A patent gloss,--rather an interpretation,--acquires no claim to be regarded as the genuine utterance of the Holy Spirit by being merely found in two or three ancient documents.

It is the little handful of documents which loses in reputation,--not the reading which gains in authority on such occasions.
In this way we are sometimes presented with what in effect are new incidents.

These are not unfrequently discovered to be introduced in defiance of the reason of the case; as where (St.John xiii.

34) Simon Peter is represented (in the Vulgate) as _actually saying_ to St.John, 'Who is it concerning whom He speaks ?' Other copies of the Latin exhibit, 'Ask Him who it is,' &c.: while [Symbol: Aleph]BC (for on such occasions we are treated to any amount of apocryphal matter) would persuade us that St.Peter only required that the information should be furnished him by St.John:--'Say who it is of whom He speaks.' Sometimes a very little licence is sufficient to convert the _oratio obliqua_ into the recta.

Thus, by the change of a single letter (in [Symbol: Aleph]BX) Mary Magdalene is made to say to the disciples 'I have seen the Lord' (St.John xx.