matters of fact to which he could attach no kind of importance, is well worth recording(272): but where on the contrary the dogmas of his own miserable system are touched, or no codices or other witnesses countenance his changes (as is perpetually the case in his edition of St. Luke, the only Gospel—and that maimed or interpolated from the others—he seems to have acknowledged at all), his blasphemous extravagance may very well be forgotten. In such cases he does not so much as profess to follow anything more respectable than the capricious devices of his misguided fancy. 3. Nothing throws so strong a light on the real state of the text in the latter half of the second century as the single notice of Irenaeus (fl. 178) on Apoc. xiii. 18. This eminent person, the glory of the Western Church in his own age, whose five books against Heresies (though chiefly extant but in a bald old Latin version) are among the most precious reliques of Christian antiquity, had been privileged in his youth to enjoy the friendly intercourse of his master Polycarp, who himself had conversed familiarly with St. John and others that had seen the Lord (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., v. 20). Yet even Irenaeus, though removed but by one stage from the very Apostles, possessed (if we except a bare tradition) no other means of settling discordant readings than are now open to ourselves; namely, to search out the best copies and exercise the judgement on their contents. His _locus classicus_ must needs be cited in full, the Latin throughout, the Greek in such portions as survive. The question is whether St. John wrote χξιϛ᾽ (666), or χιϛ᾽ (616).