The reader is now in a position to judge how much attention is due to Dr. Tregelles' dictum 'that this one passage may be relied upon' in support of the peculiar views he advocates: as well as to his confident claim that the fuller text which is found in ninety-nine MSS. out of a hundred 'must be regarded as an amplification borrowed from the prophet.' It has been shewn in answer to the learned critic that in the ancient Greek text of the prophet the 'amplification' he speaks of did not exist: it was the abbreviated text which was found there. So that the very converse of the phenomenon he supposes has taken place. Freely accepting his hypothesis that we have here a process of assimilation, occasioned by the Septuagintal text of Isaiah, we differ from him only as to the direction in which that process has manifested itself. He assumes that the bulk of the MSS. have been conformed to the generally received reading of Isaiah xxix. 13. But it has been shewn that, on the contrary, it is the two oldest MSS. which have experienced assimilation. Their prototypes were depraved in this way at an exceedingly remote period. To state this matter somewhat differently.--In all the extant uncials but five, and in almost every known cursive copy of the Gospels, the words [Greek: to stomati auton, kai] are found to belong to St. Matt. xv. 8. How is the presence of those words to be accounted for? The reply is obvious:--By the fact that they must have existed in the original autograph of the Evangelist. Such however is not the reply of Griesbach and his followers. They insist that beyond all doubt those words must have been imported into the Gospel from Isaiah xxix. But I have shewn that this is impossible; because, at the time spoken of, the words in question had no place in the Greek text of the prophet. And this discovery exactly reverses the problem, and brings out the directly opposite result. For now we discover that we have rather to inquire how is the absence of the words in question from those few MSS. out of the mass to be accounted for? The two oldest Codexes are convicted of exhibiting a text which has been corrupted by the influence of the oldest Septuagint reading of Isaiah xxix. 13. I freely admit that it is in a high degree remarkable that five ancient Versions, and all the following early writers,--Ptolemaeus[295], Clemens Alexandrinus[296], Origen[297], Didymus[298], Cyril[299], Chrysostom[300], and possibly three others of like antiquity[301],--should all quote St. Matthew in this place from a faulty text. But this does but prove at how extremely remote a period the corruption must have begun. It probably dates from the first century. Especially does it seem to shew how distrustful we should be of our oldest authorities when, as here, they are plainly at variance with the whole torrent of manuscript authority. This is indeed no ordinary case. There are elements of distrust here, such as are not commonly encountered. Sec. 6.