Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural Religion | Page 9

reserve'
to 'wilful and deliberate evasion.' I do not intend to yield to 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