To have the battle fairly fought out, Spinoza, or a Bhuddist, or a Burmese Gymnosoph, should be challenged.
Then, I am deeply persuaded, would the truth appear in full evidence, that no Christ, no God,--and, conversely, if the Father, then the Son.

I can never too often repeat, that revealed religion is a pleonasm.
-- Religion is revelation, and revelation the only religion.
Ib.p.

37.
'Shep.' Those believers, whose faith is to rely on the truth of the Christian history, rest their assent on a written report made by eye-witnesses; which report the various Churches and sects, jealous of one another, took care to preserve genuine and uncorrupted, at least in all material points, and all the religious writers in every age since have amply attested.
A divine of the present day who shall undertake the demonstration of the truth of Christianity by external evidences, or historically, must not content himself with assuming or asserting this.

He must either prove it; or prove that such proof is not necessary.

I myself should be quite satisfied if I proved the former position in respect to the fourth Gospel, and showed that the evidence of the other three was equivalent to a record by an eye-witness: which would not be at all inconsistent with my contending at the same time for the authenticity of the first Gospel, or rather for the Catholic interpretation of the title-words [Greek: Kata Matthaion], as the more probable opinion, which a sound divine will neither abandon nor overload, neither place it in the foundation, nor on the other hand suffer it to be extruded from the wall.