author. We certainly did not anticipate a distinct reply; and least of all could we be so vain as to imagine that any suggestions of ours would induce him to make alterations in the work itself. If we mistake not, however, his lordship has honoured us with this flattering mark of his attention. In the review, we stated our dissent from the opinion that it is not at all necessary that the defenders of the verse should account for its absence from the Greek MSS.' On inspecting the second edition, we find that sentence omitted; and several reasons given to account for its absence. The conclusion, to which his lordship inclines, is, that it was omitted by accident.' Our opinion is, that it is want-ing in all the MSS. now extant, because it did not exist in the first MSS. But as these are, and can be, nothing but opinions, we leave it to our readers to decide which of them is the more probable. The bishop also mentions the disciplina arcani (to which we had objected) as a reason for the silence of many of the early fathers respecting the verse, although it be not admitted as a cause of its exclusion from the text of St. John.' On this we will now only observe that, had those early fathers omitted all mention of the doctrine of the Trinity, as a matter too high for vulgar apprehension, the notion of the disciplina arcani would have had some weight; but as they by no means avoided the doctrine, it is natural to suppose that they would, at some time or other, have availed themselves of so remarkable a text, either in illustration or in proof of it.

But

In the course of his Vindication, the bishop had, at least on three occasions, referred to Mr. Nolan's theory, that the verse was suppressed by Eusebius, in his edition of the Greek Testament. From the manner in which this was done, we fancied that it was a theory which his lordship' seemed to approve.' We are now informed (Preface to Second Edition, p. 64.) that if the reviewer had read the tract he was reviewing a little more carefully, he must have seen that Mr. Nolan's theory is not the theory of the Bishop of St. David's.' Nor did we say that it was. when we found his lordship stating (p. 33. First Edition) that very probable reasons had been given by Mr. Nolan, both for the absence of the verse from the latter MSS., and the silence of the fathers,' we thought the subject not unworthy of attention. We, therefore, examined the grounds of the charge brought against Eusebius-that of deliberately mutilating the Sacred Books; and we happen to know that, in the judgment of many learned persons, we completely vindicated the character of that great man. It is gratifying to us to be enabled to indulge a hope that the Bishop of St. David's is of the same opinion; for in the second edition of his Vindication (p. 123.) his lordship has re

6

stricted

stricted his seeming approbation' to Mr. Nolan's reasons for the silence of the Greek fathers.

Again, we ventured to intimate our dislike of a paragraph in which the bishop had stated his opinion that without the 7th verse, instead of three there might be thirty witnesses in the 8th verse.' This opinion his lordship has very properly omitted in his second edition. But still he is greatly dissatisfied with us. Finding this sentence- With the three witnesses of the seventh verse, the limitation to three witnesses in the eighth followed by a natural and obvious parallelism'-we were so unfortunate as to ask, 'What, then, are the water and the blood adduced as witnesses, not because the train of the apostle's reasoning required the mention of their testimony, but merely for the sake of parallelism? Can it be supposed that St. John was less attentive to the meaning than to the structure of his sentences?' It certainly did strike us that if, without the seventh verse, the number of witnesses in the eighth might have been thirty or any other number; and if, in accommodation to the three mentioned in the seventh verse, the number was limited to three in the eighth; the limitation must have been merely for the sake of parallelism. In the preface to the second edition, (p. 21.) his lordship denies that we have put the proper construction on the passage, a matter which we will rather leave to our readers to determine, than discuss with him; but we are exceedingly glad to find that the paragraph is now completely changed.

Having thus noticed a few of the principal alterations in the Vindication, we now proceed to consider the preface which the Bishop of St. David's has done us the honour to publishin reply to the Quarterly Review.'

