Many even went so far as to advise that those interpreters of Scripture should be followed who departed furthest from the letter. The result was that almost any passage could be made to teach almost anything its expositor wished it to teach. William Muir, The Arrested Reformation (London: Morgan and Scott, 1912): 75-76 https://archive.org/details/arrestedreformat00muiriala

“By the sole authority of textual criticism, these men have dared to vote away some forty verses of the inspired Word.” Dublin Review Volume 89 (London: Ballantyne Press, 1881: 140) https://archive.org/stream/3sdublinreview06londuoft#page/n7/mode/2up

Many even went so far as to advise that those interpreters of Scripture should be followed who departed furthest from the letter. The result was that almost any passage could be made to teach almost anything its expositor wished it to teach. William Muir, The Arrested Reformation (London: Morgan and Scott, 1912): 75-76 https://archive.org/details/arrestedreformat00muiriala

“What, in the meantime is to be thought of those blind guides – those deluded ones – who would now, if they could, persuade us to go back to those same codices of which the Church hath already purged herself?” Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, J. Murray, 1883: 335 (as quoted in Unholy hands p xxxii) https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=OodLOdXpS-AC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP31

“By the sole authority of textual criticism, these men have dared to vote away some forty verses of the inspired Word.” Dublin Review Volume 89 (London: Ballantyne Press, 1881: 140) https://archive.org/stream/3sdublinreview06londuoft#page/n7/mode/2up

I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly practised in their art. Constantine, as quoted in Eusebius, “Constantine’s Letter to Eusebius on the Preparation of Copies of the Holy Scriptures,” Vita Constantini Chapter 36: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-constantine.asp http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-constantine.asp

When the Sabbath morning dawned, a crowd came from Jerusalem and the surrounding area that they might see that the tomb had been sealed. But during the night in which the Lord's day dawned, while the soldiers were stationed in pairs to keep watch, a great voice came from heaven. And they saw the heavens open and two men descend from there, having a great radiance and approaching the tomb. Then, the same stone which had been put in the entrance rolled away from it and gave way partially. And the tomb was opened and both young men went in. Then, seeing this, these soldiers woke up the centurions and elders, for they themselves were all there to keep watch. And while they were describing what they had seen, again they saw three men coming out from the tomb, two supporting the other and a cross following them. The heads of the two reached up to the heavens and the head of the one they were leading by the hand went beyond the heavens. And they heard a voice from heaven saying, "Did you preach to those who sleep?" Obediently, there was heard from the cross, "Yes" (Gospel of Peter 34-42, Andrew Bernhard English Translation). http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/gospelpeter-andrewbernhard.html

I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly practised in their art. Constantine, as quoted in Eusebius, “Constantine’s Letter to Eusebius on the Preparation of Copies of the Holy Scriptures,” Vita Constantini Chapter 36: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-constantine.asp http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-constantine.asp

Westcott, Gorham, C.B. Scott, Benson, Bradshaw, Laurd and I have started a society for the investigation of ghosts, and all supernatural appearances, and effects, being all disposed to believe that such things really exist, and ought to be discriminated from hoaxes and mere subjective delusions. Fenton Hort, in Arthur Hort, The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1, New York: MacMillan & Co 1896: 211]. https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n221/mode/2up

Fenton Hort, in Arthur Hort, The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1, New York: MacMillan & Co 1896: 211]. https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n221/mode/2up

Evangelicals seem to be perverted rather than untrue. There are, I fear, still more serious differences between us on the subject of authority, and especially the authority of the Bible.” Fenton Hort’s letter to Reverend Rowland Williams (October 21, 1858) in Arthur Hort, The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1, New York: MacMillan & Co 1896: 400) https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n239/mode/2up

Westcott, Gorham, C.B. Scott, Benson, Bradshaw, Laurd and I have started a society for the investigation of ghosts, and all supernatural appearances, and effects, being all disposed to believe that such things really exist, and ought to be discriminated from hoaxes and mere subjective delusions. Fenton Hort, in Arthur Hort, The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1, New York: MacMillan & Co 1896: 211]. https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n221/mode/2up

“By the sole authority of textual criticism, these men have dared to vote away some forty verses of the inspired Word.” Dublin Review Volume 89 (London: Ballantyne Press, 1881: 140) https://archive.org/stream/3sdublinreview06londuoft#page/n7/mode/2up

