ficult is preferable to the easy readnG ; for the obvious rea- son, that the interpolator or transcriber would be much more likely to substitute an easy reading for the more difficult one, than vice versa. In the Preface of the Smaller Greek Text, he gives this admirable rule for searching Scripture with profit, —
“ Te totum applica ad Textum ;
Rem totam applica ad te.”
Apply thyself wholly to the Text ;
Apply the subject wholly to thyself.
Among the passages especially discussed in the Apparatus, as to the true reading, are Matt. vi. 13; John i. 1, viii. 1—11 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; 1 John v. 7. Lastly, in the same work is given an Introduc- tion to the Apocalypse , a book subjected to more various readings than any book of the New Testament, though it exists in fewer MSS. BengePs exertions had brought to light several MSS. in which it is found.
These critical works of his were warmly received by many ; but others, both Protestants and Roman Catholics, assailed him as a dangerous innovator. Among these opponents, the most promi- nent were the authors of a publication, named u Early Gathered Fruits” (No. 4 of the year 1738) : J. G. Hager, M.A., probably wrote the article in which Bengel is accused of u unprecedented audacity.” An opposite kind of objection was raised in an article of the Bihliotheque Raisonnee of Amsterdam, known to have been written by Wetstein, viz. that Bengel had not gone far enough ; that he was too timid in not inserting in the text, and not merely in the margin, readings supported by the best MSS., though never before printed in the Editions ; that the right of using our critical resources was an undoubted one ; that cautious as Editors had been, they could not escape persecution : that Erasmus had been rewarded with the reputation of an Arian, and Robert Stephens was obliged to fly to Geneva to escape burning at the stake ; that Bengel him- self had been obliged to abandon his favourite caution in editing the Apocalypse ; that therefore it would have been better had he adopted in the text, whether from print or MS., whatever reading • he thought the best ; but he ends with confessing that Bengel’ s Edi- tion of the New Testament was the best ever yet published.
Bengel in reply wrote u A Defence of the Greek Testament,” edited at Tubingen, in 1734. This he inserted in his u Harmony of the Four Gospels,” published in 1736. Besides the answers im- plied in what has been written above, he notices what is most im- portant, namely, that the notion (Wetstein’s), that the correctness of the reading should be determined by a majority of MSS., is an unsound one : To ascertain the authority of a MS., we must con- sider its origin , a thing which often gives preponderance to one be- yond a hundred others.
He also replied to the u Early Gathered Fruits,” through a jour-