(3.) Now, suppose we had S. Mark back among us: and suppose that he, on being shewn this objection, were to be heard delivering himself somewhat to the following effect:—“Aye. But men may not find fault with _that_ turn of phrase. I derived it from Simon Peter’s lips. I have always suspected that it was a kind of echo, so to say, of what he and ‘the other Disciple’ had many a time rehearsed in the hearing of the wondering Church concerning the Magdalene on the morning of the Resurrection.” And then we should have remembered the familiar place in the fourth Gospel:— γύναι τί κλαίεις; τίνα ζητεῖς; ἘΚΕΊΝΗ δοκοῦσα κ.τ.λ. After which, the sentence would not have seemed at all strange, even though it be “without a copulative:”— ἀφ᾽ ἧς ἐκβεβλήκει ἑπτὰ δαιμόνια. ἘΚΕΊΝΗ πορευθεῖσα κ.τ.λ. (4.) For after all, the _only_ question to be asked is,—Will any one pretend that such a circumstance as this is _suspicious_? Unless _that_ be asserted, I see not what is gained by raking together,—(_as one easily might do in any section of any of the Gospels_,)—every minute peculiarity of form or expression which can possibly be found within the space of these twelve verses. It is an evidence of nothing so much as an incorrigible coarseness of critical fibre, that every slight variety of manner or language should be thus pounced upon and represented as a note of spuriousness,—in the face of (_a_) the unfaltering tradition of the Church universal that the document has _never_ been hitherto suspected: and (_b_) the known proclivity of all writers, as free moral and intellectual agents, sometimes to deviate from their else invariable practice.—May I not here close the discussion? There will perhaps be some to remark, that however successfully the foregoing objections may seem to have been severally disposed of, yet that the combined force of such a multitude of slightly suspicious circumstances must be not only appreciable, but even remain an inconvenient, not to say a formidable fact. Let me point out that the supposed remark is nothing else but a fallacy; which is detected the instant it is steadily looked at. For if there really had remained after the discussion of each of the foregoing XXV Articles, a slight residuum of suspiciousness, _then_ of course the aggregate of so many fractions would have amounted to something in the end. But since it has been proved that there is absolutely _nothing at all_ suspicious in _any_ of the alleged circumstances which have been hitherto examined, the case becomes altogether different. The sum of ten thousand nothings is still nothing.(296) This may be conveniently illustrated by an appeal to the only charge which remains to be examined. (XXVI. and XXVII.) The absence from these twelve verses of the adverbs εὐθέως and πάλιν,—(both of them favourite words with the second Evangelist,)—has been pointed out as one more suspicious circumstance. Let us take the words singly:—