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he did, I did not do so without good reason, and I would have the reader imagine that there is matter for deliberation. I am not aware that anything new needs particularly to be supplied : I will mention a few points, which bear upon the subject.
III. As the Complutensian editors , on the authority of Latin manu- scripts, omitted in ch. ii. the former part of ver. 14, and in ch. v. the last clause of ver. 8, although they found them in Greek manu- scripts, so they restored this very seventh verse, although not con- tained in the Greek manuscripts ; thus they allowed themselves singular liberty in this Epistle. The undisguised confession of Stunica, respecting the Latin manuscripts here employed, is of more weight than all suspicion respecting two Greek Vatican manuscripts, one of which did not contain the passage, while the other suggested it to Stunica himself, or his colleagues. That the Spanish editors here followed the Vatican copy, Erasmus does not plainly assert, as Twells understands him ; he only says, if I am not mistaken. If Amelotus afterwards read the sentence in the Vatican Manuscript, we must see that it does not in this instance Latinize.1
IV. Erasmus obtained from Britain, by the instrumentality of some one or other, a leaf. He himself distrusted it : he related the causes of his distrust, which were not unreasonable. Nothing but mere spontaneous credulity can make from this source an adequate (re- liable) British manuscript. The Complutensian editors gave one Greek version of the sentence from Latin waiters ; the British writer brought forward by Erasmus gave another ; the Greek translator of the Council of Lateran another; the interpolator of the Montfortian Manuscript another.
V. That the sentence was read by the Stephens in no Greek manuscript, the margin of the Latin Bible of Robert (Stephens) of itself proves.
It is altogether unnecessary to quote the editions of the Stephens and the others. All the rest followed Erasmus and the Compluten- sian edition in omitting or expressing the sentence.
VI. There is no great number of Greek manuscripts in which the epistles, for instance those of John, are contained: and of those which are now extant in considerable numbers, with very few ex- ceptions none exceed the age of a thousand years ; the rest are con- siderably, or even much more, recent. Therefore it is the less re-
1 That is, Bengel suspects that the Greek of the Vatican MS., if indeed it contains, as Amelotus says, this passage as to the three heavenly witnesses, must be interpolated from the Latin MSS., and not from original Greek MSS.
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