anon
of the New Testament, and even later than the fourth and fifth
centuries, literary fabricators had the skill and the audacity to make
such additions and interpolations as these, what may they have done when
no one had thought of a canon; when oral tradition, still unfixed, was
regarded as more valuable than such written records as may have existed
in the latter portion of the first century? Or, to take the other
alternative, if those who gradually settled the canon did not know of
the existence of the oldest codices which have come down to us; or if,
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 intellectual 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 Irenaeus with his "reasons" for the existence of only four
Gospels; and of such calm and dispassionate judges as Tertullian, with
his "Credo quia impossibile": 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 and deserves full and
candid consideration. It may be said that critical scepticism carried to
the length suggested is historical pyrrhonism; that if we are altogether
to discredit an ancient or a modern historian, because he has assumed
fabulous matter to be true, it will be as well to give up paying any
attention to history. It may be said, and with great justice, that
Eginhard's "Life of Charlemagne" is none the less trustworthy because of
the astounding revelation of credulity, of lack