cannot always be depended on; for some later possessor, to enhance the value of his property, may have counterfeited a signature, or subjoined a statement he knew to be false, or, at best, did not know to be true. Yet the argument from the antiquity of our manuscripts is far from being so uncertain as to forfeit all claim upon our attention; and it may be interesting to state the leading marks by which a near approximation may be made to their true age.

The materials on which they are written will furnish one important clue. The use of paper made from linen is known to have been later than the twelfth century; and by this the more recent copies may be distinguished. The employment of paper made from cotton preceded this; and prevailed from the twelfth century upwards to the ninth; but previously to the invention of printing, parchment, and especially that kind of it called vellum, made from the skin of the calf, was largely, and perhaps, when paper was unknown, exclusively used, whenever durability was an object. The scarcity and costliness of this article led to the destructive expedient of obliterating the writing of older copies, and re-employing the materials. Such manuscripts are known as Palimpsests or Rescripts; and may have owed their origin to the dimness of some time worn traces, already half obliterated from age, and inviting an attempt at their complete removal; but at all events the device was very extensively used to facilitate the multiplication of new and favourite works, to the often irreparable injury of such as, from the taste of the age, had ceased to be in much demand. The process, however, has not been so entirely successful as to deprive us altogether of the original contents; indeed it rarely happens that the former writing cannot be partially traced beneath, and sometimes the whole is legible; though in reuniting the dissevered pages, after their cleansing had been effected, no pains was of course bestowed to preserve their former order, and while many leaves were spoiled or lost, the rest were disarranged. I have mentioned a work of Cicero's, that had been blotted out to make way for a Commentary of Augustine's; but it was not always a profane or philosophical work that was thus supplanted. Thus the Codex Ephremi owes its name to some works of Ephrem the Syrian, written over a copy of the Septuagint and New Testament, which had been imperfectly erased,

and are in most places still legible; but, as might be expected, in complete disorder, and with many chasms.

The use of parchment was common to all ages, and therefore the mere employment of it can give no decisive clue to the date of a manuscript. Yet it is fair to conclude it would be in less request after paper became cheap and easy to be procured; and the original writing of the twice used parchments, must manifestly have been much anterior to that superscribed. We have then in general some sort of primâ facie reason for ascribing the highest antiquity, and consequently the greatest value, to the parchments once written, and more especially to the older traces of the palimpsests.

Still it must be confessed this, taken alone, is too general and indefinite for any thing more than a bare surmise. A second and more decisive clue is furnished us in the mode in which the characters are formed. The orthography will, as we have seen, be a useful guide when testing the genuineness of original papers, and perhaps of copies, in the case of living languages, where extraordinary care would be required on the part of a transcriber to preserve accurately a mode of spelling differing from that prevailing in his own day. That of our Greek manuscripts, however, is nearly uniform. But while the component letters of each syllable preserve their identity, they change their mode of distribution and their form. Sometimes the writing was continuous, with no divisions of chapters, verses, sentences, or words; and when in process of time one or other of these were introduced, it was not all at once, but gradually, and one while one system was followed, and anon a different one. Abbreviations of common words and terminations are also common, such as OC for OEOE, God; XC, for XPIETOΣ Christ, MHP, for MHTHP, mother, and so forth; and these are far more frequent in later than in earlier copies. In one age a plain and simple manner of writing was practised, in another elaborate ornament was in vogue; and these illuminations, as they are called, varied continually with the taste of the writers, or those by whom they were employed. Finally, there are two distinct classes of Manuscripts, the one in uncial, i. e. initial, or, as we now designate them, capital letters; and the other in small or cursive, or, as we say, running hand: and each of these give two or more

subdivisions, founded on the distinctive marks we have pointed out above. The latter class extends from the fif teenth century to the tenth; a subdivision of the former belongs to the eighth and ninth, and another, in every respect the simplest and purest, is esteemed the earliest of all; and from the close resemblance of the characters to the kind usually seen on ancient Greek monuments, and for other reasons, is supposed to reach back to the fifth, or possibly to the fourth century of the Christian æra. It is not compatible with my present object, even had I room, to specify all the particulars by which those whose attention has been given to the subject have been enabled to define the exact, or approximate age of any given copy. It is enough to acquaint the reader with the general nature of the grounds on which this is determined; the application of these principles require a degree of patience and skill, as well as opportunity and antiquarian lore, that falls to the share of very few; and here once more we are constrained, or rather I should say privileged, to avail ourselves of the labours, and talents of our fellow men, who in simple integrity, and with no disposition to strain their authorities beyond what they can fairly bear, have testified for our benefit, the result of their painful researches; and in proof of their integrity we may suggest, that had they wished to make out a case, rather than to explore the truth, they surely would never have stopped short at the fourth century, on the confines as it were of the apostolic age, when a step or two more would have taken them at once to the very fountain head.

