naries went out for the conversion of
the world. Such were not only St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Barnabas, but
also as is not unreasonable to infer many of that assemblage of
Christians at Rome whom St. Paul enumerates to our surprise in the last
chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. Many no doubt were friends whom
the Apostle of the Gentiles had met in Greece and elsewhere: but there
are reasons to shew that some at least of them, such as Andronicus and
Junias or Junia[8] and Herodion, may probably have passed along the
stream of commerce that flowed between Antioch and Rome[9], and that
this interconnexion between the queen city of the empire and the
emporium of the East may in great measure account for the number of
names well known to the apostle, and for the then flourishing condition
of the Church which they adorned.

It has been shewn in our first volume that, as is well known to all
students of Textual Criticism, the chief amount of corruption is to be
found in what is termed the Western Text; and that the corruption of the
West is so closely akin to the corruption which is found in Syriac
remains, that practically they are included under one head of
classification. What is the reason of this phenomenon? It is evidently
derived from the close commercial alliance which subsisted between Syria
and Italy. That is to say, the corruption produced in Syria made its way
over into Italy, and there in many instances gathered fresh
contributions. For there is reason to suppose, that it first arose in
Syria.

We have seen how the Church grew of itself there without regular
teaching from Jerusalem in the first beginnings, or any regular
supervision exercised by the Apostles. In fact, as far as the Syrian
believers in Christ at first consisted of Gentiles, they must perforce
have been regarded as being outside of the covenant of promise. Yet
there must have been many who revered the stories told about our Lord,
and felt extreme interest and delight in them. The story of King Abgar
illustrates the history: but amongst those who actually heard our Lord
preach there must have been very many, probably a majority, who were
uneducated. They would easily learn from the Jews, because the Aramaic
dialects spoken by Hebrews and Syrians did not greatly differ the one
from the other. What difference there was, would not so much hinder the
spread of the stories, as tend to introduce alien forms of speech and
synonymous words, and so to