liever_' and '_heretic_' were quickly invented in India
_as elsewhere_, and bandied backwards and forwards between
contending parties, till at last, when the doctors disagreed,
the help of the secular power had to be invoked, and kings and
emperors assembled councils for the suppression of schism, for
the settlement of an orthodox creed, and for the completion of
a _sacred canon_."[465:1]

That which Prof. Mueller describes as taking place in the religion of
Christ Buddha, is exactly what took place in the religion of Christ
Jesus. That the miraculous, and many of the non-miraculous, events
related in the Gospels never happened, is demonstrable from the facts
which we have seen in this work, that nearly all of these events, had
been previously related of the gods and goddesses of heathen nations of
antiquity, more especially of the Hindoo Saviour _Crishna_, and the
Buddhist Saviour _Buddha_, whose religion, with less alterations than
time and translations have made in the Jewish Scriptures, may be traced
in nearly every dogma and every ceremony of the evangelical mythology.

* * * * *

NOTE.--The _Codex Sinaiticus_, referred to on the preceding page,
(_note_ 2,) was found at the Convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, by
Tischendorf, in 1859. He _supposes_ that it belongs to the 4th cent.;
but Dr. Davidson (in Kitto's Bib. Ency., Art. MSS.) thinks different. He
says: "_Probably_ it is of the 6th _cent._," while he states that the
_Codex Vaticanus_ "is _believed_ to belong to the 4th cent.," and the
_Codex_ Alexandrinus to the 5th cent. McClintock & Strong's Ency. (Art.
MSS.,) relying probably on Tischendorf's conjecture, places the _Codex
Sinaiticus_ first. "It is _probably_ the oldest of the MSS. of the N.
T., and of the 4th cent.," say they. The _Codex Vaticanus_ is considered
the next oldest, and the _Codex Alexandrinus_ is placed third in order,
and "was _probably_ written in the first half of the 5th cent." The
writer of the art. N. T. in Smith's _Bib. Dic._ says: "The _Codex
Sinaiticus_ is probably the oldest of the MSS. of the N. T., and of the
4th cent.;" and that the _Codex Alexandrinus_ "was _probably_ written in
the first half of the 5th cent." Thus we see that in determining the
dates of the MSS. of the N. T., Christian divines are obliged to resort
to _conjecture_; there being no certainty whatever in the matter. But
with all their "suppositions,