an intelligent and unbiassed study of the character itself, as exhibited in the four narratives.
I think we may go farther.

We have no reason for thinking that _this_ was the sort of evidence which convinced the apostles themselves, and first teachers of the gospel;--if indeed in the very first years the doctrine was at all conceived of.

It cannot be shown that any one believed in the moral perfection of Jesus, who had not already adopted the belief that he was Messiah, and _therefore_ Judge of the human race.

My friend makes the pure immaculateness of Jesus (discernible by him in the gospels) his foundation, and deduces _from_ this the quasi-Messiahship: but the opposite order of deduction appears to have been the only one possible in the first age.

Take Paul as a specimen.
He believed the doctrine in question; but not from reading the four gospels,--for they did not exist.