Thus, I profess myself wholly unable to accept the suggestion of Ussher,—(which, however, found favour with Garnier (Basil’s editor), Bengel, Benson, and Michaelis; and has since been not only eagerly advocated by Conybeare and Howson following a host of German Critics, but has even enjoyed Mr. Scrivener’s distinct approval;)—that the Epistle to the Ephesians “was _a Circular_ addressed to other Asiatic Cities besides the capital Ephesus,—to Laodicea perhaps among the rest (Col. iv. 16); and that while some Codices may have contained the name of Ephesus in the first verse, _others may have had another city substituted, or the space after_ τοῖς οὔσιν _left utterly void_.”(172) At first sight, this conjecture has a kind of interesting plausibility which recommends it to our favour. On closer inspection,—(i) It is found to be not only gratuitous; but (ii) altogether unsupported and unsanctioned by the known facts of the case; and (what is most to the purpose) (iii) it is, as I humbly think, demonstrably erroneous. I demur to it,— (1) Because of its exceeding Improbability: for (_a_) when S. Paul sent his Epistle to the Ephesians we know that Tychicus, the bearer of it,(173) was charged with _a distinct Epistle_ to the Colossians:(174) an Epistle nevertheless so singularly like the Epistle to the Ephesians that it is scarcely credible S. Paul would have written those two several Epistles to two of the Churches of Asia, and yet have sent only a duplicate of one of them, (_that_ to the Ephesians,) furnished with a different address, to so large and important a place as Laodicea, for example, (_b_) Then further, the provision which S. Paul made at this very time for communicating with the Churches of Asia which he did not separately address is found to have been different. The Laodiceans were to read in their public assembly S. Paul’s “_Epistle to the Colossians_,” which the Colossians were ordered to send them. The Colossians in like manner were to read the Epistle,—(to whom addressed, we know not),—which S. Paul describes as τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας.(175) If then it had been S. Paul’s desire that the Laodiceans (suppose) should read publicly in their Churches his Epistle to the Ephesians, surely, he would have charged the Ephesians to procure that _his Epistle to them should be read in the Church of the Laodiceans_. Why should the Apostle be gratuitously assumed to have simultaneously adopted one method with the Churches of _Colosse_ and Laodicea,—another with the Churches of _Ephesus_ and Laodicea,—in respect of his epistolary communications?