him as old as all _that_ comes to--oh dear, no! he's not near
as old)--well, that earlier _Phil._ was Bentley, who wrote
(under the name of _Phileleutheros Lipsiansis_) a pamphlet
connected with this very subject, partly against an English infidel
of that day. In that pamphlet, _Phil._ the first pauses to
consider and value this very objection from textual variation to the
validity of Scripture: for the infidel (as is usual with infidels)
being no great scholar, had argued as though it were impossible to
urge anything whatever for the word of God, since so vast a variety
in the readings rendered it impossible to know what _was_ the
word of God. Bentley, though rather rough, from having too often
to deal with shallow coxcombs, was really and unaffectedly a pious
man. He was shocked at this argument, and set himself seriously to
consider it. Now, as all the various readings were Greek, and as
Bentley happened to be the first of Grecians, his deliberate review
of this argument is entitled to great attention. There were, at
that moment when Bentley spoke, something more (as I recollect) than
ten thousand varieties of reading in the text of the New Testament;
so many had been collected in the early part of Queen Anne's reign
by Wetstein, the Dutchman, who was then at the head of the collators.
Mill, the Englishman, was at that very time making further collations.
How many he added, I cannot tell without consulting books--a thing
which I very seldom do. But since that day, and long after Bentley
and Mill were in their graves, Griesbach, the German, has risen
to the top of the tree, by towering above them all in the accuracy
of his collations. Yet, as the harvest comes before the gleanings,
we may be sure that Wetstein's barn housed the very wealth of all
this variety. Of this it was, then, that Bentley spoke. And what
_was_ it that he spoke? Why, he, the great scholar, pronounced,
as with the authority of a Chancery decree, that the vast majority