etc.). After the advent of printing (A.D. 1450), the necessity of God's preserving the manuscript witness to the text was diminished. Thus, in some few instances, the majority of MSS/mss extant today may not reflect at every point what the true, commonly accepted, and majority reading was 500 years ago. The Greek manuscripts do not constitute the sole viable witness to the true text of the New Testament. The ancient versions, lectionaries, and quotes from the Fathers must also be taken into account. Hence, we should not be surprised to find that the Spirit of God has occasionally used the Latin West for corroboration on a disputed reading.1 After all, if we went strictly by the majority of the extant Greek manuscripts we wouldn't be able to include the Book of Revelation in the canon, for only one in fifty MSS/mss contains it. There was a bias against the book in the Greek speaking East, thus it was not used in the lectionary services.

Again the reason that all defenders of the TR since the Reformation follow the majority text is because it reflects the actual usage by the Church (the body of believers in all ages) which Jesus promised to lead into all truth, not merely because of statistical "superiority" or "probability". To not grasp or comprehend this leaves the reader with a "tentative" Bible. Even opponents freely admit this conclusively decisive point. For Example, Professor Kurt Aland forthrightly grants:

"It is undisputed that from the 16th to the 18th century orthodoxy's doctrine of verbal inspiration assumed ... [the] Textus Receptus. It was the only Greek text they knew, and they regarded it as the 'original text'".21 Merrill M. Parvis penned: "The Textus Receptus is not the 'true' text of the New Testament ..." but then incredulously went on to concede: "It [the TR] was the Scripture of many centuries of the Church's life. ... The Textus Receptus is the text of the Church. It is that form of text which represents the sum total and the end product of all the textual decisions which were made by the Church and her Fathers over a period of more than a thousand years."22 (author's emphasis) These candid admissions by such leading scholars of the opposing view underscore and prove our entire thesis – that the Textus Receptus always has been the N.T. used by the true Church!

However this brings us to ask: Since the texts of the TR and T.T. are identical twin brothers,23 why did Burgon only defend the T.T.; why did not Burgon "contend for the acceptance of the Textus Receptus"24 whereas Hills (Waite, Letis, this author etc.) did? (Both men did advocate "retaining" the TR but for different reasons and purposes.)

Hills best explains the reason for the disparity between himself and Burgon's views by calling attention that Burgon (as well as Prebendarys Scrivener and Edward Miller) was not a Protestant but a High-Church Anglican.25 As such, Burgon believed in infant baptism and apostolic succession. The latter meaning that only bishops who had been consecrated by earlier bishops and so on back in an unbroken chain to the first bishops who had been set aside as such by the laying on of the hands of the

1 Moorman, When The KJV Departs From The "Majority" Text, op. cit., p. 27. Also see: Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., pp. 200-203.

2 Kurt Aland, "The Text Of The Church?", Trinity Journal 8 (Fall 1987): p. 131.

3 M.M. Parvis, "The Goals Of New Testament Textual Studies", Studia Evangelica 6 (1973): p. 406.

4 Except for the infrequent instances where the T.T has missing text (i.e., I Joh.5:7-8; Acts 7:37, 8:37, 9:5-6; Luk.17:36; Mat.5:27, 27:35; Heb.2:7, 11:13 etc.), the TR and T.T. exhibt only minor insignificant differences.

5 Hoskier, Codex B and its Allies, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 415; also see: Burgon, The Revision Revised, op. cit., pp. 107, 372, 373, 392.

6 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 192.

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