478]. Hence the peculiar form which the sentence
assumes[479]:--[Greek: ginosko ta ema, kai ginoskomai hypo ton emon].
And this delicate diversity of phrase has been faithfully retained all
down the ages, being witnessed to at this hour by every MS. in existence
except four now well known to us: viz. [Symbol: Aleph]BDL. The Syriac
also retains it,--as does Macarius[480], Gregory Naz.[481],
Chrysostom[482], Cyril[483], Theodoret[484], Maximus[485]. It is a point
which really admits of no rational doubt: for does any one suppose that
if St. John had written 'Mine own know Me,' 996 MSS. out of 1000 at the
end of 1,800 years would exhibit, 'I am known of Mine'?

But in fact it is discovered that these words of our Lord experienced
depravation at the hands of the Manichaean heretics. Besides inverting
the clauses, (and so making it appear that such knowledge begins on the
side of Man.) Manes (A.D. 261) obliterated the peculiarity above
indicated. Quoting from his own fabricated Gospel, he acquaints us with
the form in which these words were exhibited in that mischievous
production: viz. [Greek: ginoskei me ta ema, kai ginosko ta ema]. This
we learn from Epiphanius and from Basil[486]. Cyril, in a paper where he
makes clear reference to the same heretical Gospel, insists that the
order of knowledge must needs be the reverse of what the heretics
pretended[487].--But then, it is found that certain of the orthodox
contented themselves with merely reversing the clauses, and so restoring
the true order of the spiritual process discussed--regardless of the
exquisite refinement of expression to which attention was called at the
outset. Copies must once have abounded which represented our Lord as
saying, 'I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me
and I know the Father'; for it is the order of the Old Latin, Bohairic,
Sahidic, Ethiopic, Lewis, Georgian, Slavonic, and Gothic, though not of
the Peshitto, Harkleian, and Armenian; and Eusebius[488], Nonnus, and
even Basil[489] so read the place. But no token of this clearly corrupt
reading survives in any known copy of the Gospels,--except [Symbol:
Aleph]BDL. Will it be believed that nevertheless all the recent Editors
of Scripture since Lachmann insist on obliterating this refinement of
language, and going back to the reading which the Church has long since
deliberately rejected,--to the manifest injury of the deposit? 'Many
words about a trifle,'--some will be found