Prec. and Preb. in Cath. Ch. of Exeter

Southwick, V.
Grimley, V.
(with Hallow, C.
Shelsey Beauchamp, R.
Othery, V.
Stoke by Nayland, V.
Hayfield, C.

Weddall, W. Wangstaff Darsham, V.

CLERGYMEN DECEASED.

Hinckshill, R.
& Rochester, St. Marg. R. Kent
St.Olave, V. & St. Martin, R. London
(Morley, St. Botolph and

and Tacolneston, R.

Hilmarton, V.

and North Nibley, P. C. Gloster

Marwood, Thomas Bicknor English, R.

Godfrey, Henry, D.D... Pres. of Queen's Coll. Camb.

Richardson, John...... Mast. of Endowed Grammar School at Wath, Yorks.

OXFORD.

and Douglas Denon Heath, B.A., of Trinity College, have been elected Fellows of that society.

DEGREES CONFERRED.

MASTERS OF ARTS.

Charles Lestourgeon, Trinity Coll
A. A. Barker, St. Peter's Coll. (Comp.)

BACHELORS OF ARTS.

Richard John St. Aubyn, Trinity Coll.
John George Bellingham, Trinity Coll.
Charles John Stock, Trinity Coll.
Tomas Nattle Grigg, St. Peter's Coll.
Frederick Augustus Glover, St. Peter's Coll.
John Richard Bogue, Christ's Coll.
James Barry, Queen's Coll.
John Hibbert, Fellow of King's Coll.
Robert H. Wilkinson, Fell. of King's Coll.
George William Barron, St. John's Coll.
George Peter Bennet, Catharine Hall.

The Rev. Henry Parsons, M.A. of Balliol Coll. Oxford, has been admitted ad eundem of this University.

MARRIED.

At St. Stephen's, Cornwall, by the Rev. J. Dawson, the Rev. Thomas Jarrett, M.A. Rector of Trunch, Norfolk, Fellow of Catharine Hall, and Professor of Arabic, in this University, to Margaret Sarah, only daughter of Mr. John Daw, of Saltash, Cornwall.

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. The deficiency of talent in John Coverdale we will endeavour to supply. That our opinion of the American Bishops is confirmed by "E. B." we are glad; but to publish the comparison, as given by our correspondent, would not perhaps be so judicious. Under existing circumstances, we very much doubt the expediency of the proceedings of the "Society in the North of England;" and recommend to their perusal the letter of the Bishop of Durham.

"Conservator" has been received.

The "Narrative, &c." shall not be forgotten.

We have pleasure in announcing that a second edition of our tract "On the Evils of Congregational Dissent," is in the press.

CHRISTIAN

REMEMBRANCER.

DECEMBER, 1832.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ART. I.-'H Kain Aia0nкn. The Greek Testament, with English Notes, Critical, Philological, and Exegetical. By the Rev. S. T. BLOOMFIELD, D. D. Cambridge, printed: London; Rivingtons; Longman and Co. &c. 1832. 2 vols. 8vo. Pp. xviii. 1195.

In the course of our editorial labours, we have had the gratification of introducing to the notice of our readers various works well calculated to facilitate the study of the Holy Scriptures. Hitherto, however, it has not fallen to our lot to bring before them a strictly critical edition of the New Testament; which at a reasonable price offers to the industrious student every facility for correctly understanding that portion of the sacred volume, at the same time that it furnishes him with an accurate digest of the labours of preceding critical editors in determining the readings of the Greek Text.

This desideratum Dr. Bloomfield has supplied in the work of which we are now to give an account; and for which his previous studies have eminently qualified him, as is amply evinced by his "Recensio Synoptica Annotationis Sacræ, or Digest of the most Important Annotations on the New Testament."*

In his preface the editor points out the deficiencies which the present work is intended to supply, and the purposes which it is designed to answer.

With regard to the TEXT, while he candidly admits that, among the various editions of the Greek Testament now extant, sufficient evi

Of the first part of this extensive and laborious work we gave an analysis at the time of its publication. The second part, containing the Acts and Apostolic Epistles, appeared in 1827, in five large volumes 8vo.: and, from the pressure of other matters, it did not receive that attention in our journal to which its merits entitle it. In giving this (unavoidably) tardy notice of the second portion of Dr. Bloomfield's Recensio Synoptica, we should be guilty of injustice, were we not to state that we consider it superior to the first part, valuable as that really is; and that those students of the sacred volume, whose means enable them to procure the entire work, will find it a comprehensive digest of the labours of the best commentators, both ancient and modern, the size and cost of whose entire works necessarily place them beyond the reach of the majority of biblical students. VOL. XIV. NO. XII. 5 A

dence is presented, to enable any competent scholar to ascertain the true reading; yet he maintains that, considering the great diversities between the Standard Texts and the inability of students and general readers to decide amidst their varieties, it was desirable that an edition should be produced, so constructed that the variations from the vulgate or common Greek text should (as far as possible) be indicated in the text itself, and that the reader should not be left to collect it from the notes. Dr. Bloomfield further observes, that in all important cases the state of the evidence, and in every case the reasons for any change of text, should be distinctly laid before the reader.

