are disfigured with the same corrupt
reading as [Symbol: Aleph]ABC. It does but prove how early and how
widespread is this depravation of the Text. But the indirect proof thus
afforded that the actual Lectionary System must needs date from a period
long anterior to our oldest Codexes is a far more important as well as a
more interesting inference. In the meantime I suspect that it was in
Western Christendom that this corruption of the text had its beginning:
for proof is not wanting that the expression [Greek: epi to auto] seemed
hard to the Latins[166].

Hence too the omission of [Greek: palin] from [Symbol: Aleph]BD (St.
Matt, xiii. 43). A glance at the place in an actual Codex[167] will
explain the matter to a novice better than a whole page of writing:--

[Greek: akoueto. telos]
[Greek: palin. arche. eipen o Kurios ten parabolen tauten.]
[Greek: Omoia estin k.t.l.]

The word [Greek: palin], because it stands between the end ([Greek:
telos]) of the lesson for the sixth Thursday and the beginning ([Greek:
arche]) of the first Friday after Pentecost, got left out [though every
one acquainted with Gospel MSS. knows that [Greek: arche] and [Greek:
telos] were often inserted in the text]. The second of these two lessons
begins with [Greek: homoia] [because [Greek: palin] at the beginning of
a lesson is not wanted]. Here then is a singular token of the antiquity
of the Lectionary System in the Churches of the East: as well as a proof
of the untrustworthy character of Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]BD. The discovery
that they are supported this time by copies of the Old Latin (a c e
ff^{1.2} g^{1.2} k l), Vulgate, Curetonian, Bohairic, Ethiopic, does but
further shew that such an amount of evidence in and by itself is wholly
insufficient to determine the text of Scripture.

When therefore I see Tischendorf, in the immediately preceding verse
(xiii. 43) on the sole authority of [Symbol: Aleph]B and a few Latin
copies, omitting the word [Greek: akouein],--and again in the present
verse on very similar authority (viz. [Symbol: Aleph]D, Old Latin,
Vulgate, Peshitto, Curetonian, Lewis, Bohairic, together with five
cursives of aberrant character) transposing the order of the words
[Greek: panta hosa echei polei],--I can but reflect on the utterly
insecure basis on which the Revisers and the school which they follow
would remodel the inspired Text.

It is precisely in this way and for the selfsame reason, that the clause
[Greek