([Symbol: Aleph]BDZ), supported by five cursives of bad character (1, 17 which gives [Greek: amen], 118, 130, 209), and, as we have seen, all the Latin copies but four, omit these words; which, it is accordingly assumed, must have found their way surreptitiously into the text of all the other copies in existence.

But let me ask,--Is it at all likely, or rather is it any way credible, that in a matter like this, all the MSS.

in the world but nine should have become corrupted?
No hypothesis is needed to account for one more instance of omission in copies which exhibit a mutilated text in every page.

But how will men pretend to explain an interpolation universal as the present; which may be traced as far back as the second century; which has established itself without appreciable variety of reading in all the MSS.; which has therefore found its way from the earliest time into every part of Christendom; is met with in all the Lectionaries, and in all the Greek Liturgies; and has so effectually won the Church's confidence that to this hour it forms part of the public and private devotions of the faithful all over the world?
One and the same reply has been rendered to this inquiry ever since the days of Erasmus.

A note in the Complutensian Polyglott (1514) expresses it with sufficient accuracy.