certain writings of any such contemporaries. In dealing with the
positions _f_. and _h_., we shall seek to prove that in the writings of
the Apostolic Fathers--taking 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,