Seeing the turn that Dr.Lightfoot's review was taking, and knowing how utterly vain it would be for any one else to go over the same ground, I felt myself more at liberty to follow a natural bent in confining myself pretty closely to the internal aspect of the enquiry.

My object has been chiefly to test in detail the alleged quotations from our Gospels, while Dr.Lightfoot has taken a wider sweep in collecting and bringing to bear the collateral matter of which his unrivalled knowledge of the early Christian literature gave him such command.
It will be seen that in some cases, as notably in regard to the evidence of Papias, the external and the internal methods have led to an opposite result; and I shall look forward with much interest to the further discussion of this subject.
I should be sorry to ignore the debt I am under to the author of 'Supernatural Religion' for the copious materials he has supplied to criticism.

I have also to thank him for his courtesy in sending me a copy of the sixth edition of his work.

My obligations to other writers I hope will be found duly acknowledged.

If I were to single out the one book to which I owed most, it would probably be Credner's 'Beitrage zur Einleitung in die Biblischen Schriften,' of which I have spoken somewhat fully in an early chapter.