But indeed, to be candid, hardly any one has seriously called that fact in question.

No, nor do any (except Dr.
Hort[610]) doubt that the passage is also of the remotest antiquity.
Adverse Critics do but insist that however ancient, it must needs be of spurious origin: or else that it is an afterthought of the Evangelist:--concerning both which imaginations we shall have a few words to offer by-and-by.
It clearly follows,--indeed it may be said with truth that it only remains,--to inquire what may have led to its so frequent exclusion from the sacred Text?
For really the difficulty has already resolved itself into that.
And on this head, it is idle to affect perplexity.

In the earliest age of all,--the age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;--at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;--what wonder if some were found to remove the _pericope de adultera_ from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh commandment?
The very subject-matter, I say, of St.John viii.

3-11 would sufficiently account for the occasional omission of those nine verses.

Moral considerations abundantly explain what is found to have here and there happened.