The subsequent history of this growth of error might have been foreseen. Scarcely had the passage been pieced together than it began to shew symptoms of disintegration; and in the course of a few centuries, it had so effectually disappeared, that tokens of it here and there are only to be found in a few of the earliest documents. First, the epithet ({ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}) was too firmly rooted to admit of a sentence of perpetual banishment from the text. Besides retaining its place in every known copy of the Gospels except eight(535), it survives to this hour in a vast majority of the most ancient documents. Thus, { ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~} is found in Justin Martyr(536) and in ps.-Tatian(537):--in the remains of the Marcosian(538),--and of the Naassene(539) Gnostics;--as well as in the Peshitto,--and in the Old Latin versions:--in the Sahidic,--and the Bohairic version,--besides in the Clementine Homilies(540), in Cureton and Lewis,--and in the Vulgate:--in Origen(541),--in Athanasius(542),--and in Basil(543),--and in Cyril of Jerusalem(544):--in Ephraem Syrus(545), and in Gregory of Nyssa(546): in Macarius Magnes(547),--and in Chrysostom(548):--in Juvencus(549),--Hilary(550),--Gaudentius(551),--Jerome(552),--and Augustine(553);--lastly in Vigilius Tapsensis(554):--in Cyril Alex.(555),--in Theodoret(556),--in Cod. C,--in the Harkleian Version,--and in the _Opus imperfectum_(557). So that, at the end of 1700 years, 6 witnesses of the second century,--3 of the third,--14 of the fourth,--4 of the fifth,--2 of the sixth, come back from all parts of Christendom to denounce the liberty taken by the ancients, and to witness to the genuineness of the traditional text.