If the author of 'Supernatural Religion' undertook to show this, he undertook a superfluous task.

So much at least, Mr.Arnold was right in saying, 'might be stated in a sentence and proved in a page.' There is a presumption in favour of the tradition, and perhaps, considering the relation of Irenaeus to Polycarp and of Polycarp to St.John, we may say, a fairly strong one; but we need now-a-days, to authenticate a document, closer evidence than this.

The cases are not quite parallel, and the difference between them is decidedly in favour of Irenaeus, but if Clement of Alexandria could speak of an Epistle written about 125 A.D.is the work of the apostolic Barnabas the companion of St.
Paul [Endnote 346:1], we must not lay too much stress upon the direct testimony of Irenaeus when he attributes the fourth Gospel to the Apostle St.John.
These are points for a different set of arguments to determine.
The Gospel itself affords sufficient indications as to the position of its author.

For the conclusion that he was a Palestinian Jew, who had lived in Palestine before the destruction of Jerusalem, familiar with the hopes and expectations of his people, and himself mixed up with the events which he describes, there is evidence of such volume and variety as seems exceedingly difficult to resist.

As I have gone into this subject at length elsewhere [Endnote 347:1], and as, so far as I can see, no new element has been introduced into the question by 'Supernatural Religion,' I shall not break the unity of the present work by considering the objections brought in detail.