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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
^ Speaking in general of books now circulating in the form which ; the invention of printing has given them , and purporting to be correct or tolerably correct representations of originals , the works of authors who ; lived many hundred years previously and before the occurrence of a long period of comparative ignorance and darkness , their authenticity is popularly received without hesitation or dispute . On this subject , however , as on
others , there often exists too much faith and too little ; and the mind , not being stored with any materials for estimating the foundations on which its confidence rests , is sometimes easily staggered b y difficulties , and at ottyer times is incapable of correctly estimating the weight of assurance which it may receive , and more especially the immense preponderance of the assurance on which its belief in the authenticity of the Scriptures , as compared with other old books , may rest . Mr . Taylor ' s mode of throwing the whole
argument into one literary view , of looking at the general evidence of authenticity as affecting literature in the bulk , and of . thus collaterally , and incidentally displaying the immense comparative weight in favour of the authenticity of the sacred records , and of the truth of their contents , is ingenious and eminently successful . The plan of course enables the author to
interweave a great deal of curious literary information , g iven in a popular form , but in a way calculated to impart to every class of readers correct ; general ideas of a subject which is more peculiarly one of labour and research . We do not know a more engaging outline for a course of lectures , which might be addressed to almost any class of students , than the argument of this volume would afford .
The subject of the work being the history of the records of history , the author proceeds to trace the extant works of ancient historians retrogressively from modern times up to the ages to which they are usually attributed , and then to explain the grounds on which , under certain limitations , the contents of these works are admitted to be authentic and worthy of credit .
The inquiry , therefore , consists of two perfectly distinct parts , of which the first relates to the antiquity , genuineness and integrity of certain books now extant , and the second relates to the degree of credit that is due to such of these ancient works as profess to be narratives of facts . Satisfactory evidence , on the one head , proves , that the works are not forgeries , on the other , that they are not fictions *
The antiquity and genuineness of ancient books are regarded as capable of proof under three distinct lines , which are each handled in a brief and forcible style by Mr . Taylor . The first relates to the history of certain copies of a work now in existence ; the second , to the history of a work as it may be collected from the series of references made to it b y others ; the third is drawn from the known history of the language in which the work is extant .
First , then , Mr . Taylor enters into the history arid description of MSS . as they were found and were made the sources of our present books at the invention of printing , and he succinctly points out the means and evidence ^ by which their dates and ages are now ascertainable ; si ^ ch as , by authentic history of their individual existence and actual transmission , —by the dates
afl&xed by copyists , —by marginal notes affixed from time to time by later hands , alluding often to persons , events , or customs , indicative of jheir age , «—by being discovered as palimpsests or rescripts under M 8 S . themselves of a considerable antiquity , —by the ornaments or illuminations , ai > d by the , quality of the ink , the nature of the- material , whether leather , parchment , papyrus , &c , —by changes in the mode of ^ writing , $ n 4 other particulars *
Untitled Article
520 Rivieic . — Taylor oh Ih 4 Tranmmion of ' Ancient BodfaJ
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 520, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/48/
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