"But" (he continues) "if thus great was the want of a text fitted for such uses, how much greater was that of a constant and suitable body of ANNOTATION!" He then proceeds to trace the rise and progress of biblical interpretation, pointing out those imperfections in the earlier commentaries, which were more or less transmitted to all succeeding ones. He shews that even the best of the earlier commentators were accustomed to explain only what it was convenient for them to explain, or what would enable them to make a display of their erudition. They were, moreover, too prolix and excursive on some points, while they were unsatisfactorily brief in others, and did not aim at forming a regular commentary. The first approach towards a regular and connected grammatical commentary, formed to be read through, and not merely to be consulted as a book of reference, was in the edition of the New Testament commenced by Koppe in 1778, and carried on, but with an abandonment of plan, inferiority of execution, and deterioration of principle, by Heinrichs and Pott. Dr. B. then proceeds to discuss the merits and defects of the principal commentaries of the recent foreign school; and from the preceding reasoning evinces, that an edition of the New Testament, formed with a due regard to the present advanced state of biblical science, and in other respects adapted for academical use, was yet a desideratum. The older exegetical works of the English School (he observes) are confessedly insufficient for the purposes which they were originally designed to answer; while the later and elementary works are for the most part so modelled upon the plan of the older publications, as to be little promotive of their professed object.

The plan of his edition and the principles of criticism and interpretation, by which he has been guided, are next detailed. Considering Dr. Bloomfield in the two-fold character of editor and commentator, we have much pleasure in stating that he has throughout evinced equal caution and sound discretion. He avows his dissent, though not from the canons of criticism professedly acted on by Dr. Griesbach, yet from the system of recensions first promulgated by that eminent critic, and founded on a misapplication of these canons, and which led

to so many rash and needless cancellings and alterations of all kinds.

The TEXT has been formed (after long and repeated examinations of the whole of the New Testament for that purpose solely) on the basis of the last Edition of R. Stephens, adopted by Mill, which differs very slightly from, but is admitted to be preferable to, the common Text, found in the Elzevir Edition of 1624. From this there has been no deviation, except on the most preponderating evidence; critical conjecture being wholly excluded; and such alterations only introduced, as rest on the united authority of MSS., antient Versions and Fathers, and the early-printed Editions, but especially upon the invaluable EDITIO PRINCEPS; and which have been already adopted in one or more of the Critical Editions of Bengel, Wetstein, Griesbach, Matthæi, and Scholz. most respects the Editor coincides with the views of Matthæi (whose Edition of the N. T. is pronounced by Bp. Middleton to be by far the best yet seen), and in a great measure with those of the learned and indefatigable Scholz.

In

Further, the present Editor has so constructed his Text, that the reader will possess the advantage of having before him both the Stephanic text and also the corrected text formed on the best MS. antient Versions and early Editions, and thus constituting, as the Editor apprehended, the true Greek Vulgate, on which the learned Dr. Nolan has so ably treated. To advert to the various kinds of alterations of the common text, as they arise from the omission, or the insertion of words, or from a change of one word into another,-nothing whatever has been omitted, which has a place in the Stephanic Text; such words only as are by the almost universal consent of Editors and Critics, regarded as interpolations, being here placed within brackets, more or less inclusive, according to the degree of suspicion attached to them. Nothing has been inserted but on the same weighty authority; and even these words are pointed out as insertions by being expressed in a smaller character. All altered readings have asterisks prefixed, the old ones being invariably indicated in the Notes. And such readings as, though left untouched, are by eminent Critics thought to need alteration, have a prefixed. As to Various Readings, the most important are noticed; chiefly those which, though not admitted into the text of the present Edition, have been adopted by one or more of the four Editors above mentioned, or are found in the Editio Princeps; or those wherein the common Text differs from that of Stephens. In such cases, the reasons for non-adoption are usually given. And this has always been done in the case of alterations of the Text, however minute. The Critical Notes are almost entirely original, and chiefly serve to give reasons for the methods pursued in forming the Text.

The division of the Text, not into verses, (though these are expressed in the inner margin) but paragraphs, is agreeable to the custom of the most eminent Editors, and can need no justification. Certain it is that scarcely any thing could have had a more unfavourable effect on the interpretation of the New Test. than H. Stephens's breaking up the whole into verses; thus, occasionally dissevering clauses which are closely connected in sense.

The Punctuation has been throughout most carefully corrected and adjusted, from a comparison of all the best Editions, from the Editio Princeps to that of Scholz. To each verse is subjoined, in the outer margin, a select body of the most apposite Parallel References, as adopted by Bp. Lloyd from Curcellæus. The citations from the Old Testament are expressed as such by being spaced out; and the words of any speaker are indicated by an appropriate mode of punctuation, and by the use of a Capital letter to designate the commencement of those words. Vol. I. pp. x.—xii.

To pass from the text to the ANNOTATIONS.-The Critical Notes, the design of which has already been stated, are original, and in all important cases are so full and instructive as to be adapted to teach