who, lest no credit should be given to the stories they told of what they could not know, did prefix, to their writings, the names of the apostles, and partly of those who succeeded the apostles, affirming, that what they wrote themselves, was written by these.  Wherein they seem to me to have been the more heinously injurious to the disciples of Christ, by attributing to them what they wrote themselves so dissonant and repugnant; and that they pretended to write those gospels under their names, which are so full of mistakes, of contradictory relations and opinions, that they are neither coherent with themselves, nor consistent with one another.  What is this, therefore, but to throw a calumny on good men, and to fix the accusation of discord on the unanimous society of Christ’s disciples.”

Addenda.  There is, in the Gospel ascribed to John, a passage, quoted as a prophecy, which, as it has been looked on as a proof text, ought to have been mentioned in the 7th chapter.  It is this.  The evangelist (John xix. 23) says, “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat—­now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.  They said, therefore, among themselves, ’ Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it’; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, ’They parted my raiment among them and for my vesture they did cast lots.’  “Now, however plausible this prophesy may appear, it is one of the most impudent applications of passages from the Old Testament that occurs in the New.  It is taken from the 18th verse of the 22d Psalm, which Psalm was probably made by David, in reference to his humiliating and wretched expulsion from Jerusalem by his son Absalom, and what was done in consequence, viz., that he was hunted by ferocious enemies, whom he compares to furious bulls, and roaring lions, gaping upon him to devour him; that his palace was plundered, and that they divided his treasured garments, (in the East, where the fashions never change, every great man has constantly presses full of hundreds and thousands of garments, many of them very costly:  they are considered as a valuable part of his riches), and cast lots for his robes.  This is the real meaning of this passage quoted as a prophecy.  In the same Psalm, there is another verse, which has been from time immemorial quoted as a prophecy of the crucifixion, (v. 16,) “They pierced my hands and my feet.”  In the original, there seems to have been a word dropped importing “they tear,” or something like it, for it is literally, “Like a lion—­my hands and my feet,” and there is there no word answering to “pierced.”  The meaning, however, of the verse is not difficult to be discerned, “dogs have compassed me; the assembly of wicked men have enclosed me; like a lion—­(they tear) my hands and my feet.”  The meaning may be discovered from the context, where David represents himself as in the utmost distress, helpless, and abandoned