ἀφ᾽ ἧς ἐκβεβλήκει ἑπτὰ δαιμόνια. ἘΚΕΊΝΗ πορευθεῖσα κ.τ.λ.
(4.) For after all, the only question to be asked is,—Will any one pretend that such a circumstance as this is suspicious? Unless that be asserted, I see not what is gained by raking together,—(as one easily might do in any section of any of the Gospels,)—every minute peculiarity of form or expression which can possibly be found within the space of these twelve verses. It is an evidence of nothing so much as an incorrigible coarseness of critical fibre, that every slight variety of manner or language should be thus pounced upon [pg 168] and represented as a note of spuriousness,—in the face of (a) the unfaltering tradition of the Church universal that the document has never been hitherto suspected: and (b) the known proclivity of all writers, as free moral and intellectual agents, sometimes to deviate from their else invariable practice.—May I not here close the discussion?
There will perhaps be some to remark, that however successfully the foregoing objections may seem to have been severally disposed of, yet that the combined force of such a multitude of slightly suspicious circumstances must be not only appreciable, but even remain an inconvenient, not to say a formidable fact. Let me point out that the supposed remark is nothing else but a fallacy; which is detected the instant it is steadily looked at.
For if there really had remained after the discussion of each of the foregoing XXV Articles, a slight residuum of suspiciousness, then of course the aggregate of so many fractions would have amounted to something in the end.
But since it has been proved that there is absolutely nothing at all suspicious in any of the alleged circumstances which have been hitherto examined, the case becomes altogether different. The sum of ten thousand nothings is still nothing.[296] This may be conveniently illustrated by an appeal to the only charge which remains to be examined.
(XXVI. and XXVII.) The absence from these twelve verses of the adverbs εὐθέως and πάλιν,—(both of them favourite words with the second Evangelist,)—has been pointed out as one more suspicious circumstance. Let us take the words singly:—
(a) The adverb εὐθέως (or εὐθύς) is indeed of very frequent occurrence in S. Mark's Gospel. And yet its absence from [pg 169] chap. xvi is proved to be in no degree a suspicious circumstance, from the discovery that though it occurs as many as
12 times in chap. i;
and 6 times in chap. v;
and 5 times in chap. iv, vi;
and 3 times in chap. ii, ix, xiv;
and 2 times in chap. vii, xi;
it yet occurs only 1 times in chap. iii, viii, x, xv;
while it occurs 0 times in chap. xii, xiii, xvi.
(b) In like manner, πάλιν, which occurs as often as
6 times in chap. xiv;
and 5 times in chap. x;
and 3 times in chap. viii, xv;
and 2 times in chap. ii, iii, vii, xi, xii;
and 1 times in chap. iv, v;
occurs 0 times in chap. i, vi, ix, xiii. xvi.[297]