But we must not turn the jest to earnest. There are plenty of honest laymen to play the jury; and to them let it be put. The issue between us and M. Loisy, as he virtually admits, must be fought out by argument. It is perfectly true, as he says, that "in principle, nothing is more legitimate, more necessary, than the comparative method; but nothing is more delicate to handle." [448] Every issue, then, must be vigilantly debated. But the obligation is reciprocal. In these inquiries we have found M. Loisy many times in untenable positions, and resorting to inconsistent arguments. The tests which he applies to a mass of tradition are equally destructive to most of what he retains. Let illicit employments of the comparative method be discredited by all means; but let us also have done with a criticism which on one leaf claims that Jesus gave a "homogeneous" teaching which his disciples could not have "combined," and on the next avows that "the gospel ethic is no more consistent than the hope of the kingdom." [449] And when the myth-theorists are called upon to make no unwarranted assumptions, let us also have an end of such assertions as that "twenty-five or thirty years after the death of Jesus the principal sentences and parables of which the apostolic generation had kept memory were put in writing." [450] This is pure hypothesis, unsupported by evidence. The issue between us and M. Loisy, once more, is not one in which merely he assails the myth-theory as outgoing its proofs: it is one in which his positions are at the same time assailed all along the line, and particularly at its centre, as incapable of resisting critical pressure. By all means let us seek that "the science of religion should be applied without preoccupations of contemporary propaganda or polemic." The present writer reached the myth-theory not by way of propaganda but as a result of sheer protracted failure to establish a presupposed historical foundation. Professor Smith disclaims all criticism of "Christianity." And if Professor Drews be blamed for avowing a religious aim, the answer is that he would otherwise be assailed as "irreligious," alike in his own country and elsewhere. The myth-theory has to meet other foes than M. Loisy.