[16] I am inclined to believe that in the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles, some person or persons of great influence and authority executed a Revision of the N.T. and gave the world the result of such labours in a 'corrected Text.' The guiding principle seems to have been to seek to _abridge_ the Text, to lop off whatever seemed redundant, or which might in any way be spared, and to eliminate from one Gospel whatever expressions occurred elsewhere in another Gospel. Clauses which slightly obscured the speaker's meaning; or which seemed to hang loose at the end of a sentence; or which introduced a consideration of difficulty:--words which interfered with the easy flow of a sentence:--every thing of this kind such a personage seems to have held himself free to discard. But what is more serious, passages which occasioned some difficulty, as the _pericope de adultera_; physical perplexity, as the troubling of the water; spiritual revulsion, as the agony in the garden:--all these the reviser or revisers seem to have judged it safest simply to eliminate. It is difficult to understand how any persons in their senses could have so acted by the sacred deposit; but it does not seem improbable that at some very remote period there were found some who did act in some such way. Let it be observed, however, that unlike some critics I do not base my real argument upon what appears to me to be a not unlikely supposition. [17] [Unless it be referred to the two converging streams of corruption, as described in The Traditional Text.] CHAPTER II. ACCIDENTAL CAUSES OF CORRUPTION. I. Pure Accident. [It often happens that more causes than one are combined in the origin of the corruption in any one passage. In the following history of a blunder and of the fatal consequences that ensued upon it, only the first step was accidental. But much instruction may be derived from the initial blunder, and though the later stages in the history come under another head, they nevertheless illustrate the effects of early accident, besides throwing light upon parts of the discussion which are yet to come.] Sec. 1. We are sometimes able to trace the origin and progress of accidental depravations of the text: and the study is as instructive as it is interesting. Let me invite attention to what is found in St. John x. 29; where,--instead of, 'My Father, who hath given them [viz. My sheep] to Me, is greater than all,'--Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, are for reading, 'That thing which My (_or_ the) Father hath given to Me is greater (i.e. is a greater thing) than all.' A vastly different proposition, truly; and, whatever it may mean, wholly inadmissible here, as the context proves. It has been the result of sheer accident moreover,--as I proceed to explain.