And on the other hand a Catholic origin of the Traditional Text found on later vellum manuscripts has been discovered in the manuscripts of papyrus which existed all over the Roman Empire, unless it was in Asia, and were to some degree in use even as late as the ninth century; before and during the employment of vellum in the Caesarean school, and in localities where it was used in imitation of the mode of writing books which was brought well-nigh to perfection in that city.
It is evident that the turning-point of the controversy between ourselves and the Neologian school must lie in the centuries before St.
Chrysostom.

If, as Dr.Hort maintains, the Traditional Text not only gained supremacy at that era but did not exist in the early ages, then our contention is vain.

That Text can be Traditional only if it goes back without break or intermission to the original autographs, because if through break or intermission it ceased or failed to exist, it loses the essential feature of genuine tradition.

On the other hand, if it is proved to reach back in unbroken line to the time of the Evangelists, or to a period as near to them as surviving testimony can prove, then Dr.
Hort's theory of a 'Syrian' text formed by recension or otherwise just as evidently falls to the ground.

Following mainly upon the lines drawn by Dean Burgon, though in a divergence of my own devising, I claim to have proved Dr.Hort to have been conspicuously wrong, and our maintenance of the Traditional Text in unbroken succession to be eminently right.