The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is a _conflation_ of those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if this _praejudicium_ be met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other. Dr. Hort’s other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort’s volume. (β) The second reason adduced by the _Two Revisers_ “is almost equally cogent” in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers “place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian” (The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (_see_ above, p. 226). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that “The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine” (Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not, “their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them”