I have gone into all these strange details,--derived, let it be remembered, from documents which carry us back to the former half of the second century,--because in no other way is the singular phenomenon which attends the text of St. John i. 18 to be explained and accounted for. Sufficiently plain and easy of transmission as it is, this verse of Scripture is observed to exhibit perturbations which are even extraordinary. Irenaeus once writes [Greek: ho] [?] [Greek: monogenes uios]: once, [Greek: ho] [?] [Greek: monogenes uios Theos]: once, [Greek: ho monogenes uios Theou][514]: Clemens Alex., [Greek: ho monogenes uios Theos monos][515]; which must be very nearly the reading of the Codex from which the text of the Vercelli Copy of the Old Latin was derived[516]. Eusebius four times writes [Greek: ho monogenes uios][517]: twice, [Greek: monogenes Theos][518]: and on one occasion gives his reader the choice of either expression, explaining why both may stand[519]. Gregory Nyss.[520] and Basil[521], though they recognize the usual reading of the place, are evidently vastly more familiar with the reading [Greek: ho monogenes Theos][522]: for Basil adopts the expression thrice[523], and Gregory nearly thirty-three times as often[524]. This was also the reading of Cyril Alex.[525], whose usual phrase however is [Greek: ho monogenes tou Theou logos][526]. Didymus has only [? cp. context] [Greek: ho monogenes Theos],--for which he once writes [Greek: ho monogenes Theos logos][527]. Cyril of Jer. seems to have read [Greek: ho monogenes monos][528]. [I have retained this valuable and suggestive passage in the form in which the Dean left it. It evidently has not the perfection that attends some of his papers, and would have been amplified and improved if his life had been spared. More passages than he noticed, though limited to the ante-Chrysostom period, are referred to in the companion volume[529]. The portentous number of mentions by Gregory of Nyssa escaped me, though I knew that there were several. Such repetitions of a phrase could only be admitted into my calculation in a restricted and representative number. Indeed, I often quoted at least on our side less than the real number of such reiterations occurring in one passage, because in course of repetition they came to assume for such a purpose a parrot-like value.