* * * * *

Thus, the hypothesis, to which Mr. Gladstone so fondly clings, finds no support in the provisions of the “Law of Moses” as that law is defined in the Pentateuch; while it is wholly inconsistent with the concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels, to which Mr. Gladstone attaches so much weight.  In my judgment, it is directly contrary to everything which profane history tells us about the constitution and the population of the city of Gadara; and it commits those who accept it to a story which, if it were true, would implicate the founder of Christianity in an illegal and inequitable act.

Such being the case, I consider myself excused from following Mr. Gladstone through all the meanderings of his late attempt to extricate himself from the maze of historical and exegetical difficulties in which he is entangled.  I content myself with assuring those who, with my paper (not Mr. Gladstone’s version of my arguments) in hand, consult the original authorities, that they will find full justification for every statement I have made.  But in order to dispose those who cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his own cause plays no part in inducing me to speak thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the following examination, which shall be as brief as I can make it, of the seven propositions in which Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary of my “errors.”

When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Holy See declared that certain propositions contained in the work of Bishop Jansen were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal replied that, while they were ready to defer to the Papal authority about questions of faith and morals, they must be permitted to judge about questions of fact for themselves; and that, really, the condemned propositions were not to be found in Jansen’s writings.  As everybody knows, His Holiness and the Grand Monarque replied to this, surely not unreasonable, plea after the manner of Lord Peter in the “Tale of a Tub.”  It is, therefore, not without some apprehension of meeting with a similar fate, that I put in a like plea against Mr. Gladstone’s Bull.  The seven propositions declared to be false and condemnable, in that kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly compares with the authoritative style of the Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or may not be true.  But they are not to be found in anything I have written.  And some of them diametrically contravene that which I have written.  I proceed to prove my assertions.

PROP. 1. Throughout the paper he confounds together what I had distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a mere pomoerium, but as a rural district.