(3) His Prayer on behalf of His murderers (xxiii. 34), will have also been away.
(4) The Inscription on the Cross, in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew (xxiii. 38), will have been partly, misrepresented,—partly, away.
(5) And there will have been no account discoverable of S. Peter's Visit to the Sepulchre (xxiv. 12).
(6) Absent will have been also the record of our Lord's Ascension into Heaven (ibid. 51).
(7) Also, from S. John's Gospel, the codices in question [pg 282] will have omitted the incident of the troubling of the pool of Bethesda (v. 3, 4).
Now, we request that it may be clearly noted that, according to Dr. Hort, against every copy of the Gospels so maimed and mutilated, (i.e. against every copy of the Gospels of the same type as codices b and א,)—the many illustrious Bishops who, (still according to Dr. Hort,) assembled at Antioch, first in a.d. 250 and then in a.d. 350,—by common consent set a mark of condemnation. We are assured that those famous men,—those Fathers of the Church,—were emphatic in their sanction, instead, of codices of the type of Cod. a,—in which all these seven omitted passages (and many hundreds besides) are duly found in their proper places.
When, therefore, at the end of a thousand and half a thousand years, Dr. Hort (guided by his inner consciousness, and depending on an intellectual illumination of which he is able to give no intelligible account) proposes to reverse the deliberate sentence of Antiquity,—his position strikes us as bordering on the ludicrous. Concerning the seven places above referred to, which the assembled Fathers pronounce to be genuine Scripture, and declare to be worthy of all acceptation,—Dr. Hort expresses himself in terms which—could they have been heard at Antioch—must, it is thought, have brought down upon his head tokens of displeasure which might have even proved inconvenient. But let the respected gentleman by all means be allowed to speak for himself:—
(1) The last Twelve Verses of S. Mark (he would have been heard to say) are a “very early interpolation.” “Its authorship and precise date must remain unknown.” “It manifestly cannot claim any Apostolic authority.” “It is [pg 283] doubtless founded on some tradition of the Apostolic age.”—(Notes, pp. 46 and 51.)
(2) The Agony in the Garden (he would have told them) is “an early Western interpolation,” and “can only be a fragment from traditions, written or oral,”—“rescued from oblivion by the scribes of the second century.”—(pp. 66-7.)
(3) The Prayer of our Lord for His Murderers (Dr. Hort would have said),—“I cannot doubt comes from an extraneous source.” It is “a Western interpolation.”—(p.68.)