one of the charges against him preferred by Anastasius, who would have been glad to employ any plausible pretext for his deposition. It may have been the restoration of the readings altered by Macedonius which gave occasion to the charge made by Victor; for the corruptions of Anasta sius are said to have taken place several years after the deposition of the bishop. Some critics have said that the statement that Macedonius was therefore deposed, as being a Nestorian, throws discredit on the whole story. We cannot think so; for the reading Jeós seems peculiarly fitted to convey the notions of Nestorius. He taught the divinity of Christ as clearly as did Athanasius or Cyril. He differed from Cyril in asserting that only the human nature was born of Mary, in which the divine nature dwelt, as in a temple. For this reason he refused to call Mary the mother of God. He says: "The God-Word was not born of Mary, but abode in that which was born of her. He did not take his beginning from the Virgin, but became inseparably connected, for all time, with that which was slowly formed within her womb."1 "The spirit formed a temple for the God-Word, which he should inhabit."2 "The Word was made flesh, that is, took flesh, and dwelt with us, that is, put on our nature." 3 Such a text, then, as "God was manifested in the flesh," which seemed to distinguish clearly between the two natures, would seem to the followers of Nestorius particularly consonant with their opinions, and a good offset to the text "The Word was made flesh," so blindly urged against them by the Monophysites; for it must be remembered that in the early part of the sixth century, all who opposed the Eutychians were branded by them as Nestorians. There is no real reason to believe that Macedonius favored Nestorianism. He was, however, a zealous defender of the Council of Chalcedon, and for this reason incurred the displeasure 1 Serm. 111. in Mar. Merc. (ed. Migne), col. 769. 8 Serm. III. col. 771. of Anastasius, and of all who believed that Council to have distinguished too clearly between the human and divine natures as joined in Christ. It is remarkable that those who have supposed it absurd that Macedonius should be accused of Nestorianism on account of his partiality for Deós, have failed to notice the fact that Theodoret, a prominent Nestorian, relies on this text, with the reading eós apparently, to prove the quality of Christ's nature, while Cyril, the champion of orthodoxy, read ős. Probably both were aware of the variation in the text. There is nothing absurd, then, in the story of Liberatus, except in so far as it attributes too much importance to this charge. No other writer of that century refers to it. The result of this examination of the external evidence may be summed up in a tabular form as given below. We shall include in the second column a few authorities for the neuter form of the relative. We next come to consider the internal evidence. In favor of Deos may be adduced the improbability of its being a careless alteration from ős. If the original reading were ős, it would seem to require an intentional corruption of the text to produce eós. It is a good rule never to have recourse to the charge of intentional corruption to explain a various reading when it can be accounted for equally well without imputing bad motives to the coypists. Now the change from OC to oc, requires the positive, intentional addition of two strokes, which were evidently not in the transcriber's exemplar. On the other hand, the change from Oc to OC might be unintentionally made, simply by omitting two small strokes, which may have become effaced in the MS. copied, or been carelessly omitted by a sleepy scribe. It would be much like the failure to cross a t or to dot an i. It is not rare to find cases in old MSS. where has failed to receive its transverse stroke at first, or lost it through age, and thus at present exhibits only the circular outline. It is true that the rule is often given, that of two forms the longer is the more suspicious; but this rule relates only to cases where one or more entire words may have inadvertently been admitted from the margin. In the case of kindred letters a stroke is more liable to be omitted than added. The addition implies intentional corruption, a charge which should, if possible, be avoided. In this view Deós has the preference. In favor of Deós it has also been asserted that the form ὃς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι is “ not Greek.” But this statement is founded on the assumed translation "He who was manifested in the flesh was justified in the spirit," making ős equivalent to he who, and including both the demonstrative and the relative. But it has been shown by Professor Stuart,1 that this is by no means an unparalleled 1 Biblical Repository, Vol. II. pp. 70-72. Matthaei, whom Henderson thinks the most learned man who ever edited the New Testament, says of the notion that τd pavepwder would be the only form grammatically allowable if we reject Deós: "If we were speaking of a Greek author, I should have nothing to say construction. Very few, however, of the defenders of the reading ős admit this translation. They regard the clause ôs épavepwen not as the subject of the subsequent predicates, édikaiwin, win, etc., but as co-ordinate with them. Their translation would be: "Great is the mystery of godliness; he who was manifested in the flesh, [he who] was justified in the spirit, [he who] was seen of angels, etc." In favor of the reading ős is the fact that it requires but a single step to obtain from it the other readings deós, ő, or is. The addition of two short strokes converts ôs into cós. On the other hand, the omission of a single letter gives us ő, a form evidently derived from ős, and adopted merely as a supposed grammatical correction. If we suppose, however, that Deos was the original reading, we must first obtain ős from it, and then obtain ő by altering this alteration. Caeteris paribus, that form is to be preferred from which the others are most easily explained. Again, ős is at first sight the more difficult reading, and as such has the preference. The form ős seems harsh, while Deós is very easy. Copyists are liable to alter a harsh form for an easier one. At the same time ős gives a good sense, even without resorting to the opinion defended by Conybeare and Howson, and by others, that Paul here quotes a fragment from a hymn of the early church, as in other places in his pastoral epistles. In accordance with this idea the verse would read: "And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. 'He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, 'Believed on in the world, received up into glory." The omission of the article before deos, although it is the subject of the sentence, is another suspicious circumstance mentioned by Professor Stuart. He found, out of two hun against it; but Paul wrote this, who in another passage, in immediate connection with τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον, has νυνὶ δὲ ἐφανερώθη, which is no sort of Greek."-Note on 1 Tim iii. 16. dred and fifty-seven cases in the New Testament in which Deos is used as the subject of the sentence, only four cases in which it fails to take the article, and so strong is the tendency to insert it, that in three of these cases, an examination of the authorities collected by Tischendorf will show that important MSS. exhibit the article. It is however noticeable that these four cases all occur, like our passage now under discussion, in the writings of Paul. It is a further argument in favor of os that Paul has in other cases similarly connected μvorηptov with some form of the verb φανερόω. In Coll. i. 26, 27, he has τὸ μυστήριον τὸ ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν γενεῶν, νυνὶ δὲ ἐφανερώθη τοῖς ἁγίοις αὐτοῦ, οἷς ἠθέλησαν ὁ Θεὸς γνωρίσαι τὶς ὁ πλοῦτος τῆς δόξης τοῦ μυστηρίου τούτου ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, ὅς ἐστι Χρίστος ἐν ὑμῖν, ἡ ἐλπὶς τῆς δόξης. Here μυστήριον is not only followed by ἐφανερώθη, but a little later τοῦ μυστήριου is followed by ὅς ἐστι Χρίστος, which shows that μυστήριον may be applied personally to Christ, and followed by the masculine relative, unless the gender is here due to attraction. In Rom. xvi. 25, 26, Paul again connects μvoτýpov with φανερόω: κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν μυστηρίου χρόνοις αἰωνίοις σεσιγημένου, φανέρωθέντος δὲ νῦν, κ. τ. λ. In favor of os, has sometimes been adduced the argument that Deós seems to be an alteration made for the purpose of its use in polemic theology, as giving the orthodox an additional text to use against the Arians and other heretics. But there seems to have been no intentional corruption of this sort, for we cannot see that there was any distinction between the orthodox and the heretics in their use of the passage. Some defenders of the deity of Christ favor one, and some the other reading. Both Gregory of Nyssa in the East, and Didymus at Alexandria, simultaneously exhibit Deós, the former using it as freely as if it were the universally received reading; while, on the other hand, the multifarious polemical writings of Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, and Epiphanius nowhere contain this passage, except |