432 
where in all likelihood it would have agreed with it, had it 
been fraudulent in its origin, and shaped for a purpose. 
In reply to the second charge, Dr. Dobbin showed, by a 
collation of the chapters whose divisions were said to be La- 
tinizing, that they followed the Greek, and not the Roman 
type; and that the two passages cited by Wetslein, as wellas 
his description of asserted kindred manuscripts, were incon- 
sistent with each other, and flatly contradictory of his own 
preamble and the statement of Erasmus. 
In reply to the third charge, the author made certain ob- 
servations to the effect that the age of uncial manuscripts was 
greatly exaggerated in his opinion; and that their value was, 
by consequence, extremely overrated. He urged, that there 
always had been a current or cursive hand during the pre- 
dominance of the uncials; and again, that there always had 
been, during the prevalence of the cursive manuscript, occa- 
sion for large, costly, uncial volumes for ecclesiastical purposes. 
That this rendered it difficult to assign a primd facie greater 
antiquity to the uncial over the cursive manuscript ; while the 
perishable nature of the materials on which every book was 
written, if exposed to the external air and the chapter of acci- 
dents, rendered it improbable in the highest degree that any 
Codex of any portion of the Scriptures was as old as 1000 
years. That thus, not only in accordance with the canon of 
criticism might a cursive copy have all the value of the uncial 
from which it was transcribed, but an older cursive would 
have a positive value superior to that of an uncial of more mo- 
dern date: that, in fact, the character of the writing was not 
an infallible guide to a right decision as to the date of a ma- 
nuscript, but that that decision must be guided by other no 
less weighty considerations. Nevertheless, forming his opi- 
nion from the sundry aspects of the manuscript, its history, its 
readings, its character, its paper, Dr. Dobbin declared his con- 
viction to be, that the Codex Montfortianus was written, from 
