I have now minutely followed Professor 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. It is impossible in a work like this, dealing with such voluminous materials, to escape errors of detail, as both of these gentlemen bear witness, but I have at least conscientiously endeavoured to be fair, and I venture to think that few writers have ever more fully laid before readers the actual means of judging of the accuracy of every statement which has been made. Before closing, I must say a few words regarding another of my critics, who is, however, of a very different order. My system of criticism is naturally uncongenial to Mr. Matthew Arnold, but while he says so with characteristic vigour, he likewise speaks of this work with equally characteristic generosity, and I cordially thank him. I could only be classed by mistake amongst the "objectors" to "Literature and Dogma," and however different may be the procedure in "Supernatural Religion," there is fundamental agreement between the two works, and the one may be considered the complement of the other. Some one must do the "pounding," if religion is to be a matter of belief and not of mere shifty opinion. We really address two distinct classes of readers. The reader who "has read _and accepted_" Mr. Matthew Arnold's "half dozen lines about the composition of the Gospels," and his "half dozen pages about miracles," may in one sense be "just in the same position as when he has read "the whole of this work,(1) but {lxxxi}