es (p.
6).--Lachmann's fatal principle (p. 8) the clue to the unfavourable
verdict of Tischendorf (p. 9), of Tregelles (p. 10), of Alford (p.
12); which has been generally adopted by subsequent Scholars and
Divines (p. 13).--The nature of the present inquiry explained (p.
15.)

It is only since the appearance of Griesbach's second edition [1796-1806]
that Critics of the New Testament have permitted themselves to handle the
last twelve verses of S. Mark's Gospel with disrespect. Previous critical
editions of the New Testament are free from this reproach. "There is no
reason for doubting the genuineness of this portion of Scripture," wrote
Mill in 1707, after a review of the evidence (as far as he was acquainted
with it) for and against. Twenty-seven years later, appeared Bengel's
edition of the New Testament (1734); and Wetstein, at the end of another
seventeen years (1751-2), followed in the same field. Both editors, after
rehearsing the adverse testimony _in extenso_, left the passage in
undisputed possession of its place. Alter in 1786-7, and Birch in 1788,(7)
(suspicious as the latter evidently was of its genuineness,) followed
their predecessors' example. But Matthaei, (who also brought his labours
to a close in the year 1788,) was not content to give a silent suffrage.
He had been for upwards of fourteen years a laborious collator of Greek
MSS. of the New Testament, and was so convinced of the insufficiency of
the arguments which had been brought against these twelve verses of S.
Mark, that with no ordinary warmth, no common acuteness, he insisted on
their genuineness.

"With Griesbach," (remarks Dr. Tregelles,)(8) "Texts which may be called
really critical begin;" and Griesbach is the first to insist that the
concluding verses of S. Mark are spurious. That he did not suppose the
second Gospel to have always ended at verse 8, we have seen already.(9) He
was of opinion, however, that "at some very remote period, the original
ending of the Gospel perished,--disappeared perhaps _from the Evangelist's
own copy_,--and that the present ending was by some one substituted in its
place." Griesbach further invented the following elaborate and
extraordinary hypothesis to account for the existence of S. Mark xvi.
9-20.

He invites his readers to believe that when, (before the end of the second
century,) the four Evangelical narratives were collected into a volume and
dignified with the title of "The Go