Abstract
In SPT’s later years, numerous responsibilities distracted him from the magnum opus of his Greek NT. His health (particularly his eyesight) was fragile, and the needs of older relatives were demanding. In the Compton Street Chapel, of which SPT was an elder, ministerial uncertainty raised further anxiety. A new pastor Elliott resolved the problem temporarily but after the congregation’s dispersal in 1866 SPT worshipped with the Presbyterians. The legacy of SPT’s earlier Brethren connection was arguably his nemesis especially when Brethren quoted his former writings, but in any case he was increasingly isolated in his doctrinal certainties. His rapprochement with Tischendorf was tenuous but he was encouraged by the rediscovery of the Codex Reuchlini. A short holiday in Brittany was a further diversion from the magnum opus, as was the completion of his edition of the Codex Muratorianus, but for SPT apologetics was but another field of Christian duty.
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Notes
- 1.
Henry Alford, Life, Journals and Letters of Henry Alford, 3rd ed., edited by his widow (London: Rivingtons, 1874), 339.
- 2.
Tregelles, Account, 167; Tregelles, Zacynthius, xxii. See also Frederick Jarratt [c.1845–?1934, a Devonian who was for many years the Rector of Goodleigh, Barnstaple], ‘Dean Alford and Dr Tregelles,’ Notes and Queries 8 (28 September 1895): 246.
- 3.
Tregelles, ‘Nitrian Palimpsest,’ 451.
- 4.
SPT worked on the palimpsest and wrote his account in Horne’s Introduction some years before the new reading room was completed in 1857.
- 5.
Tregelles, Introduction (1856), 4: 183.
- 6.
SPT (Plymouth, 9 February 1857; 10 February 1858) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [9, 15]).
- 7.
SPT (Plymouth, 12 December 1863) to B.W. Newton (Xerox copy in the writer’s possession from original formerly in the Fry Collection, but now missing from CBA 7181).
- 8.
SPT (Plymouth, 28 August 1865) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[86]).
- 9.
SPT (Kingsbridge, 15 July 1864) to R. Scott (Oxford/Pusey, Scott Papers, 1/39/2). At a later stage, his throat too was affected, so much that one obituary writer observed that those who only knew him in his later years would perhaps be surprised to learn that earlier ‘he was a fluent and distinct speaker’, Brooking-Rowe, ‘Tregelles,’ 388.
- 10.
SPT (Plymouth, 19 October 1868) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[105]). Elsewhere in this letter, he mentions having been ‘laid by with the [W]Hooping Cough’.
- 11.
For SPT’s sister, Anna Rebecca Tregelles (1811–1885), see below pp. 24–25, n.51.
- 12.
SPT (Kingsbridge, 14 April 1866) to BWN [letter formerly in the Fry Collection but now missing from CBA 7181; Xerox copy of F.W. Wyatt’s transcription in the author’s possession].
- 13.
In a statement made in 1863, by Prideaux Tregelles and W.G. Haydon (elders of the church,) we learn that the Evangelical Protestant Church in Compton Street was established on 14 December 1847 when many Christians in Plymouth had ‘found themselves in peculiar circumstances’. ‘From that time we have continued in union professing to hold the doctrines of Evangelical Protestant Christians and the definite principles of stated ministry (without of necessity its being an exclusive ministry) of open communion in the Lord’s Supper together with the maintenance of Godly discipline’; Evangelical Protestant Church, Compton Street Chapel, Plymouth, Confession of Faith and other papers connected with the settlement of the Rev. William Elliott as pastor; addressed to the pastors of Christ’s Churches [hereafter ‘Compton Street, Confession’] (London: Houlston and Wright, 1863), 19–20.
- 14.
John Offord (c.1810–1870). Born in Boston, Lincs, he is described (in 1841 and 1851 Census records) as Minister of the Gospel in Exeter, St Austel and Plymouth. From 1862, Minister of Palace Garden Chapel, Bayswater, London; see Baptist Handbook (1870), 198–99.
- 15.
