It is, however, generally agreed that the changes confessedly made by Bretonneau were merely formal.

For the promulgation of these views, which were confessedly at variance with the doctrines of the standards of the national church of Scotland, he was summoned (1726) before his presbytery, where in the course of the investigations which followed he affirmed still more explicitly his belief that "every national church established by the laws of earthly kingdoms is antichristian in its constitution and persecuting in its spirit," and further declared opinions upon the subject of church government which amounted to a repudiation of Presbyterianism and an acceptance of the puritan type of Independency.

As regards works of a scientific character, the Magyars until recently were confessedly behindhand as compared with many other European nations.

The most celebrated critics were Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom we owe the theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, confessedly the coryphaeus of criticism.

His first edition, in 1791, was confessedly very defective; the second, in 1806, still left much to be desired.