Does any one then inquire,—But why at all events may not resort be had in the first instance to Codd. BאACD?—I answer,—Because the inquiry is apt to prejudice the question, pretty sure to mislead the judgement, only too likely to narrow the issue and render the Truth hopelessly difficult of attainment. For every reason, I am inclined to propose the directly opposite method of procedure, as at once the safer and the more reasonable method. When I learn that doubt exists, as to the reading of any particular place, instead of inquiring what amount of discord on the subject exists between Codexes ABאCD (for the chances are that they will be all at loggerheads among themselves), I inquire for the verdict as it is given by the main body of the copies. This is generally unequivocal. But if (which seldom happens) I find this a doubtful question, then indeed I begin to examine the separate witnesses. Yet even then it helps me little, or rather it helps me nothing, to find, as I commonly do, that A is on one side and B on the other,—except by the way that wherever אB are seen together, or when D stands apart with only a few allies, the inferior reading is pretty sure to be found there also.
Suppose however (as commonly happens) there is no serious division,—of course, significance does not attach itself to any handful of eccentric copies,—but that there is a practical unanimity among the cursives and later uncials: I cannot see that a veto can rest with such unstable and [pg 038] discordant authorities, however much they may singly add to the weight of the vote already tendered. It is as a hundred to one that the uncial or uncials which are with the main body of the cursives are right, because (as will be shown) in their consentience they embody the virtual decision of the whole Church; and that the dissentients—be they few or many—are wrong. I inquire however,—What say the Versions? and last but not least,—What say the Fathers?
The essential error in the proceeding I object to is best illustrated by an appeal to elementary facts. Only two of the “five old uncials” are complete documents, B and א: and these being confessedly derived from one and the same exemplar, cannot be regarded as two. The rest of the “old uncials” are lamentably defective.—From the Alexandrian Codex (A) the first twenty-four chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel are missing: that is, the MS. lacks 870 verses out of 1,071. The same Codex is also without 126 consecutive verses of St. John's Gospel. More than one-fourth of the contents of Cod. A are therefore lost[25].—D is complete only in respect of St. Luke: wanting 119 verses of St. Matthew,—5 verses of St. Mark,—166 verses of St. John.—On the other hand, Codex C is chiefly defective in respect of St. Luke's and St. John's Gospel; from the former of which it omits 643 (out of 1,151) verses; from the latter, 513 (out of 880), or far more than the half in either case. Codex C in fact can only be described as a collection of fragments: for it is also without 260 verses of St. Matthew, and without 116 of St. Mark.
The disastrous consequence of all this to the Textual Critic is manifest. He is unable to compare “the five old uncials” together except in respect of about one verse in three. Sometimes he finds himself reduced to the testimony of AאB: for many pages together of St. John's [pg 039] Gospel, he is reduced to the testimony of אBD. Now, when the fatal and peculiar sympathy which subsists between these three documents is considered, it becomes apparent that the Critic has in effect little more than two documents before him. And what is to be said when (as from St. Matt. vi. 20 to vii. 4) he is reduced to the witness of two Codexes,—and those, אB? Evident it is that whereas the Author of Scripture hath bountifully furnished His Church with (speaking roughly) upwards of 2,300[26] copies of the Gospels, by a voluntary act of self-impoverishment, some Critics reduce themselves to the testimony of little more than one: and that one a witness whom many judges consider to be undeserving of confidence.
Chapter III. The Seven Notes Of Truth.
§ 1. Antiquity.
The more ancient testimony is probably the better testimony. That it is not by any means always so is a familiar fact. To quote the known dictum of a competent judge: “It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed; that Irenaeus and the African Fathers and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syriac Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephen, thirteen centuries after, when moulding the Textus Receptus[27].” Therefore Antiquity alone affords no security that the manuscript in our hands is not infected with the corruption which sprang up largely in the first and second centuries. But it remains true, notwithstanding, that until evidence has been produced to the contrary in any particular instance, the more ancient of two witnesses may reasonably be presumed to be the better informed witness. Shew me for example that, whereas a copy of the Gospels (suppose Cod. B) introduces the clause “Raise the dead” into our Saviour's ministerial commission to His Apostles (St. Matt. x. 8),—another Codex, but only of the fourteenth century [pg 041] (suppose Evan. 604 (Hoskier)), omits it;—am I not bound to assume that our Lord did give this charge to His Apostles; did say to them, νεκροὺς ἐγείρετε; and that the words in question have accidentally dropped out of the sacred Text in that later copy? Show me besides that in three other of our oldest Codexes (אCD) the place in St. Matthew is exhibited in the same way as in Cod. B; and of what possible avail can it be that I should urge in reply that in three more MSS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century the text is exhibited in the same way as in Evan. 604?
There is of course a strong antecedent probability, that the testimony which comes nearest to the original autographs has more claim to be the true record than that which has been produced at a further distance from them. It is most likely that the earlier is separated from the original by fewer links than the later:—though we can affirm this with no absolute certainty, because the present survival of Uncials of various dates of production shews that the existence of copies is measured by no span like that of the life of men. Accordingly as a general rule, and a general rule only, a single early Uncial possesses more authority than a single later Uncial or Cursive, and a still earlier Version or Quotation by a Father must be placed before the reading of the early Uncial.