The nature of Tradition is very imperfectly understood in many quarters; and mistakes respecting it lie close to the root, if they are not themselves the root, of the chief errors in Textual Criticism. We must therefore devote some space to a brief explanation of this important element in our present inquiry.

Tradition is commonly likened to a stream which, as is taken for granted, contracts pollution in its course the further it goes. Purity is supposed to be attainable only within the neighbourhood of the source: and it is assumed that distance from thence ensures proportionally either greater purity or more corruption.

Without doubt there is much truth in this comparison: only, as in the case of nearly all comparisons there are limits to the resemblance, and other features and aspects are not therein connoted, which are essentially bound up with the subject believed to be illustrated on all points in this similitude.

In the first place, the traditional presentment of the New Testament is not like a single stream, but resembles rather a great number of streams of which many have [pg 197] remained pure, but some have been corrupted. One cluster of bad streams was found in the West, and, as is most probable, the source of very many of them was in Syria: another occurred in the East with Alexandria and afterwards Caesarea as the centre, where it was joined by the currents from the West. A multitude in different parts of the Church were kept wholly or mainly clear of these contaminants, and preserved the pure and precise utterance as it issued from the springs of the Written Word.

But there is another pitfall hidden under that imperfect simile which is continually employed on this subject either by word of mouth or in writing. The Tradition of the Church does not take shape after the model of a stream or streams rolling in mechanical movement and unvaried flow from the fountain down the valley and over the plain. Like most mundane things, it has a career. It has passed through a stage when one manuscript was copied as if mechanically from another that happened to be at hand. Thus accuracy except under human infirmity produced accuracy; and error was surely procreative of error. Afterwards came a period when both bad and good exemplars offered themselves in rivalry, and the power of refusing the evil and choosing the good was in exercise, often with much want of success. As soon as this stage was accomplished, which may be said roughly to have reached from Origen till the middle of the fourth century, another period commenced, when a definite course was adopted, which was followed with increasing advantage till the whole career was fixed irrevocably in the right direction. The period of the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, and others, was the time when the Catholic Church took stock of truth and corruption, and had in hand the duty of thoroughly casting out error and cleansing her faith. The second part of the Creed was thus permanently defined; the third part which, besides the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, relates to His action [pg 198] in the Church, to the Written Word, inclusive both of the several books generally and the text of those books, to the nature of the Sacraments, to the Ministry, to the character of the unity and government of the Church, was on many points delayed as to special definition by the ruin soon dealt upon the Roman Empire, and by the ignorance of the nations which entered upon that vast domain: and indeed much of this part of the Faith remains still upon the battlefield of controversy.

But action was taken upon what may be perhaps termed the Canon of St. Augustine289: “What the Church of the time found prevailing throughout her length and breadth, not introduced by regulations of Councils, but handed down in unbroken tradition, that she rightly concluded to have been derived from no other fount than Apostolic authority.” To use other words, in the accomplishment of her general work, the Church quietly and without any public recension examined as to the written Word the various streams that had come down from the Apostles, and followed the multitude that were purest, and by gradual filtration extruded out of these nearly all the corruption that even the better lines of descent had contracted.

We have now arrived at the period, when from the general consentience of the records, it is discovered that the form of the Text of the New Testament was mainly settled. The settlement was effected noiselessly, not by public debate or in decrees of general or provincial councils, yet none the less completely and permanently. It was the Church's own operation, instinctive, deliberate, and in the main universal. Only a few witnesses here and there lifted up their voices against the prevalent decisions, themselves to be condemned by the dominant sense of Christendom. Like the repudiation of Arianism, it was [pg 199] a repentance from a partial and temporary encouragement of corruption, which was never to be repented of till it was called in question during the general disturbance of faith and doctrine in the nineteenth century. Doubtless, the agreement thus introduced has not attained more than a general character. For the exceeding number of questions involved forbids all expectation of an universal coincidence of testimony extending to every single case.

But in the outset, as we enter upon the consideration of the later manuscripts, our way must be cleared by the removal of some fallacies which are widely prevalent amongst students of Sacred Textual Criticism.

It is sometimes imagined (1) that Uncials and Cursives differ in kind; (2) that all Cursives are alike; (3) that all Cursives are copies of Codex A, and are the results of a general Recension; and (4) that we owe our knowledge of the New Testament entirely to the existing Uncials. To these four fallacies must be added an opinion which stands upon a higher footing than the preceding, but which is no less a fallacy, and which we have to combat in this chapter, viz. that the Text of the later Uncials and especially the Text of the Cursives is a debased Text.

1. The real difference between Uncials and Cursives is patent to all people who have any knowledge of the subject. Uncials form a ruder kind of manuscripts, written in capital letters with no space between them till the later specimens are reached, and generally with an insufficient and ill-marked array of stops. Cursives show a great advance in workmanship, being indited, as the name suggests, in running and more easily flowing letters, with “a system of punctuation much the same as in printed books.” As contrasted with one another, Uncials as a class enjoy a great superiority, if antiquity is considered; and Cursives are just as much higher than the sister class, if workmanship is to be the guiding principle [pg 200] of judgement. Their differences are on the surface, and are such that whoso runs may read.

But Textual Science, like all Science, is concerned, not with the superficial, but with the real;—not with the dress in which the text is presented, but with the text itself;—not again with the bare fact of antiquity, since age alone is no sure test of excellence, but with the character of the testimony which from the nature of the subject-matter is within reach. Judging then the later Uncials, and comparing them with the Cursives, we make the discovery that the texts of both are mainly the same. Indeed, they are divided by no strict boundary of time: they overlap one another. The first Cursive is dated May 7, 835290: the last Uncials, which are Lectionaries, are referred to the eleventh, and possibly to the twelfth, century291. One, Codex ?, is written partly in uncials, and partly in cursive letters, as it appears, by the same hand. So that in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries both uncials and cursives must have issued mainly and virtually from the same body of transcribers. It follows that the difference lay in the outward investiture, whilst, as is found by a comparison of one with another, there was a much more important similarity of character within.

