In preparing a complete edition of this work, I have revised it throughout. I have not hesitated to make any alterations, omissions or additions which seemed to me likely to improve it. I have endeavoured as much as possible to avoid presenting openings for side issues, and, with this object, I have softened statements which, however sustainable in themselves, might give rise to discussions apart from the direct purpose of the Inquiry. Wherever my argument has appeared to me either involved or insufficiently expressed I have as freely recast it as my limits permitted, and I have in several parts introduced new data discovered or elaborated since the work was first written, or which I may then have overlooked.
In one instance only has any alteration been requisite which demands special mention here. Since the sixth edition was published, I have been convinced that Marcion's Gospel was based upon our third Synoptic, and I have accordingly so far modified my results. It may not be unnecessary, however, plainly to repeat that, with this exception, which is not of material consequence, my convictions not only remain fundamentally unchanged, but have been confirmed and strengthened both by thorough reconsideration of my own argument, and by careful attention to the replies made by able official apologists. As regards the philosophical and other objections to miracles, their cogency is so fully recognized that Bampton Lecturers and eminent Churchmen practically abandon miracles as evidence, and press upon their brethren the necessity of reconstructing the Christian argument The necessity of reconstruction is indeed apparent, but the materials have not yet been made manifest. Meanwhile, such apologists have been forced virtually to repudiate the great Christian representatives who have hitherto defended the Faith. The case may fairly be considered desperate when the crew throw their officers overboard by way of lightening the ship. The historical argument is not in a better position. The learned professors and critics who have undertaken to deal with it do not even pretend, except perhaps in the case of Papias, to do more than assert the anonymous use of the Gospels by some of the Fathers, and their consequent existence; but, if this were established, what support could that give to the record of miracles As for Papias, with his Hebrew Matthew and fragmentary indirect Mark, even if secured as a solitary witness to the composition of two Gospels, he would prove but a fatal friend to the apologetic cause.
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