IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 329 



tion is based upon the notion that what contem- 

 porary witnesses say must be true, or, at least, has 

 always bprimd facie claim to be so regarded; so 

 that if the writers of any of the Gospels were 

 contemporaries of the events (and still more if 

 they were in the position of eye-witnesses) the 

 miracles they narrate must be historically true, 

 and, consequently, the demonology which they 

 involve must be accepted. But the story of the 

 " Translation of the blessed martyrs Marcellinus 

 and Petrus," and the other considerations (to 

 which endless additions might have been made 

 from the Fathers and the mediaeval writers) set 

 forth in a preceding essay, yield, in my judgment, 

 satisfactory proof that, where the miraculous is 

 concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability, 

 nor undoubted honesty, nor knowledge of the 

 world, nor proved faithfulness as civil historians, 

 nor profound piety, on the part of eye witnesses 

 and contemporaries, affords any guarantee of the 

 objective truth of their statements, when we know 

 that a firm belief in the miraculous was ingrained 

 in their minds, and was the pre-supposition of 

 their observations and reasonings. 



Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demon- 

 strable that we have no real knowledge of the 

 authorship, or of the date of composition of the 

 Gospels, as they have come down to us, and 

 that nothing better than more or less probable 

 guesses can be arrived at on that subject, I have 



