volve
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 presupposition of their observations and reasonings.

Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demonstrable 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 not
cared to expend any space on the question. It will be admitted, I
suppose, that the authors of the works attributed to Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, whoever they may be, are personages whose capacity and
judgment in the narration of ordinary events are not quite so well
certified as those of Eginhard; and we have seen what the value of
Eginhard's evidence is when the miraculous is in question.

I have been careful to explain that the arguments which I have used in
the course of this discussion are not new; that they are historical and
have nothing to do with what is commonly called science; and that they
are all, to the best of my belief, to be found in the works of
theologians of repute.

The position which I have taken up, that the evidence in favour of such
miracles as those recorded by Eginhard, and consequently of mediaeval
demonology, is quite as good as that in favour of such miracles as the
Gadarene, and consequently of Nazarene demonology, is none of my
discovery. Its strength was, wittingly or unwittingly, suggested, a
century and a half ago, by a theological scholar of eminence; and it has
been, if not exactly occupied, yet so fortified with bastions and
redoubts by a living ecclesiastical Vauban, that, in my judgment, it has
been rendered impregnable. In the early part of the last century, the
ecclesiastical mind in this country was much exercised by the question,
not exactly