(3.) “We are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the Hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, _is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability, resulting from the internal goodness of the Text which its adoption would force upon us_.” (4.) “ ‘We cannot doubt’ (says DR. HORT) ‘that S. Luke xxiii. 34 comes from an extraneous source.’ [_Notes_, p. 68.]—_Nor can we, on our part, doubt_,” (rejoins DR. SCRIVENER,) “_that the System which entails such consequences is hopelessly self-condemned_.” SCRIVENER’S “Plain Introduction,” &c. [ed. 1883]: pp. 531, 537, 542, 604. DEDICATION. To The Right Hon. Viscount Cranbrook, G.C.S.I., &c., &c., &c. MY DEAR LORD CRANBROOK, _Allow me the gratification of dedicating the present Volume to yourself; but for whom—(I reserve the explanation for another day)—it would never have been written._ _This is not, (as you will perceive at a glance,) the Treatise which a few years ago I told you I had in hand; and which, but for the present hindrance, might by this time have been completed. It has however_ grown out _of that other work in the manner explained at the beginning of my Preface. Moreover it contains not a few specimens of the argumentation of which the work in question, when at last it sees the light, will be discovered to be full._ _My one object has been to defeat the mischievous attempt which was made in 1881 to thrust upon this Church and Realm a Revision of the Sacred Text, which—recommended though it be by eminent names—I am thoroughly convinced, and am able to prove, is untrustworthy from beginning to end._ _The reason is plain. It has been constructed throughout on an utterly erroneous hypothesis. And I inscribe this Volume to you, my friend, as a conspicuous member of that body of faithful and learned Laity by whose deliberate verdict, when the whole of the evidence has been produced and the case has been fully argued out, I shall be quite willing that my contention may stand or fall._ _The_ English _(as well as the Greek) of the newly __“__Revised Version__”__ is hopelessly at fault. It is to me simply unintelligible how a company of Scholars can have spent ten years in elaborating such a very unsatisfactory production. Their uncouth phraseology and their jerky sentences, their pedantic obscurity and their unidiomatic English, contrast painfully with __“__the happy turns of expression, the music of the cadences, the felicities of the rhythm__”__ of our Authorized Version. The transition from one to the other, as the Bishop of Lincoln remarks, is like exchanging a well-built carriage for a vehicle without springs, in which you get jolted to death on a newly-mended and rarely-traversed road. But the __“__Revised Version__”__ is inaccurate as well; exhibits defective scholarship, I mean, in countless places._