6. We have to return to England once more, where the criticism of the New Testament had engrossed the attention of RICHARD BENTLEY [1662-1742], whose elevation to the enviable post of Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1699, was a just recognition of his supremacy in the English world of letters. As early as 1691 he had felt a keen interest in sacred criticism, and in his “Epistola ad Johannem Millium” had urged that editor, in language fraught with eloquence and native vigour, to hasten on the work (whose accomplishment was eventually left to others) of publishing side by side on the opened leaf Codd. A, D (_Bezae_), D (_Clarom._), E (_Laud._). For many years afterwards Bentley’s laurels were won on other fields, and it was not till his friend was dead, and his admirable labours were exposed to the obloquy of opponents (some honest though unwise, others hating Mill because they hated the Scriptures which he sought to illustrate), that our Aristarchus exerted his giant strength to crush the infidel and to put the ignorant to silence. In his “Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free Thinking in a letter to F[rancis] H[are] D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” 1713, Bentley displayed that intimate familiarity with the whole subject of various readings, their causes, extent, and consequences, which has rendered this occasional treatise more truly valued (as it was far more important) than the world-renowned “Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris” itself. As his years were now hastening on and the evening of life was beginning to draw nigh, it was seemly that the first scholar of his age should seek for his rare abilities an employment more entirely suited to his sacred office than even the most successful cultivation of classical learning; and so, about this time, he came to project what he henceforth regarded as his greatest effort, an edition of the Greek New Testament. In 1716 we find him in conference with J. J. Wetstein, then very young, and seeking his aid in procuring collations. In the same year he addressed his memorable “Letter” to Wm. Wake [1657-1737], Archbishop of Canterbury, whose own mind was full of the subject, wherein he explains, with characteristic energy and precision, the principles on which he proposed to execute his great scheme. As these principles must be reviewed afterwards, we will but touch upon them now. His theory was built upon the notion that the oldest manuscripts of the Greek original and of Jerome’s Latin version resemble each other so marvellously, even in the very order of the words, that by this agreement he could restore the text as it stood in the fourth century, “so that there shall not be twenty words, or even particles, difference.” “By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope’s [i.e. the Clementine] Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephen’s [1550], I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any