OF THE HOLY GOSPELS.

INTRODUCTION.

In the companion volume to this, the Traditional Text, that is, the Text
of the Gospels which is the resultant of all the evidence faithfully and
exhaustively presented and estimated according to the best procedure of
the courts of law, has been traced back to the earliest ages in the
existence of those sacred writings. We have shewn, that on the one hand,
amidst the unprecedented advantages afforded by modern conditions of
life for collecting all the evidence bearing upon the subject, the
Traditional Text must be found, not in a mere transcript, but in a
laborious revision of the Received Text; and that on the other hand it
must, as far as we can judge, differ but slightly from the Text now
generally in vogue, which has been generally received during the last
two and a half centuries.

The strength of the position of the Traditional Text lies in its being
logically deducible and to be deduced from all the varied evidence which
the case supplies, when it has been sifted, proved, passed, weighed,
compared, compounded, and contrasted with dissentient testimony. The
contrast is indeed great in almost all instances upon which controversy
has gathered. On one side the vast mass of authorities is assembled: on
the other stands a small group. Not inconsiderable is the advantage
possessed by that group, as regards numerous students who do not look
beneath the surface, in the general witness in their favour borne by the
two oldest MSS. of the Gospels in existence. That advantage however
shrinks into nothing under the light of rigid examination. The claim for
the Text in them made at the Semiarian period was rejected when
Semiarianism in all its phases fell into permanent disfavour. And the
argument advanced by Dr. Hort that the Traditional Text was a new Text
formed by successive recensions has been refuted upon examination of the
verdict of the Fathers in the first four centuries, and of the early
Syriac and Latin Versions. Besides all this, those two manuscripts have
been traced to a local source in the library of Caesarea. And on the
other hand a Catholic origin of the Traditional Text found on later
vellum manuscripts has been discovered in the manuscripts of papyrus
which existed all over the Roman Empire, unless it was in Asia, and were
to some degree in use even as late as the ninth century; before and
during the employment of vellum in the Caesarean school, and in
localitie