asunder in every page; as well as differ widely from the commonly received Text, with which they have been carefully collated. On being referred to this standard, in the Gospels alone, B is found to omit at least 2877 words: to add, 536: to substitute, 935: to transpose, 2098: to modify, 1132 (in all 7578):—the corresponding figures for א being severally 3455, 839, 1114, 2299, 1265 (in all 8972). And be it remembered that the omissions, additions, substitutions, transpositions, and modifications, _are by no means the same_ in both. It is in fact _easier to find two consecutive verses in which these two MSS. differ the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree_. But by far the most depraved text is that exhibited by codex D. “No known manuscript contains so many bold and extensive interpolations. Its variations from the sacred Text are beyond all other example.”(46) This, however, is not the result of its being the most recent of the five, but (singular to relate) is due to quite an opposite cause. It is thought (not without reason) to exhibit a IInd-century text. “When we turn to the Acts of the Apostles,” (says the learned editor of the codex in question, Dr. Scrivener,(47))— “We find ourselves confronted with a text, the like to which we have no experience of elsewhere. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that codex D reproduces the _Textus receptus_ much in the same way that one of the best Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament: so wide are the variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of expounding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability.” “_Vix dici potest_” (says Mill) “_quam supra omnem modum licenter se gesserit, ac plane lasciverit Interpolator_.” Though a large portion of the Gospels is missing, in what remains (tested by the same standard) we find 3704 words omitted: no less than 2213 added, and 2121 substituted. The words transposed amount to 3471: and 1772 have been modified: the deflections from the Received Text thus amounting in all to 13,281.—Next to D, the most untrustworthy codex is א, which bears on its front a memorable note of the evil repute under which it has always laboured: viz. it is found that at least _ten_ revisers between the IVth and the XIIth centuries busied themselves with the task of correcting its many and extraordinary perversions of the truth of Scripture.(48)—Next in impurity comes B:—then, the fragmentary codex C: our own A being, beyond all doubt, disfigured by the fewest blemishes of any.