Now the question of the historical character of the Gospels is quite distinct from that of the truth or falsehood of any system of Ecclesiastical Christianity, which asserts that its theology is a deduction from the Gospels and the other portions of the New Testament. It is not revelation itself but a system erected by the application of reason to the facts of revelation. It is most important that this distinction should be kept in view. The truth is, that the facts of revelation stand in the same relation to theology as the facts of nature do to physical science. Incorrect reasonings respecting both the one and the other are alike possible. The Ptolemaic theory was propounded as an adequate solution of the facts and phenomena of the universe, and although utterly incorrect in all its parts, it for ages held unlimited sway over the human mind. In a similar manner various theories have been propounded as solutions of the facts of revelation, but it by no means follows because they have attained a wide acceptance that they afford the true solution. In examining the claims of the Gospels to be viewed as historical, it is quite as much out of place to make them responsible for all the theories which Ecclesiastical Christianity has propounded respecting the plan of salvation, as it would be to make the facts and phenomena of the universe answerable for all the theories which have been propounded for their solution. In examining the claims of the Gospels to be accepted as historical documents, it is most unreasonable to make them responsible for theories which were not formulated in the Church until centuries after their publication. Most of the positions affirmed in the above quotation were not formulated until a late period of the Church’s history. Certainly they are nowhere directly laid down in the New Testament. The utmost which can be asserted of them is, that they are alleged to be derived inferentially from its teaching. They form no portion of the Apostles’ or of the Nicene Creeds, which are the only formularies outside of the New Testament which can be represented as embodying the creed of the universal Church. Nor can they be found even in the Athanasian creed. In discussing the claims of the Gospels to be esteemed as historical, they can only be made fairly responsible for what they actually contain. To bring into such a controversy positions only affirmed in recent attempts to formulate a body of Christian doctrine, as though they had any bearing on the claims of the New Testament to be viewed as containing a divine revelation, can lead to no satisfactory result.