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 well as 

 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, dining the prevalence of the cursive manuscript, occa- 

 sion for large, costly, uncial volumes for ecclesiastical purposes. 

 That this rendered it difficult to assign a prima facie greater 

 anticpiity 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, for min g 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 



