nge of plan,
from Volkmar. It may serve to give a sort of _coup d'oeil_ of the
subject.

It is a pleasure to be able to mention another form of assistance
from which it is one of the misfortunes of an anonymous writer to
find himself cut off. The proofs of this book have been seen in
their passage through the press by my friend the Rev. A.J. Mason,
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, whose exact scholarship has
been particularly valuable to me. On another side than that of
scholarship I have derived the greatest benefit from the advice of
my friend James Beddard, M.B., of Nottingham, who was among the
first to help me to realise, and now does not suffer me to forget,
what a book ought to be. The Index of References to the Gospels
has also been made for me.

The chapter on Marcion has already appeared, substantially in its
present form, as a contribution to the Fortnightly Review.

BARTON-ON-THE-HEATH,
SHIPSTON-ON-STOUR,
_November_, 1875.

[Greek epigraph: Ta de panta elenchoumena hupo tou photos
phaneroutai pan gar to phaneroumenon phos estin.]

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

It would be natural in a work of this kind, which is a direct
review of a particular book, to begin with an account of that
book, and with some attempt to characterise it. Such had been my
own intention, but there seems to be sufficient reason for
pursuing a different course. On the one hand, an account of a book
which has so recently appeared, which has been so fully reviewed,
and which has excited so much attention, would appear to be
superfluous; and, on the other hand, as the character of it has
become the subject of somewhat sharp controversy, and as controversy--
or at least the controversial temper--is the one thing that I wish
to avoid, I have thought it well on the whole to abandon my first
intention, and to confine myself as much as possible to a criticism
of the argument and subject-matter, with a view to ascertain the
real facts as to the formation of the Canon of the four Gospels.

I shall correct, where I am able to do so, such mistakes as may
happen to come under my notice and have not already been pointed
out by other reviewers, only dilating upon them where what seem to
be false principles of criticism are involved. On the general
subject of these mistakes--misleading references and the like--I
think that enough has been said [Endnote 2:1]. Much is perhaps
charged upon the indivi