'I hear you recommend, I might at least
Eliminate, decrassify my faith …
Still, when you bid me purify the same,
To such a process I discern no end,
Clearing off one excrescence to see two;
There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
First cut the liquefaction, what comes last
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?'
But also, on the other hand:—
'Where's
The gain? how can we guard our unbelief?
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus ending from Euripides,—
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears,
As old and new at once as Nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul …
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,—we call it black.'
Bishop Blongram's Apology.
[359:1] As to the defects of the present edition, see Tischendorf, Prolegomena to Vetus Testamentum Graece juxta LXX Interpretes, p. liii: 'Eae vero (collationes) quemadmodum in editis habentur non modo universae graviter differunt inter se fide atque accuratione, sed ad ipsos principales testes tam negligenter tamque male factae sunt ut etiam atque etiam dolendum sit tantos numos rara liberalitate per Angliam suppeditatos criticae sacrae parum profuisse.' Similarly Credner, in regard to the use of the Codex Alexandrinus, Beiträge, ii. 16: 'Wahrhaft unbegreiflich und unverzeihlich ist es, dass die Herausgeber der kostbaren Kritischen Ausgabe der LXX, welcher zu Oxford vor wenigen Jahren vollendet und von Holmes und Parsons besorgt worden ist, statt cine sorgfältige Vergleichung des in London aufbewahrten Cod. Alex. zu veranstalten, sich lediglich auf die Ausgabe von Grabe beschränkt haben, dessen Kritik vielfach nicht einmal verstanden worden ist.'
APPENDIX.
SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MARCION'S GOSPEL.
If the reader should happen to possess the work of Rönsch, Das Neue Testament Tertullian's, to which allusion has frequently been made above, and will simply glance over the pages, noting the references, from Luke iv. 16 to the end of the Gospel, I do not think he will need any other proof of the sufficiency of the grounds for the reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel, so as at least to admit of a decision as to whether it was our present St. Luke or not.
Failing this, it may be well to give a brief example of the kind of data available, going back straight to the original authorities themselves.
For this purpose we will take the first chapter that Marcion preserved entire, Luke v, and set forth in full such fragments of it as have come down to us.