Cod. B (not Cod. א) is further guilty of the “grave error” (as Dean Alford justly styles it,) of omitting that solemn record of the Evangelist:—“Then said JESUS, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” It also withholds the statement that the inscription on the Cross was “in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew.”(138) Cod. א, on the other hand, omits the confession of the man born blind (ὁ δὲ ἔφη, πιστεύω, κύριε; καὶ προσεκύνησεν αὐτῷ) in S. John ix. 38.—Both Cod. א and Cod. B retain nothing but the word υἱόν of the expression τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς τὸν πρωτότοκον, in S. Matth. i. 25; and suppress altogether the important doctrinal statement ὁ ὠν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, in S. John iii. 13: as well as the clause διελθὼν διὰ μέσου αὐτῶν; καὶ παρῆγεν οὕτως, in S. John viii. 59. Concerning all of which, let it be observed that I am neither imputing motives nor pretending to explain _the design_ with which these several serious omissions were made. All that is asserted is, that they cannot be imputed to the carelessness of a copyist, but were intentional: and I insist that they effectually dispose of the presumption that when an important passage is observed to be wanting from Cod. B or Cod. א, its absence is to be accounted for by assuming that it was also absent _from the inspired autograph of the Evangelist_. 2. To the foregoing must be added the many places where the text of B or of א, or of both, has clearly been _interpolated_. There does not exist in the whole compass of the New Testament a more monstrous instance of this than is furnished by the transfer of the incident of the piercing of our Redeemer’s side from S. John xix. 24 to S. Matth. xxvii., in Cod. B and Cod. א, where it is introduced at the end of ver. 49,—in defiance of reason as well as of authority.(139) “This interpolation” (remarks Mr. Scrivener) “which would represent the SAVIOUR as pierced while yet living, is a good example of the fact that some of our highest authorities may combine in attesting a reading unquestionably false.”(140) Another singularly gross specimen of interpolation, in my judgment, is supplied by the purely apocryphal statement which is met with in Cod. א, at the end of S. Matthew’s account of the healing of the Centurion’s servant,—και υποστρεψας ο εκατονταρχος εις τον οικον αυτου εν αυτη τη ωρα, ευρεν τον παιδα υγιαινοντα (viii. 13.)—Nor can anything well be weaker than the substitution (for ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου, in S. John ii. 3) of the following,(141) which is found _only_ in Cod. א:—οινον ουκ ειχον, οτι συνετελεσθε ο οινος του γαμου.