this has been freely accorded, on no intelligible principle can more be claimed for any two MSS. in the world. The rejoinder to all this is sufficiently obvious. Mistrust will no doubt have been thrown over the evidence borne to the text of Scripture in a thousand other places by Cod. B and Cod. א, _after demonstration that those two Codices exhibit a mutilated text_ in the present place. But what else is this but the very point requiring demonstration? Why may not these two be right, and all the other MSS. wrong? I propose, therefore, that we reverse the process. Proceed we to examine the evidence borne by these two witnesses on certain _other_ occasions which admit of _no_ difference of opinion; or next to none. Let us endeavour, I say, to ascertain _the character of the Witnesses_ by a patient and unprejudiced examination of their Evidence,—not in one place, or in two, or in three; but on several important occasions, and throughout. If we find it invariably consentient and invariably truthful, then of course a mighty presumption will have been established, the very strongest possible, that their adverse testimony in respect of the conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel must needs be worthy of all acceptation. But if, on the contrary, our inquiries shall conduct us to the very opposite result,—what else can happen but that our confidence in these two MSS. will be hopelessly shaken? We must in such case be prepared to admit that it is just as likely as not that this is only _one more occasion_ on which these “two false witnesses” have conspired to witness falsely. If, at this juncture, extraneous evidence of an entirely trustworthy kind can be procured to confront them: above all, if some one ancient witness of unimpeachable veracity can be found who shall bear contradictory evidence: what other alternative will be left us but to reject their testimony in respect of S. Mark xvi. 9-20 with something like indignation; and to acquiesce in the belief of universal Christendom for eighteen hundred years that these twelve verses are just as much entitled to our unhesitating acceptance as any other twelve verses in the Gospel which can be named?