EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH YPOGEGRAMMENI~} in his own copy of S. Paul's
Epistles,--thought fit to avail himself of Origen's suggestion. It suited
his purpose. He was proving the eternal existence of the SON of GOD. Even
_not to know_ GOD (he remarks) is _not to be_: in proof of which, he
quotes S. Paul's words in 1 Cor. i. 28:--"Things _which are not_, hath GOD
chosen." "Nay," (he proceeds,) the same S. Paul, "in his Epistle to the
Ephesians, inasmuch as he is addressing persons who by intimate knowledge
were truly joined to Him who 'IS,' designates them specially as 'those
_which are_:' saying,--'To the Saints _which are_, and faithful in CHRIST
JESUS.' " That this fancy was not original, Basil makes no secret. He
derived it, (he says,) from "those who were before us;" a plain allusion
to the writings of Origen. But neither was _the reading_ his own, either.
This is evident. He had _found_ it, he says,--(an asseveration
indispensable to the validity of his argument,)--but only after he had made
search,(164)--"_in the old copies_."(165) No doubt, Origen's strange fancy
must have been even _unintelligible_ to Basil when first he met with it.
In plain terms, it sounds to this day incredibly foolish,--when read apart
from the mutilated text which alone suggested it to Origen's fervid
imagination.--But what there is in all this to induce us to suspect that
Origen's reading was after all the _right_ one, and _ours_ the _wrong_, I
profess myself wholly at a loss to discover. Origen himself complains
bitterly of the depraved state of the copies in his time; and attributes
it (1) to the carelessness of the scribes: (2) to the rashness of
correctors of the text: (3) to the licentiousness of individuals, adopting
some of these corrections and rejecting others, according to their own
private caprice.(166)

(4) Jerome, a man of severer judgment in such matters than either Origen
or Basil, after rehearsing the preceding gloss, (but only to reject it,)
remarks that "certain persons" had been "over-fanciful" in putting it
forth. He alludes probably to Origen, whose Commentary on the Ephesians,
in three books, he expressly relates that he employed:(167) but he does
not seem to have apprehended that Origen's text _was without the words_ {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}
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