Christ four times over, and to communicate it thus to mankind. (54) For
though there are some details related in one Gospel which are not in
another, and one often helps us to understand another, we cannot thence
conclude that all that is set down is of vital importance to us, and that
God chose the four Evangelists in order that the life of Christ might be
better understood; for each one preached his Gospel in a separate
locality, each wrote it down as he preached it, in simple language, in
order that the history of Christ might be clearly told, not with any view of
explaining his fellow-Evangelists.

(55) If there are some passages which can be better, and more easily
understood by comparing the various versions, they are the result of chance,
and are not numerous: their continuance in obscurity would have impaired
neither the clearness of the narrative nor the blessedness of mankind.

(56) We have now shown that Scripture can only be called the Word
of God in so far as it affects religion, or the Divine law; we must now
point out that, in respect to these questions, it is neither faulty,
tampered with, nor corrupt. (57) By faulty, tampered with, and corrupt, I
here mean written so incorrectly, that the meaning cannot be arrived at by a
study of the language, nor from the authority of Scripture. (58) I will not
go to such lengths as to say that the Bible, in so far as it contains the
Divine law, has always preserved the same vowel-points, the same letters, or
the same words (I leave this to be proved by, the Massoretes and other
worshippers of the letter), I only, maintain that the meaning by, which
alone an utterance is entitled to be called Divine, has come down to us
uncorrupted, even though the original wording may have been more often
changed than we suppose. (59) Such alterations, as I have said above,
detract nothing from the Divinity of the Bible, for the Bible would have
been no less Divine had it been written in different words or a different