Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/26

 xx (Paris, 1886). He may fairly be said to have disposed of the claims of John of Damascus. He points out that the style of the book is superior in purity, correctness, and richness to that of the recognised works of John of Damascus. The defenders of the authorship had pointed to similarities of doctrine in ecclesiastical matters in the Barlaam and in the recognised writings of John of Damascus. M. Zotenberg in his case traces the similarity to a common source. Apart, however, from these negative arguments, M. Zotenberg has, by a careful scrutiny of the theology of Barlaam, arrived at an ingenious crucial difference between the views expressed in the book and those known to be held by John of Damascus. Each decade of the earlier centuries of Christianity can be distinguished by its fashionable heresy. The years 620-38 were dominated in Christian theology by the discussion of the exact relations of the human and divine Will in Christ. I do not profess to understand the minutiae of the discussion, and my readers will probably be grateful to me if I profess the heresy of Lord Dundreary with regard to it. But it seems that the Christian world