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A Reply to Dr Lightfoot's Essays
by Walter R. Cassels (4-Sep-1826 to 10-Jun-1907)
Originally published anonymously in 1889.
Transcribed by the Freethought Archives <freethought@despammed.com>
LONDON1889
I sincerely rejoice that Dr. Lightfoot has recovered from his recentillness. Of this restoration the vigorous energy of his preface to hisrepublication of the Essays on Supernatural Religion affords decidedevidence, and I hope that no refutation of this inference at least maybe possible, however little we may agree on other points.
It was natural that Dr. Lightfoot should not be averse to preservingthe more serious part of these Essays, the preparation of which costhim so much time and trouble; and the republication of this portionof his reply to my volumes, giving as it does the most eloquent andattractive statement of the ecclesiastical case, must be welcome tomany. I cannot but think that it has been an error of judgment andof temper, however, to have rescued from an ephemeral state of existenceand conferred literary permanence on much in his present volume,which is mere personal attack on his adversary and a deliberate attemptto discredit a writer with whom he pretends to enter into seriousargument. A material part of the volume is composed of such matter.I cannot congratulate him on the spirit which he has displayed.Personally I am profoundly indifferent to such attempts at detraction,and it is with heretical amusement that I contemplate the large partwhich purely individual and irrelevant criticism is made to playin stuffing out the proportions of orthodox argument. In the firstmoment of irritation, I can well understand that hard hitting, evenbelow the belt, might be indulged in against my work by an exasperatedtheologian—for even a bishop is a man,—but that such attacks shouldnot only be perpetuated, but repeated after years of calm reflection,is at once an error and a compliment for which I was not prepared.Anything to prevent readers from taking up Supernatural Religion:any misrepresentation to prejudice them against its statements.Elaborate literary abuse against the author is substituted for theeffective arguments against his reasoning which are unhappily wanting.In the later editions of my work, I removed everything that seemedlikely to irritate or to afford openings for the discussion of minorquestions, irrelevant to the main subject under treatment. WhilstDr. Lightfoot in many cases points out such alterations, he republisheshis original attacks and demonstrates the disparaging purpose ofhis Essays by the reiterated condemnation of passages which had solittle to do with the argument that they no longer exist in thecomplete edition of Supernatural Religion. Could there be morepalpable evidence of the frivolous and superficial character ofhis objections? It is not too much to say that in no part of theseEssays has Dr. Lightfoot at all seriously entered upon the fundamentalproposition of Supernatural Religion. He has elaborately criticisednotes and references: he has discussed dates and unimportant details:but as to the question whether there is any evidence for miracles andthe reality of alleged Divine Revelation, his volume is an absoluteblank. Bampton Lecturers and distinguished apologetic writers havefr