, refers it to the 5th year of Claudius, that is about A.D. 47:
after which period, events through more than fifteen years are recorded
in that book of sacred Scripture.

But closing the holy volume, what light does primitive antiquity enable
us to throw on this subject?

The earliest testimony quoted by the defenders of the doctrine, that
Mary was at her death taken up bodily into heaven, is a supposed entry
in the Chronicon of Eusebius, opposite the year of our Lord 48. This is
cited by Coccius without any remark; and even Baronius rests the date of
Mary's assumption upon this testimony. [Vol. i. 403.] The words referred
to are these,--"Mary the Virgin, the mother of Jesus, was taken up into
heaven; as some write that it had been revealed to them." {304}

Now, suppose for one moment that this came from the pen of Eusebius
himself, to what does it amount? A chronologist in the fourth century
records that some persons, whom he does not name, not even stating when
they lived, had written down, not what they had heard as matter of fact,
or received by tradition, but that a revelation had been made to them of
a fact alleged to have taken place nearly three centuries before the
time of that writer. But instead of this passage deserving the name of
Eusebius as its author, it is now on all sides acknowledged to be
altogether a palpable interpolation. Suspicions, one would suppose, must
have been at a very remote date suggested as to the genuineness of this
sentence. Many manuscripts, especially the seven in the Vatican, were
known to contain nothing of the kind; and the Roman Catholic editor of
the Chronicon at Bordeaux, A.D. 1604, tells us that he was restrained
from expunging it, only because nothing certain as to the assumption of
the Virgin could be substituted in its stead. [P. 566.] Its spuriousness
however can no longer be a question of dispute or doubt; it is excluded
from the Milan edition of 1818, by Angelo Maio and John Zohrab; and no
trace of it is to be found in the Armenian[110] version, published by
the monks of the Armenian convent at Venice, in 1818.

[Footnote 110: The author visited that convent whilst this
edition of the Chronicon of Eusebius was going through the
press, and can testify to the apparent anxiety of the monks to
make it worthy of the patronage of Christians.]

The next authority, to which we are referred, is a letter[111] said to
have been written by Sophronius the {305} p