" But that these are appendages made by an editor or scribe
is evident in itself, and moreover {409} in many instances is shown by
such sentences as these, "And this we have found in a certain copy in
the 8th volume:" "This is in some copies, as if omitted from the 8th
book." I find no one instance of Eusebius bringing a chapter or a
treatise to its close by any religious sentiment, or any termination of
the nature here contemplated.
It is also difficult to conceive that any author, having the flow and
connexion of the whole passage present to his mind, would himself have
appended this ejaculation as we now find it. We know that editors and
scribes often attached a sentiment of their own to the closing words of
an author. And it seems far more probable, that a scribe not having the
full drift of the argument mainly before him, but catching the
expression, "heavenly vision," appended such an ejaculation. That the
writer himself should introduce such a sentence by the connecting link
of a relative pronoun feminine, which must of necessity be referred, not
as the grammatical construction would suggest to the feminine noun
preceding it,--not to any word expressed or understood in the
intervening clause preceding it,--not to the last word in the sentence
even before that intervening clause, nor yet to the principal and
leading subject immediately under discussion and thrice repeated,--but
to a noun incidentally introduced, seems, to say the least, strange and
unnatural.
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