E. F. Hills on the God-guided preservation of the New Testament text

E. F. Hills on the God-guided preservation of the New Testament text that was received and has been faithfully handed down to us by the church…

When we call the text found in the majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts the Traditional Text, we signify that this is the text which has been handed down by the God-guided tradition of the Church from the time of the Apostles unto the present day… The special providence of God is particularly evident in the fact that the text of the Greek New Testament was first printed and published not in the East but in Western Europe where the influence of the Latin usage and of the Latin Vulgate was very strong. Through the influence of the Latin-speaking Church Erasmus and his successors were providentially guided to follow the Latin Vulgate here and there in those few places in which the Latin Church usage rather than the Greek Church usage had preserved the genuine reading. Hence the Textus Receptus was a further step in the providential preservation of the New Testament. In it the few errors of any consequence occurring in the Traditional Greek Text were corrected by the providence of God operating through the usage of the Latin speaking Church of Western Europe. 

Hills, 106-7

When we say that the Holy Spirit guided the Church to preserve the True New Testament Text, we are not speaking of the Church as an organization but of the Church as an organism. We do not mean that in the latter part of the 4th century the Holy Spirit guided the bishops to the True Text and that then the bishops issued decrees for the guidance of the common people. This would have been a return to Old Testament bondage and altogether out of accord with the New Testament principle of the universal priesthood of believers. Investigations indicate that the Holy Spirit's guidance worked in precisely the opposite direction. The trend toward the True (Traditional) Text began with the common people, the rank and file, and then rapidly built up such strength that the bishops and other official leaders were carried along with it. 

It was the Greek-speaking Church especially which was the object of God's providential guidance regarding the New Testament text because this was the Church to which the keeping of the Greek New Testament had been committed. 

Hills, 186

The agreement of the Latin Vulgate with the Traditional Text is obvious, at least in the most important passages… In fact, the only important readings in regard to which the Latin Vulgate disagrees with the Traditional New Testament Text are the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:13), certain clauses of the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:2-4), and the angel at the pool (John 5:4). In this last passage, however, the official Roman Catholic [Clementine] Vulgate agrees with the Traditional Text… There are also a few passages in which the Latin Vulgate has preserved the true reading rather than the Greek Traditional New Testament Text. 

Hills, 187-88

Long before the Protestant Reformation, the God-guided usage of the Church had produced throughout Western Christendom a common faith concerning the New Testament text, namely, a general belief that the currently received New Testament text, primarily the Greek text and secondarily the Latin text, was the True New Testament Text which had been preserved by God's special providence. 

Hills, 193

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Quotes taken from E. F. Hills, The King James Version Defended

The King James Version Defended (.pdf) http://www.faithfulcenturion.org/KJV/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf