WE have now described, in some detail, the several species of external testimony available for the textual criticism of the New Testament, whether comprising manuscripts of the original Greek (Chap. II.), or ancient translations from it (Chap. III.), or citations from Scripture made by ecclesiastical writers (Chap. IV.). We have, moreover, indicated the chief editions wherein all these materials are recorded for our use, and the principles that have guided their several editors in applying them to the revision of the text (Chap. v.). One source of information, formerly deemed quite legitimate, has been designedly passed by. It is now agreed among competent judges that Conjectural Emendation must never be resorted to, even in passages of acknowledged difficulty, in the absence of proof that the reading thus substituted for the common one is actually supported by some trustworthy document. Those that have been hazarded aforetime by eminent scholars, when but few codices were known or actually collated, have seldom, very seldom, been confirmed by subsequent researches: and the time has now fully come that, in the possession of abundant stores of variations collected from memorials of almost every age and country, we are fully authorised in believing that the reading which no manuscript, or old version, or primitive Father has borne witness to, however plausible and (for some purposes) convenient, cannot safely be accepted as genuine or evert as probable.