224 AGNOSTICISM VII 



knowing them, they rejected their authority, what 

 is to be thought of their competency as critics of 

 the text ? 



People who object to free criticism of the 

 Christian Scriptures forget that they are what 

 they are in virtue of very free criticism ; unless 

 the advocates of inspiration are prepared to affirm 

 that the majority of influential ecclesiastics during 

 several centuries were safeguarded against error. 

 For, even granting that some books of the period 

 were inspired, they were certainly few amongst 

 many; and those who selected the canonical 

 books, unless they themselves were also inspired, 

 must be regarded in the light of mere critics, and, 

 from the evidence they have left of their intel- 

 lectual habits, very uncritical critics. When one 

 thinks that such delicate questions as those 

 involved fell into the hands of men like Papias 

 (who believed in the famous millenarian grape 

 story) ; of Irenseus with his " reasons " for the 

 existence of only four Gospels ; and of such calm 

 and dispassionate judges as Tertullian, with his 

 " Credo quia impossibile " \ t the marvel is that the 

 selection which constitutes our New Testament is 

 as free as it is from obviously objectionable matter. 

 The apocryphal Gospels certainly deserve to be 

 apocryphal; but one may suspect that a little 

 more critical discrimination would have enlarged 

 the Apocrypha not inconsiderably. 



At this point a very obvious objection arises 



