Now of course this duty concerns primarily the Scripture in the form in which it was given to man: the one sacred text, existing for us at this day in the very language in which it was originally written. In plain words, by way of illustration: if the universal Church were at this day commanded to lay up a copy of this deposit, as the Law was laid up in the ark of the Covenant, that one copy would consist of the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. But now comes in a necessity for the exercise of judgment on the part of the scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven: in other words, on the part of the Church. When we speak of these two sacred texts, we speak in fact of a store of both. These texts have been transmitted by human means. They exist for us in many forms, coincident in the main, but varying more or less from one another, principally through infirmities incident to transcription in ancient times. The great mass of these variations concerns matters of relatively small importance. In primitive Christian times believers were too intensely employed about the great interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom, to be very careful about the mere letter of the Scripture narrative. Whether in one and the same phrase our Lord _went_, or _came_, or _journeyed_,—whether He _said_, or _answered_, or _spoke_, or _answered and said_, was to them small matter: and thus we have these and hundreds of such as these insignificant variations in the different ancient manuscript copies of our New Testament. But there are, and in no small number, other variations affecting the sense,—modifying the facts of the history, diverting the course of argument, changing the tendency of exhortation. And it is with regard to these that the Church, trusted as she is with the Scriptures, is bound to bring things old out of her treasures: to seek back for the most ancient and best attested of the variations, and to hold that fast as the text, rejecting the others: or, if none can be found whose evidence sufficiently preponderates, to publish to all the fact that it is so. Less than this will not be a faithful discharge of the trust: cannot satisfy her feeling of reverence for God’s word.