Warfield's Autograph Hunting

B. B. Warfield welcomed the Westcott and Hort (i.e. an ecclectic version) edition of the Greek New Testament as a real improvement and was extraordinarily enthusiastic about what might be hoped for from Lower or Textual Criticism. He said:

“The inerrant autographs were a fact once; they may possibly be a fact again, when textual criticism has said its last word on the Bible text. In proportion as they approach in the processes of textual criticism, do we have an even better and better Bible than the one we have now.” (Selected Shorter Writings, p557)

He was also confident that the text available in his day was highly accurate:

“We already have practically the autographic text in the New Testament in nine hundred and ninety-nine words out of every thousand;” (p558)