MR. GLADSTONE'S CONTROVERSIAL METHOD. 527 



solitary hint that the destruction of the pigs -was intended as a 

 punishment of their owners, or of the swineherds. On the con- 

 trary, the concurrent testimony of the three narratives is to the 

 effect that the catastrophe was the consequence of diabolic sug- 

 gestion. And, indeed, no source could be more appropriate for an 

 act of such manifest injustice and illegality. 



I can but marvel that modern defenders of the faith should not 

 be glad of any reasonable excuse for getting rid of a story which, 

 if it had been invented by Voltaire, would have justly let loose 

 floods of orthodox indignation. 



Thus, the hypothesis to which Mr. Gladstone so fondly clings 

 finds no support in the provisions of the " law of Moses " as that 

 law is defined in the Pentateuch ; while it is wholly inconsistent 

 with the concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels, to which 

 Mr. Gladstone attaches so much weight. In my judgment, it is 

 directly contrary to everything which profane history tells us 

 about the constitution and the population of the city of Gadara ; 

 and it commits those who accept it to a story which, if it were 

 true, would implicate the founder of Christianity in an illegal 

 and inequitable act. 



Such being the case, I consider myself excused from following 

 Mr. Gladstone through all the meanderings of his late attempt to 

 extricate himself from the maze of historical and exegetical dif- 

 ficulties in which he is entangled. I content myself with assur- 

 ing those who, with my paper (not Mr. Gladstone's version of my 

 arguments) in hand, consult the original authorities, that they 

 will find full justification for every statement I have made. But 

 in order to dispose those who can not, or will not, take that trou- 

 ble, to believe that the proverbial blindness of one that judges 

 his own cause plays no part in inducing me to speak thus de- 

 cidedly, I beg their attention to the following examination, which 

 shall be as brief as I can make it, of the seven propositions in 

 which Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary of my 



" errors." 



When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Holy See 

 declared that certain propositions contained in the works of Bish- 

 op Jansen were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal replied 

 that, while they were ready to defer to the Papal authority about 

 questions of faith and morals, they must be permitted to judge 

 about questions of fact for themselves; and that, really, the con 

 demned propositions were not to be found in Jansen's writings. 

 As everybody knows, his Holiness and the Grand Monarque re- 

 plied to this surely not unreasonable plea after the manner of 

 Lord Peter in the Tale of a Tub. It is, therefore, not without 

 some apprehension of meeting with a similar fate, that I put in a 



