by the first. The incident of the water and the
blood is taken from the Fourth Gospel; but a theological interpretation
is forced upon it which cannot have been intended by the Evangelist.
Some time must have elapsed before the narrative could well be made the
subject of a speculative comment like this. Thus both extracts alike
suggest that the Fourth Gospel was already a time-honoured book when
they were written.

But the author of _Supernatural Religion_ meets the inference by denying
the genuineness of the extracts. I hardly think, however, that he can
have seen what havoc he was making in his own ranks by this movement. He
elsewhere asserts very decidedly (without however giving reasons) that
the Quartodeciman controversy turned on the point whether the 14th Nisan
was the day of the Last Supper or the day of the Crucifixion, the
Quartodecimans maintaining the former [240:1]. In other words, he
believes that it was the anniversary, not of the Passion, but of the
Last Supper, which the Quartodecimans kept so scrupulously on the 14th,
and that therefore, as they pleaded the authority of St John for their
practice, the Fourth Gospel cannot have been written by this Apostle,
since it represents the Passion as taking place on the 14th. As I have
before intimated, this view of the Paschal dispute seems to me to be
altogether opposed to the general tenor of the evidence. But it depends,
for such force or plausibility as it has, almost solely on these
fragments from ancient writers quoted in the _Paschal Chronicle_, of
which the extracts from Apollinaris are the most important. If therefore
he refuses to accept the testimony of the _Paschal Chronicle_ to their
authorship, he undermines the very foundation on which his theory rests.

On this inconsistency however I need not dwell. The authorship of these
extracts was indeed questioned by some earlier writers [241:1], but on
entirely mistaken grounds; and at the present time the consensus among
critics of the most opposite schools is all but universal. 'On the
genuineness of these fragments, which Neander questioned, there is now
no more dispute, writes Scholten [242:1]. Our author however is far too
persistent to let them pass. Their veracity has once been questioned,
and therefore they shall never again be suffered to enter the
witness-box.

It may be presumed that he has alleged those arguments against their
genuineness which seemed to him to be the strongest, and I will