I am not, then, upon the whole matter, out of hopes but that, upon
366 INTEGRITY AND PURITY OF THE HEBREW AND GREEK TEXT.
a diligent review of all these various lections, tliey may be reduced to a less offensive and less formidable number. Let it be remembered that the vulgar copy we use was the public possession of many genera- tions,— that upon the invention of printing it was in actual authority throughout the world with them that used and understood that lan- guage, as far as any thing appears to the contrary; let that, then, pass for the standard, which is confessedly its right and due, and we shall, God assisting, quickly see how little reason there is to pretend such varieties of readings as we are now surprised withal : for, —
1. Let those places be separated which are not sufficiently attested unto, so as to pretend to be various lections ; it being against all pre- tence of reason that every mistake of every obscure, private copy, per- haps not above two or three hundred years old (or if older), should be admitted as a various lection, against the concurrent consent of, it may be, all others that are extant in the world, and that without any congruity of reason as to the sense of the text where it is fallen out. Men may, if they please, take pains to inform the world wherein such and such copies are corrupted or mistaken, but to impose their known failings on us as various lections is a course not to be approved.
2. Let the same judgment, and that deservedly, pass on all those different places which are altogether inconsiderable, consisting in accents or the change of a letter, not in the least intrenching on the sense of the place, or giving the least intimation of any other sense to be possibly gathered out of them but what is in the approved read- ing. To what end should the minds of men be troubled with them or about them, being evident mistakes of the scribes, and of no import- ance at all?
3. Let them also be removed from the pretence, which carry their own convictions along with them that they are spurious, either, — (1.) By their superfluity, or redundancy of unnecessary words; or, (2.) Their deficiency in words evidently necessary to the sense of their places ; or, (3.) Their incoherence with the text in their several stations ; or, (4.) [By giving] evidence of being intended as expository of diffi- culties, having been moved and assoiled by some of the ancients upon the places, and their resolutions being intimated ; or, (5.) Are foisted out of the Septuagint, as many places out of the New have been insert- ed into that copy of the Old; or, (6.) Are taken out of one p)lace in the same penman and are used in another; or, (7.) Are apparently taken out of one Gospel and supplied in another, to make out the sense of the place; or, (8.) Have been corrected hy the Vidgar Latin, — which hath often fallen out in some copies, as Lucas Brugensis shows us on Matt. xvii. 2, Mark i. 38, vii. 4, and sundry other places; or, (9.) Arise out of copies apparently corrupted, like that of Beza in Luke^ and that in the Vatican boasted of by Huntley the Jesuit, which Lucas
THE AUTHORITY OF THE ORIGINALS. 36 7
Brugensis affirms to have been changed by the Vulgar Latin, and which was written and corrected, as Erasmus says, about the [time of the] council of Florence, when an agreement was patched up between the Greeks and Latins; or, (](),) Are notoriously corrupted by the old heretics, as 1 John v. 7. Unto which heads many, yea, the most of the various lections collected in this Appendix may be referred. I say, if this work might be done with care and diligence (vvhereunto I ear- nestly exhort some in this university, who have both ability and lei- sure for it), it would quickly appear how small the number is of those varieties in the Greek copies of the New Testament which may pre- tend unto any consideration under the state and title of various lec- tions, and of how very little importance they are to weaken in any measure my former assertion concerning the care and providence of God in the preservation of his word. But this is a work of more time and leisure than at present I am possessor of ; what is to come, Seou kv yovvaGi xiTrai. In the meantime I doubt not but to hear tid- ings from Rome concerning this variety, no such collection having as yet been made in the world.
CHAPTER lY.
General premises — Opinions prejudicial to the authority of the originals in the Prolegomena enumerated — The just consequences of these premises — Others engaged in these opinions — Of Cappellus — Of Origen, Ximenes, Arias Mon- tanus' editions of the Bible.
Having now declared in Avhat sense, and with what allowance as to various lections, I maintain the assertion laid down in the fore- going treatise concerning the providential preservation of the whole book of God, so that we may have full assurance that we enjoy the whole revelation of his will in the copies abiding amongst us, I shall now proceed to weigh what may be objected further (beyond what hath already been insisted on) against the truth of it from the Prole- gomena and Appendix to the Biblia Polygiotta, at the entrance of our discourse proposed to consideration: —