e. In both the uncial and the
cursive manuscripts, each century has its peculiar style of writing.
From this, as well as from the quality of the materials, expert judges
can determine the age of a given manuscript with a good degree of
accuracy.

The details pertaining to the form of ancient manuscripts, their
number, character, etc., belong to the department of textual
criticism. The above brief notices are given to prepare the way
for a statement of the evidence that we have the gospel
narratives, as also the other books of the New Testament,
without corruption in the form in which they were originally
written. _See the PLATES at the beginning of this book._

3. Of the autograph manuscripts proceeding immediately from the inspired
authors we find no trace after the apostolic age. Here, as elsewhere,
the wisdom of God has carefully guarded the church against a
superstitious veneration for the merely outward instruments of
redemption. We do not need the wood of the true cross that we may have
redemption through the blood of Christ; nor do we need the identical
manuscripts that proceeded from the apostles and their companions, since
we have the contents of these manuscripts handed down to us without
corruption in any essential particular. This appears from various
considerations.

_First._ Several hundred manuscripts of the gospels, or of portions of
them, (to confine our attention at present to these,) have been
examined, two of them belonging to the fourth century and two, with some
fragments, to the fifth. All these, though written in different
centuries and coming from widely different regions, contain essentially
the same text. In them, not one of the great facts or doctrines of the
gospel history is mutilated or obscured.

_Secondly._ The quotations of the church fathers from the last part of
the second to the end of the fourth century are so copious, that from
them almost the entire text of our present gospels could be
reconstructed. These quotations agree substantially with each other and
with the text of our existing manuscripts; only that the earlier
fathers, as already noticed, chap. 2. 3, often quote loosely from
memory, blend together different narratives, and interweave with the
words of Scripture their own explanatory remarks.

_Thirdly._ We have two _versions_ of the New Testament--the Old Latin or
Italic, and the Syriac called Peshito--which learned men are agreed in
pl