Indeed, the high antiquity of the Church's Lectionary System is inferred with certainty from many a textual phenomenon with which students of Textual Science are familiar. It may be helpful to a beginner if I introduce to his notice the class of readings to be discussed in the present chapter, by inviting his attention to the first words of the Gospel for St. Philip and St. James' Day in our own English Book of Common Prayer,--'And Jesus said unto His disciples.' Those words he sees at a glance are undeniably nothing else but an Ecclesiastical accretion to the Gospel,--words which breed offence in no quarter, and occasion error to none. They have nevertheless stood prefixed to St. John xiv. 1 from an exceedingly remote period; for, besides establishing themselves in every Lectionary of the ancient Church[154], they are found in Cod. D[155],--in copies of the Old Latin[156] as the Vercellensis, Corbeiensis, Aureus, Bezae,--and in copies of the Vulgate. They may be of the second or third, they must be as old as the fourth century. It is evident that it wants but a very little for those words to have established their claim to a permanent place in the Text. Readings just as slenderly supported have been actually adopted before now[157]. I proceed to cite another instance; and here the success of an ordinary case of Lectionary licence will be perceived to have been complete: for besides recommending itself to Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort, the blunder in question has established itself in the pages of the Revised Version. Reference is made to an alteration of the Text occurring in certain copies of Acts iii. 1, which will be further discussed below[158]. When it has been stated that these copies are [Symbol: Aleph]ABCG,--the Vulgate,--the two Egyptian versions,--besides the Armenian,--and the Ethiopic,--it will be admitted that the Ecclesiastical practice which has resulted in so widespread a reading, must be primitive indeed. To some persons such a formidable array of evidence may seem conclusive in favour of any reading: but it can only seem so to those who do not realize the weight of counter-testimony.