Chapter I: TO ACCIDENTAL CAUSES then we give the foremost place, and of these we (10)

O but, the evidence in favour of Codex A thickens apace! Suppose then,—(for, after this admission, the supposition is at least allowable,)—suppose the discovery were made tomorrow of half-a-score of codices of the _same date as Cod._ B, but exhibiting the _same Text as Cod._ A. What a complete revolution would be thereby effected in men’s minds on Textual matters! How impossible would it be, henceforth, for B and its henchman א, to obtain so much as a hearing! Such “an eleven” would safely defy the world! And yet, according to Dr. Hort, the supposition may any day become a fact; for he informs us,—(and we are glad to be able for once to declare that what he says is perfectly correct,)—that such manuscripts once abounded or rather _prevailed;_—“_were commonest_ in the IVth century,” when codices B and א were written. We presume that then, as now, such codices prevailed universally, in the proportion of 99 to 1.

LXIX. But—what need to say it?—we entirely disallow any such narrowing of the platform which Divine Wisdom hath willed should be at once very varied and very ample. Cod. A is sometimes in error: sometimes even _conspires in error exclusively with Cod._ B. An instance occurs in 1 S. John v. 18,—a difficult passage, which we the more willingly proceed to remark upon, because the fact has transpired that it is one of the few places in which _entire unanimity_ prevailed among the Revisionists,—who yet (as we shall show) have been, one and all, mistaken in substituting “_him_” (αὐτόν) for “_himself_” (ἑαυτόν).... We venture to bespeak the Reader’s attention while we produce the passage in question, and briefly examine it. He is assured that it exhibits a fair average specimen of what has been the Revisionists’ fatal method in every page:—