“To attempt to sustain such charges by a rough comparison of these ancient authorities with the Textus Receptus, and to measure the degree of their depravation by the amount of their divergence from such a text as we have shown this Received Text really to be, is to trifle with the subject of sacred Criticism.”—p. 41.

You add:—

“Until the depravation of these ancient Manuscripts has been demonstrated in a manner more consistent with the recognized principles of Criticism, such charges as those to which we allude must be regarded as expressions of passion, or prejudice, and set aside by every impartial reader as assertions for which no adequate evidence has yet been produced.”—pp. 41-2.

[4] (Which be “the recognized principles of Textual Criticism”?—a question asked in passing.)

But give me leave to ask in passing,—Which, pray, are “the recognized principles of Criticism” to which you refer? I profess I have never met with them yet; and I am sure it has not been for want of diligent enquiry. You have publicly charged me before your Diocese with being “innocently ignorant of the now established principles of Textual Criticism.”[854] But why do you not state which those principles are? I am surprised. You are for ever vaunting “principles which have been established by the investigations and reasonings” of Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles:[855]—“the principles of Textual Criticism which are accepted and recognized by the great majority of modern Textual Critics:”[856]—“the principles on which the Textual Criticism of the last fifty years has been based:”[857]—but you never condescend to explain which be the “principles” you refer to. For the last time,—Who established those “Principles”? and, Where are they to be seen “established”?

I will be so candid with you as frankly to avow that the only two “principles” with which I am acquainted as held, with anything like consent, by “the modern Textual Critics” to whom you have surrendered your judgment, are—(1st) A robust confidence in the revelations of their own inner consciousness: and (2ndly) A superstitious partiality for two codices written in the uncial character,—for which partiality they are able to assign no intelligible reason. You put the matter as neatly as I could desire at page 19 of your Essay,—where you condemn, with excusable warmth, “those who adopt the easy method of using some favourite Manuscript,”—or of exercising “some supposed power of divining the original Text;”—as if those were “the only necessary agents for correcting the Received Text.” Why the evidence of codices b and א,—and perhaps the evidence of the VIth-century codex d,—(“the singular codex” as you call it; and it is certainly a very singular codex indeed:)—why, I say, the evidence of these two or three codices should be thought to outweigh the evidence of all other documents in existence,—whether Copies, Versions, or Fathers,—I have never been able to discover, nor have their admirers ever been able to tell me.

[5] Bp. Ellicott's and the Reviewer's respective methods, contrasted.

Waiving this however, (for it is beside the point,) I venture to ask,—With what show of reason can you pretend that I “sustain my charges” against codices א b c l, “by a rough comparison of these ancient authorities with the Textus Receptus”?[858]... Will you deny that it is a mere misrepresentation of the plain facts of the case, to say so? Have I not, on the contrary, on every occasion referred Readings in [pg 376] dispute,—the reading of א b c l on the one hand, the reading of the Textus Receptus on the other,—simultaneously to one and the same external standard? Have I not persistently enquired for the verdict—so far as it has been obtainable—of consentient Antiquity? If I have sometimes spoken of certain famous manuscripts (א b c d namely,) as exhibiting fabricated Texts, have I not been at the pains to establish the reasonableness of my assertion by showing that they yield divergent,—that is contradictory, testimony?

The task of laboriously collating the five “old uncials” throughout the Gospels, occupied me for five-and-a-half years, and taxed me severely. But I was rewarded. I rose from the investigation profoundly convinced that, however important they may be as instruments of Criticism, codices א b c d are among the most corrupt documents extant. It was a conviction derived from exact Knowledge and based on solid grounds of Reason. You, my lord Bishop, who have never gone deeply into the subject, repose simply on Prejudice. Never having at any time collated codices א a b c d for yourself, you are unable to gainsay a single statement of mine by a counter-appeal to facts. Your textual learning proves to have been all obtained at second-hand,—taken on trust. And so, instead of marshalling against me a corresponding array of Ancient Authorities,—you invariably attempt to put me down by an appeal to Modern Opinion. “The majority of modern Critics” (you say) have declared the manuscripts in question “not only to be wholly undeserving of such charges, but, on the contrary, to exhibit a text of comparative purity.”[859]

The sum of the difference therefore between our respective methods, my lord Bishop, proves to be this:—that [pg 377] whereas I endeavour by a laborious accumulation of ancient Evidence to demonstrate that the decrees of Lachmann, of Tischendorf and of Tregelles, are untrustworthy; your way of reducing me to silence, is to cast Lachmann, Tregelles and Tischendorf at every instant in my teeth. You make your appeal exclusively to them. “It would be difficult” (you say) “to find a recent English Commentator of any considerable reputation who has not been influenced, more or less consistently, by one or the other of these three Editors:”[860] (as if that were any reason why I should do the same!) Because I pronounce the Revised reading of S. Luke ii. 14, “a grievous perversion of the truth of Scripture,” you bid me consider “that in so speaking I am censuring Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles.” You seem in fact to have utterly missed the point of my contention: which is, that the ancient Fathers collectively (a.d. 150 to a.d. 450),—inasmuch as they must needs have known far better than Lachmann, Tregelles, or Tischendorf, (a.d. 1830 to a.d. 1880,) what was the Text of the New Testament in the earliest ages,—are perforce far more trustworthy guides than they. And further, that whenever it can be clearly shown that the Ancients as a body say one thing, and the Moderns another, the opinion of the Moderns may be safely disregarded.