I am saying that between ordinary cases of Assimilation such as occur in every page, and extraordinary instances where _per fas et nefas_ an enforced Harmony has been established,-- which abound indeed, but are by no means common,--I am disposed to draw a line.
This whole province is beset with difficulties: and the matter is in itself wondrously obscure.

I do not suppose, in the absence of any evidence direct or indirect on the subject,--at all events I am not aware--that at any time has there been one definite authoritative attempt made by the Universal Church in her corporate capacity to remodel or revise the Text of the Gospels.

An attentive study of the phenomena leads me, on the contrary, to believe that the several corruptions of the text were effected at different times, and took their beginning in widely different ways.

I suspect that Accident was the parent of many; and well meant critical assiduity of more.

Zeal for the Truth is accountable for not a few depravations: and the Church's Liturgical and Lectionary practice must insensibly have produced others.
Systematic villainy I am persuaded has had no part or lot in the matter.
The decrees of such an one as Origen, if there ever was another like him, will account for a strange number of aberrations from the Truth: and if the Diatessaron of Tatian could be recovered[184], I suspect that we should behold there the germs at least of as many more.