Cessationist Claims Based on Manuscript Evidence

Sometimes the cessationists' arguments based on the so-called 'earlier and most reliable manuscripts' are irrelevant or even self-defeating.

For example, a cessationist once tried to prove his beliefs by asserting that Mark 16:17-18 (which mentions tongues) does not exist in older manuscripts but was spuriously added to the text in later manuscripts. But when you think about it, that's a self-defeating argument.

If tongues had already ceased by then, no motive could have existed to spuriously insert reference to tongues in a place where no reference to tongues previously existed!

Either tongues must have still existed when the so-called 'later' manuscript was written, or else the so-called 'oldest and most reliable' manuscript must in fact have been the later of the two.

Therefore no matter which manuscript one favours, his own manuscript offers no concrete support for the dogma that tongues must have ceased.