Is one here more struck with the unfairness of the Critic, or with the feebleness of his reasoning? For,—(to say nothing of the insecurity of building on a Latin Translation,(502) especially in such a matter as the present,)—How can testimony like this be considered to outweigh the three distinct places in the original writings of this Father, where he reads not εὐδοκίας but εὐδοκία? Again. Why is a doubt insinuated concerning the trustworthiness of those three places, (“ut _nunc_ reperitur,”) where there really is _no_ doubt? How is Truth ever to be attained if investigations like the present are to be conducted in the spirit of an eager partisan, instead of with the calm gravity of an impartial judge? But I may as well state plainly that the context of the passage above quoted shews that Tischendorf’s proposed inference is inadmissible. Origen is supposing some one to ask the following question:—“Since Angels on the night when CHRIST was born proclaimed ‘on earth _Peace_,’—why does our SAVIOUR say, ‘I am _not_ come to send Peace upon earth, but a sword?’... Consider,” (he proceeds) “whether the answer may not be this:”—and then comes the extract given above. Origen, (to express oneself with colloquial truthfulness,) is _at his old tricks_. He is evidently acquainted with the reading εὐδοκίας: and because it enables him to offer (what appears to him) an ingenious solution of a certain problem, he adopts it for the nonce: his proposal to take the words εἰρήνη εὐδοκίας together, being simply preposterous,—as no one ever knew better than Origen himself.(503) 3. Lastly, CYRIL OF JERUSALEM is invariably cited by the latest Critics as favouring the reading εὐδοκίας. Those learned persons have evidently overlooked the candid acknowledgment of De Touttée, Cyril’s editor, (p. 180, cf. bottom of p. 102,) that though _the MSS. of Cyril_ exhibit εὐδοκία, yet in his editorial capacity he had ventured _to print_ εὐδοκίας. This therefore is one more Patristic attestation to the trustworthiness of the Textus Receptus in respect of S. Luke ii. 14, which has been hitherto unaccountably lost sight of by Critics. (May I, without offence, remind Editors of Scripture that instead of _copying_, they ought in every instance _to verify_ their references?) III. The history of this corruption of the Text is not hard to discover. It is interesting and instructive also. (1.) In the immediately post-Apostolic age,—if not earlier still,—some Copyist will have omitted the ἐν before ἀνθρώποις. The resemblance of the letters and the similarity of the sound (ΕΝ, ΑΝ,) misled him:— ΕΝΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΙΣ Every one must see at a glance how easily the thing may have happened. (It is in fact precisely what _has_ happened in Acts iv. 12; where, for ἐν ἀνθρώποις, D and a few cursive MSS. read ἀνθρώποις,—being countenanced therein by the Latin Versions generally, and by them only.)