Moreover, the mischief has proved infectious,—has spread. In Syria also, at Edessa or Nisibis,—(for it is as well to be circumstantial in such matters,)—the self-same iniquity is about to be perpetrated; of which the Peschito will be the abiding monument: one solitary witness only to the pure Text being suffered to escape. Cureton's fragmentary Syriac will [pg 290] alone remain to exhibit to mankind the outlines of primitive Truth. (The reader is reminded of the character already given of the document in question at the summit of page [279]. Its extravagance can only be fully appreciated by one who will be at the pains to read it steadily through.)
XXX. And pray, (we ask,)—Who says all this? Who is it who gravely puts forth all this egregious nonsense?... It is Dr. Hort, (we answer,) at pp. 134-5 of the volume now under review. In fact, according to him, those primitive Fathers have been the great falsifiers of Scripture; have proved the worst enemies of the pure Word of God; have shamefully betrayed their sacred trust; have done the diametrical reverse of what (by the hypothesis) they came together for the sole purpose of doing. They have depraved and corrupted that sacred Text which it was their aim, their duty, and their professed object to purge from its errors. And (by the hypothesis) Dr. Hort, at the end of 1532 years,—aided by codex b and his own self-evolved powers of divination,—has found them out, and now holds them up to the contempt and scorn of the British public.
XXXI. In the meantime the illustrious Professor invites us to believe that the mistaken textual judgment pronounced at Antioch in a.d. 350 had an immediate effect on the Text of Scripture throughout the world. We are requested to suppose that it resulted in the instantaneous extinction of codices the like of b א, wherever found; and caused codices of the a type to spring up like mushrooms in their place, and that, in every library of ancient Christendom. We are further required to assume that this extraordinary substitution of new evidence for old—the false for the true—fully explains why Irenæus and Hippolytus, Athanasius and Didymus, Gregory of [pg 291] Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, Basil and Ephraem, Epiphanius and Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Isidore of Pelusium, Nilus and Nonnus, Proclus and Severianus, the two Cyrils and Theodoret—one and all—show themselves strangers to the text of b and א.... We read and marvel.
XXXII. For, (it is time to enquire,)—Does not the learned Professor see that, by thus getting rid of the testimony of the whole body of the Fathers, he leaves the Science which he is so good as to patronize in a most destitute condition,—besides placing himself in a most inconvenient state of isolation? If clear and consentient Patristic testimony to the Text of Scripture is not to be deemed forcible witness to its Truth,—whither shall a man betake himself for constraining Evidence? Dr. Hort has already set aside the Traditional Text as a thing of no manner of importance. The venerable Syriac Version he has also insisted on reducing very nearly to the level of the despised cursives. As for the copies of the old Latin, they had confessedly become so untrustworthy, at the time of which he speaks, that a modest Revision of the Text they embody, (the “Vulgate” namely,) became at last a measure of necessity. What remains to him therefore? Can he seriously suppose that the world will put up with the “idiosyncrasy” of a living Doctor—his “personal instincts” (p. xi.)—his “personal discernment” (p. 65),—his “instinctive processes of Criticism” (p. 66),—his “individual mind,”—in preference to articulate voices coming to us across the gulf of Time from every part of ancient Christendom? How—with the faintest chance of success—does Dr. Hort propose to remedy the absence of External Testimony? If mankind can afford to do without either consent of Copies or of Fathers, why does mankind any longer adhere to the ancient methods of proof? Why do Critics of every school still accumulate references to [pg 292] MSS., explore the ancient Versions, and ransack the Patristic writings in search of neglected citations of Scripture? That the ancients were indifferent Textual Critics, is true enough. The mischief done by Origen in this department,—through his fondness for a branch of Learning in which his remarks show that he was all unskilled,—is not to be told. But then, these men lived within a very few hundred years of the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ: and when they witness to the reading of their own copies, their testimony on the point, to say the least, is worthy of our most respectful attention. Dated codices, in fact are they, to all intents and purposes, as often as they bear clear witness to the Text of Scripture:—a fact, (we take leave to throw out the remark in passing,) which has not yet nearly attracted the degree of attention which it deserves.
