to me, it would be much more to the purpose were he seriously to endeavour to refute my reasoning.  I have no desire to escape hard hitting or to avoid fair fight, and I feel unfeigned respect for many of my critics who, differing toto coelo from my views, have with vigorous ability attacked my arguments without altogether forgetting the courtesy due even to an enemy.  Dr. Lightfoot will not find me inattentive to courteous reasoning, nor indifferent to earnest criticism, and, whatever he may think, I promise him that no one will be more ready respectfully to follow every serious line of argument than the author of Supernatural Religion.

II.

THE SILENCE OF EUSEBIUS—­THE IGNATIAN EPISTLES. [Endnote 40:1]

This work has scarcely yet been twelve months before the public, but both in this country and in America and elsewhere it has been subjected to such wide and searching criticism by writers of all shades of opinion, that I may perhaps be permitted to make a few remarks, and to review some of my Reviewers.  I must first, however, beg leave to express my gratitude to that large majority of my critics who have bestowed generous commendation upon the work, and liberally encouraged its completion.  I have to thank others, who, differing totally from my conclusions, have nevertheless temperately argued against them, for the courtesy with which they have treated an opponent whose views must necessarily have offended them, and I can only say that, whilst such a course has commanded my unfeigned respect, it has certainly not diminished the attention with which I have followed their arguments.

There are two serious misapprehensions of the purpose and line of argument of this work which I desire to correct.  Some critics have objected that, if I had succeeded in establishing the proposition advanced in the first part, the second and third parts need not have been written:  in fact, that the historical argument against miracles is only necessary in consequence of the failure of the philosophical.  Now I contend that the historical is the necessary complement of the philosophical argument, and that both are equally requisite to completeness in dealing with the subject.  The preliminary affirmation is not that miracles are impossible, but that they are antecedently incredible.  The counter-allegation is that, although miracles may be antecedently incredible, they nevertheless actually took place.  It is, therefore, necessary, not only to establish the antecedent incredibility, but to examine the validity of the allegation that certain miracles occurred, and this involves the historical enquiry into the evidence for the Gospels which occupies the second and third parts.  Indeed, many will not acknowledge the case to be complete until other witnesses are questioned in a succeeding volume. ...