9. The next step in advance was made by John James Wetstein [1693-1754], a native of Basle, whose edition of the Greek New Testament (“cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum MSS., Editionum aliarum, Versionum et Patrum, necnon Commentario pleniore ex scriptoribus veteribus, Hebraeis, Graecis, et Latinis, historiam et vim verborum illustrante”) appeared in two volumes, folio, Amsterdam, 1751-2. The genius, the character, and (it must in justice be added) the worldly fortunes of Wetstein were widely different from those of the good Abbot of Alpirspach. His taste for Biblical studies showed itself early. When ordained pastor at the age of twenty he delivered a disputation, “De variis N. T. lectionibus,” and zeal for this fascinating pursuit became at length with him a passion—the master-passion which consoled and dignified a roving, troubled, unprosperous life. In 1714 his eager search for manuscripts led him to Paris, in 1715-16 and again in 1720 he visited England, and was employed by Bentley in collecting materials for his projected edition, but he seems to have imbibed few of that great man’s principles: the interval between them, both in age and station, almost forbade much sympathy. On his return home he gradually became suspected of Socinian tendencies, and it must be feared with too much justice; so that in the end he was deposed from the pastorate (1730), driven into exile, and after having been compelled to serve in a position the least favourable to the cultivation of learning, that of a military chaplain, he obtained at length (1733) a Professorship among the Remonstrants at Amsterdam (in succession to the celebrated Leclerc), and there continued till his death in 1754, having made his third visit to England in 1746. His “Prolegomena,” first published in 1730, and afterwards, in an altered form, prefixed to his N. T.(213), present a painful image both of the man and of his circumstances. His restless energy, his undaunted industry, his violent temper, his love of paradox, his assertion for himself of perfect freedom of thought, his silly prejudice against Jesuits and bigots, his enmities, his wrongs, his ill-requited labours, at once excite our respect and our pity: while they all help to make his writings a sort of unconscious autobiography, rather interesting than agreeable. _Non sic itur ad astra_, whether morally or intellectually; yet Wetstein’s services to sacred literature were of no common order. His philological annotations, wherein the matter and phraseology of the inspired writers are illustrated by copious—too copious—quotations from all kinds of authors, classical, Patristic, and Rabbinical, have proved an inexhaustible storehouse from which later writers have drawn liberally and sometimes without due acknowledgement; but many of the passages are of such a tenor as (to use Tregelles’ very gentle language respecting them) “only to excite surprise at their being