[Theory of interpolations] I have given many examples of the tendency of all these authors to condemn as an interpolation any text which contradicts their hypotheses. There is only one error worse than that of treating seriously documents which are no documents at all. It is that of the man who cannot recognize documents when he has got them. It is well, of course, to weigh sources, and the critical investigation of authorship lies at the basis of all true history. But, as the authors above cited justly remark (p. 99):--
We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust in these matters is almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity. Père Hardouin, who attributed the works of Virgil and Horace to medieval monks, was every whit as ridiculous as the victim of Vrain-Lucas. It is an abuse of the methods of this species of criticism to apply them, as has been done, indiscriminately, for the mere pleasure of it. The bunglers who have used this species of criticism to brand as spurious perfectly genuine documents, such as the writings of Hroswitha, the Ligurinus, and the bull unam sanctam, or to establish imaginary filiations between certain annals, on the strength of superficial indications, would have discredited criticism before now, if that had been possible.
It is unhappily easier to discredit criticism in the realm of ecclesiastical than of secular history; and this school of writers are doing their best to harm the cause of true Rationalism. They only afford amusement to the obscurantists of orthodoxy, and render doubly difficult the task of those who seek to win people over to a common-sense and historical envisagement, unencumbered by tradition and superstition, of the problems of early Christianity.
[Professor Smith's monotheistic cult] Lastly, it is a fact deserving of notice that the genesis of Christianity as these authors present it is much more mysterious and obscure than before. Their explanation needs explaining. What, we must ask, was the motive and end in view of the adherents of the pre-Christian Jesus or Joshua in writing the Gospels and bringing down their God to earth, so humanizing in a story their divine myth? Let Professor W. B. Smith speak: "What was the essence, the central idea and active principle, of the cult itself?" Here he means the cult of the pre-Christian Christ that invented the Gospels and diffused them on the market place. "To this latter," he continues, "we answer directly and immediately: It was a Protest against idolatry; it was a Crusade for monotheism."