have had no information, and to have entertained no curiosity:  they had simply passed by and were out of his reach.  Had it not been for the diversities of copies in all the Gospels on other points (he writes) he should not have ventured to object to the authenticity of a certain passage (Matt. xix. 19) on internal grounds:  “But now,” saith he, “great in truth has become the diversity of copies, be it from the negligence of certain scribes, or from the evil daring of some who correct what is written, or from those who in correcting add or take away what they think fit."’ This is respecting the MSS. of one region only, and now for another [Endnote 328:2]:  ’It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed; that Irenaeus and the African Fathers and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephens thirteen centuries later, when moulding the Textus Receptus.’  Possibly this is an exaggeration, but no one will maintain that it is a very large exaggeration of the facts.

I proceed to give a few examples which serve to bring out the antiquity of the text.  And first from Irenaeus.

There is a very remarkable passage in the work Against Heresies [Endnote 329:1], bearing not indeed directly upon the Gospels, but upon another book of the New Testament, and yet throwing so much light upon the condition of the text in Irenaeus’ time that it may be well to refer to it here.  In discussing the signification of the number of the beast in Rev. xiii. 18, Irenaeus already found himself confronted by a variety of reading:  some MSS. with which he was acquainted read 616 ([Greek:  chis’]) for 666 ([Greek:  chxs’]).  Irenaeus himself was not in doubt that the latter was the true reading.  He says that it was found in all the ’good and ancient copies,’ and that it was further attested by ’those who had seen John face to face.’  He thinks that the error was due to the copyists, who had substituted by mistake the letter [Greek:  i] for [Greek:  x].  He adds his belief that God would pardon those who had done this without any evil motive.

Here we have opened out a kind of vista extending back almost to the person of St. John himself.  There is already a multiplicity of MSS., and of these some are set apart ‘as good and ancient’ ([Greek:  en pasi tois spoudaiois kai archaiois antigraphois]).  The method by which the correct reading had to be determined was as much historical as it is with us at the present day.