Captain William G. Haydon (1779–1864), often referred to as Admiral Haydon, was from an old Plymouth family. One of his cousins was the father of Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846) the Plymouth painter who committed suicide.
- 16.
Dr James Pringle Riach (c.1798–1865) was the son of a Church of Scotland minister and had a colourful career in the Middle East before retiring to Plymouth; see Stunt, Elusive Quest, 231n.60. His death in 1865 deeply affected SPT to whom he had been ‘for more than twenty years … so valued and so intimate a friend’ (SPT Plymouth, 21 February 1865 to B.W. Newton [letter missing from CBA, Xerox copy of F.W. Wyatt’s transcription in author’s possession]).
- 17.
Henry Bellenden Bulteel (1800–1866) was from an old Devonian family and had seceded from the Church of England to be associated for a time with the Brethren; see Stunt, art. s.n. in ODNB.
- 18.
Henry Heywood (1823–1891+). Described in the Census records as ‘Preacher of the Gospel’, Compton Gifford, Plympton St Mary.
- 19.
SPT (Plymouth, 31 August 1862) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[28]).
- 20.
SPT (Plymouth, 21 December 1862) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[34]).
- 21.
My only source of information about William Elliott’s career, other than SPT’s letters is the minimally informative obituary in The Gospel Magazine (October 1904): 615–19.
- 22.
SPT (Plymouth, 4 February 1863) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[43]).
- 23.
SPT (Plymouth, 10 February 1863) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[45]).
- 24.
Compton Street, Confession; SPT’s address on this occasion is given in full, 19–29. Cf. above Footnote 13.
- 25.
SPT (Plymouth, 4 April 1866) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181[96]). Dr Charles Hingston (1805–1872) who is quoted in the letter, had, like SPT, Quaker origins but his wife had been attached to the Brethren. See Stunt, Elusive Quest, 37
- 26.
The son and successor of Rev. Septimus Courtney, for whom see Stunt, From Awakening, 289n.29, 369.
- 27.
Henry Addington Greaves (c.1802–c.1880), Al Cant. 3: 123; vide supra Chapter 9, Footnote 53.
- 28.
Joseph Wood (c.1827–1911) was of Irish origin and had previously served in Warrington before coming to Plymouth where he retired in 1897; see R. Buick Knox ‘The Irish Contribution to English Presbyterianism,’ JURCHS 4:1 (October 1987): 33.
- 29.
SPT (Plymouth, 11 April 1866) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [98]). It would have been through his friends at this Baptist chapel where the minister was Thomas C. Page [1823–1882] that Tregelles learnt of the arrival in Plymouth of a dying American missionary in September 1866. John Sydney Beecher (1819–1866) had served as a Baptist missionary in Burma and he now ‘enjoyed calls from the pious and learned Dr. Tregelles and a few other friends’, C.H. Carpenter, Self-Support, Illustrated in the History of the Bassein Karen Mission from 1840 to 1880 (Boston: Rand, Avery, 1883), 319.
- 30.
SPT (Plymouth, 25 April 1866) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [99]).
- 31.
SPT (Plas Newydd, Neath, 26 July 1867) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [102]).
- 32.
This was the testimony of the Plymouthian, Joshua Brooking-Rowe (1837–1908) in an obituary notice in The Journal of the Plymouth Institution 5 (1876): 388.
- 33.
After SPT’s death , Henry Scrivener maintained that SPT had begged him to keep in mind that ‘his last years were more happily spent as a humble lay member of the Church of England’ and that he had assured Dr A. Earle that his reason for this was ‘the results of his study of the Greek N.T.’ Scrivener, Plain Introduction 2: 241n. My familiarity with SPT’s correspondence during his later years leads me to treat Scrivener’s claim with some scepticism.
- 34.
For what is probably the most judicious and eminently balanced account of the Christology of the early Brethren and the difficulties they encountered when expounding the Lord’s humanity, see F.F. Bruce. ‘The Humanity of Jesus Christ.’ Journal of the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship 24 (1973): 5–15, available online at https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ffb/humanity_bruce.pdf [accessed 6 June 2019].
