The manuscripts of the Gospels, a full collation of whose readings with the Elzevir text of 1624 I am about to exhibit, have not been chosen with a view to the promotion of any theory of recensions, or the advocacy of individual opinions, but have been taken up almost at random, as they happen to be arranged in the catalogues of the British Museum and Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. The mass of unpublished materials is still so vast, that it would be easy, by skilful selection, to derive from them arguments in behalf of any of the several systems I have glanced at in the preceding chapter, and to allege proofs in support of each of them, which might seem irresistible, until conflicting evidence had been produced. The method I have adopted is doubtless attended with one inconvenience, that documents of inferior value will occasionally take the place of those of higher interest and importance, but this seems comparatively a slight objection to a plan which affords us the best chance of estimating, through the medium of a specimen and on a small scale, the probable results of a complete examination of the whole body of existing manuscripts. In this, as in all other branches of enquiry, it is clear that the inferences we draw from the facts before us, will be trustworthy and conclusive very much in proportion to the degree of impartiality wherewith the facts themselves shall have been culled and brought together.