the fervor of Catholic admiration for the Bible-protecting and
Bible-preserving Church of Rome somewhat within the bounds of reason. We
do not charge the Roman Church with having corrupted the text, but if
the claim of Catholics as to the age of their Church is correct, every
corruption in the copies that were made from the original documents
occurred while she was exercising her remarkable custodianship over the
Bible. That officials of the Church, especially as we approach the
Middle Ages, had something to do with corrupting the sacred text is the
belief of the authority just quoted. "The early Church," he says, "did
not know anything of that anxious clinging to the letter which
characterizes the scientific rigor and the piety of modern times, and
therefore was not bent upon preserving the exact words. Moreover, the
first copies were made rather for private than for public use." Not a
few were found in sarcophagi; they had been buried with their owners.
"Copyists were careless, often wrote from dictation, and were liable to
misunderstand. Attempted improvements of the text in grammar and style;
efforts to harmonize the quotations in the New Testament with the Greek
of the Septuagint, but especially to harmonize the Gospels; the writing
out of abbreviations; incorporation of marginal notes in the text; the
embellishing of the Gospel narratives with stories drawn from
non-apostolic, though trustworthy, sources,--it is to these that we must
attribute the very numerous 'readings' or textual variations. It is true
that the copyists were sometimes learned men; but their zeal in making
corrections may have obscured the true text as much as the ignorance of
the unlearned. The copies, indeed, came under the eye of an official
reviser, but he may have sometimes exceeded his functions, and done more
harm than good by his changes."

All this happened while the Roman Church, according to Catholic writers,
was keeper of the Bible. The honor which these writers assert for their