faith, I am abusing the dictionary. I have no business to accept it on
faith. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. It is a pure matter of
scholarship. It is a matter of study, of investigation, a matter of
clear and hard intelligence and nothing more.

Suppose I am told that the Catholic Church is infallible, and I am
asked to accept it as an article of faith. Here, again, the
introduction of the word "faith" into a domain like that is an
impertinence. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. That is a
question of fact. We can read history for the last eighteen hundred
years. We can find out what the Catholic Church has said and what the
Catholic Church has done, as to whether it has proved itself absolutely
infallible or not. It is a matter of study and decision intellectually;
and it is my duty to doubt that which does not bring authentic
credentials in a field like this.

Take the question of the authorship of the Gospel of John. Was it
written by the apostle John, who lay in the bosom of Jesus, and was
called the beloved disciple? Have I any business to say I have faith
that it was written by him, and let it rest there? Faith has nothing to
do with it. We can trace the history of that book, find out when first
it was referred to, follow it back as far as possible, find out whether
it was in existence before the apostle John had died or not. It is a
pure matter of criticism, a matter of study; and I have no business to
accept it as a matter of faith, because, if I do, I am in danger not
only of deceiving myself, but of misleading the world. And truth, we
cannot say it too often or too emphatically, truth is the only thing
that is holy in investigations of this kind. Men's beliefs and
mistakes, old, venerable, reverenced though they may have been by
thousands and for hundreds of years, are no less unworthy longer to