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e two codices; and that connexion is fatal to any claim which might be set up on their behalf as wholly independent witnesses.(135) (_c_) Further, it is evident that both alike have been subjected, probably during the process of transcription, to the same depraving influences. But because such statements require to be established by an induction of instances, the reader's attention must now be invited to a few samples of the grave blemishes which disfigure our two oldest copies of the Gospel. 1. And first, since it is the omission of the end of S. Mark's Gospel which has given rise to the present discussion, it becomes a highly significant circumstance that the original scribe of Cod. {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} had _also_ omitted the _end of the Gospel according to S. John_.(136) In this suppression of ver. 25, Cod. {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} stands _alone_ among MSS. A cloud of primitive witnesses vouch for the genuineness of the verse. Surely, it is nothing else but the _reductio ad absurdum_ of a theory of recension, (with Tischendorf in his last edition,) to accommodate our printed text to the vicious standard of the original penman of Cod. {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} and bring the last chapter of S. John's Gospel to a close at ver. 24! Cod. B, on the other hand, omits the whole of those two solemn verses wherein S. Luke describes our LORD's "Agony and bloody Sweat," together with the act of the ministering Angel.(137) As to the genuineness of those verses, recognised as they are by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Didymus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Theodoret, by all the oldest versions, and by almost every MS. in existence, including Cod. {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~},--it admits of _no_ doubt. Here then is proof positive that in order to account for omissions from the Gospel in the oldest of the uncials, there is no need whatever to resort to the hypothesis that such portions of the Gospel are not the genuine work of the Evangelist. "The admitted error of Cod. B in this place," (to quote the words of Scrivener,) "ought to make some of its advocates more chary of their confidence in cases where it is less countenanced by other witnesses than in the instance before us." Cod. B (not Cod. {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}) is further guilty of the "grave error" (as Dean Alford justly styles it,) of omitting that solemn record of the Evangelist:--"Then said JESUS, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." It
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