Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/660

562 Doubtful points are out of sight even in critical editions of classical authors merely because in ordinary literature it is seldom worth while to trouble the clearness of a page. The one disadvantage on the side of the New Testament, the comparatively early mixture of independent lines of transmission, is more than neutralised, as soon as it is distinctly perceived, by the antiquity and variety of the evidence; and the expression of doubt wherever doubt is really felt is owing to the paramount necessity for fidelity as to the exact words of Scripture.