this temptation. But the reader will have drawn his own conclusions from this recklessness of assault in one whose own armour is gaping at every joint.

But indeed, when he does stoop to notice the arguments of 'apologetic' writers, he is not always successful in apprehending their meaning.

Thus he writes of the unnamed disciple, the assumed author of the Fourth
Gospel:—

'The assumption that the disciple thus indicated is John, rests principally on the fact that whilst the author mentions the other Apostles, he seems studiously to avoid directly naming John, and also that he only once [18:3] distinguishes John the Baptist by the appellation [Greek: ho baptistês], whilst he carefully distinguishes the two disciples of the name of Judas, and always speaks of the Apostle Peter as 'Simon Peter,' or 'Peter,' or but rarely as 'Simon' only. Without pausing to consider the slightness of this evidence, etc.' [19:1]

Now the fact is, that the Fourth Evangelist never once distinguishes this John as 'the Baptist,' though such is his common designation in the other Gospels; and the only person, in whom the omission would be natural, is his namesake John the son of Zebedee. Hence 'apologists' lay great stress on this fact, as an evidence all the more valuable, because it lies below the surface, and they urge with force, that this subtle indication of authorship is inconceivable as the literary device of a forger in the second century. We cannot wonder, however, if our author considers this evidence so slight that he will not even pause upon it, when he has altogether distorted it by a mis-statement of fact. But it is instructive to trace his error to its source. Turning to Credner, to whom the author gives a reference in a footnote, I find this writer stating that the Fourth Evangelist

'Has not found it necessary to distinguish John the Baptist from the Apostle John his namesake even so much as once (auch nur ein einziges Mal) by the addition [Greek: ho baptistês].' [19:2]

So then our author has stumbled over that little word 'nur,' and his German has gone the way of his Greek and his Latin [19:3]. But the error is instructive from another point of view. This argument happens to be a commonplace of 'apologists.' How comes it then, that he was not set right by one or other of these many writers, even if he could not construe Credner's German? Clearly this cannot be the work which the reviewers credit with an 'exhaustive' knowledge of the literature of the subject. I may be asked indeed to explain how, on this theory of mistaken identity which I here put forward, the work reviewed by the critics came to be displaced by the work before me, so that no traces of the original remain. But this I altogether decline to do, and I plead authority for refusing. 'The merely negative evidence that our actual [Supernatural Religion] is not the work described by [the Reviewers] is sufficient for our purpose.' [20:1]

3. But the argument is strengthened when we come to consider a third point. 'The author's discussions,' writes our first reviewer, 'are conducted in a judicial method.' 'He has the critical faculty in union with a calm spirit.' 'Calm and judicial in tone,' is the verdict of our second reviewer. The opinion of our third and fourth reviewers on this part may be gathered not so much from what they say as from what they leave unsaid. A fifth reviewer however, who seems certainly to have had our Supernatural Religion before him, holds different language. He rebukes the author—with wonderful gentleness, considering the gravity of the offence—for 'now and then losing patience.'

Now whether calmness of tone can be said to distinguish a work which bristles with such epithets as 'monstrous,' 'impossible,' 'audacious,' 'preposterous,' 'absurd;' whether the habit of reiterating as axiomatic truths what at the very best are highly precarious hypotheses—as, for instance, that Papias did not refer to our St Mark's Gospel—does not savour more of the vehemence of the advocate than of the impartiality of the judge, I must ask the reader to decide for himself. But of the highly discreditable practice of imputing corrupt motives to those who differ from us there cannot be two opinions. We have already seen how a righteous nemesis has overtaken our author, and he has covered himself with confusion, while recklessly flinging a charge of 'falsification' at another. Unfortunately however that passage does not stand alone. I will not take up the reader's time with illustrations of a practice, of which we have seen more than enough already. But there is one example which is sufficiently instructive to deserve quoting. Dr Westcott writes of Basilides as follows:—

'At the same time, he appealed to the authority of Glaucias, who, as well as St Mark, was "an interpreter of St. Peter."' [21:1]

The inverted commas are given here as they appear in Dr Westcott's book. It need hardly be said that Dr Westcott is simply illustrating the statement of Basilides that Glaucias was an interpreter of St Peter by the similar statement of Papias and others that St Mark was an interpreter of the same apostle—a very innocent piece of information, one would suppose. On this passage however our author remarks:—

'Now we have here again an illustration of the same misleading system which we have already condemned, and shall further refer to, in the introduction after 'Glaucias' of the words 'who as well as St Mark was an interpreter of St Peter.' The words in italics are the gratuitous addition of Canon Westcott himself, and can only have been inserted for one of two purposes: (I) to assert the fact that Glaucias was actually an interpreter of Peter, as tradition represented Mark to be; or (II) to insinuate to unlearned readers that Basilides himself acknowledged Mark as well as Glaucias as the interpreter of Peter. We can hardly suppose the first to have been the intention, and we regret to be forced back upon the second, and infer that the temptation to weaken the inferences from the appeal of Basilides to the uncanonical Glaucias, by coupling with it the allusion to Mark, was [unconsciously, no doubt] too strong for the apologist.' [21:2]

Dr Westcott's honour may safely be left to take care of itself. It stands far too high to be touched by insinuations like these. I only call attention to the fact that our author has removed Dr Westcott's inverted commas [22:1], and then founded on the passage so manipulated a charge of unfair dealing, which could only be sustained in their absence, and which even then no one but himself would have thought of. I will not retort upon our author the charge of 'deliberate falsification,' which he so freely levels at others, for I do not believe that he had any such intention. The lesson suggested by this highly characteristic passage is of another kind. It exemplifies the elaborate looseness which pervades the critical portion of this book. It illustrates the author's inability to look at things in a straightforward way. It emphasizes more especially the suspicious temper of the work, which makes it, as even a favourable reviewer has said, 'painfully sceptical'—a temper which must necessarily vitiate all the processes of criticism, and which, if freely humoured elsewhere, would render life intolerable and history impossible [22:2].

It is difficult to see what end the author proposed to attain by all this literary browbeating. In the course of my examination I shall be constrained to adopt many a view which has been denounced beforehand as