question, from the existence and authority of various readings, lest we should either pass by, and thus fail to profit by the words of the apostles, or treat the words of copyists as if they were those of the apostles. I have endeavoured to furnish such a text, with all care and fidelity, in my larger edition of the Greek New Testament, published at Tubingen, and in the smaller one published at Stuttgarclt. Both of them appeared in the year 1734 : and the small one was republished, with a new prologue (admonition) in the year 1738, and lastly, entirely revised, in the year 1753. — For, I considered it my duty not to suppress, but, on the contrary, publish before my death,1 those things which the experience of a long intervening period, had supplied. Those who desire either to know, or to state, Avhat my Re vision contains, on any passage, must refer to one of these edi tions, and not to any other. He who has been accustomed to the first of the smaller editions, will easily, and advantageously, observe the differences in the latter edition. The New Testa ment, as revised by me, has come to be considered as one edition with this Gnomon, just as if they had been published in one volume. This \vill appear more clearly in the progress of the present preface, especially in the eleventh Section. My re cension has obtained the approval of many ; some of whom have partially adopted it in translations.2 It has, however, met with some impugn ers, especially tivo : for Andreas Buttigius'3 pre-
1 During his last illness he was occupied in correcting the proof-sheets of his German Version of the New Testament, and the preface he had written for the Old Testament Gnomon of his son-in-law, Ph. D. Burk. — (I. B.)
2 In 1745 when the authorized Danish version was revised by order of the King of Denmark, the text of Bengel was preferred as the standard, for that purpose. — (I. B.)
3 Andreas Buttigius brought out an edition of the Greek New Testament in 1737 — entitled
'H x,ottuYi $ioiS'/i%.Yi. Novum Testamentum Gnecum, ita adornatum ut textus probatarum editionum medullam, margo variantium lectionum in suas classes distributarum, locorumque parallelorum delectum exhiheat, curante Andrea Buttigio. Lipsife ex officina Weidmaniana. MD.CC.XXXVII.
Le Long subjoins it to his Editiones Bengelii, with the following obser vations —
Jungimus prrecedentibus merito hanc editionem, quse nil nisi iterata est textus Bengeliani editio, quod ipse, quamvis in rubro Bengelii nomen silentio prpetermissum sit, in prrcfatione fatctur editor. Textus idem est, sed more
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. n
face agrees for the most part with my views, and, where it differs, I have given the explanations in the Prologue, which I have just mentioned. What, however, others have said upon individual readings, we shall examine in their proper places. To those two, therefore (whose names I need not mention on the present occasion),1 I have put forth two defences. One was printed in German, with the Harmony of the Evangelists, A.D. 1736, at Tubingen, and afterwards, in a separate and more convenient form, in Latin, with some additions, A.D. 1737, at Leyden. In this, I showed that I had not acted timidly ; in the other, that I had not acted with temerity. That other, was written in answer to an attack upon truth, exceedingly prejudicial in the case of the ignorant, and inserted A.D. 1739, in the New Tubingen Mis cellany.2 It was reprinted in a separate form the same year, and again at Ulm, A.D. 1745. The former defence has become now nearly obsolete : for, he against whom it was directed, has made the " Crisis Mastrichtiana" so far as he has corrected it, entirely conformable to my views ; and the learned Lilienthal3 states, in his Bibliotheca Exegetica, pp. 1263, 1264, what is the opinion entertained by others, of the matters in dispute, between us. So much the more, therefore, do I wish that they who are desirous of avoiding temerity, yet of ascertaining the truth, would care fully examine my second Defence. All, at least, by whom I know that pamphlet to have been read, acknowledge that I have exerted myself laboriously, and in a religious spirit, to obtain a pure text of the New Testament. And that veiy society, in