"These Gospels, so important to the Church, have not come to us in one undisputed form. We have no authorised copy of them in their original language, so that we may know in what precise words they were originally written. The authorities from which we derive their sacred text are various ancient copies, written by hand on parchment. Of the Gospels there are more than five hundred of these manuscripts of various ages, from the fourth century after Christ to the fifteenth, when printing superseded manual writing for publication of books. Of these five hundred and more, _no two_ are in all points alike: probably in no two of the more ancient can _even a few consecutive verses_ be found in which all the words agree."--_Dean Alford, "How to Study the New Testament_." "I find Armenian Christians who say that it is a sin to eat a hare; Greeks who affirm that the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son; Nestorians who deny that Mary is the mother of God: Latins who boast that in the extreme West the Christians of Europe think quite contrary to those of Asia and Africa. I know that ten or twelve sects in Europe anathematise each other; the Musselmen disdain the Christians, whom they nevertheless tolerate; the Jews hold in equal execration the Christians and Muselmen; the Fire-worshippers despise them all; the remnant of the Sabeans will not eat with either of the Other sects; and the Brahmin cannot suffer either Salbeans, or Fire-Worshippers, or Christians, or Musselmen, or Jews. I have a hundred times wished that Jesus Christ, in coming to be incarnated in Judea, had united all the sects under his laws. I have asked myself why, being God, he did not use the rights of his divinity; why, in coming to deliver us from sin, he has left us in sin; why, in coming to enlighten all men, he has left almost all men in darkness. I know I am nothing; I know that from the depth of my nothingness I have no right to interrogate the Being of Beings; but I may, like Job, raise a voice of respectful sorrow from the bosom of my misery."--_Voltaire_.