of the Roman Church the Bible is said to have been
saved from destruction in the general confusion.

The reasoning of Catholics on this matter is specious. In the first
place, the early Christian martyrs were not Roman Catholics. The claim
of the Roman Church that the papacy starts with Peter is a myth. In the
second place, much patient labor has been expended in the last centuries
to collate existing manuscripts of the Bible for the purpose of removing
errors that had crept into the text and making the original text of the
Bible as accurate as it is possible to make it. In these labors mostly
Protestants were engaged. Fell, Mill, Kuster, Bengel, Wetzstein,
Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, have
through three centuries of untiring research cooperated in placing
before the world the authentic text of the Bible.

To-day we have not a single one of the autograph manuscripts of the
Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. If the Roman Church existed
in the days when Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, Jude, and James
wrote, and if she exercised such scrupulous care over the Bible, why has
she not preserved a single one of these invaluable documents? We suggest
this thought only in view of the unfounded Catholic boast; we do not
charge the Catholic Church with a crime for having permitted the
autographs of our Bible to become lost, we only hold that the Catholic
Church is not entitled to the eulogies which her writers bestow upon
her.

Even the condition of the copies that were made from the autograph
writings of the apostles does not speak well for the care which the
Roman Church took of the Bible, assuming, of course, that she existed in
those early centuries. "It is evident that the original purity (of the
New Testament text) was early lost. . . . Irenaeus (in the second
century) alludes to the differences between the copies. . . . Origen,
early in the third century, expressly declares that matters were growing
worse. . . . From the fourth century onward we have the manuscript text
of each century, the writings of the Fathers, and the various Oriental
and Occidental versions, all testifying to varieties of readings."
(_New Schaff-Herzog Encycl.,_ II, 102.) Our sole purpose in calling
attention to this fact, which every scholar to-day knows, is, to bring
the fervor of Catholic admiration for the Bible-protecting and
Bible-preserving Church of Rome somewhat within the bounds of reason.