"Another last word on Darwin. ... I shall not let the subject drop in a hurry, or, to speak more correctly, it will not let me drop. It has completely thrown me back into natural science, not that I had ever abandoned it either in intention, or altogether in practice. But now there is no getting rid of it any more than of a part of oneself." Fenton Hort letter to A Macmillan November 9, 1860, in Arthur Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1 (London: Macmillan, 1896): p 433-434) https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n443/mode/2up

Have you read Darwin? How I should like to talk with you about it! In spite of difficulties, I am inclined to think it unanswerable. In any case it is a treat to read such a book.” Fenton Hort in a letter to Brooke Foss Westcott (March 10, 1860), in Arthur Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1 (London: Macmillan, 1896): p. 414.] https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n425/mode/2up

Wherever the so-called Counter-Reformation, started by the Jesuits, gained hold of the people, the vernacular was suppressed and the Bible kept from the laity. So eager were the Jesuits to destroy the authority of the Bible – the paper pope of the Protestants, as they contemptuously called it – that they even did not refrain from criticizing its genuineness and historical value. Ernst Von Dobschutz, The Influence of the Bible on Civilization, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1914: 136) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36610

“I’ve been persuaded for many years that Mary Worship and Jesus Worship have very much in common in their causes and their results. Perhaps the whole question may be said to be involved in the true idea of mediation, which is almost universally corrupted in one or both of two opposite directions...but this last error can hardly be expelled till Protestants unlearn the crazy horror of the idea of the priesthood” Fenton Hort, in Arthur Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 2 (London: Macmillan, 1896): 50-51. https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf00hortgoog#page/n6/mode/2up

"Another last word on Darwin. ... I shall not let the subject drop in a hurry, or, to speak more correctly, it will not let me drop. It has completely thrown me back into natural science, not that I had ever abandoned it either in intention, or altogether in practice. But now there is no getting rid of it any more than of a part of oneself." Fenton Hort letter to A Macmillan November 9, 1860, in Arthur Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1 (London: Macmillan, 1896): p 433-434) https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n443/mode/2up

The pure Romish view seems to be nearer and more likely to lead to the truth than the Evangelical” Fenton Hort, as quoted in Samuel C, Gipp, An Understandable History of the Bible, http://www.chick.com/reading/books/157/157_08a.asp)

Wherever the so-called Counter-Reformation, started by the Jesuits, gained hold of the people, the vernacular was suppressed and the Bible kept from the laity. So eager were the Jesuits to destroy the authority of the Bible – the paper pope of the Protestants, as they contemptuously called it – that they even did not refrain from criticizing its genuineness and historical value Ernst Von Dobschutz, The Influence of the Bible on Civilization, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1914: 136) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36610

For alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin. Those that exercise alms and righteousness shall be filled with life (Tobias 12:9). https://books.google.ca/books?id=o-NUAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Yet he [Hort] found time to attend the meetings of various societies, and in June joined the mysterious company of the Apostles ... He remained always a grateful and loyal member of the secret club ... He was mainly responsible for the wording of the oath that binds the members to a conspiracy of silence. Arthur Hort, The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 1, New York: MacMillan & Co 1896: 170-171 https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf02hortgoog#page/n239/mode/2up

The angel said, Open the fish, and take the heart and the liver and the gall…if a devil or an evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof before the man or the woman, and the party shall no longer be vexed. As for the gall, it is good to anoint the man that has witness in his eyes and he shall be healed (Tobias 6:4-8). https://books.google.ca/books?id=o-NUAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

“The idea of purgation, of cleansing as by fire, seems to be inseparable from what the Bible teaches us of the Divine chastisements” Fenton Hort, in Arthur Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort Volume 2 (London: Macmillan, 1896): 336. https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersf00hortgoog#page/n6/mode/2up

“I am utterly disinclined to believe, so grossly improbable does it seem – that at the end of 1800 years, 995 copies out of every thousand, suppose, will prove untrustworthy; and that one, two, three, four or five which remain, whose contents were till yesterday as good as unknown, will be found to have retained the secret of what the Holy Spirit originally inspired. Dean J. W. Burgon, Jay P. Green (ed), Unholy Hands on the Bible Volume 1, Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1990 : 24 https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=OodLOdXpS-AC&rdid=book-OodLOdXpS-AC&rdot=1&source=gbs_atb&pcampaignid=books_booksearch_atb

