But, I repeat my conviction that, however they may have originated, the causes [are not to be found in bad principle, but either in infirmities or influences which actuated scribes unconsciously, or in a want of understanding as to what is the Church's duty in the transmission from generation to generation of the sacred deposit committed to her enlightened care.] Sec.

2.
1.

When we speak of Assimilation, we do not mean that a writer while engaged in transcribing one Gospel was so completely beguiled and overmastered by his recollections of the parallel place in another Gospel,--that, forsaking the expressions proper to the passage before him, he unconsciously adopted the language which properly belongs to a different Evangelist.

That to a very limited extent this may have occasionally taken place, I am not concerned to deny: but it would argue incredible inattention to what he was professing to copy, on the one hand,--astonishing familiarity with what he was not professing to copy, on the other,--that a scribe should have been capable of offending largely in this way.

But in fact a moderate acquaintance with the subject is enough to convince any thoughtful person that the corruptions in MSS.