reference to the polemics of the fourth century regarding the Arian doctrines; although this supposition would make it of later date.  The order of the books of the New Testament in the Codex is different from that with which we are familiar.  The Catholic Epistles from James to Jude follow the Acts, according to the order of the ancient Greek Church; then come the Pauline Epistles; and the Epistle to the Hebrews comes in between the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians and First Timothy.  Its sections, however, are numbered as if it had originally been placed between the Epistles to the Galatians and Ephesians; thus showing that this was the arrangement in the older document from which the Codex was copied.  One of the Moscow manuscripts, it may be mentioned in connection with this novelty in location, places the Epistle to the Hebrews in a position as abnormal as in the Vatican manuscript—­namely, before the Epistle to the Romans.

In the formation of the Received Text of our New Testament, the Vatican manuscript was not employed.  The basis of the early printed editions—­the Elzevir and those of Robert Stephens the celebrated Parisian printer—­was the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, published in 1516, compiled with the aid of such manuscripts as he found at Basle, and the Complutensian Polyglot—­so called after Complutum, the modern Alcala, in Spain, where it was printed in 1522, under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, whose text was said to have been formed from manuscripts sent from the Papal Library at Rome—­the Vatican Codex certainly not being among the number, as abundantly appears from internal evidence.  But though the Vatican manuscript was not employed in the construction of our Authorised Version, it has recently been used as the chief authority by the New Testament Revisers.  Drs. Westcott and Hort have built up their Greek text with special deferential regard to it; and this exclusive devotion has been severely condemned by several critics, such as Dean Burgon, who regard it as an endeavour to balance a pyramid upon its apex.  But apart from the contradictory views of such textuaries, there can be no doubt that the Vatican Codex has been of the greatest service in these later days in correcting the Authorised Version, and helping to restore the sacred text as nearly as possible to the purity of the original autographs.  And it has added its most valuable testimony to that of the many other ancient manuscripts of the Sacred Writings in existence, that, notwithstanding unimportant variations of readings naturally caused by the great multiplication of copies, the sacred text from the time when it first appeared to the present has been preserved substantially uncorrupt; so that we have the same divine truth presented to us that was presented to the Christians of the ages immediately succeeding the time of the apostles.