"I consider the Gospels decidedly genuine, for they are penetrated by the reflection of a majesty which proceeded from the Person of Christ; and this is Divine, if ever Divinity appeared upon earth."
CHAPTER II.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
CLEMENT OF ROME—THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS—THE PASTOR OF HERMAS.
The argument based on the investigation which is carried on in the seven hundred pages of the second and third parts of our author's work, is chiefly the negative one from "silence." He examines with great minuteness the date, character, and authorship of all the four Gospels, and refers to all the writings of the early Church for traces of them; insisting upon the silence of those early writings as being of as much importance as any "supposed allusions" to the Gospels found in such authors as Justin Martyr, Clement of Rome, and others who lived soon after the apostolic age; the result being, in our author's opinion, unfavourable to the view entertained by orthodox believers.
I demur to his conclusions. I notice a want of fairness in some of his quotations and in some of his translations, and a want of accuracy in some of his statements, as well as defects in his reasoning, which I have no doubt others will comment upon who may review the book. Some of these defects will appear as I proceed.
When I find him saying, as he does, vol. ii. page 387, "We must, however, carefully restrict ourselves to the limits of our inquiry, and resist any temptation to enter upon an exhaustive discussion of the problem presented by the Fourth Gospel from a more general literary point of view," I expect to find difficulties, which of course there are and must be, brought into prominence and carped at, while the general evidence upon which Divine revelation is immovably based is "carefully" avoided.
The second part, on the Synoptic Gospels, is a long investigation, extending over five hundred pages, and dealing with three and twenty works by separate non-biblical authors of the first and second centuries; and its object is to disprove that they were written solely by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and to support the hypothesis that those Gospels were not in existence until long after the times of the apostles, and, therefore, that they furnish no evidence from eye-witnesses of the miracles they record.