At the onset of his labours, indeed, this acute and candid enquirer was disposed to divide all extant materials into five or six different families; he afterwards limited them to three, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine recensions. The standard of the Alexandrian text he conceived to be Origen; who, although his works were written in Palestine, was assumed to have brought with him into exile copies of Scripture, similar to those used in his native city. To this family would belong a few manuscripts of the earliest date, and confessedly of the highest character, Codd. ABC, Cod. L of the Gospels, the Egyptian and some lesser versions. The Western recension would survive in Cod. D of the Gospels and Acts, in the other ancient copies which contain a Latin translation, in the Old Latin and Vulgate versions, and in the Latin Fathers. The vast majority of manuscripts (comprising perhaps nineteen-twentieths of the whole), together with the larger proportion of versions and Patristic writings, were grouped into the Byzantine class, as having prevailed generally in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. To this last class Griesbach hardly professed to accord as much weight as to either of the others, nor, if he had done so, would the result have been materially different. The joint testimony of two classes was, _ceteris paribus_, always to prevail; and since the very few documents which comprise the Alexandrian and Western recensions seldom agree with the Byzantine even when at variance with each other, the numerous codices which make up the third family would thus have about as much share in fixing the text of Scripture, as the poor citizens whose host was included in one of Servius Tullius’ lower classes possessed towards counterbalancing the votes of the wealthy few that composed his first or second(227).