§ 24. But instead of all this, a Revision of the _English Authorised Version_ having been sanctioned by the Convocation of the Southern Province in 1871, the opportunity was eagerly snatched at by two irresponsible scholars of the University of Cambridge for obtaining the general sanction of the Revising body, and thus indirectly of Convocation, for a private venture of their own,—their own privately devised Revision of the _Greek Text_. On that Greek Text of theirs, (which I hold to be the most depraved which has ever appeared in print), with some slight modifications, our Authorised English Version has been silently revised: silently, I say, for in the margin of the English no record is preserved of the underlying Textual changes which have been introduced by the Revisionists. On the contrary. Use has been made of that margin to insinuate suspicion and distrust in countless particulars as to the authenticity of the Text which has been suffered to remain unaltered. In the meantime, the country has been flooded with two editions of the New Greek Text; and thus the door has been set wide open for universal mistrust of the Truth of Scripture to enter. § 25. Even schoolboys, it seems, are to have these crude views thrust upon them. Witness the “Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools,” edited by Dean Perowne,—who informs us at the outset that “_the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press_ have not thought it desirable to reprint the text in common use.” A consensus of Drs. Tischendorf and Tregelles,—who confessedly employed _the self-same mistaken major premiss_ in remodelling the Sacred Text,—seems, in a general way, to represent those Syndics’ notion of Textual purity. By this means every most serious deformity in the edition of Drs. Westcott and Hort, becomes promoted to honour, and is being thrust on the unsuspecting youth of England as the genuine utterance of the HOLY GHOST. Would it not have been the fairer, the more faithful as well as the more judicious course,—seeing that in respect of this abstruse and important question _adhuc sub judice lis est_,—to wait patiently awhile? Certainly not to snatch an opportunity “while men slept,” and in this way indirectly to prejudge the solemn issue! Not by such methods is the cause of GOD’S Truth on earth to be promoted. Even this however is not all. Bishop Lightfoot has been informed that “the Bible Society has permitted its Translators to adopt the Text of the Revised Version _where it commends itself to their judgment_.”(27) In other words, persons wholly unacquainted with the dangers which beset this delicate and difficult problem are invited to determine, by the light of Nature and on the “_solvere ambulando_” principle, what _is_ inspired Scripture, what _not_: and as a necessary consequence are encouraged to disseminate in heathen lands Readings which, a few years hence,—(so at least I venture to predict,)—will be universally recognized as worthless.