CHAPTER XII.
CAUSES OF CORRUPTION CHIEFLY INTENTIONAL.
VIII.

Glosses.
Sec.

1.
'Glosses,' properly so called, though they enjoy a conspicuous place in every enumeration like the present, are probably by no means so numerous as is commonly supposed.

For certainly _every_ unauthorized accretion to the text of Scripture is not a 'gloss': but only those explanatory words or clauses which have surreptitiously insinuated themselves into the text, and of which no more reasonable account can be rendered than that they were probably in the first instance proposed by some ancient Critic in the way of useful comment, or necessary explanation, or lawful expansion, or reasonable limitation of the actual utterance of the Spirit.

Thus I do not call the clause [Greek: nekrous egeirete] in St.
Matt.x.8 'a gloss.' It is a gratuitous and unwarrantable interpolation,--nothing else but a clumsy encumbrance of the text[353].
[Glosses, or _scholia_, or comments, or interpretations, are of various kinds, but are generally confined to Additions or Substitutions, since of course we do not omit in order to explain, and transposition of words already placed in lucid order, such as the sacred Text may be reasonably supposed to have observed, would confuse rather than illustrate the meaning.