ustrations of this kind, although there are many others like
them."(189)

Let it be declared without offence, that there appears to exist in the
mind of this illustrious Critic a hopeless confusion between the
_antiquity_ of a Codex and the _value_ of its readings. I venture to
assert that a reading is valuable or the contrary, exactly in proportion
to the probability of its being true or false. Interesting it is sure to
be, be it what it may, if it be found in a very ancient codex,--interesting
and often instructive: but the editor of Scripture must needs bring every
reading, wherever found, to this test at last:--Is it to be thought that
what I am here presented with is what the Evangelist or the Apostle
actually wrote? If an answer in the negative be obtained to this question,
then, the fact that one, or two, or three of the early Fathers appear to
have so read the place, will not avail to impart to the rejected reading
one particle of _value_. And yet Tischendorf thinks it enough in _all_ the
preceding passages to assure his reader that a given reading in Cod. {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} was
recognised by Origen, by Tertullian, by Jerome. To have established this
one point he evidently thinks sufficient. There is implied in all this an
utterly false major premiss: viz. That Scriptural quotations found in the
writings of Origen, of Tertullian, of Jerome, must needs be the _ipsissima
verba_ of the SPIRIT. Whereas it is notorious "that the worst corruptions
to which the New Testament has ever been subjected originated within a
hundred years after it was composed: that Irenaeus and the whole Western,
with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to
those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephens, thirteen centuries
later, when moulding the Textus Receptus."(190) And one is astonished that
a Critic of so much sagacity, (who of course knows better,) should
deliberately put forth so gross a fallacy,--not only without a word of
explanation, a word of caution, but in such a manner as inevitably to
mislead an unsuspecting reader. Without offence to Dr. Tischendorf, I must
be allowed to declare that, in the remarks we have been considering, he
shews himself far more bent on glorifying the "Codex Sinaiticus" than in
establishing the Truth of the pure Word of GOD. He convinces me that to
have found an early uncial Codex, is every bit as fatal as to have "taken
a gift." Verily, "_it doth blind the eyes of t