[He quotes two opinions;--the opinion of an advocate who questions their genuineness, and an opposing opinion which he evidently considers the better of the two, since he rests upon the latter and casts a slur upon the former as being an off-hand expedient; besides that he quotes several words out of the twelve verses, and argues at great length upon the second hypothesis.
On the other hand, one and that the least faulty of the two MSS.
witnessing for the omission confesses mutely its error by leaving a vacant space where the omitted verses should have come in; whilst the other was apparently copied from an exemplar containing the verses[260].
And all the other copies insert them, except L and a few cursives which propose a manifestly spurious substitute for the verses,--together with all the versions, except one Old Latin (k), the Lewis Codex, two Armenian MSS.

and an Arabic Lectionary,--besides more than ninety testimonies in their favour from more than 'forty-four' ancient witnesses[261];--such is the evidence which weighs down the conflicting testimony over and over and over again.

Beyond all this, the cause of the error is patent.

Some scribe mistook the [Greek: Telos] occurring at the end of an Ecclesiastical Lection at the close of chapter xvi.

8 for the 'End' of St.Mark's Gospel[262].
That is the simple truth: and the question will now be asked by an intelligent reader, 'If such is the balance of evidence, how is it that learned critics still doubt the genuineness of those verses ?' To this question there can be but one answer, viz.