What, I ask, could have induced learned and intelligent
divines to adopt or sanction subterfuges, which neutralising the
ordinary criteria of full or defective evidence in historical
documents, would, taken as a general rule, render all collation and
cross-examination of written records ineffective, and obliterate the
main character by which authentic histories are distinguished from
those traditional tales, which each successive reporter enlarges and
fashions to his own fancy and purpose, and every different edition of
which more or less contradicts the other? Allow me to create chasms
ad libitum, and ad libitum to fill them up with imagined facts and
incidents, and I would almost undertake to harmonise Falstaff's
account of the rogues in buckram into a coherent and consistent
narrative. What, I say, could have tempted grave and pious men thus
to disturb the foundation of the Temple, in order to repair a petty
breach or rat-hole in the wall, or fasten a loose stone or two in the
outer court, if not an assumed necessity arising out of the peculiar
character of Bible history?
The substance of the syllogism, by which their procedure was
justified to their own minds, can be no other than this.
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