them as genuine—­as well as in Justin Martyr, and in other Christian works up to about A.D. 180, the quotations said to be from the canonical Gospels conclusively show that other Gospels were used, and not our present ones; but no further evidence than the long list of apocryphal writings, given on pp. 240-243 is needed in order to prove our first proposition, that forgeries, bearing the name of Christ, of the apostles, and of the early fathers, were very common in the primitive Church.

B. “That there is nothing to distinguish the canonical from the apocryphal writings.”  “Their pretences are specious and plausible, for the most part going under the name of our Saviour himself, his apostles, their companions, or immediate successors.  They are generally thought to be cited by the first Christian writers with the same authority (at least, many of them) as the sacred books we receive.  This Mr. Toland labours hard to persuade us; but, what is more to be regarded, men of greater merit and probity have unwarily dropped expressions of the like nature. Everybody knows (says the learned Casaubon against Cardinal Baronius) that Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, and the rest of the primitive writers, were wont to approve and cite books which now all men know to be apocryphal.  Clemens Alexandrinus (says his learned annotator, Sylburgius) was too much pleased with apocryphal writings.  Mr. Dodwell (in his learned dissertation on Irenaeus) tells us that, till Trajan, or, perhaps, Adrian’s time, no canon was fixed; the supposititious pieces of the heretics were received by the faithful, the apostles’ writings bound up with theirs, and indifferently used in the churches. To mention no more, the learned Mr. Spanheim observes, that Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen very often cite apocryphal books under the express name of Scripture....  How much Mr. Whiston has enlarged the Canon of the New Testament, is sufficiently known to the learned among us.  For the sake of those who have not perused his truly valuable books I would observe, that he imagines the ‘Constitutions of the Apostles’ to be inspired, and of greater authority than the occasional writings of single Apostles and Evangelists.  That the two Epistles of Clemens, the Doctrine of the Apostles, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the second book of Esdras, the Epistles of Ignatius, and the Epistle of Polycarp, are to be reckoned among the sacred authentic books of the New Testament; as also that the Acts of Paul, the Revelation, Preaching, Gospel and Acts of Peter, were sacred books, and, if they were extant, should be of the same authority as any of the rest” (J.  Jones, on the “Canon,” p. 4-6).  This same learned writer further says:  “That many, or most of the books of the New Testament, have been rejected by heretics in the first ages, is also certain.  Faustus Manichaeus and his followers are said to have rejected all the New Testament, as