172. To what extent the earliest MSS of the distinctively Western ancestry already contained distinctive Western readings, cannot now be known. However they may have differed from the apostolic autographs, there was at all events no little subsequent and homogeneously progressive change. It is not uncommon to find one, two, or three of the most independent and most authentically Western documents in agreement with the best representatives of Non-Western Pre-Syrian texts against the bulk of Western authorities under circumstances which render it highly difficult to account for the concurrence by mixture: and in such cases these detached documents must attest a state of the Western text when some of its characteristic corruptions had not yet arisen, and others had. On the other hand it is probable that even the relatively latest Western readings found in distinct provinces of Western documents, for instance in different languages, were already in existence at a very early date of Church history, it may be before the end of the second century.
173. The chief and most constant characteristic of the Western readings is a love of paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences were changed, omitted, and inserted with astonishing freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness. They often exhibit a certain rapid vigour and fluency which can hardly be called a rebellion against the calm and reticent strength of the apostolic speech, for it is deeply influenced by it, but which, not less than a tamer spirit of textual correction, is apt to ignore pregnancy and balance of sense, and especially those meanings which are conveyed by exceptional choice or collocation of words. An extreme
