at 'many ancient authorities insert it'? Would it not have
been the course of ordinary reverence,--I was going to say of truth and
fairness,--to leave the text unmolested: with a marginal memorandum that
just 'a very few ancient authorities leave it out'?

Sec. 5.

A gross depravation of the Text resulting from this cause, which
nevertheless has imposed on several critics, as has been already said,
is furnished by the first words of Acts iii. The most ancient witness
accessible, namely the Peshitto, confirms the usual reading of the
place, which is also the text of the cursives: viz. [Greek: Epi to auto
de Petros kai Ioannes k.t.l.] So the Harkleian and Bede. So Codex E.

The four oldest of the six available uncials conspire however in
representing the words which immediately precede in the following
unintelligible fashion:--[Greek: ho de Kyrios prosetithei tous
sozomenous kath' hemeran epi to auto. Petros de k.t.l.] How is it to be
thought that this strange and vapid presentment of the passage had its
beginning? It results, I answer, from the ecclesiastical practice of
beginning a fresh lection at the name of 'Peter,' prefaced by the usual
formula 'In those days.' It is accordingly usual to find the liturgical
word [Greek: arche]--indicative of the beginning of a lection,--thrust
in between [Greek: epi to auto de] and [Greek: Petros]. At a yet earlier
period I suppose some more effectual severance of the text was made in
that place, which unhappily misled some early scribe[165]. And so it
came to pass that in the first instance the place stood thus: [Greek: ho
de Kyrios prosetithei tous sozomenous kath' hemeran te ekklesia epi to
auto],--which was plainly intolerable.

What I am saying will commend itself to any unprejudiced reader when it
has been stated that Cod. D in this place actually reads as
follows:--[Greek: kathemeran epi to auto en te ekklesia. En de tais
hemerais tautais Petros k.t.l.]: the scribe with simplicity both giving
us the liturgical formula with which it was usual to introduce the
Gospel for the Friday after Easter, and permitting us to witness the
perplexity with which the evident surplusage of [Greek: te ekklesia epi
to auto] occasioned him. He inverts those two expressions and thrusts in
a preposition. How obvious it now was to solve the difficulty by getting
rid of [Greek: te ekklesia].

It does not help the adverse case to shew that the Vulgate as well as
the copy of Cyril of Alexandria