2. But when a leap is made from this position to another sweeping assertion that all cursives are alike, it is necessary to put a stop to so illicit a process. In the first place, there is the small handful of cursive copies which is associated with B and ?. The notorious 1,—handsome outwardly like its two leaders but corrupt in text,—33, 118, 131, 157, 205, 209292, and others;—the Ferrar Group, containing 13, 69, 124, 346, 556, 561, besides 348, 624, 788;—these [pg 201] are frequently dissentients from the rest of the Cursives. But indeed, when these and a few others have been subtracted from the rest and set apart in a class by themselves, any careful examination of the evidence adduced on important passages will reveal the fact that whilst almost always there is a clear majority of Cursives on one side, there are amply enough cases of dissentience more or less to prove that the Cursive MSS. are derived from a multiplicity of archetypes, and are endued almost severally with what may without extravagance be termed distinct and independent personality. Indeed, such is the necessity of the case. They are found in various countries all over the Church. Collusion was not possible in earlier times when intercommunication between countries was extremely limited, and publicity was all but confined to small areas. The genealogies of Cursive MSS., if we knew them, would fill a volume. Their stems must have been extremely numerous; and like Uncials, and often independently of Uncials, they must have gone back to the vast body of early papyrus manuscripts.

3. And as to the Cursives having been copies of Codex A, a moderate knowledge of the real character of that manuscript, and a just estimate of the true value of it, would effectually remove such a hallucination. It is only the love of reducing all knowledge of intricate questions to the compass of the proverbial nutshell, and the glamour that hangs over a very old relic, which has led people, when they had dropped their grasp of B, to clutch at the ancient treasure in the British Museum. It is right to concede all honour to such a survival of so early a period: but to lift the pyramid from its ample base, and to rest it upon a point like A, is a proceeding which hardly requires argument for its condemnation. And next, when the notion of a Recension is brought forward, the answer is, What and when and how and where? In the absence [pg 202] of any sign or hint of such an event in records of the past, it is impossible to accept such an explanation of what is no difficulty at all. History rests upon research into documents which have descended to us, not upon imagination or fiction. And the sooner people get such an idea out of their heads as that of piling up structures upon mere assumption, and betake themselves instead to what is duly attested, the better it will be for a Science which must be reared upon well authenticated bases, and not upon phantom theories.

4. The case of the Cursives is in other respects strangely misunderstood, or at least is strangely misrepresented. The popular notion seems to be, that we are indebted for our knowledge of the true text of Scripture to the existing Uncials entirely; and that the essence of the secret dwells exclusively with the four or five oldest of those Uncials. By consequence, it is popularly supposed that since we are possessed of such Uncial Copies, we could afford to dispense with the testimony of the Cursives altogether. A more complete misconception of the facts of the case can hardly be imagined. For the plain truth is that all the phenomena exhibited by the Uncial MSS. are reproduced by the Cursive Copies. A small minority of the Cursives, just as a small minority of the Uncials, are probably the depositaries of peculiar recensions.

It is at least as reasonable to assert that we can afford entirely to disregard the testimony of the Uncials, as to pretend that we can afford entirely to disregard the testimony of the Cursives. In fact of the two, the former assertion would be a vast deal nearer to the truth. Our inductions would in many cases be so fatally narrowed, if we might not look beyond one little handful of Uncial Copies.

But the point to which the reader's attention is specially invited is this:—that so far from our being entirely [pg 203] dependent on Codexes B?CD, or on some of them, for certain of the most approved corrections of the Received Text, we should have been just as fully aware of every one of those readings if neither B nor ?, C nor D, had been in existence. Those readings are every one to be found in one or more of the few Cursive Codexes which rank by themselves, viz. the two groups just mentioned and perhaps some others. If they are not, they may be safely disregarded; they are readings which have received no subsequent recognition293.

Indeed, the case of the Cursives presents an exact parallel with the case of the Uncials. Whenever we observe a formal consensus of the Cursives for any reading, there, almost invariably, is a grand consensus observable for the same reading of the Uncials.

The era of greater perfection both in the outer presentment and in the internal accuracy of the text of copies of the New Testament may be said, as far as the relics which have descended to us are concerned, to have commenced with the Codex Basiliensis or E of the Gospels. This beautiful and generally accurate Codex must have been written in the seventh century294. The rest of the later [pg 204] Uncials are ordinarily found together in a large or considerable majority: whilst there is enough dissent to prove that they are independent witnesses, and that error was condemned, not ignored. Thus the Codex Regius (L, eighth century), preserved at Paris, generally follows B and ?: so does the Codex Sangallensis (?, ninth century), the Irish relic of the monastery of St. Gall, in St. Mark alone: and the Codex Zacynthius (?, an eighth century palimpsest) now in the Library of the Bible Society, in St. Luke295. The isolation of these few from the rest of their own age is usually conspicuous. The verdict of the later uncials is nearly always sustained by a large majority. In fact, as a rule, every principal reading discoverable in any of the oldest Uncials is also exhibited in one, two, or three of the later Uncials, or in one or more of the small handful of dissentient Cursives already enumerated. Except indeed in very remarkable instances, as in the case of the last twelve verses of St. Mark, such readings are generally represented: yet in the later MSS. as compared with the oldest there is this additional feature in the representation, that if evidence is evidence, and weight, number, and variety are taken into account, those readings are altogether condemned.