The author of "Supernatural Religion," whilst he has utterly failed to
show that the Fathers in question have used earlier Gospels, has, to my
mind, proved to demonstration that, if they have quoted earlier
narratives, those accounts contain, not only substantially, but in
detail, the same Gospel which we now possess, and in a form rather more
suggestive of the Supernatural. So that, if he has been successful, the
author has only succeeded in proving that the Gospel narrative itself,
in a written form, is at least fifty or sixty years older than the books
which he attempts to discredit.
With respect to Justin Martyr, to the bearing of whose writings on this
subject I have devoted the greater part of my book, I can only say that,
in my examination of his works, my bias was with the author of
"Supernatural Religion." I had hitherto believed that this Father, being
a native of Palestine, and living so near to the time of the Apostles,
was acquainted with views of certain great truths which he had derived
from traditions of the oral teaching of the Apostles, and the possession
of which made him in some measure an independent witness for the views
in question; but I confess that, on a closer examination of his
writings, I was somewhat disappointed, for I found that he had no
knowledge of our Lord and of His teaching worth speaking of, except
what he might be fairly assumed to have derived from our present
New Testament.
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