texts, was complete; in less, in fact, than six months from the time that the first sheet was begun.”  The design of this haste was to anticipate the publication of the Complutensian edition.  The critical apparatus in Erasmus’ possession was quite slender.  It consisted of such manuscripts as he found at Basle, with the help of the revised Latin translation already prepared in England and Brabant.  For the Apocalypse he had but one manuscript, and that defective at the end.  In his four subsequent editions—­1519, 1522, 1527, 1535—­he made many corrections.  In that of 1527 he availed himself of the Complutensian text.  This edition, from which the fifth and last published during his life differs but slightly, is the basis of the common text now in use.

(3.) In 1546, 1549, 1550, appeared the three editions of Robert Stephens, the celebrated Parisian printer.  In the first two of these the text is said to have been formed from the Complutensian and Erasmian.  In the third edition, although he had the aid of thirteen Greek manuscripts, his text is almost identical with that of Erasmus’ fifth edition.

(4.) In 1565, Theodore Beza published at Geneva his first edition of the Greek Testament with his own Latin version, and also the Vulgate with annotations.  Three other editions followed in 1576, 1582, 1588-9.  He had the use of the Codex Bezae above described, the Codex Claromontanus (an ancient Graeco-Latin manuscript of the Pauline epistles), the Syriac version then recently published by Tremellius, with a close Latin translation, and Stephens’ collations.  But he is said not to have made much use of these helps.

The first of the Elzevir editions, so celebrated for their typographical beauty, was issued in 1624, its text being mainly copied from that of Beza.  This is the text that has acquired the name of Textus receptus, the Received Text, as it was for more than a century the basis of almost all subsequent editions.  The genealogy of this Textus receptus is thus succinctly given by Bishop Marsh:  “The Textus receptus, therefore, or the text in common use, was copied, with a few exceptions, from the text of Beza.  Beza himself closely followed Stephens; and Stephens (namely, in his third and chief edition) copied solely from the fifth edition of Erasmus, except in the Revelation, where he followed sometimes Erasmus, sometimes the Complutensian edition.  The text, therefore, in daily use, resolves itself at last into the Complutensian and the Erasmian editions.”  Divinity Lectures, part I, p. 111.

7.  It requires but a moderate acquaintance with the history of textual criticism to understand that the Elzevir text is not only not perfect, but is more imperfect than that which has been elaborated by the help of the abundant manuscripts, versions, and citations of the early fathers, of which modern criticism has