We have received a letter, too long to print, from
the Rev. W. West, whose recent edition of Archbishop Leighton's works has been severely handled by a critic in the British Quarterly Review. Mr. West declares that this criticism is false and malicious, and complains of us for having been willing to " endorse " it. We may say that our approval of the criticism was conditional; but we certainly believed that a strong case had been made out, and gave our readers to understand as much. We shall be very glad to do full justice to Mr. West when he lays the whole case before the public, as he promises shortly to do. Meanwhile we can give the substance of his explanation. He declares that out of a hundred alleged changes, omissions, and insertions eighty-eight are to ho found in the common editions (we thought that he professed to correct the common editions by the MSS.); that four others are mis- prints; that one has no reference given and cannot be traced ; that there are, consequently, seven only for which he is responsible. Further, he declares that he has had no party purposes in view ; that such, indeed, are out of the question, seeing that Leighton's works belong, as he has taken especial pains to point out, to the Presbyterian portion of his life, and that his views of Church government were always latitudinarian and his theology Calvinistic.
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