In the Vindication, his lordship wished to show, after Mr. Travis, that the verse was extant in Greek, in the copies of Walafrid Strabo.'* To prove this it was alleged that, in the Glossa Ordinaria, Walafrid comments upon the Prologue to the Canonical Epistles by the Pseudo-Jerome, in which the verse is mentioned,—that he also comments upon the verse itself-and moreover, that, in the prefatory matter to the Glossa Ordinaria, he directs the errors of the Latin to be corrected by the Greek. This latter part of the evidence was adduced to meet an objection of Mr. Porson. Aware that few persons of that age were acquainted with the Greek language, he very justly said: First show that Walafrid understood Greek.' On the whole of the reasoning in favour of Walafrid's testimony to the readings of the Greek MSS. we remarked: First, that the title of Walafrid

In compliance with modern custom we thus write the name; but in the Glossa Ordinaria, and other early works, it is written Strabus. E 4

Strabo,

Strabo, to be considered as the author of the Glossa Ordinaria, was exceedingly questionable; Secondly, that still more questionable was his right to the Commentary on the Prologue to the Canonical Epistles; and, thirdly, that he certainly was not the author of the preface to the Glossa Ordinaria. We contented ourselves with barely stating the two first of these points, and detailed with some minuteness our proof of the last; under the impression that when the evidence for Walafrid's knowledge of Greek was destroyed, the whole argument would fall to the ground. Accordingly, we ascertained a curious fact in literary history; and the bishop himself is so obliging as to declare that we 'fully executed our purpose.' We proved, indeed, that the preface, instead of having been written by Walafrid in the ninth century, was certainly written later than the twelfth, and most probably by Bernardinus Gadolus, in the fifteenth century. Our diligence, the learned prelate allows, has added one to the list of Mr. Travis's inaccuracies; but he still thinks that it detracts nothing from the importance of Walafrid's testimony to the existence of the seventh verse in the Greek copies of his time.' The following is a sketch of the controversy on this subject. The seventh verse, as Mr. Travis asserts, is acknowledged by Walafrid Strabo; who, in compiling his commentary, consulted Greek MSS.. First show, says Porson, that he understood Greek. He understood Greek, continues Travis, for he directs that Latin MSS. should be corrected by the Greek. No such thing, observe the Reviewers; for that direction which was thought to be Walafrid's, was written some centuries after the man was dead. The man, undoubtedly, was dead, replies the bishop; but Walafrid may have collated Greek MSS. notwithstanding. There is no evidence that Walafrid understood Greek, and Porson's objection is as firm as a rock, rejoin the Reviewers. And so the matter rests at the pre

sent moment. '

As the bishop still lays great stress upon the authority of Walafrid's Commentaries on the Prologue to the Canonical Epistles and on the seventh verse, we will now proceed to state our reasons for believing the claim of Walafrid, to both those Commentaries, to be very questionable. In a short tract, entitled De intentione Auctoris et modo procedendi, which is prefixed by Nicholas de Lyra to his edition of the Biblia cum Glossis, he assigns the following, among other reasons, why he did not himself comment upon all Jerome's Prologues: (he says, that he had written comments upon some of them.) Tum quod dicti Prologi parum faciunt ad intellectum librorum sequentium, ut mihi videtur; tum quod unus alius frater, videlicet Brito, de Ordine Nostro, Prologos Biblia valde sufficienter exposuit. Quod opus habetur communiter,

et

et ideo intendere iterum expositioni dictorum prologorum nec mihi necessarium videbatur.' The editors of the Glossated Bible, published at Antwerp, in 1634, tell us in their preface that Erasmus had ridiculed Brito's Comments on Jerome's Prologues, and that they had deemed it expedient to omit them. It can scarcely, therefore, be doubted that the comment on this prologue was written by Frater Brito, who lived in the fourteenth century.After this plain account of the source from which the Comments on the Prologues of Jerome were derived, we trust that we shall not again be told of the support afforded, either to the disputed verse or to the Prologue to the Canonical Epistles, by the Comment of Walafrid Strabo on that prologue.

