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mod. Rom. viii. 20, “, in hope.” We can hardly do more in this doubtful passage, than relax the connection of ἐπʼ ἐλπίδι with what precedes, by inserting the comma before it, and lightening the stop after it from a colon to a comma, as in 1769 mod. xi. 8, from “according” to “hear” is rightly set in a parenthesis in 1769, as approved by the Five Clergymen. 1 Cor. xvi. 22. See Appendix A, p. lxxxii., note 4. 2 Cor. v. 2, “we groan, earnestly desiring…” The adverb is doubtless intended to represent the intensive force of the preposition in ἐπιποθοῦντες (rendered coveting by Wickliffe, but simply desiring by the later versions), so that this punctuation, first found by Prof. Grote in Field’s small 8vo. (not in his 12mo.) Bible of 1660, but afterwards lost sight of, is that to be received, although through mere oversight, rather than with a view to render ingemiscimus of the Vulgate, the comma is placed after, not before, “earnestly” in 1611–1762, the final correction being due to 1769, from which the moderns adopt it. ver. 19, “God was in Christ reconciling…” All the Bibles from 1611 downwards, except that of 1743, insert a comma after “Christ”. Eph. iv. 12, “for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for…” (πρὸς … εἰς … εἰς). The comma of 1611, &c., after “saints” would be tolerable if the three prepositions were truly parallel. Phil. ii. 15, “the sons of God without rebuke,” The comma set after “God” in 1611, &c., would inevitably suggest a different gender for ἀμώμητα or ἄμωμα. Col. ii. 2, “of God and of the Father and of Christ.” The received text can hardly stand here, but the translation (taken verbatim from the Bishops’ Bible) is unquestionably very inferior to that of Tyndale, Coverdale, the Great Bible and Geneva (1557), “of God the Father, and of Christ.” The Bishops’ and our own Bibles from 1611 downwards, make bad worse by adding a comma after “God”. Heb. iv. 6, 7, “unbelief, again…” The apodosis begins with πάλιν. This is not so apparent if with 1611, &c., we set a colon after “unbelief”. vii. 5, “they that are of the sons of Levi who receive the office of the priesthood…” The comma set after “Levi” by 1611, &c., might suggest the inference that all Levites were priests. 2 Pet. i. 1–5. All our Bibles, following 1611 in their arrangement, place a comma at the end of ver. 2, a full stop at the end of ver. 4. Yet it seems evident that vv. 1, 2 form a separate paragraph, as Nourse, the Tract Society, Blackadder (see above), Wordsworth, and Tischendorf represent them; and if ver. 3 must be connected with ver. 5 (Moulton’s Winer, p. 771), a colon suffices at the end of ver. 4. ii. 22, “and, The sow”, a new proverb beginning. Thus 1638–1762, American 1867, but 1769 mod. return to “and the sow” of 1611–1630. Rev. viii. 12. Remove the stop, whether colon (1611–1630) or comma (1638 mod.), after “darkened”, since the following verb also is governed by ἵνα.

As the result of his investigations on this subject Prof. Grote infers that “With respect to the punctuation in general, independently of its affecting the meaning of particular passages, it is, in the editions before 1638, comparatively little graduated, colons and semicolons being much fewer in number than commas, and full stops……That edition made the punctuation much more graduated, and introduced one practice not common in the earlier ones, that of a full stop in the middle of a verse.” “The graduation of the punctuation; i.e. the placing of colons and semicolons, is not materially different in Blayney’s edition (1769) from what it was in that of 1683. This latter (which is pointed, as printers say, very low) improved greatly in this respect upon 1638, as 1638 had improved upon the earlier ones1.”

Section V.

On the orthography, grammatical peculiarities, and capital letters of the original, as compared with modern editions.

One of the salient points which distinguish the early editions of our Bibles from those of modern date, is their wide divergency of practice in regard to modes of spelling. It would be nothing remarkable, but rather analogous to what we observe in the case of all modern and probably of some ancient languages, that the customary orthography, even of very familiar words, should vary considerably at different periods of their literary history. But this is not the phænomenon we have mainly to account for in regard to English books printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Judged by them, it would hardly be extravagant to assert that our ancestors had no uniform system of orthography whatsoever, since there are comparatively few words, except a few particles of perpetual occurrence, that are not spelt in several fashions in the same book, on the same page, sometimes even in the same line2. The