ntroduced other Scriptures in order to maintain their errors;
and to carry out this, they made use of certain Acts, which they
attributed to St. Andrew and to St. Thomas.

The Manicheans wrote a gospel of their own style, and rejected the
Scriptures of the prophets and the apostles. The Etzaites sold a certain
book which they claimed to have come from Heaven; they cut up the other
Scriptures according to their fancy. Origen himself, with all his great
mind, corrupted the Scriptures and forged changes in the allegories
which did not suit him, thus corrupting the sense of the prophets and
apostles, and even some of the principal points of doctrine. His books
are now mutilated and falsified; they are but fragments collected by
others who have appeared since. The Ellogians attributed to the heretic
Corinthus the Gospel and the Apocalypse of St. John; this is why they
reject them. The heretics of our last centuries reject as apocryphal
several books which the Roman Catholics consider as true and sacred--such
as the books of Tobias, Judith, Esther, Baruch, the Song of the Three
Children in the Furnace, the History of Susannah, and that of the Idol
Bel, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, the first and second book of
Maccabees; to which uncertain and doubtful books we could add several
others that have been attributed to the other apostles; as, for example,
the Acts of St. Thomas, his Circuits, his Gospel, and his Apocalypse;
the Gospel of St. Bartholomew, that of St. Matthias, of St. Jacques, of
St. Peter and of the Apostles, as also the Deeds of St. Peter, his book
on Preaching, and that of his Apocalypse; that of the Judgment, that of
the Childhood of the Saviour, and several others of the same kind, which
are all rejected as apocryphal by the Roman Catholics, even by the Pope
Gelasee, and by the S. S. F. F. of the Romish Communion. That which most
confirms that there is no foundation of truth in regard to the authority
given to these books, is that those who maintain their Divinity are
compelled to acknowledge that they have no certainty as a basis, if
their faith did not assure them and oblige them to believe it. Now, as
faith is but a principle of error and imposture, how can faith, that is
to say, a blind belief, render the books reliable which are themselves
the foundation of this blind belief? What a pity and what insanity! But
let us see if these books have of themselves any feature of truth; as,
for example, of er