It is the misfortune of inquiries like the present that they sometimes constrain us to give prominence to minute details which it is difficult to make entertaining. Let me however seek to interest my reader in the true reading of St. Matt. xx. 22, 23: from which verses recent critical Editors reject the words, “and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with,” ?a? t? ?pt?sa ? ??? apt???a? apt?s???a?.

About the right of the same words to a place in the corresponding part of St. Mark's Gospel (x. 38), there is no difference of opinion: except that it is insisted that in St. Mark the clause should begin with ? instead of ?a?.

Next, the reader is requested to attend to the following circumstance: that, except of course the four (?BDL) and Z which omit the place altogether and one other (S), all the Uncials together with the bulk of the Cursives, and the [pg 210] Peshitto and Harkleian and several Latin Versions, concur in reading ? t? ?pt?sa in St. Matthew: all the Uncials but eight (?BCDLW?S), together with the bulk of the Cursives and the Peshitto, agree in reading ?a? t? ?pt?sa in St. Mark. This delicate distinction between the first and the second Gospel, obliterated in the Received Text, is faithfully maintained in nineteen out of twenty of the Cursive Copies.

In the meantime we are assured on the authority of ?BDLZ—with most of the Latin Copies, including of course Hilary and Jerome, the Cureton, the Lewis, and the Bohairic, besides Epiphanius,—that the clause in question has no right to its place in St. Matthew's Gospel. So confidently is this opinion held, that the Revisers, following Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, have ejected the words from the Text. But are they right? Certainly not, I answer. And I reason thus.

If this clause has been interpolated into St. Matthew's Gospel, how will you possibly account for its presence in every MS. in the world except 7, viz. 5 uncials and 2 cursives? It is pretended that it crept in by assimilation from the parallel place in St. Mark. But I reply,—

1. Is this credible? Do you not see the glaring improbability of such an hypothesis? Why should the Gospel most in vogue have been assimilated in all the Copies but seven to the Gospel least familiarly known and read in the Churches?

2. And pray when is it pretended that this wholesale falsification of the MSS. took place? The Peshitto Syriac as usual sides with the bulk of the Cursives: but it has been shewn to be of the second century. Some of the Latin Copies also have the clause. Codex C, Chrysostom and Basil of Seleucia also exhibit it. Surely the preponderance of the evidence is overwhelmingly one way. But then

3. As a matter of fact the clause cannot have come [pg 211] in from St. Mark's Gospel,—for the very conclusive reason that the two places are delicately discriminated,—as on the testimony of the Cursives and the Peshitto has been shewn already. And

4. I take upon myself to declare without fear of contradiction on the part of any but the advocates of the popular theory that, on the contrary, it is St. Matthew's Gospel which has been corrupted from St. Mark's. A conclusive note of the assimilating process is discernible in St. Mark's Gospel where ? has intruded,—not in St. Matthew's.

5. Why St. Matthew's Gospel was maimed in this place, I am not able to explain. Demonstrable it is that the Text of the Gospels at that early period underwent a process of Revision at the hands of men who apparently were as little aware of the foolishness as of the sinfulness of all they did: and that Mutilation was their favourite method. And, what is very remarkable, the same kind of infatuation which is observed to attend the commission of crime, and often leads to its detection, is largely recognizable here. But the Eye which never sleeps has watched over the Deposit, and provided Himself with witnesses.