Q. R. “You are not at liberty, logically, to draw any such inference from the premisses. The purest documents of all existed perforce in the first century: must have then existed. The spring is perforce purest at its source. My whole contention has been, and is,—That there is nothing at all unreasonable in the supposition that two stray copies of the IVth century,—coming down to our own times without a history and without a character,—may exhibit a thoroughly depraved text. More than this does not follow lawfully from the premisses. At the outset, remember, you delivered it as your opinion that ‘the oldest Manuscript we possess, if it be but a very ancient one, must needs be the purest.’ I asserted, in reply, that ‘it does not by any means follow, because a manuscript is very ancient, that therefore its text will be very pure’ (p. [321]); and all that I have been since saying, has but had for its object to prove the truth of my assertion. Facts have been incidentally elicited, I admit, calculated to inspire distrust, rather than confidence, in very ancient documents generally. But I am neither responsible for these facts; nor for the inferences suggested by them.
“At all events, I have to request that you will not carry away so entirely erroneous a notion as that I am the advocate for Recent, in preference to Ancient, Evidence concerning the Text of Scripture. Be so obliging as not to say concerning me that I ‘count’ instead of ‘weighing’ my witnesses. If you have attended to the foregoing pages, and have understood them, you must by this time be aware that in every instance it is to Antiquity that I persistently make my appeal. I abide by its sentence, and I require that you shall do the same.
“You and your friends, on the contrary, reject the Testimony of Antiquity. You set up, instead, some idol of your own. Thus, Tregelles worshipped ‘codex b.’ But ‘codex b’ is not ‘Antiquity’!—Tischendorf assigned the place of honour to ‘codex א.’ But once more, ‘codex א’ is not ‘Antiquity’!—You rejoice in the decrees of the VIth-century-codex d,—and of the VIIIth-century-codex l,—and of the Xth, XIth, and XIVth century codices, 1, 33, 69. But will you venture to tell me that any of these are ‘Antiquity’? Samples of Antiquity, at best, are any of these. No more! But then, it is demonstrable that they are unfair samples. Why are you regardless of all other Copies?—So, with respect to Versions, and Fathers. You single out one or two,—the one or two which suit your purpose; and you are for rejecting all the rest. But, once more,—The Coptic version is not ‘Antiquity,’—neither is Origen ‘Antiquity.’ The Syriac Version is a full set-off against the former,—Irenæus more than counterbalances the latter. Whatever is found in one of these ancient authorities must confessedly be an ‘ancient Reading:’ but it does not therefore follow that it is the ancient Reading of the place. Now, it is the ancient Reading, of which we are always in search. And he who sincerely desires to ascertain what actually is the Witness of Antiquity,—(i.e., what is the prevailing testimony of all the oldest documents,)—will begin by casting his prejudices and his predilections to the winds, and will devote himself conscientiously to an impartial survey of the whole field of Evidence.”
F. C. “Well but,—you have once and again admitted that the phenomena before us are extraordinary. Are you able to explain how it comes to pass that such an one as Clemens Alexandrinus employed such a scandalously corrupt copy of the Gospels as we have been considering?”
Q. R. “You are quite at liberty to ask me any question you choose. And I, for my own part, am willing to return you the best answer I am able. You will please to remember however, that the phenomena will remain,—however infelicitous my attempts to explain them may seem to yourself. My view of the matter then—(think what you will about it!)—is as follows:—
LVII. “Vanquished by the word Incarnate, Satan next directed his subtle malice against the Word written. Hence, as I think,—hence the extraordinary fate which befel certain early transcripts of the Gospel. First, heretical assailants of Christianity,—then, orthodox defenders of the Truth,—lastly and above all, self-constituted Critics, who (like Dr. Hort) imagined themselves at liberty to resort to ‘instinctive processes’ of Criticism; and who, at first as well as ‘at last,’ freely made their appeal ‘to the individual mind:’—such were the corrupting influences which were actively at work throughout the first hundred and fifty years after the death of S. John the Divine. Profane literature has never known anything approaching to it,—can show nothing at all like it. Satan's arts were defeated indeed through the Church's faithfulness, because,—(the good Providence of God had so willed it,)—the perpetual multiplication, in every quarter, of copies required for Ecclesiastical use,—not to say the solicitude of faithful men in diverse regions of ancient Christendom to retain for themselves unadulterated specimens of the inspired Text,—proved a sufficient safeguard against the grosser forms of corruption. But this was not all.
“The Church, remember, hath been from the beginning the ‘Witness and Keeper of Holy Writ.’[760] Did not her Divine Author pour out upon her, in largest measure, ‘the [pg 335] Spirit of Truth;’ and pledge Himself that it should be that Spirit's special function to ‘guide’ her children ‘into all the Truth’[761]?... That by a perpetual miracle, Sacred Manuscripts would be protected all down the ages against depraving influences of whatever sort,—was not to have been expected; certainly, was never promised. But the Church, in her collective capacity, hath nevertheless—as a matter of fact—been perpetually purging herself of those shamefully depraved copies which once everywhere abounded within her pale: retaining only such an amount of discrepancy in her Text as might serve to remind her children that they carry their ‘treasure in earthen vessels,’—as well as to stimulate them to perpetual watchfulness and solicitude for the purity and integrity of the Deposit. Never, however, up to the present hour, hath there been any complete eradication of all traces of the attempted mischief,—any absolute getting rid of every depraved copy extant. These are found to have lingered on anciently in many quarters. A few such copies linger on to the present day. The wounds were healed, but the scars remained,—nay, the scars are discernible still.
“What, in the meantime, is to be thought of those blind guides—those deluded ones—who would now, if they could, persuade us to go back to those same codices of which the Church hath already purged herself? to go back in quest of those very Readings which, 15 or 1600 years ago, the Church in all lands is found to have rejected with loathing? Verily, it is ‘happening unto them according to the true proverb’—which S. Peter sets down in his 2nd Epistle,—chapter ii. verse 22. To proceed however.
“As for Clemens,—he lived at the very time and in the very country where the mischief referred to was most rife. For full two centuries after his era, heretical works were so [pg 336] industriously multiplied, that in a diocese consisting of 800 parishes (viz. Cyrus in Syria), the Bishop (viz. Theodoret, who was appointed in a.d. 423,) complains that he found no less than 200 copies of the Diatessaron of Tatian the heretic,—(Tatian's date being a.d. 173,)—honourably preserved in the Churches of his (Theodoret's) diocese, and mistaken by the orthodox for an authentic performance.[762] Clemens moreover would seem to have been a trifle too familiar with the works of Basilides, Marcion, Valentinus, Heracleon, and the rest of the Gnostic crew. He habitually mistakes apocryphal writings for inspired Scripture:[763] and—with corrupted copies always at hand and before him—he is just the man to present us with a quotation like the present, and straightway to volunteer the assurance that he found it ‘so written in the Gospel according to S. Mark.’[764] The archetype of Codices b and א,—especially the archetype from which Cod. d was copied,—is discovered to have experienced adulteration largely from the same pestilential source which must have corrupted the copies with which Clement (and his pupil Origen after him) were most familiar.—And thus you have explained to you the reason of the disgust and indignation with which I behold in these last days a resolute attempt made to revive and to palm off upon an unlearned generation the old exploded errors, under the pretence that they are the inspired Verity itself,—providentially recovered from a neglected shelf in the Vatican,—rescued from destruction by a chance visitor to Mount Sinai.”
F. C. “Will you then, in conclusion, tell us how you would have us proceed in order to ascertain the Truth of Scripture?”