Europe. But in this collection,
no other book, besides what is in ours, appears ever to have had a
place. And, which is very worthy of observation, the text, though
preserved in a remote country, and without communication with ours,
differs from ours very little, and in nothing that is important (Jones
on the Canon, vol. i. e. 14.).

SECTION VII.

Our Scriptures were received by ancient Christians of different sects
and persuasions, but many Heretics as well as Catholics, and were
usually appealed to by both sides in the controversies which arose in
those days.

The three most ancient topics of controversy amongst Christians were,
the authority of the Jewish constitution, the origin of evil, and the
nature of Christ. Upon the first of these we find, in very early times,
one class of heretics rejecting the Old Testament entirely; another
contending for the obligation of its law, in all its parts, throughout
its whole extent, and over every one who sought acceptance with God.
Upon the two latter subjects, a natural, perhaps, and venial, but a
fruitless, eager, and impatient curiosity, prompted by the philosophy
and by the scholastic habits of the age, which carried men much into
bold hypotheses and conjectural solutions, raised, amongst some who
professed Christianity, very wild and unfounded opinions. I think there
is no reason to believe that the number of these bore any considerable
proportion to the body of the Christian church; and, amidst the disputes
which such opinions necessarily occasioned, it is a great satisfaction
to perceive what, in a vast plurality of instances, we do perceive, all
sides recurring to the same Scriptures.

*I. Basilides lived near the age of the apostles, about the year 120, or,
perhaps, sooner. (Lardner, vol. ix. p. 271.) He rejected the Jewish
institution, not as spurious, but as proceeding from a being inferior to
the true God; and in other respects advanced a scheme of theology widely
different from the general doctrine of the Christian church, and which,
as it gained over some disciples, was warmly opposed by Christian
writers of the second and third century. In these writings there is
positive evidence that Basilides received the Gospel of Matthew; and
there is no sufficient proof that he rejected any of the other three: on
the contrary, it appears that he wrote a commentary upon the Gospel, so
copious as to be divided into twenty-four books. (Lardner, vol. ix. ed.
1788, p. 30