What precedes admits to some extent of further numerical illustration. It is discovered that in the 111 (out of 320) pages of an ordinary copy of the Greek Testament, in which alone these five manuscripts are collectively available for comparison in the Gospels,—the serious deflections of A from the _Textus receptus_ amount in all to only 842: whereas in C they amount to 1798: in B, to 2370: in א, to 3392: in D, to 4697. The readings _peculiar to_ A within the same limits are 133: those peculiar to C are 170. But those of B amount to 197: while א exhibits 443: and the readings peculiar to D (within the same limits), are no fewer than 1829.... We submit that these facts—_which result from merely referring five manuscripts to one and the same common standard_—are by no means calculated to inspire confidence in codices B א C D:—codices, be it remembered, which come to us without a character, without a history, in fact without antecedents of _any_ kind. But let the learned chairman of the New Testament company of Revisionists (Bp. Ellicott) be heard on this subject. He is characterizing these same “old uncials,” which it is just now the fashion—or rather, the _craze_—to hold up as oracular, and to which his lordship is as devotedly and blindly attached as any of his neighbours:— “The _simplicity and dignified conciseness_” (he says) “of the Vatican manuscript (B): the _greater expansiveness_ of our own Alexandrian (A): the _partially mixed characteristics_ of the Sinaitic (א): the _paraphrastic tone_ of the _singular_ codex Bezæ (D), are now brought home to the student.”(49) Could ingenuity have devised severer satire than such a description of four professing _transcripts_ of a book; and _that_ book, the everlasting Gospel itself?—transcripts, be it observed in passing, on which it is just now the fashion to rely implicitly for the very orthography of proper names,—the spelling of common words,—the minutiæ of grammar. What (we ask) would be thought of four such “_copies_” of Thucydides or of Shakspeare? Imagine it gravely proposed, by the aid of four such conflicting documents, to re-adjust the text of the funeral oration of Pericles, or to re-edit “Hamlet.” _Risum teneatis amici?_ Why, some of the poet’s most familiar lines would cease to be recognizable: _e.g._ A,—“_Toby or not Toby; that is the question_:” B,—“_Tob or not, is the question_:” א,—“_To be a tub, or not to be a tub; the question is that_:” C,—“_The question is, to beat, or not to beat Toby?_”: D (the “singular codex”),—“_The only question is this: to beat that Toby, or to be a tub?_”