Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/48

10 persecution: but what little we do know suggests that they were usually small, containing only single books or groups of books, and not seldom, there is reason to suspect, of comparatively coarse material; altogether shewing little similarity to the stately tomes of the early Christian empire, of which we possess specimens, and likely enough to be despised in comparison in an age which exulted in outward signs of the new order of things. Another cause of neglect at a later period was doubtless obsoleteness of form. When once the separation of words had become habitual, the old continuous mode of writing would be found troublesome to the eye, and even the old 'uncial' or rounded capital letters would at length prove an obstacle to use. Had biblical manuscripts of the uncial ages been habitually treated with ordinary respect, much more invested with high authority, they could not have been so often turned into 'palimpsests', that is, had their ancient writing obliterated that the vellum might be employed for fresh writing, not always biblical. It must also be remembered that in the ordinary course of things the most recent manuscripts would at all times be the most numerous, and therefore the most generally accessible. Even if multiplication of transcripts were not always advancing, there would be a slow but continual substitution of new copies for old, partly to fill up gaps made by waste and casualties, partly by a natural impulse which could be reversed only by veneration or an archaic taste or a critical purpose. It is therefore no wonder that only a small fraction of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament preserved to modern times were written in the uncial period, and but few of this number belong to the first five or six centuries, none