ion' only? And (I venture to ask) would not
'carefulness' be better employed in scrutinizing the adverse testimony?
'honesty' in admitting that on grounds precarious as the present no
indictment against an Evangelist can be seriously maintained? This
proposal to revive a blunder which the Church in her corporate capacity
has from the first refused to sanction (for the Evangelistaria know
nothing of it) carries in fact on its front its own sufficient
condemnation. Why, in the face of all the copies in the world (except a
little handful of suspicious character), will men insist on imputing to
an inspired writer a foolish mis-statement, instead of frankly admitting
that the text must needs have been corrupted in that little handful of
copies through the officiousness of incompetent criticism?

And do any inquire,--How then did this perversion of the truth arise? In
the easiest way possible, I answer. Refer to the Eusebian tables, and
note that the foremost of his sectional parallels is as follows:--

St. Matt. [Greek: e] (i.e. iii. 3).
St. Mark. [Greek: b] (i.e. i. 3).
St. Luke. [Greek: z] (i.e. iii. 3-6).
St. John. [Greek: i] (i.e. i. 23)[224].

Now, since the name of Isaiah occurs in the first, the third and the
fourth of these places in connexion with the quotation from Is. xl. 3,
_what_ more obvious than that some critic with harmonistic proclivities
should have insisted on supplying _the second also_, i.e. the parallel
place in St. Mark's Gospel, with the name of the evangelical prophet,
elsewhere so familiarly connected with the passage quoted? This is
nothing else in short but an ordinary instance of Assimilation, so
unskilfully effected however as to betray itself. It might have been
passed by with fewer words, for the fraud is indeed transparent, but
that it has so largely imposed upon learned men, and established itself
so firmly in books. Let me hope that we shall not hear it advocated any
more.

Regarded as an instrument of criticism, Assimilation requires to be very
delicately as well as very skilfully handled. If it is to be applied to
determining the text of Scripture, it must be employed, I take leave to
say, in a very different spirit from what is met with in Dr.
Tischendorf's notes, or it will only mislead. Is a word--a clause--a
sentence--omitted by his favourite authorities [Symbol: Aleph]BDL? It is
enough if that learned critic finds nearly the same word,--a very
similar clause,--a