We must proceed now to consider the other Notes, or Tests: and the next is Number.
1. That "witnesses are to be weighed--not counted,"--is a maxim of which we hear constantly. It may be said to embody much fundamental fallacy.
2. It assumes that the "witnesses" we possess,--meaning thereby every single Codex, Version, Father--, (1) are capable of being weighed: and (2) that every individual Critic is competent to weigh them: neither of which propositions is true.
3. In the very form of the maxim,--"_Not_ to be counted--_but_ to be weighed,"--the undeniable fact is overlooked that "number" is the most ordinary ingredient of weight, and indeed in matters of human testimony, is an element which even cannot be cast away. Ask one of Her Majesty's Judges if it be not so. Ten witnesses (suppose) are called in to give evidence: of whom one resolutely contradicts what is solemnly deposed to by the other nine. Which of the two parties do we suppose the Judge will be inclined to believe?
4. But it may be urged--would not the discovery of the one original autograph of the Gospels exceed in "weight" any "number" of copies which can be named? No doubt it would, I answer. But only because it would be the original document, and not "a copy" at all: not "a witness" to the fact, but the very fact itself. It would be as if in the midst of a trial,--turning, suppose, on the history of the will of some testator--, the dead man himself were to step into Court, and proclaim what had actually taken place. Yet the laws of Evidence would remain unchanged: and in the very next trial which came on, if one or two witnesses out of as many hundred were to claim that their evidence should be held to outweigh that of all the rest, they would be required to establish the reasonableness of their claim to the satisfaction of the Judge: or they must submit to the inevitable consequence of being left in an inconsiderable minority.
5. Number then constitutes Weight, or in other words,--since I have used "Weight" here in a more general sense than usual,--is a Note of Truth. Not of course absolutely, as being the sole Test, but _caeteris paribus_, and in its own place and proportion. And this, happily, our opponents freely admit: so freely in fact, that my only wonder is that they do not discover their own inconsistency.