Of these things some of us had a competent knowledge, but the majority had no special knowledge of the genealogical method. They did know the facts on which it was based--the ascertained trustworthiness of the ancient authorities as compared with the later uncial, and the cursive manuscripts, the general characteristics of these ancient authorities, the alliances that were to be traced between some of them, and the countries with which they were particularly connected. This the majority knew generally as a part of the largely increased knowledge which the preceding forty or fifty years, and the labours of Lachmann, Tischendorf, and (so far as he had then published) Tregelles, had placed at the disposal of students of the Greek Testament. It was on this general knowledge, and not on any portions of a partly printed text, that the decisions of the Company were based; these decisions, however, by the very nature of the case and the use of common authorities, were constantly in accordance with the texts of Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles, and so with the subsequently printed text of Westcott and Hort. Such a text, thus independently formed, and yet thus in harmony with the results of the most tested critical researches of our times, has surely great claims on our unreserved acceptance, and does justify us in strongly pleading that a version of such a text, if faithfully executed, should, for the very truth's sake, be publicly read in our Churches. That the Revised Version has been faithfully executed, will I hope be shown fully and clearly in the succeeding chapter. For the present my care has been to show that the text of which it is a version, and which I have called the Revisers' Text because it underlies their revision, and, as such, has been published by the Oxford University Press, is in my judgement the best balanced text that has appeared in this country. I have mentioned with it (p. 63) the closely similar text of the well-known Professor Nestle, but as I have not gone through the laborious task of comparing the text, verse by verse, with that of the Revisers, I speak only in reference to our own country. I have compared the two texts in several crucial and important passages--such for example as St. John i. 18--and have found them identical. Bishop Westcott, I know, a short time before his lamented death, expressed to the Committee of the Bible Society his distinct approval of their adopting for future copies of the Society's Greek Testament Professor Nestle's text, as published by the Wurtemberg Bible Society.