The author strives to undermine the evidence for the authenticity of our
present Gospels for an avowedly dogmatic purpose. He believes in the
dogma of the impossibility of the supernatural; he must, for this
purpose, discredit the witness of the four, and he would fain do this by
conjuring up the ghost of a defunct Gospel, a Gospel which turns out to
be far more emphatic in its testimony to the supernatural and the
dogmatic than any of the four existing ones, and so the author of this
pretentious book seems to have answered himself. His own witnesses prove
that from the first there has been but one account of Jesus of Nazareth.




SECTION XI.

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON OUR LORD'S GODHEAD.


The author of "Supernatural Religion" has directed his attacks more
particularly against the authenticity of the Gospel according to
St. John. His desire to discredit this Gospel seems at times to arise
out of a deep personal dislike to the character of the disciple whom
Jesus loved. (Vol. ii. pp. 403-407, 427, 428, &c.)

On the author's principles, it is difficult to understand the reason for
such an attack on this particular Gospel. He is not an Arian or Socinian
(as the terms are commonly understood), who might desire to disparage
the testimony of this Gospel to the Pre-existence and Godhead of our
Lord. His attack is on the Supernatural generally, as witnessed to by
any one of the four Gospels; and it is allowed on all hands that the