BENTLEY, RICHARD, D.D., was born at Oulton in Yorkshire, 27th Jan. 1661. Having received his elementary education at the schools of Methley and Wakefield, he passed in 1676 to Cambridge, where he was admitted sub-sizar of St. John's College in his r5th year. Having taken his M.A. degree in July 1683, he resided for sonic time in London, engaged chiefly in philological pursuits. After the Revolution, he settled at Oxford, having been admitted to the degree of M.A., ad eundem ; and there, surrounded by the splendid literary treasures of that university, he spent several years of diligent study. On his receiving deacon's orders in 1689, he became chaplain to Bishop Stillingfleet ; shortly after, he was appointed the first preacher of the Boyle Lecture; in 1692 he was ordained priest, and became a prebendary of Worcester ; m 1693 he was appointed keeper of the royal library at St. James's ; and in 1694 he was a second time Boyle Lecturer. Having taken his degree of D..D. in 1696, he was in 170o advanced to the dignity of blaster of Trinity College, Cambridge, an office which occasioned him much trouble, and led to his spending the rest of his life in an almost con tinual conflict. This, however, did not interrupt his literary labours, for it is during this period of his life that some of his most valuable works were issued. His last piece of preferment was the arch deaconry of Ely, to which he was collated in 1701. He died 14th July 1742.
All subsequent scholars have united in lauding Bentley's abilities, his attainments as a scholar, and his skill as a critic. Erat,' says Hermann in his Opuscula, infinitm doctrinm, acutissimi sen sus, acerrimi judicii ; et his tribus omnis laus et virtus continentur critici.' He has not, however, contributed much directly to biblical learning. His Strictures on Free-thinking, in reply to Collins, published in 1713, under the name of Phila leutherus Lipsiensis, contains some valuable obser vations on various readings, and on the critical principles on which the settling of a correct text depends, as well as a thorough demolition of the flimsy argument which Collins had founded on the various readings of the N. T. against the authority of that book. In 1716 Bentley addressed a letter to Archbishop Wake, containing a proposal to restore the text of the Greek N. T. to the same state in which it was at the time of the Council of Nice. With this view he had collated the Codex Alexandrinus with great care, and he employed Wetstein, who had shewn him some extracts made by himself from the Cod. Ephraemi, to recollate that
MS. for him. In his letter to Wake, he dwells on the accordance between the oldest MSS. of the Vulgate and the two Greek codices of which he had collations ; and professes to be able from ancient witnesses alone, without ' altering a letter of his own head,' to restore the text as it had been in the best copies current at the time of the Council of Nice. For some time this design was enthusiasti cally pursued by him ; John Walker, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was sent to Paris to collate MSS. for the proposed edition; and on his return, Bentley issued proposals to the public, accompanied by the last chapter of the Book of Revelation as a .specimen. These were violently attacked by Dr. Conyers Middleton, and Bentley was for some time involved in a hot controversy with that writer. This, with other circumstances of an unfavourable kind, prevented his ever carrying his design into execution ; but at his death he left considerable materials which he had collected for the work, among the most valuable of which was a collation of the Vatican Codex, afterwards pub lished by Ford, from the transcription of Woide, in 1799. This edition, ' although never published, is of no small importance in the history of the text of the N. T. For the time had arrived when it was possible to use some discrimination in the choice and application of Greek MSS. to purposes of criticism. Bentley saw that the ancient MSS. are the witnesses to the ancient text ; and after this had been proved from the general accordance of such documents with the ancient versions and the early citations, he was ready to discard from considera tion, on a question of evidence, the whole mass of the modern copies. This limited the field of inquiry, and reduced it within tangible and practi cable bounds' (Tregelles, Account of the printed text of the Greek N. 7:, p. 66). Bentley's pro posal to reproduce from ancient authorities alone, the text of the N. T., as it appeared at the time of the Council of Nice, has been carried out more completely than he had the means of doing, by Lachman. If the contributions thus made directly to the stores of biblical learning are comparatively slender, it is not to be forgotten that to Bentley we stand indirectly indebted for the most splendid re sults of modern biblical criticism and exegesis, inas much as to him belongs the honour of founding the modern school of philology, to which all depart ments of ancient learning owe so much. —W. L. A.