Many other uncial manuscripts, or fragments of manuscripts, some of them of great critical value, might be described; but the above brief notices must suffice.  Of those which contain ancient versions, a few of the more important will be noticed in the following chapter.

The cursive manuscripts of the Now Testament are numbered by hundreds.  In general their authority is less than that of the more ancient uncials.  But a cursive manuscript may give indirectly a very ancient text.  There are some cursives which, from their characteristic readings, were manifestly executed from codices of high antiquity, and are for this reason very valuable.  As such Tregelles specifies those numbered 1 and 33.  For further notices of these, as also of the lectionaries, containing selections for church readings, the reader may consult the works devoted to biblical criticism.

II.  THE PRINTED TEXT.

6.  The primary editions of the Greek New Testament, whence is derived what is called the received text (Textus receptus) are the following:  (1) the Complutensian; (2) the Erasmian; (3) those of Robert Stephens; (4) those of Beza and Elzevir.  Their authority in textual criticism depends wholly upon that of the manuscripts from which their text was formed.  As no stream can rise higher than its fountains, so no printed text can obtain a just weight of influence above that of its manuscript sources.  It becomes, then, a matter of interest to inquire what was the basis of these early printed editions.

(1.) The entire New Testament was printed for the first time in Greek in the fifth volume of the Complutensian Polyglott (so called from Complutum, that is Alcala in Spain, where it was printed under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes).  It bears the date of 1514, but was not published until 1522, when Erasmus had already printed three editions of his Greek Testament.  Its editors professed to have formed their text from manuscripts sent to them from the papal library at Rome.  What these manuscripts were cannot now be ascertained; but that they were very ancient and correct, as alleged by these editors, is contradicted by the character of the text, which agrees with the modern in opposition to the most ancient manuscripts.

(2.) At the request of Froben, a celebrated printer and publisher of Basle, Erasmus, who was then in England, where he had devoted some time to a revised Latin translation of the New Testament with annotations, went to Basle in 1515, and began the work of editing a Greek New Testament.  “By the beginning of March, 1516,” says Tregelles, “the whole volume, including the annotations as well as the Greek and Latin