Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/411

397 he could afford .01659265… of a grain of logic. He instantly sent me his photograph for the asking, and another letter in proof. The Thor-hammerer does nothing but grumble, except when he tells a good story, which he says he had from Dr. Abernethy. A Mr. James Dunlop was popping at the Papists with a 666-rifled gun, when Dr. Chalmers quietly said, 'Why, Dunlop, you bear it yourself,' and handed him a paper on which the numerals in were added up. This is almost as good as the Filii Dei Vicarius, the numeral letters of which also make 666. No more of these crazy—I first wrote puerile, but why should young cricketers be libelled?—attempts to extract religious use from numerical vagaries, and to make God over all a proposer of salvation conundrums: and no more of the trumpery hints about future destiny which it is too great a compliment to call blasphemous. If the Doctor will cipher upon the letters in 🇬🇷, with double Vahu cubic measure, he will perhaps learn to leave off trying to frighten me into gathering grapes from thorns.

Mystical hermeneutics may be put to good use by out-of-the-way people. They may be made to call the attention of the many to a distinction well known among the learned. The books of the New Testament have been for 1,500 years divided into two classes: the acknowledged (🇬🇷) which it has always been paradox not to receive; and the controverted (🇬🇷), about which there has always been that difference of opinion which no scholar overlooks, however he may decide for himself after balance of evidence. Eusebius, who first (l. 3, c. 25) recorded the distinction—which was much insisted on by the early Protestants—states the books which are questioned as doubtful, but which yet are approved and acknowledged by many— or the many, it is not easy to say which he means—to be the Epistles of James and Jude, the second of Peter and the second and third of John. In other places he speaks doubtingly of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Apocalypse he does not even admit into this class, for he proceeds as follows—I use the second edition of the English folio translation (1709), to avert suspicion of bias from myself:—

'Among the spurious [🇬🇷] let there be ranked both the work entitled the Acts of Paul, and the book called Pastor, and the Reve-