5. Theodore de Bèze [1519-1605], a native of Vezelai in the Nivernois, after a licentious youth, resigned his ecclesiastical preferments at the age of twenty-nine to retire with the wife of his early choice to Geneva, that little city to which the genius of one man has given so prominent a place in the history of the sixteenth century. His noble birth and knowledge of the world, aided by the impression produced at the Conference at Poissy (1561) by his eloquence and learning, easily gained for Beza the chief place among the French Reformed on the death of their teacher Calvin in 1564. Of his services in connexion with the two Codd. D we have already spoken: he himself put forth at intervals, besides his own elegant Latin version published in 1556, ten editions of the N. T. (viz. four in folio in the years 1565, 1582, 1588, 1598, and six in octavo in 1565, 1567, 1580, 1591, 1604, and 1611), the Latin Vulgate, and Annotations(181). A better commentator perhaps than a critic, but most conspicuous as the earnest leader of a religious party, Beza neither sought very anxiously after fresh materials for correcting the text, nor made any great use of what were ready at hand, namely, his own two great codices, the papers of Henry Stephen, and Tremellius’ Latin version of the Peshitto. All his editions vary somewhat from Stephen and from each other, yet there is no material difference between any of them(182). He exhibits a tendency, not the less blameworthy because his extreme theological views would tempt him thereto, towards choosing that reading out of several which might best suit his own preconceived opinions. Thus in Luke ii. 22 he adopts (and our Authorized English version condescends to follow his judgement) τοῦ καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῆς from the Complutensian, for which he could have known of no manuscript authority whatever: _ejus_ of the Vulgate would most naturally be rendered by αὐτοῦ (_see_ Campbell in loc.). Wetstein calculates that Beza’s text differs from Stephen’s in some fifty places (an estimate we shall find below the mark), and that either in his translation or his Annotations he departs from Stephen’s Greek text in 150 passages (Wetst. N. T., Proleg., Tom. ii. p. 7).