He found that the text of the oldest of them was substantially the same as that which is printed in the Polyglotts. The grammar may have been improved, but the translation was not revised. This argument has been elaborated in two volumes of the Oxford “Studia Biblica,” in part by the use of Philip Pusey’s materials, in part by independent researches. In vol. i, paper viii, “A Syriac Biblical MS. of the fifth century,” the readings which appear to be peculiar to that MS. (about seventy in number, for it only contains SS. Matthew and Mark) are set out(22). Of these twenty-two can be compared with the Curetonian; and it is found that only _three_ approximate more nearly than the printed Peshitto to the text which, it is contended, is older than the Peshitto. Further on(23) a stronger argument is adduced; for it is shown that in eleven passages, where the fifth century codex has a different reading from the printed Peshitto, the Curetonian, instead of agreeing with the ancient text (as _ex hypothesi_ it ought) approximates to the printed Peshitto, and sometimes agrees with it. In vol. ii, paper iii, “The materials for the criticism of the Peshitto New Testament,” other evidence is adduced in support of the same conclusions. St. Matt. v. 31-48 is given, with _varr. lectt._ derived from twenty distinct authorities, so as to place before the reader the Peshitto in its best and most ancient form. The same passage is set out in the Curetonian form. The various readings in the Peshitto in the eighteen verses amount to at least thirty-one; but the majority are the merest minutiae of spelling and pronunciation. Only one deserves serious attention; and even that, more for accuracy than in relation to the sense of the context; so little has the Syriac New Testament been altered, or corrupted, in the course of ages of transcription. Again, when comparison is made with the Curetonian, while twenty-eight variations from the best form of the Peshitto occur in the above passage, only four find any support in an old Peshitto MS., and but one of the four is of any interest. In addition to these there is one place where the Curetonian agrees with the oldest Peshitto MSS., against the printed Peshitto text. It is plain then that, as far as the enquiry has yet been pursued, the peculiar readings of the Curetonian cannot be traced backwards through the form of text in the oldest Peshitto MSS. If such a revision of the Peshitto, as Dr. Hort’s theory postulates, ever took place, it must have been made at a very remote period in the history of Syriac Christian literature; and the new text must have been substituted for the old by measures so drastic that the old (as far as we know) survives only in one Nitrian and (as we are told) in one Sinaitic MS. But this is not only improbable in itself, but is contrary to the analogy supplied by the Latin versions.