Walter Richard Cassels

“ It is admitted that no other testimony could justify our believing the specific Revelation which we are considering, the very substance of which is supernatural and beyond the criticism of reason, and that its doctrines, if not proved to be miraculous truths, must inevitably be pronounced "the wildest delusions." "By no rational being could a just and benevolent life be accepted as proof of such astonishing announcements." ”

“ Whatever definition be given of miracles, such exceptional phenomena must at least be antecedently incredible. In the absence of absolute knowledge, human belief must be guided by the balance of evidence, and it is obvious that the evidence for the uniformity of the order of nature, which is derived from universal experience, must be enormously greater than can be the testimony for any alleged exception to it. ”

“ The early enunciation of so pure a system of morality, and one so intelligible to the simple as well as profound to the wise, was of great value to the world; but, experience being once systematised and codified, if higher principles do not constrain us, society may safely be left to see morals sufficiently observed. It is true that, notwithstanding its fluctuating rules, morality has hitherto assumed the character of a Divine institution, but its sway has not, in consequence, been more real than it must be as the simple result of human wisdom and the outcome of social experience. ”

“ It is impossible to secure absolute unanimity of opinion, and the only question in such a case is whether I refer to writers, in connection with the circumstances which I affirm to be demonstrated, who advance arguments and evidence bearing upon it. A critic is quite at liberty to say that the arguments are insufficient, but he is not at liberty to deny that there are any arguments at all when the elaborate reasoning of men like Volkmar, Baur, and Hilgenfeld is referred to. ”

“ We were compelled to pronounce the evidence for the Resurrection and Ascension absolutely and hopelessly inadequate to prove the reality of such stupendous miracles, which must consequently be unhesitatingly rejected. There is no reason given, or even conceivable, why allegations such as these, and dogmas affecting the religion and even the salvation of the human race, should be accepted upon evidence which would be declared totally insufficient in the case of any common question of property or title before a legal tribunal. ”

“ If it were granted, for the sake of argument, that each slip in translation, each error in detail and each oversight in statement, with which Canon Lightfoot reproaches Supernatural Religion were well founded, it must be evident to any intelligent mind that the mass of such a work would not really be affected; such flaws—and what book of the kind escapes them—which can most easily be removed, would not weaken the central argument, and after the Apologist's ingenuity has been exerted to the utmost to blacken every blot, the basis of Supernatural Religion would not be made one whit more secure. ”

“ I may perhaps express my surprise that a writer who is quite capable of thinking for himself should have considered it worth his while to burden his pages with lists of names and writings, arranged, for the most part, alphabetically, which have in very many cases no value whatever for a scholar, while they can only oppress the general reader with a vague feeling that all 'profound' critics are on one side. The questions to be discussed must be decided by evidence and by argument and not by authority. ”

“ How far Christianity has promoted education and civilisation, we shall not here venture adequately to discuss. We may emphatically assert, however, that whatever beneficial effect Christianity has produced has been due, not to its supernatural dogmas, but to its simple morality. Dogmatic Theology, on the contrary, has retarded education and impeded science. Wherever it has been dominant, civilisation has stood still. Science has been judged and suppressed by the light of a text or a chapter of Genesis. ”

“ But the future tense, 'will be accomplished,' is itself the expression of a belief, not the statement of a fact. We may, indeed, accept this qualification as clear testimony that, when the narrative was written, many of his forebodings and predictions had not been fulfilled. The only example of a prediction actually given in the narrative is the dream of his burning pillow, which suggested to him that he would undergo martyrdom by fire. But what more natural than this presentiment, when persecution was raging around him and fire was a common instrument of death? ”

“ We may look in vain even in the synoptic Gospels for the doctrines elaborated in the Pauline Epistles and the Gospel of Ephesus. The great transformation of Christianity was effected by men who had never seen Jesus, and who were only acquainted with his teaching after it had become transmuted by tradition. The fervid imagination of the East constructed Christian theology. It is not difficult to follow the development of the creeds of the Church, and it is certainly most instructive to observe the progressive boldness with which its dogmas were expanded by pious enthusiasm. ”

