combining them; and had shown the comprehensiveness of its application.

3." As to his never embodying in the text (except in that of the Apocalypse,) any MS. reading, though appearing the more correct one, he admitted it was a rule he had obeyed for prudential reasons, rather than from absolute necessity. He considered it, however, not so cautiously narrow as was represented; for as the many printed editions of the text serve to correct one another, all imperative need of reference to unprinted MSS. is hereby, except in a few instances, entirely done away. His caution, though censured, was also most justifiable, as tending to satisfy very many considerate persons who had expressed, not entirely without cause in relation to such matters, their dissatisfaction with critics in general. Had he not used that caution, greater evil might have ensued than even was apprehended in the strictures of this journal, namely, an increased perplexity in the minds of many about the certainty of the text; a perplexity keeping pace with men's natural eagerness for novelty, and which at present was the more to be dreaded, as Wetstein's own example gave indeed some occasion to fear, that the public might, by and by, have the text of the New Testament modelled, first after one system of theoretical divinity, and then after another; unless some stand, like that objected to, were made to prevent it.

4. "That the exception he had indulged in his revision of the Apocalypse, was defensible on two accounts; first, that its contingent of various readings was much greater than that of any other part of the New Testament; and secondly, that fewer MSS. of this than of its other parts had ever been collated, or even been discovered; so that his restricting himself to printed editions here, would have been rather out of place.

5. "To the ridicule attempted against his yet unpublished Gnomon,' he had only to say, that the more his materials had increased, the more had he found it necessary to divide his notes, critical and exegetical, into three distinct works, namely, Text, Apparatus, and Gnomon; and that the last was now in the press.

6. "As to Wetstein's notion, that the correctness of readings should be determined by a majority of MSS., it was absurd in itself, and contradicted its abettor's own Prolegomena of 1730; as also his preface to the second edition of Gerard's New Testament, published by the Wetsteins in 1735. That to ascertain the authority of any MS., it was necessary to have consideration of its origin; a thing which often gives preponderance to one,

beyond a hundred others. Were this mode of estimating them allowed and acted upon, there would be so little occasion for fearing any numerical reckoning, that rather he would wish it to be made; and that meanwhile he would venture to pledge himself that even a majority of manuscripts would in general confirm no recension so fully as his own.

7. "Though he had no wish to inquire into Wetstein's motives for getting up such a hasty reprint of Gerard's Greek Testament in behalf of the firm of his relatives, he could not forbear making a few observations on the character of this new edition. Hasty, indeed, he was obliged to call it, because it retained all the typographical errors of the first, and even added one more, in stating that a hundred MSS. had been collated for that first edition, whereas only a single MS. had been collated for it; and because Wetstein had given this second edition a preface, which betrayed very diligent availment of Bengel's "Apparatus Criticus," and more approval of it than had been expressed in the Bibliothèque raisonnée," &c.

To the other strictures which appeared in the "Early gathered Fruits," and in "Hager's Disputation," he replied, partly in German and partly in Latin (in 1739), through a journal entitled "New Literary Notices from Tübingen." "As the former of these strictures had attempted to show, by specimens of Bengel's criticisms on the text of the Apocalypse, how much he had departed from the received one; and as the reviewer had hence concluded that the other books of the New Testament had been treated much in the same manner, which was surely, he said, to be lamented, as such an endeavour to throw uncertainty over the text was putting weapons into the hands of infidels; Bengel, therefore, showed that Erasmus, who undervalued the Apocalypse, so hurried it to the press, that he had suffered many evident errors to remain, and had even substituted for the original Greek text of the concluding part of this book, a translation of his own into Greek from the Latin Vulgate. That "though the genuine Greek was afterwards brought to light, and printed in the Spanish (Complutensian) Polyglott, this spurious Greek of Erasmus was still propagated by other editions; so that it was high time the Apocalypse should undergo a most accurate revision, aided by the variety of excellent materials which had been gathered, not only from versions and from the Fathers, but also from newlydiscovered manuscripts. Unreasonable, then, was it that the Apocalypse, the only book in which he (Bengel) had deviated

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from the printed readings, should be produced as a specimen of his having presumptuously altered the text of the New Testament. He therefore now solemnly called upon these 'ministers of God's word,' to examine the whole of his work most strictly; and then, in a future number of their journal, either to point out in what passages he had deviated from any printed edition, or else to acknowledge their having borne false witness against him.”

"As to the objection that he was putting weapons into the hands of infidels, he could only reply, that the sum and substance of the New Testament having remained complete and uninjured in all its existing copies, whether manuscript or printed, and whether more accurate or less, the infidel could have no advantage, unless furnished with it by those very critics who underrate a proper revision of the text; for, by indiscreetly restricting such sober liberty, they leave the sacred text exposed to every rash and presumptuous judgment. Besides, infidels cannot possibly be ignorant how many various readings have been put forth; which, instead of finding increased by his own revision, they would find fewer for objecting against than ever. That other strictures, to which he had been compelled to reply, upon this same work of his, had accused him of uncritical caution and diffidence; whereas the present called upon him to show, that he had not proceeded with uncritical temerity. It turned out then, on the whole, that he had kept the middle way, and consequently the right one. That all truth, even in reaching its own ministers, had to undergo, first, temptation within the bosom of him who sends it forth, and then, gainsaying and contradiction from without; yet, sooner or later, according to the persons it has to deal with, it proves at last victorious," &c.

