I PROLOGUE 29 



that they should show cause why, in these 

 days, science should not resume the work the 

 ancients did so imperfectly, and carry it out 

 efficiently. 



But no such cause can be shown. If " antiquity " 

 permitted Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Irenoeus, 

 to argue for the reception of this book into the 

 canon and the rejection of that, upon rational 

 grounds, " antiquity " admitted the whole prin- 

 ciple of modern criticism. If Irenseus produces 

 ridiculous reasons for limiting the Gospels to four, 

 it was open to any one else to produce good 

 reasons (if he had them) for cutting them down 

 to three, or increasing them to five. If the 

 Eastern branch of the Church had a right to 

 reject the Apocalypse and accept the Epistle to 

 the Hebrews, and the Western an equal right to 

 accept the Apocalypse and reject the Epistle, 

 down to the fourth century, any other branch 

 would have an equal right, on cause shown, to 

 reject both, or, as the Catholic Church afterwards 

 actually did, to accept both. 



Thus I cannot but think that the thirty-eight 

 are hoist with their own petard. Their " appeal to 

 antiquity " turns out to be nothing but a round- 

 about way of appealing to the tribunal, the juris- 

 diction of which they affect to deny. Having 

 rested the world of Christian supernaturalism on 

 the elephant of biblical infallibility, and furnished 

 the elephant with standing ground on the tortoise 



