It should perhaps be stated in passing, that Griesbach was driven into this curious maze of unsupported conjecture by the exigencies of his “Recension Theory;” which, inasmuch as it has been long since exploded, need not now occupy us. But it is worth observing that the argument already exhibited, (such as it is,) breaks down under the weight of the very first fact which its learned author is obliged to lay upon it. Codex B.,—the solitary manuscript witness for _omitting_ the clause in question, (for Codex א had not yet been discovered,)—had been already claimed by Griesbach as a chief exponent of his so-called “Alexandrine Recension.” But then, on the Critic’s own hypothesis, (as we have seen already,) Codex B. ought, on the contrary, to have _contained_ it. How was that inconvenient fact to be got over? Griesbach quietly remarks in a foot-note that Codex B. “_has affinity_ with the Eastern family of MSS.”—The misfortune of being saddled with a worthless theory was surely never more apparent. By the time we have reached this point in the investigation, we are reminded of nothing so much as of the weary traveller who, having patiently pursued an _ignis fatuus_ through half the night, beholds it at last vanish; but not until it has conducted him up to his chin in the mire. Neither Hug, nor Scholz his pupil,—who in 1808 and 1830 respectively followed Griesbach with modifications of his recension-theory,—concurred in the unfavourable sentence which their illustrious predecessor had passed on the concluding portion of S. Mark’s Gospel. The latter even eagerly vindicated its genuineness.(10) But with Lachmann,—whose unsatisfactory text of the Gospels appeared in 1842,—originated a new principle of Textual Revision; the principle, namely, of paying exclusive and absolute deference to the testimony of a few arbitrarily selected ancient documents; no regard being paid to others of the same or of yet higher antiquity. This is not the right place for discussing this plausible and certainly most convenient scheme of textual revision. That it leads to conclusions little short of irrational, is certain. I notice it only because it supplies the clue to the result which, as far as S. Mark xvi. 9-20 is concerned, has been since arrived at by Dr. Tischendorf, Dr. Tregelles, and Dean Alford,(11)—the three latest critics who have formally undertaken to reconstruct the sacred Text.