lower degree of evidence will suffice for them than when the sense is affected, inasmuch as idiosyncrasies in spelling are of all others the most liable to be gradually and progressively modernized even by faithful and painstaking transcribers. 7. The same remarks will obviously apply to those other dialectic forms, which, having been once peculiar to some one race of the great Greek family, had in the Apostles’ time spread themselves throughout the Greek colonies of Asia and Africa, and become incorporated into the common speech, if they did not enter into the cultivated literary style, of the whole nation. Such are the reputed Dorisms ὀδυνᾶσαι Luke xvi. 25, καυχᾶσαι Rom. ii. 17, 1 Cor. iv. 7 of the Received text, with no real variation in any known manuscript: all such examples must stand or fall on their own proper grounds of external evidence, the internal, so far as it ought to go, being clearly in their favour. Like to them are the Ionisms μαχαίρης Luke xxi. 24 (B*Δ _only_); Heb. xi. 34 (אAD*); 37 (אD*): μαχαίρῃ Luke xxii. 49 (אB*DLT _only_); Acts xii. 2 (אAB*D**, 61): συνειδυίης Acts v. 2 (AB3E _only_, συνιδυης א, συνιδυιης B*): σπείρης Acts xxvii. 1 of the common text, where the only authorities for the more familiar σπείρας seem to be Chrysostom, the cursives 37, 39, 56, 66, 100, 111, 183, 186, 188, 189. To this class belong such changes of conjugation as κατεγέλουν Mark v. 40 in K, 228, 447, 511 or cscr; or _vice versâ_, as ἀγανακτῶντες Cod. 69, in Mark xiv. 4. The form ἔστηκεν for ἕστηκεν John viii. 44; Apoc. xii. 4, adopted by Westcott and Hort as the imperfect of στήκω (Mark xi. 25, &c.), does not seem suitable to the context in either place, although οὐκ precedes in the former passage in אB*DLXΔΛ*, 1, 69*, 253, 507, 508, Evst. 234. 8. One caution seems called for in this matter, at least if we may judge from the practice of certain critics of high and merited fame. The sacred penmen may have adopted orthographical forms from the dialect of the Septuagint, or from the debased diction of common life, but they did not, and could not, write what was merely inaccurate or barbarous. Hence repudiate, in St. Paul especially, expressions like Tischendorf’s ἐφ᾽ ἐλπίδι Rom. viii. 20, as simply incredible on any evidence(332). He may allege for it Codd. אB*D*FG, of which the last three are bilingual codices, the scribes of FG showing marvellous ignorance of Greek(333). That Codd. אB should countenance such a _monstrum_ only enables us to accumulate one example the more of the fallibility of the very best documents, and to put in all seriousness the inquiry of Cobet in some like instance: “Quot annorum Codex te impellet ut hoc credas?... ecquis est, cui _fides veterum membranarum_ in tali re non admodum ridicula et inepta videatur?” (N. T. Vatic., Praef. p. xx). In the same way we utterly disregard the manuscripts when they confound οὐχ with οὐκ (but _see_ p. 318), μέλλει with μέλει, sense with nonsense.