by the other binary combinations, evidently remains unaffected.
307. When א is tested in like manner, the results are quite different. None of its binary combinations, if their readings are examined consecutively, are found to be habitually of good character, though here and there readings occur which are not to be hastily dismissed. The readings of אD in the Gospels and Acts are often interesting, but they are shown by the Versions and Fathers which usually support them to be simply Western: the character of אD with the Old Latin, of א with the Old Latin, and of D with the Old Latin is identical. Except in the peculiar Western non-interpolations we have never found reason to trust אD. It is worth mention here that much the most considerable deduction to be made from the superiority of text in Tischendorf's editio octava to his earlier editions is due to the indiscriminate vagueness of his estimate of א: a large proportion of those readings adopted by him which we have been obliged to reject are ordinary Western readings which are attested by א in consequence of the Western element which it contains. With אD of the Gospels may be classed אG3 of the Pauline Epistles; while the rarer combination אD2 of the Pauline Epistles contains both bad and good readings, the latter being apparently confined to the parts where Β is defective, and elsewhere to those variations in which the reading of Β is that of its Western element peculiar to these books, so that in the absence of this element we might have expected אBD2 in place of אD2. Trial by Internal Evidence is likewise unfavourable to such groups as in the Gospels אL, אC, אT, אΞ, אZ, א 33, in St Mark אΔ; in the Acts אA, אC, אE2, א 61; in the Catholic Epistles אA, אC, אP2; in the
