If there is none of the autographs, can it be assumed that the Holy Spirit had a purpose in allowing them to be lost to us?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Documentary Evidence, Textual Criticism and Translation’ (2007).

I wouldn't like myself to question the providence of God; if the Holy Spirit allowed the autographs to perish then I bow to his providence. You can think up all sorts of reasons. If the manuscript that Paul himself wrote, stained with his tears, had survived, I tell you what would happen. People would worship it and put a shrine around it. In the 1990s when we began to give away Christian literature in Russian, we didn't frequently in the first days offer Bibles, we offered New Testaments. In those days if you had given a Russian a Bible he would weep over it sometimes and kiss it, and go home and put it on the shelf along with his icons and pray to it and not read it.