But here I must pause. The use made by the Revisers of these ancient documents has called out the foregoing comments, and has awakened the hope, which I now venture to express, that the critical use of the Versions may be expanded, and form a part of that systematic revision of the text of the Old Testament which will not improbably form part of the critical labours of the present century. II. We may now turn to the New Testament, and to the revision of the _textus receptus_ of the New Testament which our rules necessitated, and which formed a very important and, it may be added, a very anxious part of our revision. And here, at the very outset, one general observation is absolutely necessary. It is very commonly said, and I fear believed by many to be true, that the text adopted by the Revisers and afterwards published (in different forms) by the two University Presses, hardly differs at all from the afterwards published text of the two distinguished scholars and critics, one of whom was called from us a few years ago, and the other of whom has, to our great sorrow, only recently left us. I allude, of course, to the Greek Testament, now of world-wide reputation, of Westcott and Hort. What has been often asserted, and is still repeated, is this, that the text had been in print for some time before it was finally published, and was in the hands of the Revisers almost, if not quite, from the very first. It was this, so the statement runs, that they really worked upon, and this that they assimilated.