(2.) The _only_ Father who so expresses himself as to warrant the inference that the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ were absent from his copy, is Origen, in the beginning of the third century. “Only in the case of the Ephesians,” (he writes), “do we meet with the expression ‘the Saints which are:’ and we inquire,—Unless that additional phrase be simply redundant, what can it possibly signify? Consider, then, whether those who have been partakers of _His_ nature who revealed Himself to Moses by the Name of I AM, may not, in consequence of such union with Him, be designated as ‘those _which are_:’ persons, called out, of a state of _not_-being, so to speak, into a state of _being_.”(163)—If Origen had read τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ in his copy, it is to me incredible that he would have gone so very far out of his way to miss the sense of such a plain, and in fact, unmistakable an expression. Bishop Middleton, and Michaelis before him,—_reasoning however only from the place in Basil,_ (to be quoted immediately,)—are unwilling to allow that the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ were ever away from the text. It must be admitted as the obvious inference from what Jerome has delivered on this subject (_infrà_, p. 98 _note_) that he, too, seems to know nothing of the reading (if reading it can be called) of Codd. B and א. (3) The influence which Origen’s writings exercised over his own and the immediately succeeding ages of the Church, was prodigious. Basil, bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, writing against the heresy of Eunomius about 150 years later,—although he read ἐν Ἐφέσῳ in his own copy of S. Paul’s Epistles,—thought fit to avail himself of Origen’s suggestion. It suited his purpose. He was proving the eternal existence of the SON of GOD. Even _not to know_ GOD (he remarks) is _not to be_: in proof of which, he quotes S. Paul’s words in 1 Cor. i. 28:—“Things _which are not_, hath GOD chosen.” “Nay,” (he proceeds,) the same S. Paul, “in his Epistle to the Ephesians, inasmuch as he is addressing persons who by intimate knowledge were truly joined to Him who ‘IS,’ designates them specially as ‘those _which are_:’ saying,—‘To the Saints _which are_, and faithful in CHRIST JESUS.’ ” That this fancy was not original, Basil makes no secret. He derived it, (he says,) from “those who were before us;” a plain allusion to the writings of Origen. But neither was _the reading_ his own, either. This is evident. He had _found_ it, he says,—(an asseveration indispensable to the validity of his argument,)—but only after he had made search,(164)—“_in the old copies_.”(165) No doubt, Origen’s strange fancy must have been even _unintelligible_ to Basil when first he met with it. In plain terms, it sounds to this day incredibly foolish,—when read apart from the mutilated text which alone suggested it to Origen’s fervid imagination.—But what there is in all this to induce us to suspect that Origen’s reading was after all the _right_ one, and _ours_ the _wrong_, I