case indeterminable. In most instances there would be both gain and loss; but both would be fortuitous, and they might bear to each other every conceivable proportion. Textual purity, as far as can be judged from the extant literature, attracted hardly any interest. There is no evidence to shew that care was generally taken to choose out for transcription the exemplars having the highest claims to be regarded as authentic, if indeed the requisite knowledge and skill were forthcoming. Humanly speaking, the only influence which can have interfered to an appreciable extent with mere chance and convenience in the selection between existing readings, or in the combination of them, was supplied by the preferences of untrained popular taste, always an unsafe guide in the discrimination of relative originality of text. The complexity introduced into the transmission of ancient texts by mixture needs no comment. Where the mixture has been accompanied or preceded by such licence in transcription as we find in the New Testament, the complexity can evidently only increase the precariousness of printed texts formed without taking account of the variations of text which preceded mixture.
14. Various causes have interfered both with the preservation of ancient MSS and with their use as exemplars to any considerable extent. Multitudes of the MSS of the New Testament written in the first three centuries were destroyed at the beginning of the fourth, and there can be no doubt that multitudes of those written in the fourth and two following centuries met a similar fate in the various invasions of East and West. But violence was not the only agent of destruction. We know little about the external features of the MSS of the ages of
