(δ) But one or two steps yet remain in this thorough elimination of useless elements. A few authorities still survive which are honoured as _Pre-Syrian_, and continued unaffected by the phantom revisions, which, for critical purposes, have reduced their colleagues to ignominious silence. Besides the Western, Dr. Hort has in reserve two other groups, the Alexandrian and the Neutral. The former retains a text essentially pure from Syrian (though not from Western) mixture, but its component members are portentously few in number, being tolerably void of corruption as regards the substance, with “no incorporation of matter extraneous to the canonical text of the Bible, and no habitual or extreme license of paraphrase ... the changes made having usually more to do with language than with matter, and being marked by an effort after correctness of phrase” (_ibid._ p. 131). There are no unmixed vouchers for this Non-Western, Pre-Syrian, Alexandrian class, though Cyril of Alexandria seems to come the nearest to purity (_ibid._ p. 141), then Origen, occasionally other Alexandrian Fathers, also the Sahidic, and especially the Bohairic version (_ibid._ p. 131). No extant MS. has preserved so many Alexandrian readings as Cod. L (_ibid._ p. 153). Cod. C has some, T and Ξ more: in the Gospels they are chiefly marked by the combination אCLXZ, 33 (_ibid._ p. 166). In Cod. A, for the Acts and Epistles, the Alexandrian outnumber both the Syrian and Western readings (Hort, p. 152), but they all are mere degenerations so far as they depart from Dr. Hort’s standard (ε) The _Neutral_ type of text: so called because it is free from the glaring corruption of the Western, from the smooth assimilations of the Syrian, and from the grammatical purism of the Alexandrian. Only two documents come under this last head, Codd. B and א, and of these two, when they differ, B is preferable to א, which has a not inconsiderable Western element, besides that the scribe’s bold and rough manner has rendered “all the ordinary lapses due to rapid and careless transcription more numerous” than in B (_ibid._ p. 246). Yet, with certain slight exceptions which he carefully specifies, it is our learned author’s belief “(1) that the readings of אB should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings of אB can safely be rejected absolutely, though it is sometimes right to place them only on an alternative footing, especially where they receive no support from Versions and Fathers” (_ibid._ p. 225): and this their pre-eminence, in our critic’s judgement, “is due to the extreme, and, as it were, primordial antiquity of the common original from which the ancestries of the two MSS. have diverged, the date of which cannot be later than the earlier part of the second century, and may well be yet earlier” (_ibid._ p. 223).