The last-mentioned term has been happily applied by Tregelles to that delicate and important process, whereby we seek to determine the _comparative_ value, and trace the mutual relation, of authorities of every kind upon which the original text of the N. T. is based. Thus explained (and in this enlarged sense scholars have willingly accepted it), its researches may be pursued with diligence and interest, without reference to the maintenance or refutation of any particular system or scheme of recensions. The mode of procedure is experimental and tentative, rather than dogmatical; the facts it gradually develops will eventually (as we trust) put us on the right road, although for the present we meet with much that is uncertain, perplexing, ambiguous. It has already enabled critics in some degree to classify the documents with which they have to deal; it may possibly lead them, at some future period, to the establishment of principles more general, and therefore more simple, than we can now conceive likely or even possible to be attained to. 1. In the course of investigations thus difficult and precarious, designed to throw light on a matter of such vast consequence as the genuine condition of the text of Scripture, one thing would appear at first sight almost too clear for argument, too self-evident to be disputed,—that it is both our wisdom and our duty _to weigh the momentous subject at issue in all its parts_, shutting out from the mind no source of information which can reasonably be supposed capable of influencing our decision. Nor can such a course become less right or expedient because it must perforce involve us in laborious, extensive, and prolonged examination of a vast store of varied and voluminous testimony. It is essential that divines should strive to come to definite conclusions respecting disputed points of sacred criticism; it is not necessary that these conclusions should be drawn within a certain limited period, either this year, or even in the lifetime of our generation. Hence such a plan as that advocated by Lachmann, for abridging the trouble of investigation by the arbitrary rejection of the great mass of existing evidence, must needs be condemned for its rashness by those who think their utmost pains well bestowed in such a cause; nor can we consistently praise the determination of others, who, shunning the more obvious errors into which Lachmann fell, yet follow his example in constructing the text of the N. T. on a foundation somewhat less narrow, but scarcely more firm than his. As the true science of Biblical criticism is in real danger of suffering harm from the efforts of disciples of this school, it cannot be out of place if we examine the pleas which have been urged in vindication of their scheme, and assign (as briefly as we may) our reasons for believing that its apologists are but labouring in vain.