HKB
all ages and in many provinces of the earlier church. Frequently also, they are of unquestionable use, when they bear witness in a less striking manner, or in smaller number.
The practice of illustrating the various readings of Scripture from the reliques of Christian antiquity is so obvious and reasonable, that all who have written critical annotations on the sacred text have resorted to it, from Erasmus downwards: the Greek or Latin commentators are appealed to in four out of the five marginal notes found in the Complutensian N. T. When Bishop Fell, however, came to prepare the first edition of the Greek Testament attended with any considerable apparatus for improving the text, he expressly rejected “S. Textus loca ab antiquis Patribus aliter quam pro recepto more laudata,” from which the toil of such a task did not so much deter him, “quam cogitatio quod minus utile esset futurum iisdem insistere.” (N. T. 1675, Praef.). “Venerandi enim illi scriptores,” he adds, “de verborum apicibus non multum soliciti, ex memoriâ quae ad institutum suum factura videbantur passim allegabant; unde factum ut de priscâ lectione ex illorum scriptis nil ferè certi potuerit hauriri.” It is certainly to the credit of Mill’s sagacity that he did not follow his patron’s example by setting aside Patristic testimony in so curt and compendious a manner(140). Nevertheless, no one can study Mill’s “Prolegomena” without being conscious of the fact, that the portion of them relating to the history of the text, as gathered from ecclesiastical writers, and the accumulation of that mass of quotations from the Fathers which stands below his Scripture text, must have been, what he asserts, the result of some years’ labour (N. T. Proleg. § 1513): yet these are just the parts of his celebrated work that have given the least satisfaction. The field indeed is too vast to be occupied by one man. A whole library of authors has to be thoroughly searched; each cited passage must be patiently examined; the help of indices should be employed critically and warily; the best editions must be used, and even then the text of the very writers is to be corrected, so far as may be, by the collation of other manuscripts(141).
To Griesbach must be assigned the merit of being the earliest editor of the Greek Testament who saw, or at least who acted upon the principle, that it is far more profitable as well as more scholarlike to do one thing well, than to attempt more than can be performed completely and with accuracy. He was led by certain textual theories he had adopted, and which we shall best describe hereafter, to a close examination of the works of Origen, the most celebrated Biblical critic of antiquity. The result, published in the second volume of his Symbolae Criticae, is a lasting monument both of his industry and acuteness; and, if not quite faultless in point of correctness, deserves to be taken as a model by his successors. Tregelles, of whose Greek Testament we shall presently speak, has evidently bestowed much pains on his Patristic citations; to Eusebius of Caesarea, especially to those portions of his works which have been recently edited or brought to light, he has paid great attention: but besides many others, Chrysostom has been grievously neglected, although the subjects of a large portion of his writings, the early date of some of his codices(142), the extensive collations of Matthaei, and the excellent modern editions of most of his Homilies, might have sufficed to commend him to our particular regard. The custom, commenced by Lachmann, and adopted by Tregelles (though not uniformly by Tischendorf), of recording the exact edition, volume, and page of the writer quoted, and in important cases of copying his very words, cannot be too much praised: we would suggest, however, the expediency of further indicating, by an asterisk or some such mark, those passages about which there can be no ambiguity as to the reading adopted by the author, in order to distinguish them from others which are of infinitely less weight and importance.