail, (in a third Article, which appeared in the “Quarterly Review” for April 1882), the absolute absurdity,—(I use the word advisedly)—of “Westcott and Hort's New Textual Theory;”[7] and I now respectfully commend those 130 pages to the attention of candid and unprejudiced readers. It were idle to expect to convince any others. We have it on good authority (Dr. Westcott's) that “he who has long pondered over a train of Reasoning, becomes unable to detect its weak points.”[8] A yet stranger phenomenon is, that those who have once committed themselves to an erroneous Theory, seem to be incapable of opening their eyes to the untrustworthiness of the fabric they have erected, even when it comes down in their sight, like a child's house built with playing-cards,—and presents to every eye but their own the appearance of a shapeless ruin.
§ 1. Two full years have elapsed since the first of these Essays was published; and my Criticism—for the best of reasons—remains to this hour unanswered. The public has been assured indeed, (in the course of some hysterical remarks by Canon Farrar[9]), that “the ‘Quarterly Reviewer’ can be refuted as fully as he desires as soon as any scholar has the leisure to answer him.” The “Quarterly Reviewer” can afford to wait,—if the Revisers can. But they are reminded that it is no answer to one who has demolished their master's “Theory,” for the pupils to keep on reproducing fragments of it; and by their mistakes and exaggerations, to make both themselves and him, ridiculous.
§ 2. Thus, a writer in the “Church Quarterly” for January 1882, (whose knowledge of the subject is entirely derived from what Dr. Hort has taught him,)—being evidently much exercised by the first of my three Articles in the “Quarterly Review,”—gravely informs the public that “it is useless to parade such an array of venerable witnesses,” (meaning the enumerations of Fathers of the iiird, ivth, and vth centuries which are given below, at pp. [42-4]: [80-1]: [84]: [133]: [212-3]: [359-60]: [421]: [423]: [486-90]:)—“for they have absolutely nothing to say which deserves a moment's hearing.”[10]—What a pity it is, (while he was about it), that the learned gentleman did not go on to explain that the moon is made of green cheese!
§ 3. Dr. Sanday,[11] in a kindred spirit, delivers it as his opinion, that “the one thing” I lack “is a grasp on the central condition of the problem:”—that I do “not seem to have the faintest glimmering of the principle of ‘Genealogy:’ ”—that I am “all at sea:”—that my “heaviest batteries are discharged at random:”—and a great deal more to the same effect. The learned Professor is quite welcome to think such things of me, if he pleases. Οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ.
§ 4. At the end of a year, a Reviewer of quite a different calibre made his appearance in the January number (1883) of the “Church Quarterly:” in return for whose not very [pg xvii] encouraging estimate of my labours, I gladly record my conviction that if he will seriously apply his powerful and accurate mind to the department of Textual Criticism, he will probably produce a work which will help materially to establish the study in which he takes such an intelligent interest, on a scientific basis. But then, he is invited to accept the friendly assurance that the indispensable condition of success in this department is, that a man should give to the subject, (which is a very intricate one and abounds in unexplored problems), his undivided attention for an extended period. I trust there is nothing unreasonable in the suggestion that one who has not done this, should be very circumspect when he sits in judgment on a neighbour of his who, for very many years past, has given to Textual Criticism the whole of his time;—has freely sacrificed health, ease, relaxation, even necessary rest, to this one object;—has made it his one business to acquire such an independent mastery of the subject as shall qualify him to do battle successfully for the imperilled letter of God's Word. My friend however thinks differently. He says of me,—
“In his first Article there was something amusing in the simplicity with which ‘Lloyd's Greek Testament’ (which is only a convenient little Oxford edition of the ordinary kind) was put forth as the final standard of appeal. It recalled to our recollection Bentley's sarcasm upon the text of Stephanus, which ‘your learned Whitbyus’ takes for the sacred original in every syllable.” (P. 354.)