readings existed side by side in the received copies of the gospel. This fact is the more significant in view of the jealous care with which the purity of the New Testament text was guarded. So long as the last of the apostles survived, his inspired authority was an available resort on all questions of controversy, arising in the churches. (2 Cor. xi, 28; 3 John 9, 10.) During this period, the importance of an absolutely pure text of the writings of the apostles and evangelists was not fully appreciated. The work of transcription was left to the zeal of private individuals, who were often wanting in the necessary qualifications; whilst there was no system of responsible revision. It was probably during this period, closing about fifty years after the death of the apostle John, that the most important variations and errors crept in. About that time, the importance of a pure text, as an authoritative standard of appeal on questions of controversy, began to be felt; and, thereafter, great vigilance was exercised by the officers of the church in securing correct copies. The transcriptions were made from the best and most accurate manuscripts. And when a copy was made, it appears to have been subjected to a critical revision, after having been first collated usually by the scribe himself, with the copy from which it was taken, for the purpose of correcting any clerical errors, that might have occurred in the transcription. The manuscript was then handed over to “the corrector,” whose business it was to revise the text by a comparison with other available manuscripts. In this office the services of the most learned and able men in the church were employed; and it was not until sanctioned by such revision that a manuscript was accepted as an authentic copy. Beside the process here described, the ancient manuscripts abound in changes made by subsequent critics. The codex Sinaiticus exhibits alterations “by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional or limited to separate portions of the manuscript, many of them being cotemporaneous with the first writer; far the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century, a few being as recent as the twelfth.”[68] Footnote 68: Scrivener’s Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus, Introduction, p. xx.