in his footnote drew on
him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical
Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in
his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added
by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added:
"Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern
American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the
above footnote.--Editor.]

About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is
said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were
scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had
begun to form itself into an hierarchy, or church government, with
temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as
we now see them, called 'The New Testament.' They decided by vote, as I
have before said in the former part of the Age of Reason, which of those
writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of
God, and which should not. The Robbins of the Jews had decided, by vote,
upon the books of the Bible before.

As the object of the church, as is the case in all national
establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the
means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and
wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of
being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in
the place of it; for it can be traced no higher.

Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves
Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the
authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called St.
Augustine, and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, "The books
called the Evangelists have been composed long after the times of the
apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not
give credit to their relation of matters of which they could not be
informed, have published them under the names of the apostles; and
which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is
neither agreement nor connection between them."

And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those
books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your
predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things
which, though they carry his name, agree not with his doctr