For there can be no doubt that Isaiah's phrase (retained by St.Matthew) is [Greek: ho laos outos],--St.Mark's [Greek: outos ho laos].

And yet, when Clemens Romanus quotes Isaiah, he begins--[Greek: outos ho laos][293]; and so twice does Theodoret[294].
The reader is now in a position to judge how much attention is due to Dr.Tregelles' dictum 'that this one passage may be relied upon' in support of the peculiar views he advocates: as well as to his confident claim that the fuller text which is found in ninety-nine MSS.

out of a hundred 'must be regarded as an amplification borrowed from the prophet.' It has been shewn in answer to the learned critic that in the ancient Greek text of the prophet the 'amplification' he speaks of did not exist: it was the abbreviated text which was found there.

So that the very converse of the phenomenon he supposes has taken place.

Freely accepting his hypothesis that we have here a process of assimilation, occasioned by the Septuagintal text of Isaiah, we differ from him only as to the direction in which that process has manifested itself.