§ 17. In Textual Criticism then, “rough comparison” can seldom, if ever, be of any real use. On the other hand, the exact _Collation_ of documents whether ancient or modern with the received Text, is the necessary foundation of all scientific Criticism. I employ that Text,—(as Mill, Bentley, Wetstein; Griesbach, Matthæi, Scholz; Tischendorf, Tregelles, Scrivener, employed it before me,)—not as a criterion of _Excellence_, but as a standard of _Comparison_. All this will be found fully explained below, from page 383 to page 391. Whenever I would judge of _the authenticity_ of any particular reading, I insist on bringing it, wherever found,—whether in Justin Martyr and Irenæus, on the one hand; or in Stephens and Elzevir, on the other;—to the test of _Catholic Antiquity_. If that witness is consentient, or very nearly so, whether for or against any given reading, I hold it to be decisive. To no other system of arbitration will I submit myself. I decline to recognise any other criterion of Truth. § 18. What compels me to repeat this so often, is the impatient self-sufficiency of these last days, which is for breaking away from the old restraints; and for erecting the individual conscience into an authority from which there shall be no appeal. I know but too well how laborious is the scientific method which _I_ advocate. A long summer day disappears, while the student—with all his appliances about him—is resolutely threshing out some minute textual problem. Another, and yet another bright day vanishes. Comes Saturday evening at last, and a page of illegible manuscript is all that he has to show for a week’s heavy toil. _Quousque tandem?_ And yet, it is the indispensable condition of progress in an unexplored region, that a few should thus labour, until a path has been cut through the forest,—a road laid down,—huts built,—a _modus vivendi_ established. In this department of sacred Science, men have been going on too long inventing their facts, and delivering themselves of oracular decrees, on the sole responsibility of their own inner consciousness. There is great convenience in such a method certainly,—a charming simplicity which is in a high degree attractive to flesh and blood. It dispenses with proof. It furnishes no evidence. It asserts when it ought to argue.(23) It reiterates when it is called upon to explain.(24) “I am sir Oracle.” ... This,—which I venture to style the _unscientific_ method,—reached its culminating point when Professors Westcott and Hort recently put forth their Recension of the Greek Text. Their work is indeed quite a psychological curiosity. Incomprehensible to me is it how two able men of disciplined understandings can have seriously put forth the volume which they call “INTRODUCTION—APPENDIX.” It is the very _Reductio ad absurdum_ of the uncritical method of the last fifty years. And it is especially in opposition to this new method of theirs that I so strenuously insist that _the consentient voice of Catholic