A division between church members who sought world leadership and those who humbly followed Jesus was growing in Europe. The majority of writings of Christian authors acceptable to the West, which have come down to us from the centuries immediately following the apostles, reflect the mixture of Christianity and pagan philosophy. This is especially true of the allegorizing teachers and graduates of the church college of Alexandria. Bruce Wilkinson, Truth Triumphant: The Truth in the Wilderness (New York: TEACH Services Inc, 2005): 122 http://www.sabbathtruth.com/portals/20/documents/Truth_Triumphant.pdf

“I am utterly disinclined to believe, so grossly improbable does it seem – that at the end of 1800 years, 995 copies out of every thousand, suppose, will prove untrustworthy; and that one, two, three, four or five which remain, whose contents were till yesterday as good as unknown, will be found to have retained the secret of what the Holy Spirit originally inspired. Dean J. W. Burgon, Jay P. Green (ed), Unholy Hands on the Bible Volume 1, Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1990 : 24 https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=OodLOdXpS-AC&rdid=book-OodLOdXpS-AC&rdot=1&source=gbs_atb&pcampaignid=books_booksearch_atb

As to our proposed recension of the New Testament text, our object should be, I suppose, to prepare a text for common and general use—in schools, for instance. With such an end in view,   would it not be best to introduce only certain emendations into the received text, and to take note in the margin such as seem likely or noticeable—after Griesbach’s manner?” Brooke Westcott to Fenton Hort, in Arthur Westcott, Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott Volume 1 (London: Macmillan, 1903): 228. https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersb02westgoog#page/n262/mode/2up

this is common to Christian discipline with that of those philosophers in whose teaching some things are exoteric, and some esoteric.”Origen gives much information as to the Mysteries of the Ophites; and there is no doubt all the Gnostic sects had Mysteries and an initiation. They all claimed to possess a secret doctrine, coming to them directly from Jesus Christ, different from that of the Gospels and Epistles, and superior to those communications which in their eyes, were merely exoteric”  Origen, as quoted in Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma (LH Jenkins, 1871: 544)   The Mysteries were open to the Fideles or Faithful only; and no spectators were allowed at the communion. Tertullian who died about AD 216 says in his Apology: “None are admitted to the religious Mysteries without an oath of secrecy.,.... And should strangers betray us? They knew nothing but by report and hearsay...Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, was born in the year 315 and died in 386. In his Catechesis he says: “The Lord speak in parables to His hearers in general; but to His disciples He explained in private the parables and allegories which He spoke in public. The splendor of glory is for those who are early enlightened: obscurity and darkness are the portion of the unbelievers and ignorant. Just so the church discovers its Mysteries to those who have advanced beyond the class of Catechumens: we employ obscure terms with others. “St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who was born in 347, and died in 430, says in one of this discourses: “Having dismissed the Catechumens, we have retained you only to be our hearers; because, besides those things which belong to all Christians in common, we are now to discourse to you of sublime Mysteries, which none are qualified to hear, but those who, by the Master’s favor, are made partakers of them...To have taught them openly, would have been to betray them. St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine speaks of initiation more than 50 times. St. Ambrose writes to those who are initiated; and initiation was not merely baptism, or admission into the church, but it referred to initiation into the Mysteries. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was born in 354 and died in 417. He says “I wish to speak openly: but I dare not, on account of those who are not initiated. I shall therefore avail myself of disguising terms, discoursing in a shadowy manner.. Morals and Dogma, p. 544-546

The Mysteries were open to the Fideles or Faithful only; and no spectators were allowed at the communion. Tertullian who died about AD 216 says in his Apology: “None are admitted to the religious Mysteries without an oath of secrecy.,.... And should strangers betray us? They knew nothing but by report and hearsay...Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, was born in the year 315 and died in 386. In his Catechesis he says: “The Lord speak in parables to His hearers in general; but to His disciples He explained in private the parables and allegories which He spoke in public. The splendor of glory is for those who are early enlightened: obscurity and darkness are the portion of the unbelievers and ignorant. Just so the church discovers its Mysteries to those who have advanced beyond the class of Catechumens: we employ obscure terms with others. “St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who was born in 347, and died in 430, says in one of this discourses: “Having dismissed the Catechumens, we have retained you only to be our hearers; because, besides those things which belong to all Christians in common, we are now to discourse to you of sublime Mysteries, which none are qualified to hear, but those who, by the Master’s favor, are made partakers of them...To have taught them openly, would have been to betray them. St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine speaks of initiation more than 50 times. St. Ambrose writes to those who are initiated; and initiation was not merely baptism, or admission into the church, but it referred to initiation into the Mysteries. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was born in 354 and died in 417. He says “I wish to speak openly: but I dare not, on account of those who are not initiated. I shall therefore avail myself of disguising terms, discoursing in a shadowy manner.. Morals and Dogma, p. 544-546

