he citations in Origen; a peculiarity
which recommends Cod. L, (as it recommends three cursive Codices of the
Gospels, 1, 33, 69,) to the especial favour of a school with which
whatever is found in Cod. B is necessarily right. It is described as the
work of an ignorant foreign copyist, who probably wrote with several MSS.
before him; but who is found to have been wholly incompetent to determine
which reading to adopt and which to reject. Certain it is that he
interrupts himself, at the end of ver. 8, to write as follows:--

"_SOMETHING TO THIS EFFECT IS ALSO MET WITH_:

"All that was commanded them they immediately rehearsed unto Peter
and the rest. And after these things, from East even unto West,
did JESUS Himself send forth by their means the holy and
incorruptible message of eternal Salvation.

"_BUT THIS ALSO IS MET WITH AFTER THE WORDS, _'FOR THEY WERE
AFRAID:'

"Now, when He was risen early, the first day of the week,"(217)
&c.

It cannot be needful that I should delay the reader with any remarks on
such a termination of the Gospel as the foregoing. It was evidently the
production of some one who desired to remedy the conspicuous
incompleteness of his own copy of S. Mark's Gospel, but who had imbibed so
little of the spirit of the Evangelical narrative that he could not in the
least imitate the Evangelist's manner. As for the scribe who executed
Codex L, he was evidently incapable of distinguishing the grossest
fabrication from the genuine text. The same worthless supplement is found
in the margin of the Hharklensian Syriac (A.D. 616), and in a few other
quarters of less importance.(218)--I pass on, with the single remark that I
am utterly at a loss to understand on what principle Cod. L,--a solitary
MS. of the viiith or ixth century which exhibits an exceedingly vicious
text,--is to be thought entitled to so much respectful attention on the
present occasion, rebuked as it is for the fallacious evidence it bears
concerning the last twelve verses of the second Gospel by all the
seventeen remaining Uncials, (three of which are from 300 to 400 years
more ancient than itself;) and by _every cursive copy of the Gospels in
existence_. Quite certain at least is it that not the faintest additional
probability is established by Cod. L that S. Mark's Gospel when it left
the hands of its inspired Author was in a mutilated condition. The copyist
shews that he was as well acq