ST. GEORGE AGAIN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3678, 28 April 1883, Page 3

ST. GEORGE AGAIN.

[To tiu: Emron or the Daily Telegraph.] Sie,—Ymiv two correspondents "Outsider" and "Pugilist"' Lave .shown what can bo done in the way of gratuitous assertion in the matter of disputed points of history, and >jet Mr Mulvilull can ask your readers to accept the Rev. Alban Butler and Hayden unsupported by a single authority from antiquity, and that too after I have shown that the advocates of Christianity have not hesitated to tamper with the .Scriptures when it suited their purpose, inserting various passages, ay, a whole book (the Revelations) after that very book had been proved a forgery, and rejected as spurious by one of the earliest Councils of the Church (Council of Laodieia, 360), it being then and there "tacitly excluded from the sacred canon by the same Churches of Asia to whom it was addressed," so that, to suit their varying circumstances, the fathers of Christianity forged it, accepted it, re-accepted it, and their .successors now preach it as the genuine Word of God by St. John, and I for one refuse to accept their ipsc disits without confirmation. Your correspondent seems to have got into a fog with his variorum notes. I am acquainted with the edition of Gibbon he speaks of. The notes he quotes are Gibbon's own, as he may easily verify by referring to another edition, so let us see how the matter stands with St. George. From his examination of the early fathers and historians, including Gelasius and the reputed Acts of St. George, Giblion eour eludes that St, George is identical with Georgo of Cappadocia ; and, after a perusal oi' Longuoruana, a more modern writer, ho states that, though not absolutely certain, it is extremely probable that he is the tutelar saint "of England. Mr Mulvihill says they "ought to know whom the}' honor," but he has certainly failed to establish a personality (except on the dicta of modern writers) for any St. George other than George of Cappadocia. But modern Christians, ashamed of worshipping a fraudulent bacon contractor, whom the early church canonized to conciliate a faction, (see Gibbon, Vol. 1., 070, Warnu's edition) have sought to divest the name of George of the iufanny of the Cappadocian and to clothe it with the rank and distinction of Adauctus and the self-sacritico and devotion of Marcollus. —-I am, vfcc, QuiNTILIANUS. [As our readers have now learnt all that can be told about St. George, the correspondence npon the disputed point of hi.s identity must now cease.—Ed. D.T.]