that from the earliest period to which testimony reaches, the incident of 'the woman taken in adultery' occupied its present place in St.John's Gospel.

The Critics eagerly remind us that in four cursive copies (13, 69, 124, 346), the verses in question are found tacked on to the end of St.Luke xxi.

But have they then forgotten that 'these four Codexes are derived from a common archetype,' and therefore represent one and the same ancient and, I may add, corrupt copy?
The same Critics are reminded that in the same four Codexes [commonly called the Ferrar Group] 'the agony and bloody sweat' (St.Luke xxii.

43, 44) is found thrust into St.Matthew's Gospel between ch.xxvi.39 and 40.

Such licentiousness on the part of a solitary exemplar of the Gospels no more affects the proper place of these or of those verses than the superfluous digits of a certain man of Gath avail to disturb the induction that to either hand of a human being appertain but five fingers, and to either foot but five toes.
It must be admitted then that as far back as testimony reaches the passage under discussion stood where it now stands in St.John's Gospel.
And this is my first position.