FATHER LAMBERT AND INGERSOLL.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5173, 15 August 1885, Page 3

FATHER LAMBERT AND INGERSOLL.

[To the Editor of the Evening Star.] Sib, —This is a rery clever production indeed, and shows that the Eev. Father is a master of the art of special pleading; he pleads with all the force of a talented barrister who has received a heavy retaining fee, and who has determined to win his cfise at all hazards. The book has been bighlp praised, not only by Catholic but by many Protestant journals, even those of an extreme type, those avowedly hostile to the Roman Catholic religion. And yet, after all, the victory over Ingersoil is one in appearance rather than reality. The writer repeatedly and boldly contradicts Ingersoll on matters of scholarship, where Ingerscll is right, and he himself is proving his theological ignorance of facts, of which no Christian debater should be ignorant. This is the more inexcusable in his case, inasmuch as Ingersoll had in the cases in point called his particular attention to the disputed points. One example is sufficient; see page 146 of Father Lambert's book. The paragraph in Josephus is admitted to be aninterpolation. Father Lambert's com meat is: " Admitted by whom ? By you, and Paine, and Voltaire, and other infidels, Tooley street tailors, &c." These remarks of Father Lambert's show gross ignorance, for the passage in Josephus i? admitted to be a forgery by the following eminent Christian scholars :—Blpndel, Ittigius.and Vandale (Protestant Divines), Tannequi, Le Fevre, and Le Clerc (eminent scholars), and other soholars of less eminence ; also by Bishop Warburton, of the Episcopalian Church, who disowns the passage, saying that if a Jew owned the truth of Christianity he must needs embrace it. In the interpolated passage Josephus is made to say, "This was the Christ," yet Josephus lived and died a Jew. That famous critic, Dr Lardner, of the Unitarians, says forcibly, "I cannot see that we want the disputed passage in Josephus at all." The Abbe Bullet, who wrote a defence of the passage, winds up his argument by saying that Josephus must have written the passage, and its not being found by any of the Fathers before Usebius is to be accounted for by the supposition (a very unlikely one) that Josephus himself tniffMh&re published two distinct editions of his work, inserting the passage in that edition which came to' the hand of Easebins, but omitting it in all others. Father Lamberb further says " that it was first quoted by Eusebius, and it is morally impossible that he could have forged it without being detected." The learned Father appears to be unaware that in an after age, when the fact that none of the Christian Fathers, in their debates with heathen philosophers, had ever quoted the passage,—and Eusebius was consequently freely charged with the forgery, and the controversy waxed hot,—a rigid enquiry was made into .the matter, and it was proved that one copy of Josephus did exist in ..the. time of Eusebius, and this copy was traced to the writer, a presbyter of the Christian Church named Caius, and proved that it had been written in the middle of the century immediately preceding that of Eusebius (namely, in A.D. 250)y and' thus was the name of that great Christian ecclesiastical historian (of the first three centuries of Christendom) rescued from the disgrace and obloquy which would have been deservedly bis, had be been guilty of such an abominable fraud. The reader must understand that I am not one of those who dispute either Ihe existence or the value and excellence of the work and life of Jesus. What I do dispute is the right of the Eev. Father to attempt either through reckless carelessness or misguided zeal, to foist forged passages upon his renders as; genuine evidences of Christianity.Everyone of the passagesquoted so positively by Father Lambert are gravely questioned by scholars, while some of them bear internal evidence of their falsehood of so plain a character as could not escape the notice of any Bcholarly critic. The Eev. Father, in spite of his undoubted intellectual ability (if judged by the tone of his book) is not, I fear,-one of those Catholic priests who, by their self-denying heroism, gentleness, and charity, have won the respect of not only their, own flocks, but of heretics, sceptics, and infidels whenever they have been acquainted with their merits. In conclusion, the Key. Father so ingeniously, at times uses sound arguments and facts to draw unsound conclusions that it is often difficult to unravel his sophistries.— lam.&c, G. Vidal. P.S.—I regret that lack of space prevents me from proving other errors or showing such merits as the book undoubtedly possesses. It will, no doubt, answer the purpose for which it was ■written amongst the unlearned, but it will hardly convert Ingersoll or any scholarly sceptic to Catholicity. Nevertheless, I welcome it, as it is-a sign of the intellectual improvement of the age we live in over former times —that a tierce and zealous priest should have thought it necessary to try and overthrow the infidel by argument rather than by brute force.