1. The testimony of the oldest versions, when attention is paid to their contents, is discovered to be of inferior moment in minuter matters of this nature. Thus, copies of the Old Latin version thrust Isaiah's name into St. Matt. i. 22, and Zechariah's name into xxi. 4: as well as thrust out Jeremiah's name from xxvii. 9:--the first, with Curetonian, Lewis, Harkleian, Palestinian, and D,--the second, with Chrysostom and Hilary,--the third, with the Peshitto. The Latin and the Syriac further substitute [Greek: tou prophetou] for [Greek: ton propheton] in St. Matt. ii. 23,--through misapprehension of the Evangelist's meaning. What is to be thought of Cod. [Symbol: Aleph] for introducing the name of 'Isaiah' into St. Matt. xiii. 35,--where it clearly cannot stand, the quotation being confessedly from Ps. lxxviii. 2; but where nevertheless Porphyry[213], Eusebius[214], and pseudo-Jerome[215] certainly found it in many ancient copies? 2. Next, for the testimony of the Uncial Codexes [Symbol: Aleph]BDL[Symbol: Delta]:--If any one will be at the pains to tabulate the 900[216] new 'readings' adopted by Tischendorf in editing St. Mark's Gospel, he will discover that for 450, or just half of them,--all the 450, as I believe, being corruptions of the text,--[Symbol: Aleph]BL are responsible: and further, that their responsibility is shared on about 200 occasions by D: on about 265 by C: on about 350 by [Delta][217]. At some very remote period therefore there must have grown up a vicious general reading of this Gospel which remains in the few bad copies: but of which the largest traces (and very discreditable traces they are) at present survive in [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL[Symbol: Delta]. After this discovery the avowal will not be thought extraordinary that I regard with unmingled suspicion readings which are exclusively vouched for by five of the same Codexes: e.g. by [Symbol: Aleph]BDL[Symbol: Delta]. 3. The cursive copies which exhibit 'Isaiah' in place of 'the prophet.' reckoned by Tischendorf at 'nearly twenty-five,' are probably less than fifteen[218], and those, almost all of suspicious character. High time it is that the inevitable consequence of an appeal to such evidence were better understood.