profess myself wholly at a loss to discover. Origen himself complains bitterly of the depraved state of the copies in his time; and attributes it (1) to the carelessness of the scribes: (2) to the rashness of correctors of the text: (3) to the licentiousness of individuals, adopting some of these corrections and rejecting others, according to their own private caprice.(166) (4) Jerome, a man of severer judgment in such matters than either Origen or Basil, after rehearsing the preceding gloss, (but only to reject it,) remarks that “certain persons” had been “over-fanciful” in putting it forth. He alludes probably to Origen, whose Commentary on the Ephesians, in three books, he expressly relates that he employed:(167) but he does not seem to have apprehended that Origen’s text _was without the words_ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ. If he was acquainted with Origen’s text, (of which, however, his writings afford no indication,) it is plain that he disapproved of it. Others, he says, understand S. Paul to say not “the Saints _which are_:” but,—“the Saints and faithful _which are at Ephesus_.”(168) (5) The witnesses have now all been heard: and I submit that there has been elicited from their united evidence nothing at all calculated to shake our confidence in the universally received reading of Ephesians i. 1. The facts of the case are so scanty that they admit of being faithfully stated in a single sentence. Two MSS. of the ivth century, (exhibiting in other respects several striking notes of vicious sympathy,) are found to conspire in omitting a clause in Ephesians i. 1, which, (necessary as it is to the sense,) may be inferred to have been absent from Origen’s copy: and Basil testifies that it was absent from “the old copies” to which he himself obtained access. This is really the whole of the matter: in which it is much to be noted that Origen does not say that he _approved_ of this reading. Still less does Basil. They both witness to _the fact_ that the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ were omitted from _some_ copies of the iiird century, just as Codd. B and א witness to the same fact in the ivth. But what then? Origen is known occasionally to go out of his way to notice readings confessedly worthless; and, why not here? For not only is the text all but _unintelligible_ if the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ be omitted: but (what is far more to the purpose) the direct evidence of _all_ the copies, whether uncial or cursive,(169)—and of _all_ the Versions,—is _against_ the omission. In the face of this overwhelming mass of unfaltering evidence to insist that Codd. B and א must yet be accounted right, and all the rest of Antiquity wrong, is simply irrational. To uphold the authority, in respect of this nonsensical reading, of _two_ MSS. confessedly untrustworthy in countless other places,—against _all_ the MSS.—_all_ the Versions,—is nothing else but an act of vulgar prejudice. I venture to declare,—(and with this I shall close the discussion and dismiss the subject,)—that _there does not