of more importance than their number, which he adopts in discriminately ; and, in the second place, he leaves the very number in great obscurity and confusion — in one instance, sup posing that there are in support of a reading many MSS., where there are few or scarcely any — in another instance, that there are few, when in reality there are a sufficient number, or more, or even very many in its favour. For most of the codices (a list of which is prefixed to his Canons) contain only the Gospels, a few the Acts and Epistles, a very few the Apocalypse; in addition to which they are occasionally im perfect, not examined with equal care, collated with editions which are at variance with each other; but our author is accustomed to attribute to the reading of his margin only the MSS. expressly cited in the margin, whilst he ascribes almost all the remaining MSS. (which he enumerates) in such a manner to his text, as though he supposed it to be supported by hundreds of MSS., even in the case of the Apocalypse.
The second edition of the " Crisis" rightly denominates this a manifest and great error ; and the formula, therefore, concern ing hundreds of MSS., etc., has been expunged ; but the rest of its tenor remains unaltered. So much the more necessary, therefore, is it to warn those, who fancy that this Crisis has been now purged of all its errors. Anthony Blackwall has committed a similar error in his " Sacred Classics Illustrated," p. 594, where he has cited a hundred and twenty MSS. on Acts ii. 24, and 1 John iv. 3 ; though, before his time, not so many as forty MSS. had been collated for the Acts and Epistles of St John; and he has also mistaken the sixteen MSS. of Stephens (for I suppose he would have it read thus, not sixty),
cam paulatim patefaceret. Duo huiusmodi testes debebant, 1. totum com- plecti N. T. ; 2. antiquitate excellere ; 3. et de lectionibus eorum liquido constare. Ex versionibus nulla est, qua? cum Latino, conferri possit. Nam etiam Syriaca diversis temporibus est adornata : et de ceteris abstrusioribus multa sunt ambigua. Latina versio est ex familia Africana : cui si unus aliquis codex Grsecus Asiaticus jungi posset, plus esset facilitatis. Nunc quum ejusmodi nullus prsesto est, Alexandrinus tantisper adsciscendus venit. Huic ununi Vaticanum opponi passim video : sed id judicium vanum esse, ostendi in Gnom." — (I. B.)