If the most primitive witnesses to our hand are indeed discovered to bear false witness to the text of Scripture,--whither are we to betake ourselves for the Truth?
And what security can we hope ever to enjoy that any given exhibition of the text of Scripture is the true one?
Are we then to be told that in this subject-matter the maxim '_id verius quod prius_' does not hold?
that the stream instead of getting purer as we approach the fountain head, on the contrary grows more and more corrupt?
Nothing of the sort, I answer.

The direct reverse is the case.

Our appeal is always made to antiquity; and it is nothing else but a truism to assert that the oldest reading is also the best.

A very few words will make this matter clear; because a very few words will suffice to explain a circumstance already adverted to which it is necessary to keep always before the eyes of the reader.
The characteristic note, the one distinguishing feature, of all the monstrous and palpable perversions of the text of Scripture just now under consideration is this:--that they are never vouched for by the oldest documents generally, but only by a few of them,--two, three, or more of the oldest documents being observed as a rule to yield conflicting testimony, (which in this subject-matter is in fact contradictory).

In this way the oldest witnesses nearly always refute one another, and indeed dispose of one another's evidence almost as often as that evidence is untrustworthy.