ALthough the Various Readings of this sort are not of the original Text of the Bible, we notwithstanding join them to the foregoing, to prevent our being obliged to speak of them in another Place, and that we may insert them here, under the same Title which so well suits with them.
These Various Readings are in the Latin Bibles whereof we have been speaking, and particularly in F. de la Haye’s very large Bible, whereof we shall say something in the next Part. There are some likewise in the Apparatus of the Antwerp Polyglot, in the 4th Tome of the London Polyglot, in the Great Criticks of London, and the Supplement, printed at Frankfort, tom. 1. 1700. There are some also in James’s famous Book entitled Bellum Papale, and in Bukentborpe’s Lux de de Luce, which we speak of in another Place.
Besides these General Readings of the whole Bible, there are some Particular, among others, upon the Psalms, which are in the new Edition of St. Austin, at the Beginning of the 4th Tome, and of these of there is mention made in the Preface.
Zeger’s Piece likewise, entitled Castigator locorum Depravatorum, was printed at Cologn, in 1555, in 8vo. and in the Great Criticks; this must be meant of his Preface, which is in the Beginning of the 6th Tome, p. 14. Tacitus Nicholas Zeger was of Brussels, and of the Order of Minor Brothers, understood Greek, and was a pretty good Critick. He addicted himself to the Study of Holy Scripture, as appears by his Works. He died in the Year 1559.
Samuel Petit put out Various Readings, which give Light to many Passages of Scriptue. They were printed in the 4th Tome of the Great Criticks, p. 2536. They had been published before, at Paris, in 1633. Samuel Petit, of Nimes, a Calvinist, was an Enemy to every Party. He had a great Reverence for Ecclesiastical Antiquity, and the Hierarchy, which he affirmed to have been established in the Time of the Apostles. His Death happened in 1643.
F. Martianay printed Various Readings on the Gospel of St. Matthew, at Paris, 1695, in 12mo. Dom Mabillon published some at the End of his Gallican Liturgy, extracted from an old Lectionary. We too have inserted some at the End of the last Tome of our Comment, taken from an ancient Manuscript of Corbic, of above a thousand Years old, the principal whereof are chosen by us.