But really, such a remark is wholly without force, as an argument against the genuineness of the passage in which the word is found: for, (1.) Where else in the course of this Gospel _could_ ἀπιστεῖν have occurred? Now, unless some reason can be shewn why the word _should_, or at least _might_ have been employed elsewhere, to remark upon its introduction in this place, _where it __ could scarcely be dispensed with_, as a ground of suspicion, is simply irrational. It might just as well be held to be a suspicious circumstance, in respect of verses 3 and 4, that the verb ἀποκυλίζειν occurs there, _and there only_, in this Gospel. Nothing whatever follows from the circumstance. It is, in fact, a point scarcely deserving of attention. (2.) To be sure, if the case of a verb exclusively used by the two Evangelists, S. Mark and S. Luke, were an unique, or even an exceedingly rare phenomenon, it might have been held to be a somewhat suspicious circumstance that the phenomenon presented itself in the present section. But nothing of the sort is the fact. There are no fewer than forty-five verbs _exclusively used by S. Mark and S. Luke_. And why should not ἀπιστεῖν be, (as it is,) one of them? (3.) Note, next, that this word _is used twice_, and in the course of his last chapter too, also _by S. Luke_. Nowhere else does it occur in the Gospels. It is at least as strange that the word ἀπιστεῖν should be found twice in the last chapter of the Gospel according to S. Luke, as in the last chapter of the Gospel according to S. Mark. And if no shadow of suspicion is supposed to result from this circumstance in the case of the third Evangelist, why should it in the case of the second? (4.) But, lastly, _the noun_ ἀπιστία (which occurs in S. Mark xvi. 14) occurs in two other places of the same Gospel. And this word (which S. Matthew uses twice,) is employed by none of the other Evangelists.—What need to add another word? Do not many of these supposed suspicious circumstances,—_this_ one for example,—prove rather, on closer inspection, to be confirmatory facts? (IX.) We are next assured that μετὰ ταῦτα (ver. 12) “_is not found in Mark_, though many opportunities occurred for using it.” (1.) I suppose that what this learned writer means, is this; that if S. Mark had coveted an opportunity for introducing the phrase μετὰ ταῦτα earlier in his Gospel, he might have found one. (More than this cannot be meant: for _nowhere_ before does S. Mark employ _any other phrase_ to express “after these things,” or “after this,” or “afterwards.”) But what is the obvious inference from the facts of the case, as stated by the learned Critic, except that the blessed Evangelist _must be presumed to have been unconscious of any desire to introduce the expression under consideration on any other occasion except the present_?