When I first took up the book entitled 'Supernatural Religion,' I felt,
whether rightly or wrongly, that its criticisms were too loose and
pretentious, and too full of errors, to produce any permanent effect;
and for the most part attacks of this kind on the records of the Divine
Life are best left alone. But I found that a cruel and unjustifiable
assault was made on a very dear friend to whom I was attached by the
most sacred personal and theological ties; and that the book which
contained this attack was from causes which need not be specified
obtaining a notoriety unforeseen by me. Thus I was forced to break
silence; and, as I advanced with my work, I seemed to see that, though
undertaken to redress a personal injustice, it might be made subservient
to the wider interests of the truth.

Paper succeeded upon paper, and I had hoped ultimately to cover the
whole ground, so far as regards the testimony of the first two centuries
to the New Testament Scriptures. But my time was not my own, as I was
necessarily interrupted by other literary and professional duties which
claimed the first place; and meanwhile I was transferred to another and
more arduous sphere of practical work, being thus obliged to postpone
indefinitely my intention of giving something like completeness to the
work.

In republishing these papers then, the only course open to me, in
justice to my adversary as well as to myself, was to reprint them in
succession word for word as they appeared, correcting obvious misprints;
though in many cases my argument might have been strengthened
considerably. Recently discovered documents for instance have
established the certainty of the main conclusions respecting Tatian's
_Diatessaron_, to which the criticism of the available evidence had led
me. Again I have since treated the Ignatian question more fully