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proved its Insufficiency. They fay, and they faytruly, that the great Source of Omissions in theMSS of the Greek Testaments, is the Likeness ofBeginning and Ending in contiguous Passages, whichis remarkably the Cafe of i John v. 7. and of thefollowing Verse . In such Circumstances, the Co-st ft s so frequently omit the former of the two,that if, in the Case before us, it had been foundin all the Greek MSS, we should have had moreto wonder at than we have now, that it appears inso few. A Transeriber, who had begun with theseventh Verse , and had written on rfg einv ot px( 3 -t vgfvTtCy returning to his Copy , and casually light-ing on the same Words in the Verse following, rea-dily went on with the Remainder of it. And thusbegan the Omijftoti of the disputed Text. If thisMistake happened early (as it must have been olderthan the Syriac Version, which wants the Para-graph) when Copies of this Epistle were veryscarce, this will at once account for the Absence ofthe seventh Verse in most of the Greek MSS, andfor the Silence of so many Greek and Latin Fathers.in that Respect. The Greeks could not cite whattheir Books were defective in; and many of theLatins , using Copies of the old Italick , that hadbeen reformed after the Greek in this very Parti-cular, could have nothing to lay of the disputedVerse . Whilst others again, living in the sameCountries , and near the same Age, who had Co-pies which had not undergone the Alteration , butread the Passage as it stood when the Italick Ver-sion was sirst made; these, I fay, cited and strenu-ously insisted on 1 Johti v. 7. as deciffice in Favour ofa consubftantial Trinity .