SECTION II.

On the Text concerning the Mystery of Godliness manifest in the Flesh.

1. WHAT the Latins have done to the foregoing, the Greeks have done to that of St Paul, 1 Timothy iii. 16. For by changing into oc, the abbreviation of Ors, they now read, "Great is the mystery of godliness; GOD manifested in the flesh." Whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome, as well as the rest, read, "Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh." For this is the common reading of the Ethiopic, Syriac, and Latin versions to this day; Jerome's manuscripts having given him no occasion to correct the old vulgar Latin in this place. Grotius adds the Arabic, but the Egyptian Arabic version has Os; and so has the above mentioned Sclavonian version of Cyrillus; for these two versions were made long after the sixth century, wherein the corruption began. With the ancienter versions agree the writers of the first five centuries, both Greeks and Latins. For they, in all their discourses to prove the Deity of the Son, never allege this text, that I can find, as they would all have done, and some of them frequently, had they read "God manifested in the flesh;" and therefore they read ". Ter

tullian adversus Praxeam, and Cyprian adversus Judæos, industriously cite all the places where Christ is called God, but have nothing of this. Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasius, the bishops of the council of Sardica, Epiphanius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Nyssen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Cassian, also Hilary, Lucifer, Jerome, Ambrose, Austin, Phœbadius, Victorinus Afer, Faustinus Diaconus, Pope Leo the Great, Arnobius Junior, Cerealis, Vigilius Tapsensis, Fulgentius, wrote all of them in the fourth and fifth centuries, for the deity of the Son, and incarnation of God; and some of them largely, and in several tracts; and yet I cannot find that they ever allege this text to prove it, excepting that Gregory Nyssen once urges it,* if the passage crept not into him out of some marginal annotation. In all the times of the hot and lasting Arian controversy, it never came into play; though now those disputes are over, they that read "God manifested in the flesh," think it one of the most obvious and pertinent texts for the business.

II. The churches, therefore, of those ages were absolute strangers to this reading. For, on the contrary, their writers, as often as they have any occasion to cite the reading then in use, discover that it was %. For though they cite it not to prove

*Orat. xi. contra Eunom.

the deity of the Son, yet in their commentaries, and sometimes in other discourses, they produce it. And particularly Hilary, lib. 2. de Trinitate, and Ambrose, or whoever of his contemporaries was the author of the commentary on the Epistles, reads '; and so doth St Austin in Genesin ad literam, lib. 5; and Beda in his commentary on this text, where he cites the reading of St Austin, and the author of the commentary on the Epistles, ascribed to Jerome. So also do Primasius and Sedulius in their commentaries on this text; and Victorinus Afer, lib. 1. adversus Arium; and Idacius Clarus, or rather Vigilius Tapsensis, lib. 3. adversus Varimadum, cap. 12; and Fulgentius, c. 2. de Incarnatione; and so did Pope Leo the Great, epist. 20. ad Flavianum; and Pope Gregory the Great, lib. 34. Moral. cap. 7. These ancient Latins all cite the text after this manner, "Great is the mystery of Godliness, which was manifested in the flesh;" as the Latin manuscripts of St Paul's Epistles generally have it to this day; and therefore it cannot be doubted, but that this hath been the constant public reading of the Latin churches from the beginning. So also one of the Arians in a homily, printed in Fulgentius's works, reads %, and interprets it of the Son of God, who was born of the Father ante secula; and of the Virgin, in novissimo tempore. And Fulgentius, in his answer to this homily, found no fault with the citation; but on the contrary, in his first book ad Trasimundum, cap.

6. seems to have read and understood the text after the same manner with other Latins.

III. Now, for the Greeks, I find indeed that they have changed the ancient reading of the text, not only in the manuscripts of St Paul's Epistles, but also in other authors; and yet there are still remaining sufficient instances among them of what the reading was at first. So in Chrysostom's commentary on this epistle, they have now gotten sòs into the text; and yet by considering the commentary itself, I am satisfied that he read . For he neither in this commentary, nor any where else, infers the deity of Christ from this text; nor expounds it, as they do who reads; but with the Latins, who read, understands by it Christ incarnate; or, as he expresses it, "Man made God, and God made Man;" and so leaves it at liberty to be taken for either God or man. And accordingly in one place of his commentary he saith, Εφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ ὁ δημιερο γός. In another place ; "Ανθρωπος ὤφθη ἀναμάρτητος, ἄνθρωπος ἀναλήφθη, ἐκηρύχθη ἐν κόσμῳ, μεθ' ἡμῶν εἶδον αυτὸν oi ayy201. Man appeared without sin; Man was ἄγγελοι. received up; Man was preached in the world; was seen amongst us by angels. Instead ofiarnpáln ἐν σαρκὶ, ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι, &c. he saith, Man appeared without sin; making Man the nominative case to these and all the verbs which follow; which certainly he would not have done, had Orès been their nominative case expressly in the text. He might properly put man

for, but not for os. Neither could he have put ἀναμάρτητος for ἐδικαιώθη, if he had read in his text Θεὸς ἐδικαιώθη.

For what man of common sense would say, that God was made sinless in and through the spirit? But what I have said of Chrysostom will be more evident, when I shall have shown you how afterwards, in the time of the Nestorian controversy, all parties read or is, without any dispute raised about the reading; and how the Greeks have since corrupted the text in Cyril's writings, and changed and as into Os, as they have done in Chrysostom's.

IV. And, first, that the Nestorians read is evident by some fragments of the orations or homilies of Nestorius, sent by him to the Pope, and cited by Arnobius Junior, in the second book of his conflict with Serapion. For there, in order to show what was the opinion of Nestorius, and how he defended it, he cites two of his orations in these words; Non peperit sanctissima Maria Deitatem; nam quod natum est de carne, caro est. Non peperit creatura Creatorem; sed peperit hominem Deitatis ministrum. Non ædificavit Deum, Verbum, Spiritus Sanctus; quod ex ipsâ natum est, de Spiritu Sancto est. Deo itaque virgo templum ex virgine ædificavit. Et paulo post; Qui per se natus est 1 in utero (scilicet ante Luciphorum) D ulo post;