[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.

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:—

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”?

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.

When therefore I open your pamphlet at the first page, and read as follows:—“A bold assault has been made in recent numbers of the Quarterly Review upon the whole fabric of Criticism which has been built up during the last fifty years by the patient labour of successive editors of the New Testament,”861—I fail to discover that any practical inconvenience results to myself from your announcement. The same plaintive strain reappears at p. 39; where, having [pg 378] pointed out “that the text of the Revisers is, in all essential features, the same as that text in which the best critical editors, during the past fifty years, are generally agreed,”—you insist “that thus, any attack made on the text of the Revisers is really an attack on the critical principles that have been carefully and laboriously established during the last half-century.” With the self-same pathetic remonstrance you conclude your labours. “If,” (you say) “the Revisers are wrong in the principles which they have applied to the determination of the Text, the principles on which the Textual Criticism of the last fifty years has been based, are wrong also.”862... Are you then not yet aware that the alternative which seems to you so alarming is in fact my whole contention? What else do you imagine it is that I am proposing to myself throughout, but effectually to dispel the vulgar prejudice,—say rather, to plant my heel upon the weak superstition,—which “for the last fifty years” has proved fatal to progress in this department of learning; and which, if it be suffered to prevail, will make a science of Textual Criticism impossible? A shallow empiricism has been the prevailing result, up to this hour, of the teaching of Lachmann, and Tischendorf, and Tregelles.

[6] Bp. Ellicott in May 1870, and in May 1882.

A word in your private ear, (by your leave) in passing. You seem to have forgotten that, at the time when you entered on the work of Revision, your own estimate of the Texts put forth by these Editors was the reverse of favourable; i.e. was scarcely distinguishable from that of your present correspondent. Lachmann's you described as “a text composed on the narrowest and most exclusive principles,”—“really based on little more than four manuscripts.”—“The [pg 379] case of Tischendorf” (you said) “is still more easily disposed of. Which of this most inconstant Critic's texts are we to select? Surely not the last, in which an exaggerated preference for a single manuscript has betrayed him into an almost childlike infirmity of judgment. Surely also not the seventh edition, which exhibits all the instability which a comparatively recent recognition of the authority of cursive manuscripts might be supposed likely to introduce.”—As for poor Tregelles, you said:—“His critical principles ... are now, perhaps justly, called in question.” His text “is rigid and mechanical, and sometimes fails to disclose that critical instinct and peculiar scholarly sagacity which”863 have since evidently disclosed themselves in perfection in those Members of the Revising body who, with Bp. Ellicott at their head, systematically outvoted Prebendary Scrivener in the Jerusalem Chamber. But with what consistency, my lord Bishop, do you to-day vaunt “the principles” of the very men whom yesterday you vilipended precisely because their “principles” then seemed to yourself so utterly unsatisfactory?

[7] “The fabric of modern Textual Criticism” (1831-81) rests on an insecure basis.

