indeed it would have been impossible, owing to the changes of form or language introduced in the process of quotation. We have merely tried to indicate probable or possible lines of Hebraic metrical structure clothed in a Greek dress, first by assigning a separate line to each member, and then by expressing the most salient parallelisms through an artificial ordering of lines. Doubtful cases however have not been rare; and we are far from supposing that the divisions and distributions here employed are exclusively right.
421. The hymns of the Apocalypse shew, strange to say, no metrical arrangement of diction, so that they could be marked only by a narrower column of type; and in Luke ii 14 the diversities of possible construction led to the adoption of the same course. On the other hand the example of Eph. ν 14, which seems to be taken from a Christian source, has emboldened us to give a metrical form to the latter part of 1 Tim. iii 16, the difficulties of which are certainly somewhat lightened by the supposition that it is part of a hymn. But we are unable to recognise in the Pastoral Epistles any other quotations, metrical or not, such as are supposed by some to be introduced or concluded by the phrase πιστὸς ὁ λόγος. We have been especially glad to mark the essentially metrical structure of the Lord's Prayer in St Matthew's Gospel, with its invocation, its first triplet of single clauses with one common burden, expressed after the third but implied after all, and its second triplet of double clauses, variously antithetical in form and sense. Other typographical arrangements speak for themselves.
422, In the order of the different books we have for various reasons not thought it advisable to depart from traditional arrangements. We should have defeated our own purpose had we needlessly mixed up such disputable matter as the chronology and authorship of the apostolic writings with the results of textual criticism, obtained by different methods from evidence of an entirely different kind. We have however followed recent editors in abandoning the Hieronymic order, familiar in modern Europe through the influence of the Latin Vulgate, in favour of the order most highly commended by various Greek authority of the fourth century, the earliest time when we have distinct evidence of the completed Canon as it now stands. It differs from the Hieronymic order in two respects. First, the Acts are immediately followed by the Catholic