He invites his readers to believe that when, (before the end of the second century,) the four Evangelical narratives were collected into a volume and dignified with the title of “The Gospel,”—S. Mark’s narrative was furnished by some unknown individual with its actual termination in order to remedy its manifest incompleteness; and that this volume became the standard of the Alexandrine recension of the text: in other words, became the fontal source of a mighty family of MSS. by Griesbach designated as “Alexandrine.” But there will have been here and there in existence isolated copies of one or more of the Gospels; and in all of these, S. Mark’s Gospel, (by the hypothesis,) will have ended abruptly at the eighth verse. These copies of single Gospels, when collected together, are presumed by Griesbach to have constituted “the Western recension.” If, in codices of this family also, the self-same termination is now all but universally found, the fact is to be accounted for, (Griesbach says,) by the natural desire which possessors of the Gospels will have experienced to supplement their imperfect copies as best they might. “Let this conjecture be accepted,” proceeds the learned veteran,—(unconscious apparently that he has been demanding acceptance for at least half-a-dozen wholly unsupported as well as entirely gratuitous conjectures,)—“and every difficulty disappears; and it becomes perfectly intelligible how there has crept into almost every codex which has been written, from the second century downwards, a section quite different from the original and genuine ending of S. Mark, which disappeared before the four Gospels were collected into a single volume.”—In other words, if men will but be so accommodating as to assume that the conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel disappeared before any one had the opportunity of transcribing the Evangelist’s inspired autograph, they will have no difficulty in understanding that the present conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel was not really written by S. Mark.