8. Encouraged by Bishop Fell, John MILL (1645-1707), about 1677, set to work upon an edition which appeared in the year of his death.[10] The value of Mill’s New Testament lies in its extended critical apparatus, and particularly in its Prolegomena. An enlarged edition was brought out in 1710 by Ludolf Küster of Westphalia (1670-1716), which, however, had such a small sale that it had to be reissued with a new title-page at Leipzig in 1723, and again at Amsterdam in 1746. In Mill’s time the number of various readings in the New Testament was estimated at 30,000: a competent estimate will now make them more than four or five times as many. That is to say, there are almost more variants than words. Mention must also be made of Nicolaus TOINARD’S Latin-Greek Harmony of the Gospels, which appeared at Orleans in the same year as Mill’s New Testament, and which was the fruit of nearly as many years’ labour. Toinard was the first Catholic after Erasmus, and the last previous to Scholz, to undertake a critical edition of the New Testament. He was also the first editor after Beza to estimate properly the critical value of the Vulgate. [Sidenote: Bentley.] It was Edward Wells who set the example of greater freedom in the adoption into the text of new readings from the manuscripts. His famous countryman, the great philologist Richard BENTLEY (1662-1742), projected a great critical edition of the New Testament, but unfortunately got no further than the preparation of materials and the publication of his “Proposals” in 1720. He undertook to remove two thousand errors from the Pope’s Vulgate, and as many from that of the Protestant Pope (Stephen), without using any manuscript under 900 years old. But as his edition never appeared, his nephew had to refund the 2000 guineas prepaid by the subscribers. In 1729 MACE published an edition anonymously, in which, perhaps, most courage was shown in departing from the ordinary text. Thereafter, English work in this department was suspended for nearly a century. It was transferred to Germany and the Netherlands by the Swabian scholar Bengel and by Wettstein of Basel. LITERATURE.—A. A. Ellis, _Bentleii Critica Sacra_, Camb., 1862. R. C. Jebb, _Bentley_, London, 1882. _TiGr._, 229-240. Wordsworth-White, I. pp. xv-xxviii (see below, p. 123). [Sidenote: Bengel.]