LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
1896.
'Tenet ecclesia nostra, tenuitque semper firmam illam etimmotam Tertulliani regulam "Id verius quod prius, id priusquod ab initio." Quo propius ad veritatis fontem accedimus,eo purior decurrit Catholicae doctrinae rivus.'
Cave's Proleg. p. xliv.
'Interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona, etambulate in ea.'—Jerem. vi. 16.
'In summa, si constat id verius quod prius, id prius quod abinitio, id ab initio quod ab Apostolis; pariter utique constabit,id esse ab Apostolis traditum, quod apud Ecclesias Apostolorumfuerit sacrosanctum.'—Tertull. adv. Marc. l. iv. c. 5.[Pg iii]
The reception given by the learned world to theFirst Volume of this work, as expressed hithertoin smaller reviews and notices, has on the wholebeen decidedly far from discouraging. All have hadsome word of encomium on our efforts. Many haveaccorded praise and signified their agreement, sometimeswith unquestionable ability. Some have pronouncedadverse opinions with considerable candourand courtesy. Others in opposing have employedarguments so weak and even irrelevant to the realquestion at issue, as to suggest that there is notafter all so much as I anticipated to advance againstour case. Longer examinations of this importantmatter are doubtless impending, with all the interestattaching to them and the judgements involved: butI beg now to offer my acknowledgements for all thewords of encouragement that have been uttered.
Something however must be said in reply to anattack made in the Guardian newspaper on May 20,because it represents in the main the positionoccupied by some members of an existing School.I do not linger over an offhand stricture upon my'adhesion to the extravagant claim of a second-centuryorigin for the Peshitto,' because I am[Pg iv]content with the companionship of some of the veryfirst Syriac scholars, and with the teaching givenin an unanswered article in the Church QuarterlyReview for April, 1895. Nor except in passingdo I remark upon a fanciful censure of my accountof the use of papyrus in MSS. before the tenthcentury—as to which the reviewer is evidently notversed in information recently collected, and describedfor example in Sir E. Maunde Thompson'sGreek and Latin Palaeography, or in Mr. F. G.Kenyon's Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts,and in an article in the just mentioned Reviewwhich appeared in October, 1894. These observationsand a large number of inaccuracies shewthat he was at the least not posted up to date. Butwhat will be thought, when attention is drawn tothe fact that in a question whether a singular set ofquotations from the early Fathers refer to a passagein St. Matthew or the parallel one in St. Luke, thepeculiar characteristic of St. Matthew—'them thatpersecute you'—is put out of sight, and bothpassages (taking the lengthened reading of St.Matthew) are represented as having equally onlyfour clauses? And again, when quotations goingon to the succeeding verse in St. Matthew (v. 45)are stated dogmatically to have been wronglyreferred by me to that Evangelist? But as to thedetails of this point in dispute, I beg to refer ourreaders to pp. 144-153 of the prese