ntly adopted rule of the committee of
Convocation the criterion of this consciously felt necessity was to be
faithfulness to the original. All then that can justly be said in
reference to the Revisers is this,--not that they exceeded their
instructions (a very serious charge), but that their estimate of what
constituted faithfulness, and involved the necessity of change, was, from
time to time, in the judgement of their critic, mistaken or exaggerated.
Such language however as that used in reference to the changes made by
the Revisers as "unnecessary and uninstructive alterations," and
"irritating trivialities," was a somewhat harsh form of expressing the
judgement arrived at.

But to proceed. On the presentation of the Report it was stated that the
committee had not been able to confer with the Northern Convocation, as
no committee had been appointed by them. It was commonly supposed that
the Northern President (Abp. of York) was favourable to revision, but the
two Houses, who at that time sat together, had taken a very different
view {22}, as our President informed us that he had received a
communication from the Convocation of York to the effect that--"The
Authorised Version of the English Bible is accepted, not only by the
Established Church, but also by the Dissenters and by the whole of the
English-speaking people of the world, as their standard of faith; and
that although blemishes existed in its text such as had, from time to
time, been pointed out, yet they would deplore any recasting of its text.
That Convocation accordingly did not think it necessary to appoint a
committee to co-operate with the committee appointed by the Convocation
of Canterbury, though favourable to the errors being rectified."

This obviously closed the question of co-operation with the Northern
Convocation. We sincerely regretted the decision, as there were many
able and learned men in the York Convocation whose co-operation we should
have heartily welcomed. Delay, however, was now out of the question.
The working out of the scheme therefore had now become the duty of the
Convocation that had adopted, and in part formulated, the proposed
revision.

The course of our proceedings was then as follows:

After the Report of the committee had been accepted by the Upper House,
and communicated to the Lower House, the following resolution was
unanimously adopted by the Upper House (May 3, 1870), and in due course
sent down to the Lower