(1st.) It is plain from internal considerations that the improbability of the hypothesis is excessive; “the contents of these Verses being such as to preclude the supposition that they were the work of a post-Apostolic period. The very difficulties which they present afford the strongest presumption of their genuineness.” No fabricator of a supplement to S. Mark’s Gospel would have ventured on introducing so many minute _seeming_ discrepancies: and certainly “his contemporaries would not have accepted and transmitted such an addition,” if he had. It has also been shewn at great length that the Internal Evidence for the genuineness of these Verses is overwhelmingly strong.(477) But, (2nd.) Even external Evidence is not wanting. It has been acutely pointed out long since, that the absence of a vast assemblage of various Readings in this place, is, in itself, a convincing argument that we have here to do with no spurious appendage to the Gospel.(478) Were this a deservedly suspected passage, it must have shared the fate of all other deservedly (or undeservedly) suspected passages. It never could have come to pass that the various Readings which these Twelve Verses exhibit would be _considerably fewer_ than those which attach to the last twelve verses of any of the other three Gospels. (3rd.) And then surely, if the original Gospel of S. Mark had been such an incomplete work as is feigned, the fact would have been notorious from the first, and must needs have become the subject of general comment.(479) It may be regarded as certain that so extraordinary a circumstance would have been largely remarked upon by the Ancients, and that evidence of the fact would have survived in a hundred quarters. It is, I repeat, simply incredible that Tradition would have proved so utterly neglectful of her office as to remain _quite_ silent on such a subject, if the facts had been such as are imagined. Either Papias, or else John the Presbyter,—Justin Martyr, or Hegesippus, or one of the “Seniores apud Irenæum,”—Clemens Alexandrinus, or Tertullian, or Hippolytus,—if not Origen, yet at least Eusebius,—if not Eusebius, yet certainly Jerome,—_some_ early Writer, I say, must _certainly_ have recorded the tradition that S. Mark’s Gospel, as it came from the hands of its inspired author, was an incomplete or unfinished work. The silence of the Ancients, joined to the inherent improbability of the conjecture,—(_that_ silence so profound, _this_ improbability so gross!)—is enough, I submit, _in the entire absence of Evidence on the other side_, to establish _the very contradictory_ of the alternative which recent Critics are so strenuous in recommending to our acceptance.