MY lamented friend and fellow student, the late Very Reverend J. W. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, very earnestly requested me, that if I lived to complete the present work, I would publickly testify that my latest labours had in no wise modified my previous critical convictions, namely, that the true text of the New Testament can best and most safely be gathered from a comprehensive acquaintance with every source of information yet open to us, whether they be Manuscripts of the original text, Versions, or Fathers; rather than from a partial representation of three or four authorities which, though in date the more ancient and akin in character, cannot be made even tolerably to agree together.

I saw on my own part no need of such avowal, yet (neget quis carmina Gallol?) I could not deny Dean Burgon's request. The Dean's capital argument arising from the fact that the text used by Patristic writers is often purer than primary manuscripts written one or two centuries younger than they (see p. vi. note 1) needs, of course, much care in its application, and can only be insisted on when the context renders it quite clear what the reading before the elder writer actually was.