No one has hitherto ventured to regard this paragraph as genuine, however perplexing it may be to decide at what period or even in what language it originated. The wide divergences between the witnesses must always dismiss it from serious consideration. Its chief critical use must be to show that the united testimony of the Old Latin, of the Curetonian Syriac, and of Cod. D, are quite insufficient in themselves to prove any more than that the reading they exhibit is ancient: certainly as ancient as the second century. 7. MATT. xxi. 28-31. This passage, so transparently clear in the common text, stands thus in the edition of Tregelles: (28) Τί δὲ ὑμῖν δοκεῖ? ἄνθρωπος εἶχεν τέκνα δύο, καὶ προσελθὼν τῷ πρώτῳ εἶπεν, Τέκνον, ὕπαγε σήμερον ἐργάζου ἐν τῷ ἀμπελῶνι. (29) ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν, Οὐ θέλω; ὕστερον δὲ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν. (30) προσελθὼν δὲ τῷ δευτέρῳ εἶπεν ὡσαύτως. ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν, Ἐγώ, κύριε; καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν. (31) τίς ἐκ τῶν δύο ἐποίησεν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρός? λέγουσιν, Ὁ ὕστερος. The above is indeed a brilliant exemplification of Bengel’s Canon, “Proclivi orationi praestat ardua.” Lachmann in 1842 had given the same reading, with a few slight and unimportant exceptions. The question is proposed which of the two sons did their father’s will; the reply is ὁ ὕστερος, the one that promised and then failed! Lachmann in 1850 (N. T., vol. ii. Praef. p. 5) remarks that had he been sure that πρῶτος (ver. 31) was the reading of Cod. C, he should have honoured it, _the only word that makes sense_, with a place in his margin: “Nihilo minus,” he naïvely adds, “id quod nunc solum edidi ... ὁ ὕστερος veri similius est altero, quod facile aliquis correctori adscribat, illud non item;” and we must fairly confess that no copyist would have sought to introduce a plain absurdity into so beautiful and simple a parable. “Quid vero,” he goes on to plead, “si id quod veri similius esse dixi ne intellegi quidem potest?” (a pertinent question certainly) “CORRIGETUR, SI MODO NECESSE ERIT:” critical conjecture, as usual, is his panacea. Conjecture, however, is justly held inadmissible by Tregelles, whose mode of interpretation is a curiosity in its way. “I believe,” he says, “that ὁ ὕστερος refers not to the order in which the two sons have been mentioned, but to the previous expression about the elder son, ὕστερον δὲ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν, _afterwards_ he repented and went.” “Which of the two did his father’s will! ὁ ὕστερος. _He who afterwards_ [repented and went]. This answers the charge that the reading of Lachmann is void of sense” (An Account of the Printed Text, p. 107). I entertain sincere veneration for the character and services of Dr. Tregelles, but it is only right to assert at once that what stands in his text is impossible Greek. Even granting that instead of the plain answer “the first,” our Lord’s adversaries resorted to the harsh and equivocal reply “he who afterwards,” they would not have said ὁ ὕστερος, but ὁ