The foregoing remarks may tend to explain the broad distinction between mere conjectural emendation, which must be utterly discarded, and that just use of internal testimony which he is the best critic who most judiciously employs. They so far resemble each other, as they are both products of the reasoning faculty exercising itself on the sacred words of Scripture: they differ in this essential feature, that the one proceeds in ignorance or disregard of evidence from without, while the office of the other has no place unless where external evidence is evenly, or at any rate not very unevenly, balanced. What degree of preponderance in favour of one out of several readings, all of them affording some tolerable sense, shall entitle it to reception as a matter of right; to what extent canons of subjective criticism may be allowed to eke out the scantiness of documentary authority; are points that cannot well be defined with strict accuracy. Men’s decisions respecting them will always vary according to their temperament and intellectual habits; the judgement of the same person (the rather if he be by constitution a little unstable) will fluctuate from time to time as to the same evidence brought to bear on the self-same passage. Though the _canons_ or rules of internal testimony be themselves grounded either on principles of common sense, or on certain peculiarities which all may mark in the documents from which our direct proofs are derived; yet has it been found by experience (what indeed we might have looked for beforehand), that in spite, perhaps in consequence, of their extreme simplicity, the application of these canons has proved a searching test of the tact, the sagacity, and the judicial acumen of all that handle them. For the other functions of an editor accuracy and learning, diligence and zeal are sufficient: but the delicate adjustment of conflicting probabilities calls for no mean exercise of a critical genius. This innate faculty we lack in Wetstein, and notably in Scholz; it was highly developed in Mill and Bengel, and still more in Griesbach. His well-known power in this respect is the main cause of our deep regret for the failure of Bentley’s projected work, with all its faults whether of plan or execution. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Nearly all the following rules of internal evidence, being founded in the nature of things, are alike applicable to all subjects of literary investigation, though their general principles may need some modification in the particular instance of the Greek Testament.