y with
thoughtful and learned Divines that they have felt themselves
constrained, as their last resource, to cast about for some hypothesis
which shall at once account for the absence of these verses from so many
copies of St. John's Gospel, and yet retain them for their rightful
owner and author,--St. John. Singular to relate, the assumption which
has best approved itself to their judgement has been, that there must
have existed two editions of St. John's Gospel,--the earlier edition
without, the later edition with, the incident under discussion. It is I
presume, in order to conciliate favour to this singular hypothesis, that
it has been further proposed to regard St. John v. 3, 4 and the whole of
St. John xxi, (besides St. John vii. 53-viii. 11), as after-thoughts of
the Evangelist.

1. But this is unreasonable: for nothing else but _the absence_ of St.
John vii. 53-viii. 11, from so many copies of the Gospel has constrained
the Critics to regard those verses with suspicion. Whereas, on the
contrary, there is not known to exist a copy in the world which omits so
much as a single verse of chap. xxi. Why then are we to assume that the
whole of that chapter was away from the original draft of the Gospel?
Where is the evidence for so extravagant an assumption?

2. So, concerning St. John v. 3, 4: to which there really attaches no
manner of doubt, as I have elsewhere shewn[616]. Thirty-two precious
words in that place are indeed omitted by [Symbol: Aleph]BC:
twenty-seven by D. But by this time the reader knows what degree of
importance is to be attached to such an amount of evidence. On the other
hand, they are found in _all other copies_: are vouched for by the
Syriac[617] and the Latin versions: in the Apostolic Constitutions, by
Chrysostom, Cyril, Didymus, and Ammonius, among the Greeks,--by
Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine among the Latins. Why a passage
so attested is to be assumed to be an after-thought of the Evangelist
has never yet been explained: no, nor ever will be.

(5) Assuming, however, just for a moment the hypothesis correct for
argument's sake, viz. that in the second edition of St. John's Gospel
the history of the woman taken in adultery appeared for the first time.
Invite the authors of that hypothesis to consider what follows. The
discovery that five out of six of the oldest uncials extant (to reckon
here the fragment T) are without the verses in question; which yet are
contained in ninety-nin