used here and there in the following pages, we desire to make it clearly understood beforehand how much of the New Testament stands in no need of a textual critic's labours.
3. Again, textual criticism is always negative, because its final aim is virtually nothing more than the detection and rejection of error. Its progress consists not in the growing perfection of an ideal in the future, but in approximation towards complete ascertainment of definite facts of the past, that is, towards recovering an exact copy of what was actually written on parchment or papyrus by the author of the book or his emanuensis. Had all intervening transcriptions been perfectly accurate, there could be no error and no variation in existing documents. Where there is variation, there must be error in at least all variants but one; and the primary work of textual criticism is merely to discriminate the erroneous variants from the true.
4. In the case indeed of many ill preserved ancient writings textual criticism has a further and a much more difficult task, that of detecting and removing corruptions affecting the whole of the existing documentary evidence. But in the New Testament the abundance, variety, and comparative excellence of the documents confines this task of pure 'emendation' within so narrow limits that we may leave it out of sight for the present, and confine our attention to that principal operation of textual criticism which is required whenever we have to decide between the conflicting evidence of various documents.
