B R I 



minstfil Australasia. It was fird fxplorfd and named 

 ( ■, l»,«m;>itfr, who paffcd a lirait called atter hi? r.aoie, bc- 

 tutci. tills ttrritiry ai.d Papua, or NVw Guinea. In 1767, 

 cant.Cartrivt iiavifjaleil a ihannel that lies btt\veen New 

 V. ■■-.:.. ;,,,,i Xew lre!ai\J ; and he called its north point Cape 

 . !•.» rail point C.'pe Orford, and a bay about the 



, ,^ , ; ••- . .'^ni coall Port Montague. This land was 



{■_xn by '9 fcjuadron in 172:, and by M. de 



■ •■ . l».irpjiitr, who vifitcd the bay fince 



;'• in 170J, fou-.d the land rrountainous 

 ;; . ».i.... ,, u..i . .vetfperfed with fertile vales and beautiful 

 Urea'.".. T'le country fcenied very populous, the natives 

 rvfenit'i'ni^ ih .fe of I'dpua, and navigating their canoes with 

 grcut fKill. The c! 'cf proHuct fcemcd to be cocoa nuts, but 

 there were yams, and other loais, particularly ginger ; and 

 the fea and rivers fwarmcd with (vK In the main land, and 

 adjacent ill-S, there are fevcral voleanos. A Spanifh 

 frigate, c.illed the Princtffa, fpiled from Manilla, towards 

 the ch'fc of the year 1780, fnr San Klas in California ; and 

 li.iving, in her way thither, fallen in with fome of the iflands 

 which form the nortlicrn part of the Rroup called New 

 ]Jri«sin, (he difcovered, on the 20th of January 17S1, nine 

 fmall iflands, overed with palm-trees, furrounded by a fand 

 bank, and foriiiLiiJ within thenifelvci a lagoon, or pond of 

 Uill water, and agreeing, in every other refpeft, with the de- 

 fcriptlon which is given by Valentin of Ontong Java, dif- 

 tnvertJ by Le Mane and Schoutcn in 1616. The latitude 

 of the fo'Jthcrn part of lbs duller of iflands %«as obferved to 

 be 4^ 5 5' S. Nck^• Britain I es between 4^ and 6° 50' S. lat. 

 and l+H^ 20' and 151'' 2d' E. long. 



BRITANNIC Plagui;, in AhScine. See Sweating- 

 sickness. 



BRITANNICA, in Bolany. See Rumex Aqual'icus, 



or Hv DP OLA PAT HUM. 



BRITANNICO, John, in Biography, an eminent Italian 

 fcholar of tlie Ijtli century, was bora in the Brcfclan terri- 

 tory, of a familv originally from Great Britain ; and having 

 l\udicd at Pa-! na about the year 1470, kept fchoolat Brefcia, 

 and dillinguirned hiir.fclf by feveral learned annotations on 

 various claffic authors, partic.ilarly Juvenal, Horace, Perfnis, 

 and Statins in his Achilleid. He alfo wrote grammatical 

 and other Irafts, and an eulogy on Bartholomew Cajetano. 

 He is fuppofed not to have long furvived the year 1518, and 

 did not live to publidi his notes upon Pliny's Natural Hiftory. 

