Now, it will be said that this is an infidel attack upon the New Testament, and that it tends to the overthrow of the only religion that can do the world any good. And yet, strange as it may appear, these facts are presented in the best interests of true religion—presented because they are true, and therefore best adapted, nay absolutely essential, to the successful defense and propagation of virtue and morality. The real infidels of the day are the theological liars and pretenders who are wilfully ignorant, or too dishonest and cowardly to publish what they know. Infidelity is breach of trust, disloyalty to truth. He who would do the most good must tell the whole truth. If we regard the Gospels as simple compilations from earlier documents and traditions, with occasional additions and alterations to meet occasions and times, we shall find in them very many things to admire and to adopt into our problems of life and systems of morals, many things worthy of imitation, many things to give courage and comfort in the struggle for existence, many things which would be just as true and just as useful if they had only been written yesterday by some one whom we have known from our childhood. Regarding the Gospels as human, we can excuse their absurdities and errors, and while we cast these errors aside we joyfully accept what is true and good and beautiful; but by claiming for them what they are not we bring even what is true into disrepute. It was a master-stroke of worldly wisdom and policy when Irenæus in the second century (who first mentioned our four Gospels) sanctioned the monstrous assumption of all ecclesiastical authority by divine right by the bishops and priests, which power soon became centralized at Rome; but it was the greatest misfortune of the ages for the cause of true religion and sound morality. It not only made the Church of Rome with its immense machinery a necessary result, but it made the not less false systems of Protestant dogmatic theology possible. There is no use in attempting to disguise the fact that the so-called scheme of redemption is in principle and substance the same in the Catholic and orthodox Protestant Churches. Many intelligent persons feel that they would as soon belong to one as the other, while they secretly regard the Romanists as logically the more consistent. The Romanists are strong in that they place the Church _first (jure divino)_ and make the scriptures the product of the Church, and of course subject to its interpretation. Protestants are weak in that they make the Church subject to written scriptures, which were selected by the founders of _Catholicism_, and then for centuries altered, forged, interpolated, and manipulated by popes and priests to strengthen their authority and secure the absolute submission of the people.