 and it is easier by their help to rectify the mistakes of some copies, for when we have only one manuscript, there may be scope for fancy; but none for judicious comparison and well-grounded criticism.
Style and language may be distinguished by a happy genius of natural sagacity, improved by true learning and proper application, as well as statues, pictures, and medals. No age can counterfeit Cicero, Terence, St. Mark, St. John, St. Paul, no more than a counterfeit picture, medal, etc. can be imposed on, and deceive the compleat masters and judges of those ingenious professions and sciences.
Secondly, there is nothing in the various lections that affects the essentials of religion, or can imply a considerable depravation of the copies, that alters or weakens one moral contained in the divine books. And therefore, though it cannot with reason be supposed, that God Almighty should work perpetual miracles to prevent the mistakes and blunders of every careless or corrupt hand, of those numerous transcribers of those sacred volumes, no more than by a resistless power and restraint to prevent all the errors and villanis committed by free and accountable creatures; yet the argument receives strength, that notwithstanding the innumerable

variations, mistakes and contradictions in small matters, the all-seeing eye of Providence has so watched his own blessed and glorious revelations to mankind, that all the transcripts of that divine volume agree in the essential doctrine and grand design of christianity. This is a truth that Infidels and Papists cannot disprove.
I observe in the last place, that exclusive of the care of Providence, there could not possibly happen any detriment to our sacred records by various readings: for though in an innumerable number of copies of the gospel that were made before printing was known, and in the many translations of it into several languages, where the idioms are different, and the phrase may be mistaken, it was almost impossible there should not be various lections, and slips of amanuenses, yet the sacred volumes in the early ages of christianity, were disposed into innumerable hands, translated into so many languages, kept in so many libraries, churches, and in private families of believers, and so carefully preserved and revered as the authentic deeds and charters of eternal happiness, that they were not capable of being falsified.
Nor could those inestimable copies, scattered as they were over the then discovered world, and in the noble language so universally known and acceptable, be liable to hazards, by sudden revolutions and public disasters;

because those convulsions and surprizing calamities, could not happen alike in every country at one time
