It can never be any question among scholars, that a fatal error was committed when a body of Divines, appointed _to revise the Authorized English Version_ of the New Testament Scriptures, addressed themselves to the solution of an entirely different and far more intricate problem, namely _the re-construction of the Greek Text_. We are content to pass over much that is distressing in the antecedent history of their enterprise. We forbear at this time of day to investigate, by an appeal to documents and dates, certain proceedings in and out of Convocation, on which it is known that the gravest diversity of sentiment still prevails among Churchmen.(41) This we do, not by any means as ourselves “halting between two opinions,” but only as sincerely desirous that the work before us may stand or fall, judged by its own intrinsic merits. Whether or no Convocation,—when it “nominated certain of its own members to undertake the work of Revision,” and authorized them “to refer when they considered it desirable to Divines, Scholars, and Literary men, at home or abroad, _for their opinion_;”—whether Convocation intended thereby to sanction the actual _co-optation_ into the Company appointed by themselves, of members of the Presbyterian, the Wesleyan, the Baptist, the Congregationalist, the Socinian body; _this_ we venture to think may fairly be doubted.—Whether again Convocation can have foreseen that of the ninety-nine Scholars in all who have taken part in this work of Revision, only forty-nine would be Churchmen, while the remaining fifty would belong to the sects:(42)—_this_ also we venture to think may be reasonably called in question.—Whether lastly, the Canterbury Convocation, had it been appealed to with reference to “the Westminster-Abbey scandal” (June 22nd, 1870), would not have cleared itself of the suspicion of complicity, by an unequivocal resolution,—we entertain no manner of doubt.—But we decline to enter upon these, or any other like matters. Our business is exclusively with the _result_ at which the Revisionists of the New Testament have arrived: and it is to this that we now address ourselves; with the mere avowal of our grave anxiety at the spectacle of an assembly of scholars, appointed to revise _an English Translation_, finding themselves called upon, as every fresh difficulty emerged, to develop the skill requisite for _critically revising the original Greek Text_. What else is implied by the very endeavour, but a singular expectation that experts in one Science may, at a moment’s notice, show themselves proficients in another,—and _that_ one of the most difficult and delicate imaginable?