With respect to the Glossa Ordinaria itself, which is a running comment upon the Scriptures compiled from the writings of the Fathers, our reason for thinking that Walafrid was not the compiler, is simply this. Nicholas de Lyra and the other editors, in assigning to the different authors, Augustine, Jerome, &c. from whose works the Comment was formed, their respective portions, assign certain parts to Strabo (Strabus); who thus appears not as the compiler, but as one of those more ancient writers, from whom the Comment was taken. But granting that he was the first, or one of the first, who engaged in compiling the Glossa Marginalis (this must be distinguished from the Glossa Interlinearis, collected by Anselmus Laudunensis, who lived about the year 1100)-it has obviously grown, by very large subsequent additions, to its present bulk. The name of Strabus occurs very frequently in the first volume, and very seldom in the last. The Comment on the Fifth Chapter of St. John's Epistle is taken for the most part from Bede; whose name the Antwerp editors have regularly prefixed to the portions that belong to him. To the Comment on the seventh verse they have prefixed no name: obviously because they knew not what name to prefix. We maintain, therefore, that those critics who assert that the Comment on the seventh verse was written by Walafrid Strabo, assert that for which they cannot produce the slightest evidence.

'Wa

There can be no end of controversy, if arguments are compelled to vouch for more than they prove. The bishop conceives that Walafrid Strabo, being a learned man, commented upon the seventh verse, because he found it in his Greek MSS. Let us adopt this reasoning and carry it a little farther. lafrid Strabo was a man of learning, and of a learned school.— He was a scholar of Rabanus Maurus, as Rabanus was of Alcuin, and Alcuin of Bede.'-Preface to Second Edition, p. 45. Bede, according to Semler, as quoted by his lordship, was eruditus homo, et qui Græcos Codices ipse diligenter versavit.' Now,

Bede

Bede wrote a regular commentary on the First Epistle of St. John; in which he takes no notice of the seventh verse of the fifth chapter. And thus Bede did not comment upon the verse, because it was not in his Greek MSS. Here, then, we have the authority of Walafrid Strabo, in the ninth century, as to the Greek MSS., rebutted by that of Bede, in the eighth. The argument is not amiss, as an argumentum ad hominem; and in that light only we here avail ourselves of it. Great, indeed, is the authority of VENERABLE BEDE, whenever it can be fairly adduced. We look to him as the land-mark of the age in which he lived- a column in the melancholy waste.' He was a man of unwearied ardour in the pursuit of knowledge, and careful to transmit it to posterity. Whatever may be thought of his evidence in relation to the Greek MSS. his silence respecting the seventh verse, in a minute commentary, must ever remain an invincible proof that it was not the received reading of the Latin MSS. in the eighth century.

There seems to be some misunderstanding between the learned prelate and ourselves respecting the Prologue to the Canonical Epistles. We will extract, from the preface to the second edi tion, the passage to which we allude.

'The author of the Prologue answers for the absence of the verse from some Latin copies, that is, from such as were in his possession, or were known to him. He asserts also, that it was extant in the Greek-in some Greek copies at the least. If his authority be valid for the Latin copies, is it not equally so for the Greek?"No," says the reviewer, "we think not. Little could in general be known of Greek manuscripts compared with what we know [read was known, Rev.] of Latin manuscripts." But the question of fact here does not depend on the comparative number of Greek and Latin MSS., but on the competency of the voucher.'-p. 47.

We maintained, what we still believe, that the Prologue is good evidence as to the Latin MSS., although inadmissible with regard to the Greek, and for this reason:-As the readers of the Latin MSS. at that time knew little or nothing of the Greek MSS., the Prologue-writer might state what he pleased, on the subject of the latter, without fear of detection. On the other hand, except the verse was then really wanting in a great many of the former, every other quality of the Prologue is lost in its folly. For this fact, therefore, the Prologue is good evidence, and for nothing more, unless it be to show that the writer was imposing upon the credulity of an illiterate age. We believe this work to have been a forgery of the eighth century. For many ages, indeed, it was considered, what it pretended to be, the production of Jerome. Simon, towards the close of the seventeenth century, assigned