times; let it be accepted as conclusive whensoever there are no grave reasons to the contrary, but let not their paramount authority shut out all other considerations, external and internal, which might guide us to the true reading of a passage; nor let us be so illogical as to conclude, because א and B are sometimes right, that therefore they never are in the wrong(293). The results of this excessive and irrational deference to one of our chief codices, that which he was so fortunate as to bring to the light twenty-five years ago, appears plainly in Tischendorf’s eighth edition of the New Testament. That great critic had never been conspicuous for stability of judgement. His third edition was constructed almost without any reference to the cursive manuscripts, which, unless they be, what no one asserts or imagines, merely corrupt copies, or copies of copies, of existing uncials, must needs be the representatives of yet older codices which have long since perished: “respectable ancestors” (as one has quaintly put the matter) “who live only in their descendants” (Long, Ciceronis Verrin. Orat., Praef. p. vi)(294). In Tischendorf’s seventh edition, completed in 1859, that error was rectified, and the sum of textual variations between the third and seventh edition in consequence amounted to 1296, in no less than 595 of which (430 of the remainder being mere matters of spelling) he returned to the readings of the Received text, which he had before deserted, but to which fresh materials and larger experience had brought him back(295). In the eighth edition another disturbing element is introduced, and that edition differs from his seventh in as many as 3369 places, to the scandal of the science of Comparative Criticism, as well as to his own grave discredit for discernment and consistency. The evidence of Cod. א, supported or even unsupported by one or two authorities of any description, proved with him sufficient to outweigh all other witnesses, whether manuscripts, versions, or ecclesiastical writers.