Excerpt from A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion IT is now fourteen years since I prepared the first edi tion of this volume. In that time laborious Germans, some of them men of great genius, have investigated the history of the first and second centuries of the Chris tian Era with an amount of learning, patience, sagacity, and freedom of thought never before directed to that inquiry. Partly by their help, and partly by my own investigations, I have been led to conclude that the fourth Gospel is not the work of John the Disciple of Jesus, but belongs to a later period, and is of small his torical value. This conclusion and its consequences will appear in some alterations made in this volume, which I have carefully revised in the light of the theo logical science of the present day. I know there are Truths in the Book which must prevail; the Errors connected therewith I invite men to expose and leave them to perish, that the Truths may the more readily do their work. I commit both to the Justice of Man kind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.