Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt: ...Westcott and Hort. They are either troubled with no similar anxieties, or else too clear-sighted to cherish any similar hope. They are evidently of opinion that a cloud or a quagmire will serve pg 307 their turn every bit as well as granite or Portland-stone. Dr. Hort (as we have seen already, namely in p. 252, ) considers that his individual "strong preference " of one set of Readings above another, is sufficient to determine whether the Manuscript which contains those Readings is pure or the contrary. "Formidable arrays of hostile Documentary evidence," he disregards and sets at defiance, when once his own "fullest consideration of Internal Evidence " has "pronounced certain Readings to be right" p. 61. The only indication we anywhere meet with of the actual ground of Dr. Hort's certainty, and reason of his preference, is contained in his claim that, - " Every binary group of MSS. containing b is found to offer a large proportion of Readings, which, on the closest scrutiny, have the ring of genuineness: while it is difficult to find any Readings so attested which look suspicious after full consideration. " -(p. 227. Also vol. i. 557-where the dictum is repeated.) XLVIII. And thus we have, at last, an honest confession of the ultimate principle which has determined the Text of the present edition of the N. T. "The ring of genuineness "! This it must be which was referred to when "instinctive processes of Criticism " were vaunted; and the candid avowal made that "the experience which is their foundation needs perpetual correction and recorrection." 729 " We are obliged " (say these accomplished writers) " to come to the individual mind at last . " 730 And thus, behold, "at last" we have reached the goal!. Individual idiosyncrasy, - not external Evidence: -Readings "strongly preferred,"- not Readings strongly attested: - "personal discernment " (self! still self!) conscientiously...
