to command respect in Codex {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}? Is, then,
_manuscript authority_ to be confounded with _editorial
caprice_,--exercising itself upon the corrections of "at least ten
different revisers," who, from the vith to the xiith century, have been
endeavouring to lick into shape a text which its original author left
"_very rough_?"

The co-ordinate primacy, (as I must needs call it,) which, within the last
few years, has been claimed for Codex B and Codex {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, threatens to grow
into a species of tyranny,--from which I venture to predict there will come
in the end an unreasonable and unsalutary recoil. It behoves us,
therefore, to look closely into this matter, and to require a reason for
what is being done. The text of the sacred deposit is far too precious a
thing to be sacrificed to an irrational, or at least a superstitious
devotion to two MSS.,--simply because they may possibly be older by a
hundred years than any other which we possess. "Id verius quod prius," is
an axiom which holds every bit as true in Textual Criticism as in Dogmatic
Truth. But on that principle, (as I have already shewn,) the last twelve
verses of S. Mark's Gospel are fully established;(132) and by consequence,
the credit of Codd. B and {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} sustains a severe shock. Again, "Id verius
quod prius;" but it does not of course follow that a Codex of the ivth
century shall exhibit a more correct text of Scripture than one written in
the vth, or even than one written in the xth. For the proof of this
statement, (if it can be supposed to require proof,) it is enough to
appeal to Codex D. That venerable copy of the Gospels is of the vith
century. It is, in fact, one of our five great uncials. No older MS. of
the Greek Text is known to exist,--excepting always A, B, C and {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}. And yet
_no_ text is more thoroughly disfigured by corruptions and interpolations
than that of Codex D. In the Acts, (to use the language of its learned and
accurate Editor,) "it is hardly an exaggeration to assert that it
reproduces the _textus receptus_ much in the same way that one of the best
Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament: so wide are the
variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of
expanding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend
themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability."(133)
Where, then, is the _a priori_ probabilit