Your point is interesting, since the translators of the Textus Receptus (KJV) did not view the variants (and there WERE variants) the same way you do, nor did the view the TR as the "preserved" version. They were pretty much of the same mindset of modern scholars, viewing all the texts with differing degrees of reliability, including tha TR. You also had your liberals (although they were far fewer in number than today) who did not hold any reverential awe for the book.
The idea that God preserved His word through the ages is an indisputable fact, and a lynchpin of the faith. The idea that this was only through the Textus Receptus is ignorant and uninformed. Not even the translators of the KJV believed that. I used to have a collection of quotes from some of those guys illustrating that, but I have misplaced it.
Your point is interesting, since the translators of the Textus Receptus (KJV) did not view the variants (and there WERE variants) the same way you do, nor did the view the TR as the "preserved" version. They were pretty much of the same mindset of modern scholars, viewing all the texts with differing degrees of reliability, including tha TR. You also had your liberals (although they were far fewer in number than today) who did not hold any reverential awe for the book.
The King James translators rejected any and all readings that all found in the current Alexandrian texts.
The TR readings, in its various editions does have differences among itself, but these are relatively small compared to the differences between the Critical and TR texts.
The 'mindset' of the King James translators was that God did in fact preserve His words and that they were translating them.
They did not think God had lost some of His words and we could never really know what God said.
The idea that God preserved His word through the ages is an indisputable fact, and a lynchpin of the faith. The idea that this was only through the Textus Receptus is ignorant and uninformed. Not even the translators of the KJV believed that. I used to have a collection of quotes from some of those guys illustrating that, but I have misplaced it.
The fact is that there are two lines of Bibles.
The TR produced the Luther Bible, Tyndale, Coverdale, The Great Bible, The Geneva and the King James.
Those Bibles do not read as do the modern Bibles that were the products of the Westcort/Hort, Nestle/Aland, United Bible Society texts.
Two different lines of Greek Bibles, two different types of Bibles with different readings in them, producing two different kinds of fruit.
For example, I had a visit from the JW's the other day.
And they had their New World Translation (from the Alexandrian Greek Text) and they rejected the Trinity on the basis of Matthew 24:36, which in their 'bible' had 'nor the Son' knowing the time of the Second Coming.
All modern bibles have that reading it, a reading which attacks the Trinity.
The TR doesn't have that reading in it, nor does the King James.