- 35.
Tregelles, Five Letters, 5.
- 36.
SPT (Plymouth, 7 January 1863) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [37]). The pamphlet was soon published in William Kelly’s Bible Treasury (1862) and subsequently as ‘The Righteousness of God’ in Darby’s Collected Writings 7 (Doctrinal 2): 302–48.
- 37.
‘Letter IV: The Brethren’s Pathway of error in Doctrine’, Tregelles, Five Letters 18–24. The same point was at issue as late as 1866 when SPT wrote to defend the Rev. Nassau Cathcart [c.1828–1911+], Vicar of Holy Trinity, Guernsey who was in dispute with the Brethren for their espousal of the doctrine of Christ’s ‘heavenly humanity’; SPT (Plymouth, 16 March 1866) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [95]).
- 38.
Catesby Paget (1809–1878) was a nephew of the first Marquess of Anglesey and had been a Captain in the 7th Royal Fusiliers. His first wife was Florinda Frances Mason and the marriage was celebrated at Powerscourt Lodge in August 1839.
- 39.
Catesby Paget, A Letter to Dr Tregelles on Vicarious Law fulfilling (London: Yapp, 1863), 3–4.
- 40.
SPT (Plymouth, 6 November 1863) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [57]).
- 41.
For details of the evolution of these conferences see R. Braithwaite [ed.], The Life and Letters of Rev. William Pennefather, B.A. [‘Cheap edition’] (London: John F Shaw, 1878), 297–490 passim.
- 42.
Rev. Charles Dallas Marston (1824–1876) Vicar of St Mary’s, Bryanston Square, London.
- 43.
SPT (Plymouth, 9 December 1863) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [59]; and SPT (Plymouth, 12 December 1863) to B.W. Newton (Xerox copy in the author’s possession [original missing from CBA 7181]).
- 44.
The Mildmay Conference, 1894: Reports of the Addresses, Corrected by the Speakers (London: Shaw, 1894), viii. For SPT’s published dislike of what he called ‘dreamy ethereality’ and ‘sentimental religion’ see Tregelles, The Hope, 87–95.
- 45.
SPT (Leipsic, 25 June 1862) to B.F. Westcott (Cambridge/CUL, Westcott Papers, Add.8317/1/215).
- 46.
It was probably the ladies’ choice to visit the sites of Lutheran significance as SPT had been in Wittenberg twelve years earlier in 1850 when he shared some of his thoughts about Luther’s life with readers of the JSL (see Tregelles, ‘Letters from the Continent,’ 455). For the journey to Vienna, see my transcript below of SPT’s ‘lost’ letter from Vienna included in the ‘Appendix of Unpublished letters’ (Letter 6).
- 47.
See above Chapter 5, Footnotes 5 and 6. Delitzsch was working on the MS in his home and he allowed Tregelles to take it to his rooms at the Whale hotel, in Erlangen. The MS is now in Augsburg University Library.
- 48.
For one example of Erasmus’s textual creativity, which has survived in the textus receptus, we may refer to Rev xxii.18 where the Codex Reuchlini came to an end. Here he translated the Latin Vulgate Contestor ego back into a literal (classical) Greek Συµµαρτυροῡµαι—a word which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament—where all the extant Greek MSS (to which unfortunately Erasmus did not have access) read µαρτυρῶ ἐγὼ. A similar dependence on the Vulgate occurs in the next verse where the textus receptus, following Erasmus, notoriously replaces the tree of life with the book of life. See above Chapter 5 Footnote 6.
- 49.
Tregelles, ‘A Few Notes,’ 2.
- 50.
SPT (Trèves, 11 August 1862) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [26]). For the ‘lively recollection of the enthusiasm’ of SPT and Franz Delitzsch ‘over this unexpected discovery’ as described by the Aberdeen Professor of Theology, Stewart D.F. Salmond who was in their company at the time, see his account of ‘Franz Delitzsch,’ The Expositor, series 3, vol. 3 (1886): 467.
- 51.