I have been guilty of little else than sacrilege, it seems, because I have ventured to send a shower of shot and shell into the flimsy decrees of these three Critics which now you are pleased grandiloquently to designate and describe as “the whole fabric of Criticism which has been built up within the last fifty years.” Permit me to remind you that the “fabric” you speak of,—(confessedly a creation of yesterday,)—rests upon a foundation of sand; and has been already so formidably assailed, or else so gravely condemned by a succession of famous Critics, that as “a fabric,” its very [pg 380] existence may be reasonably called in question. Tischendorf insists on the general depravity (“universa vitiositas”) of codex b; on which codex nevertheless Drs. Westcott and Hort chiefly rely,—regarding it as unique in its pre-eminent purity. The same pair of Critics depreciate the Traditional Text as “beyond all question identical with the dominant [Greek] Text of the second half of the fourth century:”—whereas, “to bring the sacred text back to the condition in which it existed during the fourth century,”864 was Lachmann's one object; the sum and substance of his striving. “The fancy of a Constantinopolitan text, and every inference that has been grounded on its presumed existence,”865 Tregelles declares to have been “swept away at once and for ever,” by Scrivener's published Collations. And yet, what else but this is “the fancy,” (as already explained,) on which Drs. Westcott and Hort have been for thirty years building up their visionary Theory of Textual Criticism?—What Griesbach attempted [1774-1805], was denounced [1782-1805] by C. F. Matthæi;—disapproved by Scholz;—demonstrated to be untenable by Abp. Laurence. Finally, in 1847, the learned J. G. Reiche, in some Observations prefixed to his Collations of MSS. in the Paris Library, eloquently and ably exposed the unreasonableness of any theory of “Recension,”—properly so called;866 thereby effectually [pg 381] anticipating Westcott and Hort's weak imagination of a “Syrian Text,” while he was demolishing the airy speculations of Griesbach and Hug. “There is no royal road” (he said) “to the Criticism of the N. T.: no plain and easy method, at once reposing on a firm foundation, and conducting securely to the wished for goal.”867... Scarcely therefore in Germany had the basement-story been laid of that “fabric of Criticism which has been built up during the last fifty years,” and which you superstitiously admire,—when a famous German scholar was heard denouncing the fabric as insecure. He foretold that the “regia via” of codices b and א would prove a deceit and a snare: which thing, at the end of four-and-thirty years, has punctually come to pass.

Seven years after, Lachmann's method was solemnly appealed from by the same J. G. Reiche:868 whose words of warning to his countrymen deserve the attention of every thoughtful scholar among ourselves at this day. Of the same general tenor and purport as Reiche's, are the utterances of those giants in Textual Criticism, Vercellone of Rome and Ceriani of Milan. Quite unmistakable is the verdict of our own Scrivener concerning the views of Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles, and the results to which their system has severally conducted them.—If Alford adopted the prejudices of his three immediate predecessors, [pg 382] his authority has been neutralized by the far different teaching of one infinitely his superior in judgment and learning,—the present illustrious Bishop of Lincoln.—On the same side with the last named are found the late Philip E. Pusey and Archd. Lee,—Canon Cook and Dr. Field,—the Bishop of S. Andrews and Dr. S. C. Malan. Lastly, at the end of fifty-one years, (viz. in 1881,) Drs. Westcott and Hort have revived Lachmann's unsatisfactory method,—superadding thereto not a few extravagances of their own. That their views have been received with expressions of the gravest disapprobation, no one will deny. Indispensable to their contention is the grossly improbable hypothesis that the Peschito is to be regarded as the “Vulgate” (i.e. the Revised) Syriac; Cureton's, as the “Vetus” or original Syriac version. And yet, while I write, the Abbé Martin at Paris is giving it as the result of his labours on this subject, that Cureton's Version cannot be anything of the sort.869 Whether Westcott and Hort's theory of a “Syrian” Text has not received an effectual quietus, let posterity decide. Ἁμέραι δ᾽ ἐπίλοιποι μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι.

From which it becomes apparent that, at all events, “the fabric of Criticism which has been built up within the last fifty years” has not arisen without solemn and repeated protest,—as well from within as from without. It may not therefore be spoken of by you as something which men are bound to maintain inviolate,—like an Article of the Creed. It is quite competent, I mean, for any one to denounce the entire system of Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles,—as I do now,—as an egregious blunder; if he will but be at the [pg 383] pains to establish on a severe logical basis the contradictory of not a few of their most important decrees. And you, my lord Bishop, are respectfully reminded that your defence of their system,—if you must needs defend what I deem worthless,—must be conducted, not by sneers and an affectation of superior enlightenment; still less by intimidation, scornful language, and all those other bad methods whereby it has been the way of Superstition in every age to rivet the fetters of intellectual bondage: but by severe reasoning, and calm discussion, and a free appeal to ancient Authority, and a patient investigation of all the external evidence accessible. I request therefore that we may hear no more of this form of argument. The Text of Lachmann and Tischendorf and Tregelles,—of Westcott and Hort and Ellicott, (i.e. of the Revisers,)—is just now on its trial before the world.870