e high antiquity of the Church's Lectionary System is inferred
with certainty from many a textual phenomenon with which students of
Textual Science are familiar.

It may be helpful to a beginner if I introduce to his notice the class
of readings to be discussed in the present chapter, by inviting his
attention to the first words of the Gospel for St. Philip and St. James'
Day in our own English Book of Common Prayer,--'And Jesus said unto His
disciples.' Those words he sees at a glance are undeniably nothing else
but an Ecclesiastical accretion to the Gospel,--words which breed
offence in no quarter, and occasion error to none. They have
nevertheless stood prefixed to St. John xiv. 1 from an exceedingly
remote period; for, besides establishing themselves in every Lectionary
of the ancient Church[154], they are found in Cod. D[155],--in copies of
the Old Latin[156] as the Vercellensis, Corbeiensis, Aureus, Bezae,--and
in copies of the Vulgate. They may be of the second or third, they must
be as old as the fourth century. It is evident that it wants but a very
little for those words to have established their claim to a permanent
place in the Text. Readings just as slenderly supported have been
actually adopted before now[157].

I proceed to cite another instance; and here the success of an ordinary
case of Lectionary licence will be perceived to have been complete: for
besides recommending itself to Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, and
Westcott and Hort, the blunder in question has established itself in the
pages of the Revised Version. Reference is made to an alteration of the
Text occurring in certain copies of Acts iii. 1, which will be further
discussed below[158]. When it has been stated that these copies are
[Symbol: Aleph]ABCG,--the Vulgate,--the two Egyptian versions,--besides
the Armenian,--and the Ethiopic,--it will be admitted that the
Ecclesiastical practice which has resulted in so widespread a reading,
must be primitive indeed. To some persons such a formidable array of
evidence may seem conclusive in favour of any reading: but it can only
seem so to those who do not realize the weight of counter-testimony.

But by far the most considerable injury which has resulted to the Gospel
from this cause is the suspicion which has alighted in certain quarters
on the last twelve verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark. [Those
verses made up by themselves a complete Lection. The preceding Lection,
which was used