SPT [Vienna, 17 July’62] to BWN (letter formerly in the Fry Collection but now missing from CBA 7181) see below ‘Appendix of Unpublished Letters’ (Letter 6) for my transcription made in 1962.
- 52.
[A.R.Tregelles], The Ways of the Line, a Monograph on Excavators (Edinburgh: Oliphant; London: Hamilton Adams, 1858), 5. For the work of Catherine Marsh [1818–1912] see ODNB art by G.C. Boase, rev. T.C.F. Stunt,‘William Marsh’; see also C. Marsh, English Hearts and English Hands or The Railway and the Trenches (London: Nisbet 1857) Cf A. Mallery, Crossing the Line: Women and the Railway Mission (Sheffield, 2018) 192–3. Of Anna Rebecca’s later life we know little except that after the death of her mother and brother she went to live in Falmouth, the town of her birth (G.C. Boase, W.P. Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis: A Catalogue of the Writings, Both Manuscript and Printed, of Cornishmen, and of Works Relating to the County of Cornwall, with Biographical Memoranda and Copious Literary References (London: Longmans, 1878), 2: 752.
- 53.
SPT (Plymouth, 31 May 1865) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [83]).
- 54.
S.P. Tregelles, Notes of a Tour in Brittany (Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter [1865]) see, for example, pp. 52–54, 100–12, 148–52.
- 55.
The MS is usually listed as cursive 47: Roe 16; see J.J. Griesbach, Symbolae Criticae ad supplendas et corrigendas variarum N.T. Lectionum collections … (Halle, 1793), 2: 155–58. For SPT’s interest in the MS, see his Greek New Testament Part IV (1869) Introductory Notice, p. ii where the first volume of Griesbach’s Symbolae is wrongly cited in place of the second volume.
- 56.
SPT had kept Macbride informed of his work since 1854, see SPT (Plymouth, 7 September 1854) to J.D. Macbride (Oxford/Bod., MS Eng. lett. d.185).
- 57.
Not to be confused with the Cambridge scholar John Barber Lightfoot. Tregelles appreciated the Rector’s donnish humour when, in a reference to their shared second name, Lightfoot ‘amusingly introduced me to people as his “cousin”’. SPT (Roebuck Hotel, Oxford, 28 October 1865), to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [88]).
- 58.
The name of Robert Scott [1811–1887] is forever linked with his fellow Greek lexicographer Henry Liddell [1811–1898], the Dean of Christ Church and the father of the eponymous ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
- 59.
See above Chapter 11, pp. 4–5, Footnotes 11–12.
- 60.
SPT (Plymouth, 13 March 1868) to B.W. Newton (Manchester/JRUL/CBA 7181 [103]).
- 61.
Tregelles, Historic Evidence, 15–19, 22, 43, 52, 56, 61.
- 62.
‘ὃ τε γὰρ γνοὺς καὶ µὴ σαφῶς διδάξας ἐν ἴσῳ καὶ εἰ µὴ ἐνεθυµήθη.’ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2: 60.
- 63.
As an example of his editorial convictions and the reasoning behind his work, the following may serve: ‘But if we do not claim intuitive and unerring knowledge as to things spiritual, it is for us to make Scripture the rule of our faith, and not some subjective feeling of our own the test of what we ought to receive as Scripture.’
‘Whoever casts doubt on this Gospel, seeks to render uncertain now that on which there was no doubt in the second century, and that on the part of those who had all the facts before them. One testimony such as that of the Muratorian Fragment shews the futility of all the surmises that could be brought together’. Tregelles, Canon Muratorianus . 80–81.
- 64.
For some reactions to SPT’s edition of the Muratori fragment, see E. Hilgert, ‘Two unpublished letters regarding Tregelles’ Canon Muratorianus’, Andrews University Seminary Studies 5 (July 1967): 122–30. Hilgert included several citations verbatim from SPT’s letters to Newton which, I shared with him fifty years ago, before they became part of the Christian Brethren Archive in Manchester.
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Stunt, T.C.F. (2020). The Later Years. In: The Life and Times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32266-3_12
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