ions or revisions by ecclesiastical authority, but
arose gradually from the causes above considered (No. 3). These
variations exhibit such gradations of text that it is impossible
to draw definite lines of classification, without admitting so
many exceptions as almost to destroy the application of such a
system.

There is a general difference in characteristic readings between
the more ancient manuscripts, versions, and citations, and the
copies of general circulation in more recent times. This gives
rise to the general line of demarcation between the _more
ancient_ and the _more recent_ texts; each of these two classes,
however, having, in turn, its own points of difference among the
texts belonging to it.

The more ancient manuscripts, versions, and citations which we
possess range themselves under what we know from their combined
testimony to be the more ancient text. Among the manuscripts and
documents so allied there are such shades of difference and
characteristic peculiarities, that the versions and manuscripts
might be easily contemplated as ramifying into two subclasses.

The most ancient documents in general are sufficiently
dissimilar to enable us to regard their testimony, when
combined, as cumulative.

5. Respecting the materials for writing in ancient times--papyrus and
parchment, afterwards paper made from linen or cotton; the form of
manuscripts--the roll with papyrus, and the book-form with leaves when
parchment was used; the use of _palimpsests_; the _uncial_ and _cursive_
styles of writing; and the means of determining the age of manuscripts,
see in Chap. 3, No. 2. The existing manuscripts have been all numbered
and catalogued. The custom since the time of Wetstein has been to mark
the uncial manuscripts by capital letters, and the cursives by numbers
or small letters. We append a brief notice of a few of the more
celebrated manuscripts.

There are four very ancient and important manuscripts, all of
which originally contained the entire Greek Bible of the Old and
New Testament, and which belong to a time when the arrangements
of Euthalius, especially his stichometrical mode of writing
(Chap. 25, Nos. 6-9), had either not been introduced or not come
into common use. These are the following:

(1.) The _Codex Vaticanus_, _Vatican manuscript_, marked by the
letter B, and so called fr