 BRITANNICUS Codex Era/mi, in Biblical Hijory, a 

 MS. copy of the New Ttllament, which is one of the two 

 MSS. (the Codex Ravianus being the other) that contain the 

 difputed palTage of the three that bear record in heaven, 

 1 John, V. 7. This MS. is probably the fame with that de- 

 nominated Montfortianus and Dublinenfis, soted 61 in the 

 full part of Wctftein's N. T. in the fecond 40, and in the 

 third 34. It is of the l2mo l-ze, contains the whole N. T., 

 is written on a thick glazed paper, and not on vellum, in a 

 modern hand, and is probably of the i6lh centur)'. Mill 

 relates, that it belonged originally to one Froy, a Francifcan 

 friar, who poirelTcd it either about or before the middle of 

 the 1 6th century ; a few years previous to which period, that 

 is, between I5l9and 1522, it was known to Erafmus by the 

 name of " Codex Britannicus." From Froy it came into 

 the polTeffion of Thomas Clement, probably a doftor of 

 philofophy and medicine in England ; from him it came into 

 tjie hands of William Chare, a learned Greek fcholar ; after 

 Chare, it was podefied by Ur. Thomas Montfort, and from 

 him took its name, becaufe it belonged to him when it was 

 collated for the London Polyglot; and lince the time of 

 Ulher, who had it after Montfort, it has been preferved in 

 the library of Trinity-college in Dublin, where it is noted 

 G. 97 ; and hence it is fometimes called Dublinenfis. As 

 Eiafmus, in the iwo firft editions of his Greek Teftiiment, 



B R I 



omitted I John, v. -,. but in the later editions inferted it, be- 

 caufe he had found it, as he relates, in a Codex Britannicus, 

 it ha; been concluded, with a very great degree of proba- 

 bilitv, that the Montfortianus is the fime as the Britannicus 

 of Erafnus; becaufe, tHough every MS. in Great Britain 

 has been carefully fearched, this is the only one %yhich con- 

 tains the paflage in quellion. In proof of this it is llrongly 

 urL'cd, that the text of the third edition of Erafmus, in 1522, 

 dllTers in this interpolated paffage from all other editions, 

 except thofe which were immediately copied from it, and at 

 the fame time agrees word for word with the Codex Mont- 

 fortianus. Although no critic would pfcribe a high auti-. 

 qnity to the Cod. jilontf. we have no rcafon to fufpecl that 

 it is a mere tranfcript from the Complutemian Polyglot, 

 which is faid to be the cafe with refpcA to the Codex 

 Ravianus. For the difference is (Irongly marked in nume- 

 rons paffages, and even the text in qucftion, for which 

 this MS. is famous, is not the fame as in that Polyglot. 

 Erafmus defcribes the Codex Britannicus as a Latinizing 

 MS. ; and Wetftein entertains the fame opinion with regard 

 to the Montfortianus, of which the paflage in quellion, 

 I John v. 7, affords the flrongeft proof ; for in the Cod. 

 Montf. it not only differs from the ufual text, but is written 

 in fuch Greek as manifellly betrays a tranflation from the 

 Latin. For the fatisfaftion of thofe who may not have ac- 

 cefs to other means of information, we fliall give it below, 

 with all the abbreviations, as it is given by Travis, in his 

 letters to Gibbon, p. 153. 



OtV Tpei's EiffilV 0* ^-tapTU 



pouvT' £v Tw oZrji, -nrJip, \oyo^f y.y.'i iTvcc ayi'oy 

 y,y.'i otiTcV 0* Tp:*; Ev iia-'i 

 Ka'i TfU'j Ei'T*y di jj-^pv 



Here the article is omitted before the words expreflive of 

 Father, Son, and Holy Gholl, becaufe there is no article in 

 the Latin, and it occurred not to the tranflator, that the 

 ufual Greek was ■s'^ln;, \oyo-, 10 T7»Euaa. He has alfo f» 

 Tvi yr,, which is falfe Greek, for f-i 1»,- yr,;, becaufe he found 

 in the Latin, in terra. He has likewife omitted xxioi Tptij eij 

 TO Ev E15-1V, which is wanting in many Latin MSS. becaufe the 

 Lateran council, held in 1215, had rejefted it through po- 

 lemical motives. The omiflion of this claufe at the end of 

 the 8th verfe proves, not only that the writer of the Codex 

 Montfortianus copied from the Vulgate, becaufe no ancient 

 Greek MS. omits the claufe in that place, but that he copied 

 even from modern tranfcripts of the Vulgate, becaufe this 

 final claufe is found in all the MSS. of the Vulgate, written 

 before the 1 3th century. It is further alleged, that •anui^a,, in 

 the 6th verfe, is altered to x(^^'^'> becaufe chrillus is the 

 reading of the Vulgate, though it is not found in any Greek 

 MS. Befides, in this MS. the Latin arrangement is obferved 

 with regard to the divifion of the text into chapters, though 

 at the fame time the x^JiaXccia. of Eufebins are noted. This 

 Latin arrangement was introduced by Hugo de S. Caro, in 

 the I2th century, and is that of our printed Bibles; but 

 though obferved in the modern MSS. of the Vulgate, it 

 was in general not admitted into the Greek MSS. which 

 adhered to the xs^pccXata, of Eufebius. Its admiffion, there- 

 fore, into the Codex Montf. not only fliews what influence 

 the Vulgate has had in this MS. ; but proves, at the fame 

 time, independently of other arguments, that the Codex 

 Montf. is very modern. For no Greek MS. is known, in 

 which the text is divided into our prefent chapters, that was 

 written before the I Jth century ; when the Greeks, who fled 

 from their own country into the well of Europe, became 

 tranfcribers for the members of the Latin church, and of 

 courfe adopted the Latin diviiions. Moreover, the dots over 

 the < and v, which have been urged in favour of the antiquity 

 of this MS. on the authority of Montfaucon, who, in his 



" Palso. 



