, being corruptions of the text,--[Symbol: Aleph]BL are
responsible: and further, that their responsibility is shared on about
200 occasions by D: on about 265 by C: on about 350 by [Delta][217]. At
some very remote period therefore there must have grown up a vicious
general reading of this Gospel which remains in the few bad copies: but
of which the largest traces (and very discreditable traces they are) at
present survive in [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL[Symbol: Delta]. After this
discovery the avowal will not be thought extraordinary that I regard
with unmingled suspicion readings which are exclusively vouched for by
five of the same Codexes: e.g. by [Symbol: Aleph]BDL[Symbol: Delta].

3. The cursive copies which exhibit 'Isaiah' in place of 'the prophet.'
reckoned by Tischendorf at 'nearly twenty-five,' are probably less than
fifteen[218], and those, almost all of suspicious character. High time
it is that the inevitable consequence of an appeal to such evidence were
better understood.

4. From Tischendorf's list of thirteen Fathers, serious deductions have
to be made. Irenaeus and Victor of Antioch are clearly with the Textus
Receptus. Serapion, Titus, Basil do but borrow from Origen; and, with
his argument, reproduce his corrupt text of St. Mark i. 2. The
last-named Father however saves his reputation by leaving out the
quotation from Malachi; so, passing directly from the mention of Isaiah
to the actual words of that prophet. Epiphanius (and Jerome too on one
occasion[219]) does the same thing. Victorinus and Augustine, being
Latin writers, merely quote the Latin version ('sicut scriptum est in
Isaia propheta'), which is without variety of reading. There remain
Origen (the faulty character of whose Codexes has been remarked upon
already), Porphyry[220] the heretic (who wrote a book to convict the
Evangelists of mis-statements[221], and who is therefore scarcely a
trustworthy witness), Eusebius, Jerome and Severianus. Of these,
Eusebius[222] and Jerome[223] deliver it as their opinion that the name
of 'Isaiah' had obtained admission into the text through the
inadvertency of copyists. Is it reasonable, on the slender residuum of
evidence, to insist that St. Mark has ascribed to Isaiah words
confessedly written by Malachi? 'The fact,' writes a recent editor in
the true spirit of modern criticism, 'will not fail to be observed by
the careful and honest student of the Gospels.' But what if 'the fact'
should prove to be 'a fict