mmon practice for the scribe at the end of
his copy, to adjure all who transcribed from it to use the greatest care,
and to refrain from the least alteration of word or sense. Authors more
especially followed this course, thus at the end of some we find such
injunctions as this.

"I adjure you who shall transcribe this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ
and by his glorious coming, who will come to judge the quick and the
dead, that you compare what you transcribe and diligently correct it by
the copy from which you transcribe it--this adjuration also--and insert
it in your copy."[52]

The Consuetudines Canonicorum, before referred to, also particularly
impressed this upon the monks, and directed that all the brothers who
were engaged as scribes, were not to alter any writing, although in their
own mind they might think it proper, without first receiving the sanction
of the abbot, "_on no account were they to commit so great a
presumption_."[53] But notwithstanding that the scribes were thus
enjoined to use the utmost care in copying books, doubtless an occasional
error crept in, which many causes might have produced, such as bad light,
haste, a little drowsiness, imperfect sight, or even a flickering lamp
was sufficient to produce some trivial error; but in works of importance
the smallest error is of consequence, as some future scribe puzzled by
the blunder, might, in an attempt to correct, still more augment the
imperfection; to guard against this, with respect to the Scriptures, the
most critical care was enforced. Monks advanced in age were alone allowed
to transcribe them, and after their completion they were
read--revised--and reread again, and it is by that means that so uniform
a reading has been preserved, and although slight differences may here
and there occur, there are no books which have traversed through the
shadows of the dark ages, that preserve their original text so pure and
uncorrupt as the copies of the Scriptures, the fathers of the church, and
the ancient writings of the classic authors; sometimes, it is true, a
manuscript of the last order is discovered possessing a very different
reading in some particular passage; but these appear rather as futile
emendations or interpolations of the scribe than as the result of a
downright blunder, and are easily perceivable, for when the monkish
churchmen tampered with ancient copies, it generally originated in a
desire to smooth over the indecencies of the heat