“Origen being a textual critic, is supposed to have corrected numerous portions of the sacred manuscripts. Evidence to the contrary shows he changed them to agree with his own human philosophy of mystical and allegorical ideas. Thus, through deceptive scholarship of this kind, certain manuscripts became corrupt.” (Les Garrett, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press, 1982: 16).

 “These manuscripts have in agreement with them, by far the vast majority of copies of the original text. So vast is this majority that even the enemies of the Received Text admit that nineteen-twentieths of all Greek manuscripts are of this class”  Les Garrett, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press, 1982: 64

“Tell us, when should these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy presence, and of the consummation of the age?” asked the disciples of the MASTER, on the Mount of Olives. The reply given by the “Man of Sorrow,” the Chrestos, on his trial, but also on his way to triumph, as Christos, or Christ, is prophetic, and very suggestive. The sentences italicized are those which stand corrected in the New Testament after the recent revision in 1881 of the version of 1611; which version is full of errors, voluntary and involuntary. The word “presence,” for “coming,” and “the consummation of the age” now standing for “the end of the world,” have altered, of late, the whole meaning, even for the most sincere Christians, if we exempt the Adventists. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Esoteric Character of the Gospels (Kessinger Publishing, 2005) p 1  

Two things become evident to all in the above passages, now that their false rendering is corrected in the revision text: (a) “the coming of Christ” means the presence of CHRISTOS in a regenerated world, and not at all the actual coming in body of “Christ” Jesus; (b) this Christ is to be sought neither in the wilderness nor “in the inner chambers,” nor in the sanctuary of any temple or any church built by man; for Christ--the true esoteric SAVIOR--is no man, but the DIVINE PRINCIPLE in every human being. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Esoteric Character of the Gospels (Kessinger Publishing, 2005] p 230-231

Two things become evident to all in the above passages, now that their false rendering is corrected in the revision text: (a) “the coming of Christ” means the presence of CHRISTOS in a regenerated world, and not at all the actual coming in body of “Christ” Jesus; (b) this Christ is to be sought neither in the wilderness nor “in the inner chambers,” nor in the sanctuary of any temple or any church built by man; for Christ--the true esoteric SAVIOR--is no man, but the DIVINE PRINCIPLE in every human being. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Esoteric Character of the Gospels (Kessinger Publishing, 2005] p 230-231

“Fundamentally, there are only two streams of Bibles...The first stream which carried the Received Text in Hebrew and Greek, began with the apostolic churches, and reappearing at intervals down the Christian Era among enlightened believers, was protected by the wisdom and scholarship of the pure church in her different phases; by such as the church at Pella in Palestine where Christians fled, when in 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem; by the Syrian Church of Antioch which produced eminent scholarship; by the Italic Church in northern Italy; and also at the same time by the Gallic Church in southern France and by the Celtic Church in Great Britain; by the pre-Waldensian, the Waldensian, and the churches of the Reformation. This first stream appears, with very little change, in the Protestant Bibles of many languages, and in English, in that Bible known as the King James Version, the one which has been in use for three hundred years in the English speaking world. The second stream is a small one of a very few manuscripts. These last MSS. are represented:(a) In Greek: The Vatican MS., or Codex B, in the library at Rome; and the Sinaitic, or Codex Aleph (#), its brother. We will fully explain about these two MSS. later.(b) In Latin: The Vulgate or Latin Bible of Jerome.(c) In English: The Jesuit Bible of 1582, which later with vast changes is seen in the Douay, or Catholic Bible.(d) In English again: In many modern Bibles which introduce practically all the Catholic readings of the Latin Vulgate which were rejected by the Protestants of the Reformation; among these, prominently, are the Revised Versions.   So the present controversy between the King James Bible in English and the modern versions is the same old contest fought out between the early church and rival sects and later, between the Waldenses and the Papists from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries; and later still between the Reformers and the Jesuits in the sixteenth century” Benjamin Wilkinson, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, Takoma Park, Washington DC: 1930) 12-13