n earnest Gentile
against whatever of a like nature He had experienced in His dealing with
the Jewish people; and declaring the result. He is contrasting Jacob's
descendants, the heirs of so many lofty privileges, with this Gentile
soldier: their spiritual attainments with his; and assigning the palm to
him. Substitute 'With no one in Israel have I found so great faith,' and
the contrast disappears. Nothing else is predicated but a greater
measure of faith in one man than in any other. The author of this feeble
attempt to improve upon St. Matthew's Gospel is found to have also tried
his hand on the parallel place in St. Luke, but with even inferior
success: for there his misdirected efforts survive only in certain
copies of the Old Latin. Ambrose notices his officiousness, remarking
that it yields an intelligible sense; but that, 'juxta Graecos,' the
place is to be read differently (i. 1376.)

It is notorious that a few copies of the Old Latin (Augustine _once_
(iv. 322), though he quotes the place nearly twenty times in the usual
way) and the Egyptian versions exhibit the same depravation. Cyril
habitually employed an Evangelium which was disfigured in the same way
(iii. 833, also Opp. v. 544, ed. Pusey.). But are we out of such
materials as these to set about reconstructing the text of Scripture?

[352] 'In quibusdam Latinis codicibus additum est, _neque Filius_: quum
in Graecis, et maxime Adamantii et Pierii exemplaribus hoc non habeatur
adscriptum. Sed quia in nonnullis legitur, disserendum videtur.' Hier.
vii. 199 a. 'Gaudet Arius et Eunomius, quasi ignorantia magistri gloria
discipulorum sit, et dicunt:--"Non potest aequalis esse qui novit et qui
ignorat."' Ibid. 6.

In vi. 919, we may quote from St. Mark.

CHAPTER XII.

CAUSES OF CORRUPTION CHIEFLY INTENTIONAL.

VIII. Glosses.

Sec. 1.

'Glosses,' properly so called, though they enjoy a conspicuous place in
every enumeration like the present, are probably by no means so numerous
as is commonly supposed. For certainly _every_ unauthorized accretion to
the text of Scripture is not a 'gloss': but only those explanatory words
or clauses which have surreptitiously insinuated themselves into the
text, and of which no more reasonable account can be rendered than that
they were probably in the first instance proposed by some ancient Critic
in the way of useful comment, or necessary explanation, or lawful
expansion, or reasonable limitation of the actual