“ Rather the mirage with its pleasant illusion, is the human cry, than the desert with its barrenness. Not so, is the friendly warning; seek not vainly in the desert that which is not there, but turn rather to other horizons and to surer hopes. Do not waste life clinging to ecclesiastical dogmas which represent no eternal verities, but search elsewhere for truth which may haply be found. What should we think of the man who persistently repulsed the persuasion that two and two make four from the ardent desire to believe that two and two make five? ”

“ There is no uncertainty as to the origin of belief in supernatural interference with nature. The assertion that spurious miracles have sprung up round a few instances of genuine miraculous power has not a single valid argument to support it. History clearly demonstrates that, wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely acknowledged that, under their influence, 'inexplicable' and 'miraculous' are convertible terms. ”

“ Almost every great advance which has been made towards enlightenment has been achieved in spite of the protest or the anathema of the Church. Submissive ignorance, absolute or comparative, has been tacitly fostered as the most desirable condition of the popular mind. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," has been the favourite text of Doctors of Divinity with a stock of incredible dogmas difficult of assimilation by the virile mind. Even now, the friction of theological resistance is a constant waste of intellectual power. ”

“ Now my argument in the first part is not that miracles are impossible—a thesis which it is quite unnecessary to maintain—but the much more simple one that miracles are antecedently incredible. Having shown that they are so, and appreciated the true nature of the allegation of miracles, and the amount of evidence requisite to establish it, I proceed to examine the evidence which is actually produced in support of the assertion that, although miracles are antecedently incredible, they nevertheless took place. ”

“ To entertain such libellous representations at all as part of the contents of "Divine Revelation," it was necessary to assert that man was incompetent to judge of the ways of the God of Revelation, and must not suppose him endowed with the perfection of human conceptions of justice and mercy, but submit to call wrong right and right wrong at the foot of an almighty Despot. ”

“ Similar miracles are reported long antecedently to the first promulgation of Christianity, and continued to be performed for centuries after it. A stream of miraculous pretension, in fact, has flowed through all human history, deep and broad as it has passed through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether failed to convince the people to whom the Revelation was primarily addressed. ”

“ We are freed from the incubus of base Hebrew mythology, and from doctrines of Divine government which outrage morality and set cruelty and injustice in the place of holiness. If we have to abandon cherished anthropomorphic visions of future Blessedness, the details of which are either of unseizable dimness or of questionable joy, we are at least delivered from quibbling discussions of the meaning of [Greek: aiônios] , and our eternal hope is unclouded by the doubt whether mankind is to be tortured in hell for ever and a day, or for a day without the ever. ”

“ On the other hand, in proportion as knowledge of natural laws has increased, the theory of supernatural interference with the order of nature has been dispelled and miracles have ceased. The effect of science, however, is not limited to the present and future, but its action is equally retrospective, and phenomena which were once ignorantly isolated from the sequence of natural cause and effect are now restored to their place in the unbroken order. Ignorance and superstition created miracles; knowledge has for ever annihilated them. ”

“ Without forming or adopting any theory whatever as to the date or origin of our Gospels, we simply searched the writings of the Fathers, during a century and a half after the events in question, for information regarding the composition and character of these works and even for any certain traces of their use, although, if discovered, these could prove little beyond the mere existence of the Gospels used at the date of the writer. In the latter and minor investigation, we were guided by canons of criticism, previously laid down, which are based upon the simplest laws of evidence. ”

“ There is nothing original in the claim of Christianity to be regarded as Divine Revelation, and nothing new either in the doctrines said to have been revealed, or in the miracles by which it is alleged to have been distinguished. There has not been a single historical religion largely held amongst men which has not pretended to be divinely revealed, and the written books of which have not been represented as directly inspired. There is not a doctrine, sacrament, or rite of Christianity which has not substantially formed part of earlier religions ”

“ As I have shown, however, the Vossian Epistles, whatever the value of their testimony, so far from supporting the claims advanced in favour of our Gospels, rather discredit them.
I have now minutely followed Dr. Lightfoot and Dr. Westcott in their attacks upon me in connection with Eusebius and the Ignatian Epistles, and I trust that I have shown once for all that the charges of "misrepresentation" and "misstatement," so lightly and liberally advanced, far from being well-founded, recoil upon themselves. ”