Now, every delicate discriminating touch in this sublime picture is faithfully retained throughout by the cursive copies in the proportion of about eighty to one. The great bulk of the MSS., as usual, uncial and cursive alike, establish the undoubted text of the Evangelist, which is here the Received Text. Thus, a vast majority of the MSS., with [Symbol: Aleph]AD at their head, read [Greek: epipeson] in St. John xiii. 25. Chrysostom[192] and probably Cyril[193] confirm the same reading. So also Nonnus[194]. Not so B and C with four other uncials and about twenty cursives (the vicious Evan. 33 being at their head), besides Origen[195] in two places and apparently Theodorus of Mopsuestia[196]. These by mischievously assimilating the place in ch. xiii to the later place in ch. xxi in which such affecting reference is made to it, hopelessly obscure the Evangelist's meaning. For they substitute [Greek: anapeson oun ekeinos k.t.l.] It is exactly as when children, by way of improving the sketch of a great Master, go over his matchless outlines with a clumsy pencil of their own. That this is the true history of the substitution of [Greek: anapeson] in St. John xiii. 25 for the less obvious [Greek: epipeson] is certain. Origen, who was probably the author of all the mischief, twice sets the two places side by side and elaborately compares them; in the course of which operation, by the way, he betrays the viciousness of the text which he himself employed. But what further helps to explain how easily [Greek: anapeson] might usurp the place of [Greek: epipeson][197], is the discovery just noticed, that the ancients from the earliest period were in the habit of identifying St. John, as St. John had identified himself, by calling him '_the one that lay_ ([Greek: ho anapeson]) _upon the Lord's chest_.' The expression, derived from St. John xxi. 20, is employed by Irenaeus[198] (A.D. 178) and by Polycrates[199] (Bp. of Ephesus A.D. 196); by Origen[200] and by Ephraim Syrus[201]: by Epiphanius[202] and by Palladius[203]: by Gregory of Nazianzus[204] and by his namesake of Nyssa[205]: by pseudo-Eusebius[206], by pseudo-Caesarius[207], and by pseudo-Chrysostom[208]. The only wonder is, that in spite of such influences all the MSS. in the world except about twenty-six have retained the true reading.