If he comes across a quotation apparently taken from our Gospels he is at once ready with his reply, 'But it may be taken from a lost Gospel.' Granted; it may.

But the extant Gospel is there, and the quotation referable to it; the lost Gospel is an unknown entity which may contain anything or nothing.
If we admit that the possibility of quotation from a lost Gospel impairs the certainty of the reference to an extant Gospel, it is still quite another thing to argue that it is the more probable explanation and an explanation that the critic ought to accept.

In very few cases, I believe, has the author so much as attempted to do this.
We might then take a stand here, and on the strength of what can be satisfactorily proved, as well as of what can be probably inferred, claim to have sufficiently established the use and antiquity of the Gospels.

This is, I think, quite a necessary conclusion from the data hitherto collected.
But there is a further objection to be made to the procedure in 'Supernatural Religion.' If the object were to obtain clear and simple and universally appreciable evidence, I do not hesitate to say that the enquiry ends just where it ought to have begun.
Through the faulty method that he has employed the author forgets that he has a hypothesis to make good and to carry through.

He forgets that he has to account on the negative theory, just as we account on the positive, for a definite state of things.