11. The Number of witnesses, who support each reading of every passage, ought to be carefully examined : and to that end, in so doing, we should separate those Codices which contain only the Gospels, from those which contain the Acts and the Epistles, with or without the Apocalypse, or those which contain that book alone ; those which are entire, from those which have been mutilated ; those which have been collated for the Stephanie1 edition, from those which have been collated for the Compluten- sian,2 or the Elzevirian,3 or any obscure edition ; those which are knoAvn to have been carefully collated, as, for instance, the Alexandrine,4 — from those which are not known to have been
1 The Stephani (called in French Etienne, or Estiennc, in English Stephens) were the most famous and learned printers of their day. Henry Stephens had three sons, Robert, born A.D. 1503; Francis, and Charles. Robert had also a son named Henry, born A.D. 1528. They were perse cuted at Paris by the Sorbonne, and ultimately forced to fly to Geneva, in 1552. Robert published his first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1546, a second in 1549, and a third in 1551, to which his son added another in 1569.— (I. B.)
2 i.e., The Sixth Volume of the Complutensian or Alcala Bible, so called from Alcala, in Spain, where it was printed. The full title of the work is, " Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, complectentia Vetus Testament um, Hebraico, Grseco, et Latino Idiomate ; Novum Testamentum Gnecum et Latinum ; et Vocabularium Hebraicum et Chaldaicum Veteris Testamenti, cum Gram- matica Hebraica, nee non Dictionario Graeco ; Studio, Opera et Impensis Cardinalis Francisci XIMENES de Cisneros. Industria Arnaldi Gulielmi de Brocario artis impressorise magistri. Compluti 1514, 1515, 1517. 6 Vols. Folio." It cost the Cardinal Ximenes 50,000 ducats. — (I. B.)
3 Printed at Leyden, at the celebrated Elzevir press. The first edition appeared in 1624, the second, which is considered the best, in 1633. The Elzevir text claimed to itself, par excellence, the title of Textus Reccptus ; a phrase, however, which is not always confined to that recension. In the preface to the edition of 1633, occurs the arrogant assertion : " Textum, ergo habes nunc ab omnibus receptum ; in quo nihil immutatum aut cor- ruptum damus." — (I. B.)
* The CODEX ALEXANDRINUS, now in the British Museum, a manu script of the fourth or fifth century. A facsimile of it has been published by G. Woide, 1786. This codex consists of four folio volumes; the three first contain the whole of the Old Testament, together with the Apocryphal Books, and the fourth comprises the New Testament, the first Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, and the Apocryphal Psalms, ascribed to Solomon. It was sent as a present to King Charles i., from Cyrillus Lucares, a native of Crete, and Patriarch of Constantinople, by Sir Thomas Rowe, Ambassador from England to the Sublime Porte, in the year 1628. — (I. B.)