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the difficulties of his task as an editor, since they frequently did not offer him the same reading; but, as Lachmann triumphantly shewed, in no other way was it possible to avoid the errors that must often find acceptance when numberless variations are approached from the wrong side.

253. The limitations of view in Griesbach and his predecessors were the natural result of the slenderness of their materials. Bentley and Bengel wrote when A was for practical purposes the one ancient purely Greek uncial; and the peculiarities of its text, used as a standard, coloured their criticism, and to a certain extent even that of Griesbach. He learned much from his study of C and L: but the very large distinctively Alexandrian element which they contain had probably a considerable share in leading him implicitly to assume that any extant ancient text not Western must be Alexandrian, and that in the most exclusive sense. A later generation has less excuse for overlooking the preservation of a neutral text, in approximate integrity in B, and in greater or less proportions in many other documents; or for questioning the vast increase of certainty introduced by its recognition in weighing the claims of rival Pre-Syrian readings.

D. 254, 255. Permanent value of Griesbach's criticism

254. In dwelling on Griesbach's errors at some length, notwithstanding the neglect into which his writings have unhappily fallen, we should be grieved even to seem regardless of a name which we venerate above that of every other textual critic of the New Testament. It was essential to our purpose to explain clearly in what sense it is true, and in what sense it is not true, that we are attempting to revive a theory which is popularly supposed to have been long since exploded. No valid objection can, we believe, be brought against the greater part of Griesbach's historical view. It is commonly met by vague sceptical assertions which make no attempt to deal with the actual phenomena. Criticisms which merely shewed that he had been led into too broad and unqualified assertions as to this or that document have left untouched or even unawares strengthened his main positions. The most plausible allegation, that his latest discoveries as to Origen's readings compelled him