XXXIII. For ourselves, having said so much on this subject, it is fair that we should add,—We devoutly wish that Dr. Hort's hypothesis of an authoritative and deliberate Recension of the Text of the New Testament achieved at Antioch first, about A.D. 250, and next, about a.d. 350, were indeed an historical fact. We desire no firmer basis on which to rest our confidence in the Traditional Text of Scripture than the deliberate verdict of Antiquity,—the ascertained sanction of the collective Church, in the Nicene age. The Latin “Vulgate” [a.d. 385] is the work of a single man—Jerome. The Syriac “Vulgate” [a.d. 616] was also the work of a single man—Thomas of Harkel. But this Greek “Vulgate” was (by the hypothesis) the product of the Church Catholic, [a.d. 250-a.d. 350,] in her corporate capacity. Not only should we hail such a monument of the collective piety and learning of the Church in her best days with unmingled reverence and joy, were it introduced to our notice; but we should insist that no important deviation from such a “Textus Receptus” as that [pg 293] would deserve to be listened to. In other words, if Dr. Hort's theory about the origin of the Textus Receptus have any foundation at all in fact, it is “all up” with Dr. Hort. He is absolutely nowhere. He has most ingeniously placed himself on the horns of a fatal dilemma.
For,—(let it be carefully noted,)—the entire discussion becomes, in this way, brought (so to speak) within the compass of a nutshell. To state the case briefly,—We are invited to make our election between the Fathers of the Church, a.d. 250 and a.d. 350,—and Dr. Hort, a.d. 1881. The issue is really reduced to that. The general question of the Text of Scripture being the matter at stake; (not any particular passage, remember, but the Text of Scripture as a whole;)—and the conflicting parties being but two;—Which are we to believe? the consentient Voice of Antiquity,—or the solitary modern Professor? Shall we accept the august Testimony of the whole body of the Fathers? or shall we prefer to be guided by the self-evolved imaginations of one who confessedly has nothing to offer but conjecture? The question before us is reduced to that single issue. But in fact the alternative admits of being yet more concisely stated. We are invited to make our election between fact and—fiction.... All this, of course, on the supposition that there is any truth at all in Dr. Hort's “New Textual Theory.”
XXXIV. Apart however from the gross intrinsic improbability of the supposed Recension,—the utter absence of one particle of evidence, traditional or otherwise, that it ever did take place, must be held to be fatal to the hypothesis that it did. It is simply incredible that an incident of such magnitude and interest would leave no trace of itself in history. As a conjecture—(and it only professes to be a conjecture)—Dr. Hort's notion of how the Text of the Fathers of [pg 294] the IIIrd, IVth, and Vth centuries,—which, as he truly remarks, is in the main identical with our own Received Text,—came into being, must be unconditionally abandoned. In the words of a learned living Prelate,—“the supposition” on which Drs. Westcott and Hort have staked their critical reputation, “is a manifest absurdity.”[725]
XXXV. We have been so full on the subject of this imaginary “Antiochian” or “Syrian text,” not (the reader may be sure) without sufficient reason. Scant satisfaction truly is there in scattering to the winds an airy tissue which its ingenious authors have been industriously weaving for 30 years. But it is clear that with this hypothesis of a “Syrian” text,—the immediate source and actual prototype of the commonly received Text of the N. T.,—stands or falls their entire Textual theory. Reject it, and the entire fabric is observed to collapse, and subside into a shapeless ruin. And with it, of necessity, goes the “New Greek Text,”—and therefore the “New English Version” of our Revisionists, which in the main has been founded on it.
XXXVI. In the meantime the phenomena upon which this phantom has been based, remain unchanged; and fairly interpreted, will be found to conduct us to the diametrically opposite result to that which has been arrived at by Drs. Westcott and Hort. With perfect truth has the latter remarked on the practical “identity of the Text, more especially in the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, in all the known cursive MSS., except a few” (p. 143). We fully admit the truth of his statement that—
“Before the close of the IVth century, a Greek Text not materially differing from the almost universal Text of the IXth,”—[and [pg 295] why not of the VIth? of the VIIth? of the VIIIth? or again of the Xth? of the XIth? of the XIIth?]—“century, was dominant at Antioch.”—(p. 142.)