Aspersions answered: an explanatory statement, addressed to the public at large, and to every reader of the Quarterly review in particular

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1824 ...There is something here not quite in good taste, not quite gentlemanly. If Mr. Rennell so departed from the usual course, as to introduce my name on his title-page, he might have prefixed to it the only Christian name that some, who think themselves Christians, allow me. To me, however, the omission is no discredit; nor, to me, is it of any consequence that in his preface he calls the criticism of the Quarterly Review " an able article." It seems that Mr. Rennell delayed his work in the expectation of an answer " long since threatened by the Editors of the Apocryphal Volume to the article above-mentioned;" I presume he may be almost persuaded that, though I advertised " a Refutation of the Quarterly Review of the Apocryphal New Testament," my abstinence from the press arose from other feelings than those of fear. T confess that I smiled l at Mr. Rennell's praise of an adversary, whose reputation for ability has lasted exactly two years and a quarter, merely because I maintained a sovereign contempt for his dishonesty during that period. Mr. Rennell supposes that the Apocryphal New Testament is " an insidious attempt to place its writings upon the same foundation with the Scriptures themselves." Upon that, as a general allegation, I shall observe when I come to set forth the circumstances that occasioned the work, and my design in publishing it. Mr. Rennell's animadversions on the apocryphal Gospels are so mingled with animadversions on me, that from thence it must be presumed that I designed to palm these Gospels for genuine, and to represent their contents as true. His strictures altogether tend to impute to me motives and conduct that he misconceives, and misrepresents. To illustrate, by an instance or two. He remar...