e of which the defendant is accused;
how can it be expected, that any reasonable, unprejudiced person,
should admit similar evidence to be of weight, in a case of the
greatest importance possible, not to himself only; but to the whole
human race?

But there is still a greater defect in the testimony of those early
writers, than their superstitious credulity, I mean their disregard of
honour, and veracity, in whatever concerned the cause of their
particular system.

Though Luke asserts, that many (even before he wrote his histories
for the use of Theophilus,) had written upon the same subject:
(who of course must have been of the Jewish nation,) and many
more must have been written afterwards, whose writings must have
been particularly valuable yet so singularly industrious have the
fathers, and succeeding sons of the orthodox church been, in
destroying every writing upon the subject of Christianity, which
they could not by some means, or other, apply to the support of
their own unholy superstition, that no work of importance of any
Christian writer, within the three first centuries, hath been
permitted to come down to us, except those books which they have
thought fit to adopt, and transmit to us as the canon of apostolic
scripture; and the works of a few other writers, who were all of
them, not only converts from Paganism, but men who had been
educated and well instructed in the Philosophic Schools of the
latter Platonists, and Pythagoreans.

The established maxim of these schools was, that it was not lawful
only, but commendable to deceive, and assert falsehoods for the
sake of promoting what they considered as the cause of truth and
piety, and the effects of this maxim, which was fully acted upon by
both orthodox Christians, and heretics, produced a multiplicity of
false, and spurious writings wherewith the second century
abounded.

Nay, they did not spare from the operation of this maxim, the
scriptures themselves. For they stuffed their copies of the
Septuagint with a number of interpolated pretended prophecies
concerning Jesus, and his death upon the cross; forgeries as weak,
and contemptible, and clumsy in themselves, as they were impious
and wicked. Whoever desires to see a number of them; may find
them in the dispute, or dialogue of Justin with Trypho the Jew;
where he will see the simple Justin bringing them out passage after
passage against the stubborn Israelite, who contents himself with
coolly answ