INTRODUCTION To TI1K AMERICAN EDITION. Uii
been increased immensely. It is good, therefore, to have more anchors than one. ... It is a good providence and a great blessing that so many manuscripts of the New Tea- tamcnt arc still amongst us ; some procured from Kgypt, others from Asia, others found in the Western churches. For the very distances of places, as well as numbers of the books, demonstrate that there could be no collusion, no al- tering, nor interpolating one copy by another, nor all by any of them. In profane authors whereof one manuscript only had the luck to be preserved, as Velleius Paterculus among the Latins, and Hcsychius among the Greeks, the faults of the scribes arc found so numerous, and the de- fects so beyond all redress, that, notwithstanding the pains of the learnedest and acutest critics for two whole centu- ries, these books still are, and are like to continue, a mere heap of errors. On the contrary, where the copies of any author arc numerous, though the various readings always increase in proportion, there the text, by an accurate colla- tion of them, made by skilful and judicious hands, is ever the more correct, and comes nearer to the true words of the author." And again : " Make your 30,000 (variations) as many more if numbers of copies can ever reach that sura all the better to a knowing and a serious reader, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and yet with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same. 1 '
To quote a modern authority : " So far," says Dr. Scriv- ener (p. 4), " is the copiousness of our stores from causing doubt or perplexity to the genuine student of Iloly Script-
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