3. But the case is altogether different, as all must see, when it is proposed to get rid of the twelve verses which for 1700 years and upwards have formed the conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel; no alternative conclusion being proposed to our acceptance. For let it be only observed what this proposal practically amounts to and means. (_a._) And first, it does _not_ mean that S. Mark himself, with design, brought his Gospel to a close at the words ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. _That_ supposition would in fact be irrational. It does not mean, I say, that by simply leaving out those last twelve verses we shall be restoring the second Gospel to its original integrity. And this it is which makes the present a different case from every other, and necessitates a fuller, if not a different kind of proof. (_b._) What then? It means that although an abrupt and impossible termination would confessedly be the result of omitting verses 9-20, no nearer approximation to the original autograph of the Evangelist is at present attainable. Whether S. Mark was _interrupted_ before he could finish his Gospel,—(as Dr. Tregelles and Professor Norton suggest;)—in which case it will have been published by its Author in an unfinished state: or whether “_the last leaf was torn away_” before a single copy of the original could be procured,—(a view which is found to have recommended itself to Griesbach;)—in which case it will have once had a different termination from at present; which termination however, by the hypothesis, has since been irrecoverably lost;—(and to one of these two wild hypotheses the critics are logically reduced;)—_this_ we are not certainly told. The critics are only agreed in assuming that S. Mark’s Gospel _was at first without the verses which at present conclude it_.