on of them in their
writings;" and, secondly, by another passage of the same work, wherein,
speaking of the First Epistle of Peter, "This," he says, "the presbyters
of ancient times have quoted in their writings as undoubtedly genuine;"
(Lardner, vol. viii. p. 99.) and then, speaking of some other writings
bearing the name of Peter, "We know," he says, "that they have not been
delivered down to us in the number of Catholic writings, forasmuch as no
ecclesiastical writer of the ancients, or of our times, has made use of
testimonies out of them." "But in the progress of this history," the
author proceeds, "we shall make it our business to show, together with
the successions from the apostles, what ecclesiastical writers, in every
age, have used such writings as these which are contradicted, and what
they have said with regard to the Scriptures received in the New
Testament, and acknowledged by all, and with regard to those which are
not such." (Lardner, vol. viii. p. 111)

After this it is reasonable to believe that when Eusebius states the
four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, as uncontradicted,
uncontested, and acknowledged by all; and when he places them in
opposition, not only to those which were spurious, in our sense of that
term, but to those which were controverted, and even to those which were
well known and approved by many, yet doubted of by some; he represents
not only the sense of his own age, but the result of the evidence which
the writings of prior ages, from the apostles' time to his own, had
furnished to his inquiries. The opinion of Eusebius and his
contemporaries appears to have been founded upon the testimony of
writers whom they then called ancient: and we may observe, that such of
the works of these writers as have come down to our times entirely
confirm the judgment, and support the distinction which Eusebius
proposes. The books which he calls "books universally acknowledged" are
in fact used and quoted in time remaining works of Christian writers,
during the 250 years between the apostles' time and that of Eusebius,
much more frequently than, and in a different manner from, those the
authority of which, he tells us, was disputed.

SECTION IX.

Our historical Scriptures were attacked by the early adversaries of
Christianity, as containing the accounts upon which the Religion was
founded.

Near the middle of the second century, Celsus, a heathen philosopher,
wrote a professed treatise aga