Six Fathers of the Church have been examined who are commonly represented as bearing hostile testimony to the last Twelve Verses of S. Mark's Gospel; and they have been [pg 066] easily reduced to one. Three of them, (Hesychius, Jerome, Victor,) prove to be echoes, not voices. The remaining two, (Gregory of Nyssa and Severus,) are neither voices nor echoes, but merely names: Gregory of Nyssa having really no more to do with this discussion than Philip of Macedon; and “Severus” and “Hesychius” representing one and the same individual. Only by a Critic seeking to mislead his reader will any one of these five Fathers be in future cited as witnessing against the genuineness of S. Mark xvi. 9-20. Eusebius is the solitary witness who survives the ordeal of exact inquiry.[117] But,

I. Eusebius, (as we have seen), instead of proclaiming his distrust of this portion of the Gospel, enters upon an elaborate proof that its contents are not inconsistent with what is found in the Gospels of S. Matthew and S. John. His testimony is reducible to two innocuous and wholly unconnected propositions: the first,—That there existed in his day a vast number of copies in which the last chapter of S. Mark's Gospel ended abruptly at ver. 8; (the correlative of which of course would be that there also existed a vast number which were furnished with the present ending.) The second,—That by putting a comma after the word Ἀναστάς, S. Mark xvi. 9, is capable of being reconciled with S. Matth. xxviii. 1[118].... I profess myself unable to understand how it can be pretended that Eusebius would have subscribed to the opinion of Tischendorf, Tregelles, and the rest, that the Gospel of S. Mark was never finished by its inspired Author, or was mutilated before it came abroad; at all events, that the last Twelve Verses are spurious.

II. The observations of Eusebius are found to have been adopted, and in part transcribed, by an unknown writer of the vith century,—whether Hesychius or Severus is not certainly known: but if it were Hesychius, then it was not Severus; if Severus, then not Hesychius. This writer, however, (whoever he may have been,) is careful to convince us that individually he entertained no doubt whatever about the genuineness of this part of Scripture, for he says that he writes in order to remove the (hypothetical) objections of others, and to silence their (imaginary) doubts. Nay, he freely quotes the verses as genuine, and declares that they were read in his day on a certain Sunday night in the public Service of the Church.... To represent such an one,—(it matters nothing, I repeat, whether we call him “Hesychius of Jerusalem” or “Severus of Antioch,”)—as a hostile witness, is simply to misrepresent the facts of the case. He is, on the contrary, the strenuous champion of the verses which he is commonly represented as impugning.

III. As for Jerome, since that illustrious Father comes before us in this place as a translator of Eusebius only, he is no more responsible for what Eusebius says concerning S. Mark xvi. 9-20, than Hobbes of Malmesbury is responsible for anything that Thucydides has related concerning the Peloponnesian war. Individually, however, it is certain that Jerome was convinced of the genuineness of S. Mark xvi. 9-20: for in two different places of his writings he not only quotes the 9th and 14th verses, but he exhibits all the twelve in the Vulgate.

IV. Lastly, Victor of Antioch, who wrote in an age when Eusebius was held to be an infallible oracle on points of Biblical Criticism,—having dutifully rehearsed, (like the rest,) the feeble expedient of that illustrious Father for harmonizing S. Mark xvi. 9 with the narrative of S. Matthew,—is observed to cite the statements of Eusebius concerning the last Twelve Verses of S. Mark, only in order to refute them. Not that he opposes opinion to opinion,—(for the opinions of Eusebius and of Victor of Antioch on this behalf were probably identical;) but statement he meets with counter-statement,—fact he confronts with fact. Scarcely [pg 068] can anything be imagined more emphatic than his testimony, or more conclusive.

For the reader is requested to observe that here is an Ecclesiastic, writing in the first half of the vth century, who expressly witnesses to the genuineness of the Verses in dispute. He had made reference, he says, and ascertained their existence in very many MSS. (ὡς ἐν πλείστοις). He had derived his text from “accurate” ones: (ἐξ ἀκριβῶν ἀντιγράφων.) More than that: he leads his reader to infer that he had personally resorted to the famous Palestinian Copy, the text of which was held to exhibit the inspired verity, and had satisfied himself that the concluding section of S. Mark's Gospel was there. He had, therefore, been either to Jerusalem, or else to Cæsarea; had inquired for those venerable records which had once belonged to Origen and Pamphilus;[119] and had inspected them. Testimony more express, more weighty,—I was going to say, more decisive,—can scarcely be imagined. It may with truth be said to close the present discussion.

With this, in fact, Victor lays down his pen. So also may I. I submit that nothing whatever which has hitherto come before us lends the slightest countenance to the modern dream that S. Mark's Gospel, as it left the hands of its inspired Author, ended abruptly at ver. 8. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome; neither Severus of Antioch nor Hesychius of Jerusalem; certainly not Victor of Antioch; least of all Gregory of Nyssa,—yield a particle of support to that monstrous fancy. The notion is an invention, a pure imagination of the Critics ever since the days of Griesbach.

It remains to be seen whether the MSS. will prove somewhat less unaccommodating.

VII. For it can be of no possible avail, at this stage of the discussion, to appeal to

Euthymius Zigabenus,