pistles in the
writings of the second century.

But though the Vatican Codex is the oldest manuscript of the New
Testament in existence, it does not follow from that circumstance that
it is the most reliable. Widely different views of its critical value
are entertained by scholars. By some it has been accepted as the most
authoritative of all versions, while others have regarded it as one of
the most corrupt and imperfect. Indeed the conjecture has been
hazarded that the very circumstance of its continued preservation
during so many centuries is a proof that it was an unreliable copy
long laid aside, and therefore exempt from the wear and tear under
which genuine copies of the same date have long ago perished. These
extreme views, however, are unjust. While it is not free from many
gross inaccuracies and faults, it presents upon the whole a very fair
idea of the Greek Vulgate of the early Church, and is worthy of as
much respect at least as any single document in existence. The chief
peculiarity of the Codex is the large number of important omissions in
it; so that, as Dr. Dobbin says, it presents an abbreviated text of
the New Testament. A few of these omissions were wilfully made, while
the large majority were no doubt caused by the carelessness of the
writer in transcribing from the copy before him; for there are several
instances of his having written the same words and clauses twice over.
On the supposition of the MS. being one of the fifty prepared at
Constantine's order, the extreme haste with which such a task would be
executed would account for the multitude of clerical errors. Besides
the last verses of the Gospel of St. Mark already alluded to, and no
less than three hundred and sixty-four other omissions in the same
Gospel of greater or less moment, the doxology at the end of the
Lord's Prayer, in Matthew vi. 13, is wanting; as also the description
of the agony of the Saviour and the help of the angel in Luke xxii.
43, 44; the important clause, "For he was before me," in John i. 27;
the miraculous troubling of the water in the Pool of Bethesda in John
v. 3, 4; the narrative of the adulterous woman in John vii. 53 to
viii. 11; the question of Philip and the answer of the Ethiopian
eunuch in Acts viii. 37; the significant and affecting incidents in
Paul's conversion mentioned in Acts ix. 5, 6; and the well-known
disputed text of the _Three witnesses in Heaven_, in 1 John v. 7.
These omitted passages, which, f