[14] The Question modestly proposed,—Whether Bp. Ellicott's adoption of Westcott and Hort's new Textual Theory does not amount to (what lawyers call) Conspiracy?

But, my lord Bishop, when I reach the end of your laborious avowal that you entirely accept Westcott and Hort's new Textual Theory,—I find it impossible to withhold the respectful enquiry,—Is such a proceeding on your part altogether allowable? I frankly confess that to me the wholesale adoption by the Chairman of the Revising body, of the theory of two of the Revisers,—and then, his exclusive reproduction and vindication of that theory, when he undertakes,

to supply the reader with a few broad outlines of Textual Criticism, so as to enable him to form a fair judgment on the question of the trustworthiness of the readings adopted by the Revisers,—p. 29,

all this, my lord Bishop, I frankly avow, to me, looks very much indeed like what, in the language of lawyers, is called Conspiracy. It appears then that instead of presiding over the deliberations of the Revisionists as an impartial arbiter, you have been throughout, heart and soul, an eager partizan. You have learned to employ freely Drs. Westcott and Hort's peculiar terminology. You adopt their scarcely-intelligible phrases: their wild hypotheses: their arbitrary notions about Intrinsic and Transcriptional Probability: their baseless theory of Conflation: their shallow Method of Genealogy. You have, in short, evidently swallowed their novel invention whole. I can no longer wonder at the result arrived at by the body of Revisionists. Well may Dr. Scrivener have pleaded in vain! He found Drs. Ellicott and Westcott and Hort too many for him.... But it is high time that I should pass on.