(This is an excerpt from a larger work entitled, The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, which was begun by John Burgon, but was completed by Edward Miller after the death of Dean Burgon. Full book here)
That which distinguishes Sacred Science from every
other Science which can be named is that it is Divine, and
has to do with a Book which is inspired; that is, whose
true Author is God. For we assume that the Bible is to be
taken as inspired, and not regarded upon a level with the
Books of the East, which are held by their votaries to be
sacred. It is chiefly from inattention to this circumstance
that misconception prevails in that department of Sacred
Science known as ' Textual Criticism.' Aware that the New
Testament is like no other book in its origin, its contents,
its history, many critics of the present day nevertheless
permit themselves to reason concerning its Text, as if they
entertained no suspicion that the words and sentences of
which it is composed were destined to experience an extraordinary
fate also. They make no allowances for the
fact that influences of an entirely different kind from any
with which profane literature is acquainted have made
themselves felt in this department, and therefore that even
those principles of Textual Criticism which in the case of
profane authors are regarded as fundamental are often out
of place here.
It is impossible that all this can be too clearly apprehended.
In fact, until those who make the words of the
New Testament their study are convinced that they move
in a region like no other, where unique phenomena await
them at every step, and where seventeen hundred and
fifty years ago depraving causes unknown in every other
department of learning were actively at work, progress
cannot really be made in the present discussion. Men
must by all means disabuse their minds of the prejudices
which the study of profane literature inspires. Let me
explain this matter a little more particularly, and establish
the reasonableness of what has gone before by a few plain
considerations which must, I think, win assent. I am not
about to offer opinions, but only to appeal to certain undeniable
facts. What I deprecate, is not any discriminating
use of reverent criticism, but a clumsy confusion of points
essentially different.
No sooner was the work of Evangelists and Apostles
recognized as the necessary counterpart and complement of
God's ancient Scriptures and became the ' New Testament,'
than a reception was found to be awaiting it in the world
closely resembling that which He experienced Who is the
subject of its pages. Calumny and misrepresentation, persecution
and murderous hate, assailed Him continually.
And the Written Word in like manner, in the earliest
age of all, was shamefully handled by mankind. Not
only was it confused through human infirmity and misapprehension,
but it became also the object of restless
malice and unsparing assaults. Marcion, Valentinus,
Basilides, Heracleon, Menander, Asclepiades, Theodotus,
Hermophilus, Apollonides, and other heretics, adapted the
Gospels to their own ideas. Tatian, and later on Ammonius,
created confusion through attempts to combine the four
Gospels either in a diatessaron or upon an intricate arrangement
made by sections, under which as a further result the
words of one Gospel became assimilated to those of another.
Want of familiarity with the sacred words in the first ages,
carelessness of scribes, incompetent teaching, and ignorance
of Greek in the West, led to further corruption of the Sacred
Text. Then out of the fact that there existed a vast number
of corrupt copies arose at once the need of Recension, which
was carried on by Origen and his school. This was a fatal
necessity to have made itself felt in an age when the first
principles of the Science were not understood ; for ' to
correct
' was too often in those days another word for
' to corrupt.' And this is the first thing to be briefly
explained and enforced : but more than a counterbalance
was provided under the overruling Providence of God.
Sacred Textual Criticism