Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/323

Rh a specially acceptable boon. But it would be an illusion to anticipate important changes of text from any acquisition of new evidence. Greater possibilities of improvement lie in a more exact study of the relations between the documents that we already possess. The effect of future criticism, as of future discovery, we suspect, will not be to import many fresh readings; but there is reason to hope that the doubts between alternative readings will be greatly reduced.

372. We must not hesitate however to express the conviction that no trustworthy improvement can be effected except in accordance with the leading principles of method which we have endeavoured to explain, and on the basis of the primary applications of them which have been here made to the interpretation of the documentary phenomena of the New Testament. It is impossible to entertain an equal degree of confidence in the numerous decisions which we have felt ourselves justified in making in comparatively obscure or difficult variations; because in these cases a greater liability to error was involved in the proportionally larger part inevitably played by individual personal judgements. Even where a text is certain enough to make the exhibition of alternative readings superfluous, gradation of certainty is a necessary consequence of the manifold gradations of evidence. But, while we dare not implicitly trust our own judgement in details, the principles of criticism here followed rest on an incomparably broader foundation, and in an overwhelming proportion of cases their application is free from difficulty. As was said at the outset, the best textual criticism is that which takes account of every class of textual facts, and assigns to the subordinate method corresponding to each class of textual