Through his laborious study of Codex Alexandrinus, he believed he found misinterpretations or calculated mistakes of New Testament written in Greek. He came under particular fire for disputing the passage of 1 Timothy 3:16, believing the original reading to be "which was manifest in the flesh," rather than "God was manifest in the flesh." Through his studies he developed an increasingly critical attitude on textual matters and their relationship to doctrinal issues. Yet during the latter years of his life, he adopted the position that the oldest extant Greek manuscripts had been corrupted by influence of the Latin, resulting in his loss of confidence in those ancient copies, including Alexandrinus. Between 1751 and 1752 his "Prolegomena" and "Novum Testamentum Graecum" was published. Its base text was the 1624 version of the Elzevir Textus Receptus, with minor changes, with his preferred reading noted in the apparatus.