. "This" (he adds) "is the end of the Gospel.
Mark makes no extended mention of the Ascension."(48) Elsewhere he has an
unmistakable reference to S. Mark xvi. 9.(49)

XIII. JEROME, on a point like this, is entitled to more attention than any
other Father of the Church. Living at a very early period, (for he was
born in 331 and died in 420,)--endowed with extraordinary Biblical
learning,--a man of excellent judgment,--and a professed Editor of the New
Testament, for the execution of which task he enjoyed extraordinary
facilities,--his testimony is most weighty. Not unaware am I that Jerome is
commonly supposed to be a witness on the opposite side: concerning which
mistake I shall have to speak largely in Chapter V. But it ought to be
enough to point out that we should not have met with these last twelve
verses in the Vulgate, had Jerome held them to be spurious.(50) He
familiarly quotes the 9th verse in one place of his writings;(51) in
another place he makes the extraordinary statement that in certain of the
copies, (especially the Greek,) was found after ver. 14 _the reply of the
eleven Apostles_, when our SAVIOUR "upbraided them with their unbelief and
hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen Him after
He was risen."(52) To discuss so weak and worthless a forgery,--no trace of
which is found in any MS. in existence, and of which nothing whatever is
known except what Jerome here tells us,--would be to waste our time indeed.
The fact remains, however, that Jerome, besides giving these last twelve
verses a place in the Vulgate, quotes S. Mark xvi. 14, as well as ver. 9,
in the course of his writings.

XIV. It was to have been expected that AUGUSTINE would quote these verses:
but he more than quotes them. He brings them forward again and
again,(53)--discusses them as the work of S. Mark,--remarks that "in diebus
Paschalibus," S. Mark's narrative of the Resurrection was publicly read in
the Church.(54) All this is noteworthy. Augustine flourished A.D. 395-430.

XV. and XVI. Another very important testimony to the genuineness of the
concluding part of S. Mark's Gospel is furnished by the unhesitating
manner in which NESTORIUS, the heresiarch, quotes ver. 20; and CYRIL of
ALEXANDRIA accepts his quotation, adding a few words of his own.(55) Let
it be borne in mind that this is tantamount to the discovery of _two_
dated codices containing the last twelve verses of S. Mark,--and _that_
date _anterior_