This investigation is important, inasmuch as it brings us back with absolute certainty, as to the identity of our story, to the ascertained age of the earliest extant copies. It is true the result is so far unsatisfactory, in that it is only approximate; and the uncertainty extends, in many cases, and particularly in the earlier manuscripts, over a century or two; or possibly even more. Still we are brought vastly nearer to the point we are bound for, and the quantum of evidence thus furnished is a hundred fold more than is deemed sufficient to establish the identity of any single book antiquity has handed down to our times. But we have to notice another circumstance of the last moment respecting these manuscripts, in which their superiority over all others

is no less conspicuous, and from which as a weighty presumption of their integrity cannot fail to be drawn. The eircumstance I allude to is their close and intimate agreement with each other, and with the versions and extracts made from them in early times. The reader will frequently have occasion to remark that manifold objections may be started as to some one or more particulars attending the propagation of the Gospel, or the preservation of its books, which in the first bald statement might startle the Christian, and fill the unbeliever's heart with hopeful anticipations of joy; but which, when sifted to the bottom, and brought out in their real bearings, are found to add incalculable strength to the argument of the former, and furnish a fresh weapon to silence the gainsayer. Such, it will be seen, is the case in the particular now before us. I will take permission to repeat, what I desire the reader will not fail at every stage of our progress to bear in mind, that the books of the New Testament, and indeed of our Scriptures generally, when their Canon was completed, were committed to the custody of men; still, be it remembered under the protecting care of their Divine Author, but to be preserved by the ordinary methods, and obnoxious to the ordinary accidents, incidental to all that pertains to man. And as their authenticity was not to be vindicated by a perpetual series of miracles, but by the right exercise of reason in the examination of human evidence, so neither was their uncorrupted preservation provided for by other than ordinary human means. They were multiplied in the first ages by the labour of the copyist, as now by that of the printer; and in both cases they were liable to those minor errors, inseparable as they are found in practice, from either art: they were exempt neither from the unavoidable inadvertencies of the careful scribe, nor from the grosser and less pardonable blunders of the slovenly, and the ignorant; neither from the unwarranted emendations of the self-conceited, nor the occasional tamperings of the dishonest. From whatever cause arising, the number of discrepancies multiplies in a direct proportion to the number of manuscripts examined. Yet notwithstanding this, in general, the correctness of the text of any ancient author depends upon the number of the manuscripts that remain, rather than on the correctness of any one. After all the pains bestowed upon printed books,

inaccuracies have never been entirely avoided, and sometimes errors of considerable moment are overlooked: hence, even in re-editing printed works, it is esteemed an advantage to be able to compare two or more editions. But in the case of manuscripts, this is still more necessary; the same time and care would seldom be bestowed on a manuscript, for the accuracy attained could not be secured for a thousand or ten thousand impressions, as it is by the press: an equal amount of labour must be expended on every successive transcription, or an equal measure of correctness could not reasonably be looked for. "In profane authors," says Dr. Bentley, "whereof one manuscript only had the luck to be preserved, as Velleius Paterculus among the Latins, and Hesychius among the Greeks, the faults of the scribes are found so numerous, and the defects so beyond all redress, that notwithstanding the pains of the learnedest and acutest critics for two whole centuries, those books still are, and are likely to continue, a mere heap of errors. On the contrary where the copies of any author are numerous, though the various readings always increase in proportion, there the text, by an accurate collation of them made by skilful and judicious hands, is ever the more correct, and comes nearer to the true words of the author." "The real text, of the sacred writers," as Michaelis has aptly observed, "does not now, (since the originals have been so long lost,) lie in any single manuscript or edition, but is dispersed in them all;" and the remark applies, without exception, to all ancient writers, whether sacred or profane.

Inasmuch then as more manuscripts exist of the New Testament, than of any other ancient author, it is reasonable to expect a proportionate number of variations in its text. No fewer than six hundred and seventy-four ancient manuscripts, more or less complete, have been, wholly or partially, examined by Griesbach, Scholz, and others; and it has been computed that the edition of the former, founded on the collation of three hundred and fifty-five of these, contains one hundred and fifty thousand various readings. What then, it may be asked with some surprise, becomes of the close agreement boasted of above? There is certainly something paradoxical in the assertion, but it is not the less strictly true. The character of individual copies contrasts strongly with what Dr. Bentley has said of those of

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