It might have been passed by with fewer words, for the fraud is indeed transparent, but that it has so largely imposed upon learned men, and established itself so firmly in books.

Let me hope that we shall not hear it advocated any more.
Regarded as an instrument of criticism, Assimilation requires to be very delicately as well as very skilfully handled.

If it is to be applied to determining the text of Scripture, it must be employed, I take leave to say, in a very different spirit from what is met with in Dr.
Tischendorf's notes, or it will only mislead.

Is a word--a clause--a sentence--omitted by his favourite authorities [Symbol: Aleph]BDL?
It is enough if that learned critic finds nearly the same word,--a very similar clause,--a sentence of the same general import,--in an account of the same occurrence by another Evangelist, for him straightway to insist that the sentence, the clause, the word, has been imported into the commonly received Text from such parallel place; and to reject it accordingly.
But, as the thoughtful reader must see, this is not allowable, except under peculiar circumstances.

For first, whatever _a priori_ improbability might be supposed to attach to the existence of identical expressions in two Evangelical records of the same transaction, is effectually disposed of by the discovery that very often identity of expression actually does occur.