son to Barnabas, then it will lie also against him.  Leaving aside the main difficulty, pointed out above, it is grossly improbable, on the face of it, that these Jewish writers should employ Greek, even if they knew it, instead of their own tongue.  They were writing the story of a Jew; why should they translate all his sayings instead of writing them down as they fell from his lips?  Their work lay among the Jews.  Eight years after the death of Jesus they rebuked one of their number, Peter, who eat with “men uncircumcised” (Acts xi. 3); nineteen years afterwards they still went only “unto the circumcision” (Gal. ii. 9); twenty-seven years afterwards they were still in Jerusalem, teaching Jews, and carefully fulfilling the law (Acts xxi. 18-24); after this, we hear no more of them, and they must all have been old men, not likely to then change the Jewish habits of their lives.  Besides, why should they do so? their whole sphere of work was entirely Jewish, and, if they were educated enough to write at all, they would surely write for the benefit of those amongst whom they worked.  The only parallel for so curious a phenomenon as these Greek Gospels, written by ignorant Jews, would be found if a Cornish fisherman and a low London attorney, both perfectly ignorant of German, wrote in German the sayings and doings of a Middlesex carpenter, and as their work was entirely confined to the lower classes of the people, who knew nothing of German, and they desired to place within their reach full knowledge of the carpenter’s life, they circulated it among them in German only, and never wrote anything about him in English.  The Greek text of the Gospels proves that they were written in later times, when Christianity found its adherents among the Gentile populations.  It might, indeed, be fairly urged that the Greek text is a suggestion that the creed did not originate in Judaea at all, but was the offshoot of Gentile thought rather than of Jewish.  However that may be, the Greek text forbids us to believe that these Gospels were written by the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus, and we conclude that the language in which they are written is presumptive evidence against their authenticity.

K. That they are in themselves utterly unworthy of credit from (1) the miracles with which they abound. (2) The numerous contradictions of each by the others. (3) The fact that the story of the hero, the doctrines, the miracles, were current long before the supposed dates of the Gospels, so that these Gospels are simply a patchwork composed of older materials.

(1) The miracles with which they abound. Paley asks:  “Why should we question the genuineness of these books?  Is it for that they contain accounts of supernatural events?  I apprehend that this, at the bottom, is the real, though secret cause of our hesitation about them; for, had the writings, inscribed with the names of Matthew and John, related nothing but ordinary history, there would have been