atessarons caused copyists insensibly to assimilate one
Gospel to another. And doctrinal predilections, as in the case of those
who belonged to the Origenistic school, were the source of lapsing into
expressions which were not the _verba ipsissima_ of Holy Writ. In such
cases, when the inadvertency was genuine and was unmingled with any
overt design, it is much to be noted that the error seldom propagated
itself extensively.]

But next, well-meant endeavours must have been made at a very early
period 'to rectify' ([Greek: diorthoun]) the text thus unintentionally
corrupted; and so, what began in inadvertence is sometimes found in the
end to exhibit traces of design, and often becomes in a high degree
perplexing. Thus, to cite a favourite example, it is clear to me that in
the earliest age of all (A.D. 100?) some copyist of St. Luke ii. 14
(call him X) inadvertently omitted the second [Greek: en] in the Angelic
Hymn. Now if the persons (call them Y and Z) whose business it became in
turn to reproduce the early copy thus inadvertently depraved, had but
been content both of them to transcribe exactly what they saw before
them, the error of their immediate predecessor (X) must infallibly have
speedily been detected, remedied, and forgotten,--simply because, as
every one must have seen as well as Y and Z, it was impossible to
translate the sentence which results,--[Greek: epi ges eirene anthropois
eudokia]. Reference would have been made to any other copy of the third
Gospel, and together with the omitted preposition ([Greek: en]) sense
would have been restored to the passage. But unhappily one of the two
supposed Copyists being a learned grammarian who had no other copy at
hand to refer to, undertook, good man that he was, _proprio Marte_ to
force a meaning into the manifestly corrupted text of the copy before
him: and he did it by affixing to [Greek: eudokia] the sign of the
genitive case ([Greek: s]). Unhappy effort of misplaced skill! That copy
[or those copies] became the immediate progenitor [or progenitors] of a
large family,--from which all the Latin copies are descended; whereby it
comes to pass that Latin Christendom sings the Hymn 'Gloria in excelsis'
incorrectly to the present hour, and may possibly sing it incorrectly to
the end of time. The error committed by that same venerable Copyist
survives in the four oldest copies of the passage extant, B* and
[Symbol: Aleph]*, A and D,--though happily in no others,--in t