asserted that his St. Mark is
not the same as ours. [Endnote 3:1]

The reader may ask, "How is it possible, against such a mode of
argument, to prove the genuineness or authenticity of any book, sacred
or profane?" And, of course, it is not. Such a way of conducting a
controversy seems absurd, but on the author's premises it is a
necessity. He asserts the dogma that the Governor of the world cannot
interfere by way of miracle. He has to meet the fact that the foremost
religion of the world appeals to miracles, especially the miracle of the
Resurrection of the Founder. For the truth of this miraculous
Resurrection there is at least a thousand times more evidence than there
is for any historical fact which is recorded to have occurred 1,800
years ago. Of course, if the supernatural in Christianity is impossible,
and so incredible, all the witnesses to it must be discredited; and
their number, their age, and their unanimity upon the principal points
are such that the mere attempt must tax the powers of human labour and
ingenuity to the uttermost.

How, then, is such a book to be met? It would take a work of twice the
size to rebut all the assertions of the author, for, naturally, an
answer to any assertion must take up more space than the assertion.
Fortunately, in this case, we are not driven to any such course; for, as
I shall show over and over again, the author has furnished us with the
most ample means for his own refutation. No book that I have over read
or heard of contains so much which can be met by implication from the
pages of the author himself, nor can I imagine any book of such
pretensions pervaded with so entire a misconception of the conditions of
the problem on which he is writing.

These assertions I shall now, God helping, proceed to make good.

SECTION II.

THE WAY CLEARED.

The writers, whose testimonies to the existence or use of our present
Gospels are examined by the author, are twenty-three in number. Five of
these, namely, Hegesippus, Papias, Melito, Claudius Apollinaris, and
Dionysius of Corinth are only known to us through fragments preserved as
quotations in Eusebius and others. Six others--Basilides, Valentinus,
Marcion, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Celsus--are heretical or infidel
writers whom we only know through notices or scraps of their works in
the writings of the Christian Fathers who refuted them. The Epistle of
the Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons is only in part preserved in