II. More recently, a claim to co-ordinate primacy has been set up on behalf of the Codex Sinaiticus. Tischendorf is actually engaged in remodelling his seventh Leipsic edition, chiefly in conformity with the readings of his lately discovered MS.(129) And yet the Codex in question abounds with “errors of the the eye and pen, to an extent not unparalleled, but happily rather unusual in documents of first-rate importance.” On many occasions, 10, 20, 30, 40 words are dropped through very carelessness.(130) “Letters and words, even whole sentences, are frequently written twice over, or begun and immediately cancelled: while that gross blunder ... whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same words as the clause preceding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament. Tregelles has freely pronounced that ‘the state of the text, as proceeding from the first scribe, may be regarded as _very rough_.’ ”(131) But when “the first scribe” and his “very rough” performance have been thus unceremoniously disposed of, one would like to be informed what remains to command respect in Codex א? Is, then, _manuscript authority_ to be confounded with _editorial caprice_,—exercising itself upon the corrections of “at least ten different revisers,” who, from the vith to the xiith century, have been endeavouring to lick into shape a text which its original author left “_very rough_?” The co-ordinate primacy, (as I must needs call it,) which, within the last few years, has been claimed for Codex B and Codex א, threatens to grow into a species of tyranny,—from which I venture to predict there will come in the end an unreasonable and unsalutary recoil. It behoves us, therefore, to look closely into this matter, and to require a reason for what is being done. The text of the sacred deposit is far too precious a thing to be sacrificed to an irrational, or at least a superstitious devotion to two MSS.,—simply because they may possibly be older by a hundred years than any other which we possess. “Id verius quod prius,” is an axiom which holds every bit as true in Textual Criticism as in Dogmatic Truth. But on that principle, (as I have already shewn,) the last twelve verses of S. Mark’s Gospel are fully established;(132) and by consequence, the credit of Codd. B and א sustains a severe shock. Again, “Id verius quod prius;” but it does not of course follow that a Codex of the ivth century shall exhibit a more correct text of Scripture than one written in the vth, or even than one written in the xth. For the proof of this statement, (if it can be supposed to require proof,) it is enough to appeal to Codex D. That venerable copy of the Gospels is of the vith century. It is, in fact, one of our five great uncials. No older MS. of the Greek Text is known to exist,—excepting always A, B, C and א. And yet _no_ text is more thoroughly disfigured by corruptions and interpolations than that of Codex D. In the Acts, (to use the language of its learned and