And thus, the men who were appointed to improve _the English Translation_ are exhibited to us remodelling _the original Greek_. At a moment’s notice, as if by intuition,—by an act which can only be described as the exercise of instinct,—these eminent Divines undertake to decide which shall be deemed the genuine utterances of the HOLY GHOST,(79)—which _not_. Each is called upon to give his vote, and he gives it. “_The Text being thus settled_” they proceed to do the only thing they were originally appointed to do; viz. to try their hands at improving our Authorized Version. But we venture respectfully to suggest, that by no such “rough and ready” process is that most delicate and difficult of all critical problems—the truth of Scripture—to be “settled.” Sir Edmund Beckett remarks that if the description above given “of the process by which the Revisionists ‘settled’ the Greek alterations, is not a kind of joke, it is quite enough to ‘settle’ this Revised Greek Testament in a very different sense.”(80) And so, in truth, it clearly is.—“Such a proceeding appeared to me so strange,” (writes the learned and judicious Editor of the _Speaker’s Commentary_,) “that I fully expected that the account would be corrected, or that some explanation would be given which might remove the very unpleasant impression.”(81) We have since heard on the best authority, _that_ namely of Bishop Ellicott himself,(82) that Dr. Newth’s account of the method of “settling” the text of the N. T., pursued in the Jerusalem Chamber, is correct. But in fact, it proves to have been, from the very first, a definite part of the Programme. The chairman of the Revisionist body, Bishop Ellicott,—when he had “to consider the practical question,”—whether “(1), to construct a critical Text first: or (2), to use preferentially, though not exclusively, some current Text: or (3), _simply to proceed onward_ with the work of Revision, whether of Text or Translation, making the current _Textus Receptus_ the standard, and departing from it only when critical or grammatical considerations show that it is clearly necessary,—in fact, _solvere ambulando_;” announces, at the end of 19 pages,—“We are driven then to the third alternative.”(83) We naturally cast about for some evidence that the members of the New Testament company possess that mastery of the subject which alone could justify one of their number (Dr. Milligan) in asserting roundly that these 12 verses are “_not from the pen of S. Mark himself_;”(84) and another (Dr. Roberts) in maintaining that “the passage is _not the immediate production of S. Mark_.”(85) Dr. Roberts assures us that— “Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Victor of Antioch, Severus of Antioch, Jerome, as well as other writers, especially Greeks, testify that these verses were not written by S. Mark, or not found in the best copies.”(86)