M. Renan goes on to say that, as an historical document, the Gospel of Mark has a great superiority (p. 116); but Mark has a motive for omitting the discourses, and he attaches a “puerile importance” to miracles (p, 117).  The Gospel of Mark is less a legend, than a biography written with credulity (p. 118).  It would be rash to say that Mark has not been interpolated and retouched (p. 120).

If any one thinks that I have not been warranted in drawing a sharp distinction between “scientific theologians” and “counsels for creeds”; or that my warning against the too ready acceptance of certain declarations as to the state of biblical criticism was needless; or that my anxiety as to the sense of the word “practical” was superfluous; let him compare the statement that M. Renan has made a “practical surrender of the adverse case” with the facts just set forth.  For what is the adverse case?  The question, as Dr. Wace puts it, is “It may be asked how far can we rely on the accounts we possess of our Lord’s teaching on these subjects.”  It will be obvious that M. Renan’s statements amount to an adverse answer—­to a “practical” denial that any great reliance can be placed on these accounts.  He does not believe that Matthew, the apostle, wrote the first Gospel; he does not profess to know who is responsible for the collection of “logia,” or how many of them are authentic; though he calls the second Gospel the most historical, he points out that it is written with credulity, and may have been interpolated and retouched; and as to the author, “quid qu’il soit,” of the third Gospel, who is to “rely on the accounts” of a writer, who deserves the cavalier treatment which “Luke” meets with at M. Renan’s hands?

I repeat what I have already more than once said, that the question of the age and the authorship of the Gospels has not, in my judgment, the importance which is so commonly assigned to it for the simple reason that the reports even of eye-witnesses, would not suffice to justify belief in a large and essential part of their contents; on the contrary, these reports would discredit the witnesses.  The Gadarene miracle, for example, is so extremely improbable that the fact of its being reported by three even independent, authorities could not justify belief in it, unless we had the clearest evidence as to their capacity as observers and as interpreters of their observations.  But it is evident that the three authorities are not independent; that they have simply adopted a legend of which there were two versions; and instead of their proving its truth, it suggests their superstitious credulity; so that if “Matthew,” “Mark,” and “Luke” are really responsible for the Gospels, it is not the better for the Gadarene story, but the worse for them.

A wonderful amount of controversial capital has been made out of my assertion in the note to which I have referred, as an obiter dictum of no consequence to my argument, that if Renan’s work[71] were non-extant, the main results of biblical criticism, as set forth in the works of Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar, for example, would not be sensibly affected.  I thought I had explained it satisfactorily already, but it seems that my explanation has only exhibited still more of my native perversity, so I ask for one more chance.