Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural Religion

Essays on the Work Entitled
''Supernatural Religion''

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Title: Essays on "Supernatural Religion"
Author: Joseph B. Lightfoot
Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18191]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been relocated to the end of the
text, and footnote anchors have been labeled with the original page and
footnote numbers. Inconsistent hyphenations by the author (including
co-extensive/coextensive, foot-notes/footnotes,

hundred-fold/hundredfold, mis-statement/misstatement,
re-written/rewritten, two-fold/twofold) have been retained as printed.]

ESSAYS ON THE WORK ENTITLED "SUPERNATURAL
RELIGION"
Reprinted from The Contemporary Review.
BY
J.B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. LATE BISHOP OF
DURHAM.

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK. 1893
First Edition, 1889. Second Edition, 1893.

PREFACE.
This republication of Essays which were written several years ago has
no reference to any present controversies. Its justification is the fact
that strangers and friends in England and America alike had urged me
from time to time to gather them together, that they might be had in a
more convenient form, believing that they contained some elements of
permanent value which deserved to be rescued from the past numbers
of a Review not easily procurable, and thus rendered more accessible to
students. I had long resisted these solicitations for reasons which I shall
explain presently; but a few months ago, when I was prostrated by
sickness and my life was hanging on a slender thread, it became
necessary to give a final answer to the advice tendered to me. This
volume is the result. The kind offices of my chaplain the Rev. J.R.
Harmer, who undertook the troublesome task of verifying the
references, correcting the press, and adding the indices, when I was far
too ill to attend to such matters myself, have enabled me to bring it out

sooner than I had hoped.
When I first took up the book entitled 'Supernatural Religion,' I felt,
whether rightly or wrongly, that its criticisms were too loose and
pretentious, and too full of errors, to produce any permanent effect; and
for the most part attacks of this kind on the records of the Divine Life
are best left alone. But I found that a cruel and unjustifiable assault was
made on a very dear friend to whom I was attached by the most sacred
personal and theological ties; and that the book which contained this
attack was from causes which need not be specified obtaining a
notoriety unforeseen by me. Thus I was forced to break silence; and, as
I advanced with my work, I seemed to see that, though undertaken to
redress a personal injustice, it might be made subservient to the wider
interests of the truth.
Paper succeeded upon paper, and I had hoped ultimately to cover the
whole ground, so far as regards the testimony of the first two centuries
to the New Testament Scriptures. But my time was not my own, as I
was necessarily interrupted by other literary and professional duties
which claimed the first place; and meanwhile I was transferred to
another and more arduous sphere of practical work, being thus obliged
to postpone indefinitely my intention of giving something like
completeness to the work.
In republishing these papers then, the only course open to me, in justice
to my adversary as well as to myself, was to reprint them in succession
word for word as they appeared, correcting obvious misprints; though
in many cases my argument might have been strengthened considerably.
Recently discovered documents for instance have established the
certainty of the main conclusions respecting Tatian's Diatessaron, to
which the criticism of the available evidence had led me. Again I have
since treated the Ignatian question more fully elsewhere, and satisfied
myself on points about which I had expressed indecision in these
Essays. On the other hand on one or two minor questions I might have
used less confident language.
What shocked me in the book was not the extravagance of the opinions
or the divergence from my own views; though I cannot pretend to be

indifferent about the veracity of the records which profess to reveal
Him, whom I believe to be not only the very Truth, but the very Life. I
have often learnt very much even from extreme critics, and have freely
acknowledged my obligations; but here was a writer who (to judge
from his method) seemed to me, and not to me only