f Alexandria,--among the Fathers:
some Old Latin MSS.[448] the Bohairic and Sahidic, and coming later on,
the Curetonian and Lewis,--among the Versions: of the copies Codd. B and
[Symbol: Aleph]: and above all, coming later down still, Cod. D:--these
venerable monuments of a primitive age occasionally present us with
deformities which it is worse than useless to extenuate,--quite
impossible to overlook. Unauthorized appendixes,--tasteless and stupid
amplifications,--plain perversions of the meaning of the
Evangelists,--wholly gratuitous assimilations of one Gospel to
another,--the unprovoked omission of passages of profound interest and
not unfrequently of high doctrinal import:--How are such phenomena as
these to be accounted for? Again, in one quarter, we light upon a
systematic mutilation of the text so extraordinary that it is as if some
one had amused himself by running his pen through every clause which was
not absolutely necessary to the intelligibleness of what remained. In
another quarter we encounter the thrusting in of fabulous stories and
apocryphal sayings which disfigure as well as encumber the text.--How
will any one explain all this?

Let me however at the risk of repeating what has been already said
dispose at once of an uneasy suspicion which is pretty sure to suggest
itself to a person of intelligence after reading what goes before. If
the most primitive witnesses to our hand are indeed discovered to bear
false witness to the text of Scripture,--whither are we to betake
ourselves for the Truth? And what security can we hope ever to enjoy
that any given exhibition of the text of Scripture is the true one? Are
we then to be told that in this subject-matter the maxim '_id verius
quod prius_' does not hold? that the stream instead of getting purer as
we approach the fountain head, on the contrary grows more and more
corrupt?

Nothing of the sort, I answer. The direct reverse is the case. Our
appeal is always made to antiquity; and it is nothing else but a truism
to assert that the oldest reading is also the best. A very few words
will make this matter clear; because a very few words will suffice to
explain a circumstance already adverted to which it is necessary to keep
always before the eyes of the reader.

The characteristic note, the one distinguishing feature, of all the
monstrous and palpable perversions of the text of Scripture just now
under consideration is this:--that they are never vouched fo