on
the authority of [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL[Symbol: Delta],--a most suspicious
company, and three cursives; besides a few copies of the Old Latin,
including the Vulgate:--[Greek: amen lego hymin, anektoteron estai
Sodomois e Gomorrois en hemerai kriseos, he te polei ekeine]. It is
pretended that this is nothing else but an importation from the parallel
place of St. Matthew's Gospel (x. 15). But that is impossible: for, as
the reader sees at a glance, a delicate but decisive note of
discrimination has been set on the two places. St. Mark writes, [Greek:
SodomOIS E GomorrOIS]: St. Matthew, [Greek: GE SodomON KAI GomorrON].
And this threefold, or rather fourfold, diversity of expression has
existed from the beginning; for it has been faithfully retained all down
the ages: it exists to this hour in every known copy of the Gospel,--
except of course those nine which omit the sentence altogether. There
can be therefore no doubt about its genuineness. The critics of the
modern school (Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and
Hort) seek in vain to put upon us a mutilated text by omitting those
fifteen words. The two places are clearly independent of each other.

It does but remain to point out that the exclusion of these fifteen
words from the text of St. Mark, has merely resulted from the influence
of the parallel place in St. Luke's Gospel (ix. 5),--where nothing
whatever is found[225] corresponding with St. Matt. x. 5--St. Mark vi.
11. The process of Assimilation therefore has been actively at work
here, although not in the way which some critics suppose. It has
resulted, not in the insertion of the words in dispute in the case of
the very many copies; but on the contrary in their omission from the
very few. And thus, one more brand is set on [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL[Symbol:
Delta] and their Latin allies,--which will be found _never_ to conspire
together exclusively except to mislead.

Sec. 7.

Because a certain clause (e.g. [Greek: kai he lalia sou homoiazei] in
St. Mark xiv. 70) is absent from Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL, Lachmann,
Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort entirely eject these
five precious words from St. Mark's Gospel, Griesbach having already
voted them 'probably spurious.' When it has been added that many copies
of the Old Latin also, together with the Vulgate and the Egyptian
versions, besides Eusebius, ignore their existence, the present writer
scarcely expects to be listened to if he