giving place, in manuscripts written on parchment, to the form of books with leaves.  How we should value the original rolls which contained the handwriting of the evangelists and apostles!  With what profound interest should we gaze upon the signature and salutation of St. Paul affixed to the Epistles which he dictated to an amanuensis on account of his defective eyesight!  How we should prize the apostolic autograph of the Epistle to the Galatians, of which the writer says, “Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.”  What a thrill would pass through us at the sight of those two pastoral Epistles, at the close of which St. John says,—­“I had many things to write, but I will not with pen and ink write unto thee”!  Our legitimate veneration, however, would be apt to pass over into idolatrous superstition.  We should worship such precious documents as the early Christians worshipped the relics of the saints.  It was, therefore, a wise providential arrangement that such a temptation should have been taken out of the way.  All the original manuscripts of the sacred writings disappeared, on account of the fragile character of their materials, probably in a few years after the death of the writers, no special care having been taken to preserve them; and, as Dr. Westcott has remarked, not a single authentic appeal is made to them in the religious disputes regarding the exact words of certain passages in the Gospels and Epistles in the writings of the second century.

But though the Vatican Codex is the oldest manuscript of the New Testament in existence, it does not follow from that circumstance that it is the most reliable.  Widely different views of its critical value are entertained by scholars.  By some it has been accepted as the most authoritative of all versions, while others have regarded it as one of the most corrupt and imperfect.  Indeed the conjecture has been hazarded that the very circumstance of its continued preservation during so many centuries is a proof that it was an unreliable copy long laid aside, and therefore exempt from the wear and tear under which genuine copies of the same date have long ago perished.  These extreme views, however, are unjust.  While it is not free from many gross inaccuracies and faults, it presents upon the whole a very fair idea of the Greek Vulgate of the early Church, and is worthy of as much respect at least as any single document in existence.  The chief peculiarity of the Codex is the large number of important omissions in it; so that, as Dr. Dobbin says, it presents an abbreviated text of the New Testament.  A few of these omissions were wilfully made, while the large majority were no doubt caused by the carelessness of the writer in transcribing from the copy before him; for there are several instances of his having written the same words and clauses twice over.  On the supposition of the MS. being one of the fifty prepared at Constantine’s order, the extreme haste with which such a task would be executed would