He
really seems incapable of discriminating between a denial that there is
clear and palpable evidence of the existence and authorship of these
particular Gospels, and denial that they actually existed at all. I do
not suppose that there is any critic, past or present, who doubts that
our four Gospels had been composed and were in wide circulation during
this period of the second century. It is a very different matter to
examine what absolute testimony there is regarding the origin,
authenticity, and trustworthiness of these documents, as records of
miracles and witnesses for the reality of Divine Revelation.
I cannot accuse myself of having misled Dr. Lightfoot on this point by
any obscurity in the statement of my object, but, as he and other
apologists have carefully ignored it, and systematically warped my
argument, either by accident or design, I venture to quote a few
sentences from _Supernatural Religion_, both to justify myself and to
restore the discussion to its proper lines.
In winding up the first part of the work, which was principally
concerned with the antecedent credibility of miracles, I said:--
"Now it is apparent that the evidence for miracles requires to
embrace two distinct points: the reality of the alleged facts, and
the accuracy of the inference that the phenomena were produced by
supernatural agency .
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