of Clemens
Romanus (Sec. 3), professing to quote the place in the prophet Isaiah,
exhibits it thus,--[Greek: Ho laos outos tois cheilesi me tima]. Clemens
Alexandrinus certainly does the same thing on at least two
occasions[290]. So does Chrysostom[291]. So does Theodoret[292].

Two facts have thus emerged, which entirely change the aspect of the
problem: the first, (_a_) That the words [Greek: en to stomati auton,
kai en] were anciently absent from the Septuagintal rendering of Isaiah
xxix. 13: the second, (_b_) that the place of Isaiah was freely quoted
by the ancients without the initial words [Greek: engizei moi].

And after this discovery will any one be so perverse as to deny that on
the contrary it must needs be Codexes B and [Symbol: Aleph], and not the
great bulk of the MSS., which exhibit a text corrupted by the influence
of the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah xxix. 13? The precise extent to
which the assimilating influence of the parallel place in St. Mark's
Gospel has been felt by the copyists, I presume not to determine. The
essential point is that the omission from St. Matthew xv. 8 of the words
[Greek: To stomati auton, kai], is certainly due in the first instance
to the ascertained Septuagint omission of those very words in Isaiah
xxix. 13.

But that the text of St. Mark vii. 6 has exercised an assimilating
influence on the quotation from Isaiah is demonstrable. For there can be
no doubt that Isaiah's phrase (retained by St. Matthew) is [Greek: ho
laos outos],--St. Mark's [Greek: outos ho laos]. And yet, when Clemens
Romanus quotes Isaiah, he begins--[Greek: outos ho laos][293]; and so
twice does Theodoret[294].

The reader is now in a position to judge how much attention is due to
Dr. Tregelles' dictum 'that this one passage may be relied upon' in
support of the peculiar views he advocates: as well as to his confident
claim that the fuller text which is found in ninety-nine MSS. out of a
hundred 'must be regarded as an amplification borrowed from the
prophet.' It has been shewn in answer to the learned critic that in the
ancient Greek text of the prophet the 'amplification' he speaks of did
not exist: it was the abbreviated text which was found there. So that
the very converse of the phenomenon he supposes has taken place. Freely
accepting his hypothesis that we have here a process of assimilation,
occasioned by the Septuagintal text of Isaiah, we differ from him only
as to the direction in which tha