In the other and Latin portion of this reply to the "Early gathered Fruits," he chiefly controverts Hager's notion, that in Acts ix. 5, the paraphrastic, and not the close reading, is the correct one. He shows that the close reading is favoured by the greatest number, variety, and antiquity of MSS.; that is, he omits no proof which could be demanded for its support. So that, whereas Hager alleged this as an instance of his improper treatment of the Greek Testament, it was evident, he said, that Hager had nothing here to object to at all, as it was now clear that he (Bengel) had acted, not according to his own arbitrary pleasure, but according to the most approved principles of criticism.

Before there was time to put in general circulation this German

and Latin reply to Hager's Strictures, the alarm which this opponent had excited, served to nip in the bud one of the fair fruits of Bengel's industry. For after Muthmann and Steinbart had agreed to publish, at Züllichau, a German original Bible, with the Greek Testament, according to Bengel's revision, annexed, and had announced their intention in Proposals of Oct. 1, 1738, they were so vehemently attacked from various quarters, respecting this appendage, that they changed their purpose, and, instead of the text of Bengel, chose that of Reineccius. By the appearance, however, of Bengel's defence, the alarm was so far allayed, that they applied to him to compose for their work a tabular index, displaying, in parallel columns, the more important variations between the text of Luther, the Greek text of Reineccius, and that of Bengel.* This table was very serviceable in justifying the correctness of Bengel's revisions; so that none could help seeing that they supported Luther's version much more closely than did the lections, which hitherto had been most commonly adopted.

Other controversial business awaited him through the proeeedings of Count Zinzendorf, who probably never anticipated, much less intended, any such thing. But the count had made a translation of the New Testament, and had issued printed specimens of it, in which he acknowledged that he had availed himself of Bengel's revised Greek text as his principal standard for the work. This acknowledgment provoked a great outcry against the count's new version, especially through a publication entitled "Theophili à veritate, or, Biblical Scandal, given by Zinzendorf." Moreover, the editors of the "Early gathered Fruits" thought this a good opportunity for entering their own protest once more against Bengel; as they had been prudently silent about him ever since his solemn challenge to them in the "Reply to certain Ministers of God's Word," above mentioned. Accordingly, in their fifth number of the year 1741, one of their remarks to that effect was-" Zinzendorf acknowledges his own new version to have been framed according to Bengel's Greek edition obsequiously throughout, notwithstanding he knew, or might have known, how much censurable matter has been discovered by sound divines in that edition." To this fresh piece of detraction Bengel replied in an augmented reprint of his Answer to

* This table is also inserted in the second edition of the "Apparatus Criticus,” p. 678, &c.

Hager, from which for brevity's sake we extract but one remark, viz. that "the need of a thoroughly revised text of the Greek Testament is now greater than ever, because not only are the earlier vernacular translations undergoing revisal, and new editions of them, each to a large amount, are successively issuing from various quarters, but missionaries are also beginning to translate the Scriptures into the common dialects of India and other countries."

In the hope of contributing some assistance to such an important undertaking in behalf of the heathen, he about this time transmitted, by pastor Kleinknecht, a copy of his Greek Testament, with various annotations in his own handwriting, to the Danish missionaries at Tranquebar, who were then preparing a version of the Scriptures in the Tamul dialect.

Lastly, the Roman-catholic party attacked him violently, on account of his criticism in general, and that of the Apocalypse in particular. One of them, the Rev. Thomas Adelbert Berghauer, in a publication of A. D. 1746, entitled, "Bibliomachia, or, an Expedition and Review of many lamentably adulterated Bibles," asserted that "Bengel had moulded the Greek of the Apocalypse into a quite novel form, and with his slashing and murderous pruning knife had most wretchedly hacked, decomposed, and nullified the original text." Bengel's reply † was given in an appendix to the 58th-60th of his "Practical Addresses on the Apocalypse;" and showed, by a demonstrative chain of argument ad hominem, that "as for the vulgar objection of his being a Bible-murderer, a corrupter of the Scriptures, and so forth, because he set a high value upon sound criticism, it was just as applicable to the editors of the Complutensian Bible, Cardinal Ximenes and his coadjutors, with their patron Leo the Tenth, as to himself. That the charge of his having maltreated the Apocalypse, was evidently repeated after Hager; and showed that his work had never been carefully looked into, otherwise his clerical opponent must have seen, that the text here agrees much more closely with the Vulgate and Complutenian text, than with that commonly received among Protestants."

He then makes some general remarks upon this scurrilous pamphlet, and observes that the author had very appropriately entitled it" Bibliomachia;" for its special and infelicitous

* Printed at Ulm, 1745.

+ It is also found in the second edition of the "Apparatus Criticus," p. 748, &c.