Bishop Ellicott.[844]

My Lord Bishop,

Last May, you published a pamphlet of seventy-nine pages[845] in vindication of the Greek Text recently put forth by [pg 370] the New Testament Company of Revisers. It was (you said) your Answer to the first and second of my Articles in the Quarterly Review:[846]—all three of which, corrected and enlarged, are now submitted to the public for the second time. See above, from page 1 to page 367.

[1] Preliminary Statement.

You may be quite sure that I examined your pamphlet as soon as it appeared, with attention. I have since read it through several times: and—I must add—with ever-increasing astonishment. First, because it is so evidently the production of one who has never made Textual Criticism seriously his study. Next, because your pamphlet is no refutation whatever of my two Articles. You flout me: you scold me: you lecture me. But I do not find that you ever answer me. You reproduce the theory of Drs. Westcott and Hort,—which I claim to have demolished.[847] You seek to put me down by flourishing in my face the decrees of Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles,—which, as you are well aware, I entirely disallow. Denunciation, my lord Bishop, is not Argument; neither is Reiteration, Proof. And then,—Why do you impute to me opinions which I do not hold? and charge me with a method of procedure of which I have never been guilty? Above all, why do you seek to prejudice the question at issue between us by importing irrelevant matter which can only impose upon the ignorant and mislead the unwary? Forgive my plainness, but really you are so conspicuously unfair,—and at the same time so manifestly unacquainted, [pg 371] (except at second-hand and only in an elementary way,) with the points actually under discussion,—that, were it not for the adventitious importance attaching to any utterance of yours, deliberately put forth at this time as Chairman of the New Testament body of Revisers, I should have taken no notice of your pamphlet.

[2] The Bishop's pamphlet was anticipated and effectually disposed of, three weeks before it appeared, by the Reviewer's Third Article.

I am bound, at the same time, to acknowledge that you have been singularly unlucky. While you were penning your Defence, (namely, throughout the first four months of 1882,) I was making a fatal inroad into your position, by showing how utterly without foundation is the “Textual Theory” to which you and your co-Revisers have been so rash as to commit yourselves.[848] This fact I find duly recognized in your “Postscript.” “Since the foregoing pages were in print” (you say,) “a third article has appeared in the Quarterly Review, entitled ‘Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory.’ ”[849] Yes. I came before the public on the 16th of April; you on the 4th of May, 1882. In this way, your pamphlet was anticipated,—had in fact been fully disposed of, three weeks before it appeared. “The Reviewer,” (you complain at page 4,) “censures their [Westcott and Hort's] Text: in neither Article has he attempted a serious examination of the arguments which they allege in its support.” But, (as explained,) the “serious examination” which you reproach me with having hitherto failed to produce,—had been already three weeks in the hands of readers of the Quarterly before your pamphlet saw the light. You would, in consequence, [pg 372] have best consulted your own reputation, I am persuaded, had you instantly recalled and suppressed your printed sheets. What, at all events, you can have possibly meant, while publishing them, by adding (in your “Postscript” at page 79,)—“In this controversy it is not for us to interpose:” and again,—“We find nothing in the Reviewer's third article to require further answer from us:”—passes my comprehension; seeing that your pamphlet (page 11 to page 29) is an elaborate avowal that you have made Westcott and Hort's theory entirely your own. The Editor of the Speaker's Commentary, I observe, takes precisely the same view of your position. “The two Revisers” (says Canon Cook) “actually add a Postscript to their pamphlet of a single short page noticing their unexpected anticipation by the third Quarterly Review article; with the remark that ‘in this controversy (between Westcott and Hort and the Reviewer) it is not for us to interfere:’—as if Westcott and Hort's theory of Greek Revision could be refuted, or seriously damaged, without cutting the ground from under the Committee of Revisers on the whole of this subject.”[850]

[3] Bp. Ellicott remonstrated with for his unfair method of procedure.

I should enter at once on an examination of your Reply, but that I am constrained at the outset to remonstrate with you on the exceeding unfairness of your entire method of procedure. Your business was to make it plain to the public that you have dealt faithfully with the Deposit: have strictly fulfilled the covenant into which you entered twelve years ago with [pg 373] the Convocation of the Southern Province: have corrected only “plain and clear errors.” Instead of this, you labour to enlist vulgar prejudice against me:—partly, by insisting that I am for determining disputed Readings by an appeal to the “Textus Receptus,”—which (according to you) I look upon as faultless:—partly, by exhibiting me in disagreement with Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles. The irrelevancy of this latter contention,—the groundlessness of the former,—may not be passed over without a few words of serious remonstrance. For I claim that, in discussing the Greek Text, I have invariably filled my pages as full of Authorities for the opinions I advocate, as the limits of the page would allow. I may have been tediously demonstrative sometimes: but no one can fairly tax me with having shrunk from the severest method of evidential proof. To find myself therefore charged with “mere denunciation,”[851]—with substituting “strong expressions of individual opinion” for “arguments,”[852]—and with “attempting to cut the cord by reckless and unverified assertions,” (p. 25,)—astonishes me. Such language is in fact even ridiculously unfair.

The misrepresentation of which I complain is not only conspicuous, but systematic. It runs through your whole pamphlet: is admitted by yourself at the close,—(viz. at p. 77,)—to be half the sum of your entire contention. Besides cropping up repeatedly,[853] it finds deliberate and detailed expression when you reach the middle of your essay,—viz. at p. 41: where, with reference to certain charges which I not only bring against codices א b c l, but laboriously substantiate by a free appeal to the contemporary evidence of Copies, Versions, and Fathers,—you venture to express yourself concerning me as follows:—