are not so foolish as to believe that God having once sent a deep
message of truth to man, would suffer it to lie at the mercy of a
careless or a wicked copyist. Treasures so vast would not be left
at the mercy of accidents so vile. Very little more than two hundred
years ago, a London compositor, not wicked at all, but simply drunk,
in printing Deuteronomy, left out the most critical of words; the
seventh commandment he exhibited thus-'Thou _shalt_ commit
adultery;' in which form the sheet was struck off. And though in
those days no practical mischief could arise from this singular
_erratum,_ which English Griesbachs will hardly enter upon
the roll of various readings, yet, harmless as it was, it met with
punishment. 'Scandalous!' said Laud, 'shocking! to tell men in
the seventeenth century, as a biblical rule, that they positively
must commit adultery!' The brother compositors of this drunken
biblical reviser, being too honorable to betray the individual
delinquent, the Star Chamber fined the whole 'chapel.' Now, the
copyists of MSS. were as certain to be sometimes drunk as this
compositor--famous by his act--utterly forgotten in his person--whose
crime is remembered--the record of whose name has perished. We
therefore hold, that it never was in the power, or placed within
the discretion, of any copyist, whether writer or printer, to injure
the sacred oracles. But the bibliolatrist cannot say _that_;
because, if he does, then he is formally unsaying the very principle
which is meant by bibliolatry. He therefore must require another
supplementary inspiration, viz., No. 4, to direct him in his
choice of the true reading amongst so many as continually offer
themselves.[Footnote: [Footnote: I recollect no variation in the
test of Scripture which makes any startling change, even to the
amount of an eddy in its own circumjacent waters, except that famous
passage about the three witnesses--'_There are three that bare