accurate Editor,) “it is hardly an exaggeration to assert that it reproduces the _textus receptus_ much in the same way that one of the best Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament: so wide are the variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of expanding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability.”(133) Where, then, is the _à priori_ probability that two MSS. of the ivth century shall have not only a superior claim to be heard, but almost an exclusive right to dictate which readings are to be rejected, which retained? How ready the most recent editors of the New Testament have shewn themselves to hammer the sacred text on the anvil of Codd. B and א,—not unfrequently in defiance of the evidence of all other MSS., and sometimes to the serious detriment of the deposit,—would admit of striking illustration were this place for such details. Tischendorf’s English “_New Testament_”—“with various readings from the three most celebrated manuscripts of the Greek Text” translated at the foot of every page,—is a recent attempt (1869) to popularize the doctrine that we have to look exclusively to two or three of the oldest copies, if we would possess the Word of GOD in its integrity. Dean Alford’s constant appeal in his revision of the Authorized Version (1870) to “the oldest MSS.” (meaning thereby generally Codd. א and B with one or two others(134)), is an abler endeavour to familiarize the public mind with the same belief. I am bent on shewing that there is nothing whatever in the character of either of the Codices in question to warrant this servile deference. (_a_) And first,—Ought it not sensibly to detract from our opinion of the value of their evidence to discover that _it is easier to find two consecutive verses in which the two MSS. differ, the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree_? Now this is a plain matter of fact, of which any one who pleases may easily convince himself. But the character of two witnesses who habitually contradict one another has been accounted, in every age, precarious. On every such occasion, only one of them can possibly be speaking the truth. Shall I be thought unreasonable if I confess that these _perpetual_ inconsistencies between Codd. B and א,—grave inconsistencies, and occasionally even gross ones,—altogether destroy my confidence in either? (_b_) On the other hand, discrepant as the testimony of these two MSS. is throughout, they yet, strange to say, conspire every here and there in exhibiting minute corruptions of such an unique and peculiar kind as to betray a (probably not very remote) common corrupt original. These coincidences in fact are so numerous and so extraordinary as to establish a real connexion between those two codices; and that connexion is fatal to any claim which might be set up on their behalf as wholly independent witnesses.(135)