(5) The witnesses have now all been heard: and I submit that there has been elicited from their united evidence nothing at all calculated to shake our confidence in the universally received reading of Ephesians i. 1. The facts of the case are so scanty that they admit of being faithfully stated in a single sentence. Two MSS. of the ivth century, (exhibiting in other respects several striking notes of vicious sympathy,) are found to conspire in omitting a clause in Ephesians i. 1, which, (necessary as it is to the sense,) may be inferred to have been absent from Origen's copy: and [pg 099] Basil testifies that it was absent from “the old copies” to which he himself obtained access. This is really the whole of the matter: in which it is much to be noted that Origen does not say that he approved of this reading. Still less does Basil. They both witness to the fact that the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ were omitted from some copies of the iiird century, just as Codd. B and א witness to the same fact in the ivth. But what then? Origen is known occasionally to go out of his way to notice readings confessedly worthless; and, why not here? For not only is the text all but unintelligible if the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ be omitted: but (what is far more to the purpose) the direct evidence of all the copies, whether uncial or cursive,[169]—and of all the Versions,—is against the omission. In the face of this overwhelming mass of unfaltering evidence to insist that Codd. B and א must yet be accounted right, and all the rest of Antiquity wrong, is simply irrational. To uphold the authority, in respect of this nonsensical reading, of two MSS. confessedly untrustworthy in countless other places,—against all the MSS.—all the Versions,—is nothing else but an act of vulgar prejudice. I venture to declare,—(and with this I shall close the discussion and dismiss the subject,)—that there does not exist one single instance in the whole of the New Testament of a reading even probably correct in which the four following notes of spurious origin concur,—which nevertheless are observed to attach to the two readings which have been chiefly discussed in the foregoing pages: viz.
1. The adverse testimony of all the uncial MSS. except two.
2. The adverse testimony of all, or very nearly all, the cursive MSS.
3. The adverse testimony of all the Versions, without exception.
4. The adverse testimony of the oldest Ecclesiastical Writers.
To which if I do not add, as I reasonably might,—
5. The highest inherent improbability,—it is only because I desire to treat this question purely as one of Evidence.
II. Learned men have tasked their ingenuity to account for the phenomenon on which we have been bestowing so many words. The endeavour is commendable; but I take leave to remark in passing that if we are to set about discovering reasons at the end of fifteen hundred years for every corrupt reading which found its way into the sacred text during the first three centuries subsequent to the death of S. John, we shall have enough to do. Let any one take up the Codex Bezae, (with which, by the way, Cod. B shews marvellous sympathy[170],) and explain if he can why there is a grave omission, or else a gross interpolation, in almost every page; and how it comes to pass that Cod. D “reproduces the ‘textus receptus’ of the Acts much in the same way that one of the best Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament; so wide are the variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of expounding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability.”[171] Our business as Critics is not to invent theories to account for the errors of Copyists; but rather to ascertain where they have erred, where not. What with the inexcusable depravations of early Heretics,—the preposterous emendations of ancient Critics,—the injudicious assiduity of Harmonizers,—the licentious caprice of individuals;—what with errors resulting from the inopportune recollection of similar or parallel places,—or from the familiar phraseology of the Ecclesiastical Lections,—or from the inattention of Scribes,—or from marginal glosses;—however arising, endless are the corrupt readings of the oldest MSS. in existence; and it is by no means safe to [pg 101] follow up the detection of a depravation of the text with a theory to account for its existence. Let me be allowed to say that such theories are seldom satisfactory. Guesses only they are at best.
Thus, I profess myself wholly unable to accept the suggestion of Ussher,—(which, however, found favour with Garnier (Basil's editor), Bengel, Benson, and Michaelis; and has since been not only eagerly advocated by Conybeare and Howson following a host of German Critics, but has even enjoyed Mr. Scrivener's distinct approval;)—that the Epistle to the Ephesians “was a Circular addressed to other Asiatic Cities besides the capital Ephesus,—to Laodicea perhaps among the rest (Col. iv. 16); and that while some Codices may have contained the name of Ephesus in the first verse, others may have had another city substituted, or the space after τοῖς οὔσιν left utterly void.”[172] At first sight, this conjecture has a kind of interesting plausibility which recommends it to our favour. On closer inspection,—(i) It is found to be not only gratuitous; but (ii) altogether unsupported and unsanctioned by the known facts of the case; and (what is most to the purpose) (iii) it is, as I humbly think, demonstrably erroneous. I demur to it,—
(1) Because of its exceeding Improbability: for (a) when S. Paul sent his Epistle to the Ephesians we know that Tychicus, the bearer of it,[173] was charged with a distinct Epistle to the Colossians:[174] an Epistle nevertheless so singularly like the Epistle to the Ephesians that it is scarcely credible S. Paul would have written those two several Epistles to two of the Churches of Asia, and yet have sent only a duplicate of one of them, (that to the Ephesians,) furnished with a different address, to so large and important a place as Laodicea, for example, (b) Then further, the provision which S. Paul made at this very time for communicating with the Churches of Asia which he did not separately address is found to have been different. The Laodiceans were to read in their public assembly S. Paul's “Epistle to the Colossians,” which the Colossians were ordered to send them. The Colossians [pg 102] in like manner were to read the Epistle,—(to whom addressed, we know not),—which S. Paul describes as τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας.[175] If then it had been S. Paul's desire that the Laodiceans (suppose) should read publicly in their Churches his Epistle to the Ephesians, surely, he would have charged the Ephesians to procure that his Epistle to them should be read in the Church of the Laodiceans. Why should the Apostle be gratuitously assumed to have simultaneously adopted one method with the Churches of Colosse and Laodicea,—another with the Churches of Ephesus and Laodicea,—in respect of his epistolary communications?