PROP. 3. His one item of direct evidence as to the Gentile character of the city refers only to the former and not to the latter.

More fatal still.  But, once more, not to me.  I adduce not one, but a variety of “items” in proof of the non-Judaic character of the population of Gadara:  the evidence of history; that of the coinage of the city; the direct testimony of Josephus, just cited—­to mention no others.  I repeat, if the wealthy people and those connected with them—­the “classes” and the “hangers on” of Mr. Gladstone’s well-known taxonomy—­were, as he appears to admit they were, Gentiles; if the “civil government” of the city was in their hands, as the coinage proves it was; what becomes of Mr. Gladstone’s original proposition in “The Impregnable Rock of Scripture” that “the population of Gadara, and still less (if less may be) the population of the neighbourhood,” were “Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law”?  And what is the importance of estimating the precise proportion of Hebrews who may have resided, either in the city of Gadara or in its independent territory, when, as Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful to say “seems"), the government, and consequently the law, which ruled in that territory and defined civil right and wrong was Gentile and not Judaic?  But perhaps Mr. Gladstone is prepared to maintain that the Gentile “local civil government” of a city of the Decapolis administered Jewish law; and showed their respect for it, more particularly, by stamping their coinage with effigies of the Emperors.

In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone has given away his case.

PROP. 4. He fatally confounds the question of political party with those of nationality and of religion, and assumes that those who took the side of Rome in the factions that prevailed could not be subject to the Mosaic Law.

It would seem that I have a feline tenacity of life; once more, a “fatal error.”  But Mr. Gladstone has forgotten an excellent rule of controversy; say what is true, of course, but mind that it is decently probable.  Now it is not decently probable, hardly indeed conceivable, that any one who has read Josephus, or any other historian of the Jewish war, should be unaware that there were Jews (of whom Josephus himself was one) who “Romanised” and, more or less openly, opposed the war party.  But, however that may be, I assert that Mr. Gladstone neither has produced, nor can produce, a passage of my writing which affords the slightest foundation for this particular article of his indictment.

PROP. 5. His examination of the text of Josephus is alike one-sided, inadequate, and erroneous.

Easy to say, hard to prove.  So long as the authorities whom I have cited are on my side, I do not know why this singularly temperate and convincing dictum should trouble me.  I have yet to become acquainted with Mr. Gladstone’s claims to speak with an authority equal to that of scholars of the rank of Schuerer, whose obviously just and necessary emendations he so unceremoniously pooh-poohs.