. pp. 280, 281, &
283.)

It is extremely material to remark, that Celsus not only perpetually
referred to the accounts of Christ contained in the four Gospels, but
that he referred to no other accounts; that he founded none of his
objections to Christianity upon any thing delivered in spurious Gospels.
(The particulars, of which the above are only a few, are well collected
by Mr. Bryant, p. 140.)

II. What Celsus was in the second century, Porphyry became in the third.
His work, which was a large and formal treatise against the Christian
religion, is not extant. We must be content, therefore, to gather his
objections from Christian writers, who have noticed in order to answer
them; and enough remains of this species of information to prove
completely, that Porphyry's animadversions were directed against the
contents of our present Gospels, and of the Acts of the Apostles;
Porphyry considering that to overthrow them was to overthrow the
religion. Thus he objects to the repetition of a generation in Saint
Matthew's genealogy; to Matthew's call; to the quotation of a text from
Isaiah, which is found in a psalm ascribed to Asaph; to the calling of
the lake of Tiberius a sea; to the expression of Saint Matthew, "the
abomination of desolation;" to the variation in Matthew and Mark upon
the text, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," Matthew citing it
from Isaias, Mark from the Prophets; to John's application of the term
"Word;" to Christ's change of intention about going up to the feast of
Tabernacles (John vii. 8); to the judgment denounced by Saint Peter upon
Ananias and Sapphira, which he calls an "imprecation of death." (Jewish
and Heathen Test. Vol. iii. p. 166, et seq.)

The instances here alleged serve, in some measure, to show the nature of
Porphyry's objections, and prove that Porphyry had read the Gospels with
that sort of attention which a writer would employ who regarded them as
the depositaries of the religion which he attacked. Besides these
specifications, there exists, in the writings of ancient Christians,
general evidence that the places of Scripture upon which Porphyry had
remarked were very numerous.

In some of the above-cited examples, Porphyry, speaking of Saint
Matthew, calls him your Evangelist; he also uses the term evangelists in
the plural number. What was said of Celsus is true likewise of Porphyry,
that it does not appear that he considered any history of Christ except
these as having