FORGED GOSPELS AND EPISTLES.
The Unitarian Bible says, in its preface, "It is notorious that forged writings, under the name of the apostles, were in circulation almost from the apostolic age." Mosheim testifies that "several histories of Christ's life and doctrines, fall of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were put in circulation before the meeting of the Council of Nice;" and he states, like William Penn, that he had no confidence in their ability to distinguish the true from the false. We will here quote another statement of William Penn: "There are many errors in the Bible. The learned know it: the unlearned had better not know it." Here is another sad proof of the blinding effect of reading and believing a book which abounds in errors. He would have the unlearned and honest reader swallow all the errors of the Bible, and be thereby morally poisoned by them, rather than have the book brought into discredit by having its errors exposed. This circumstance of itself is sufficient to seal its condemnation. Belsham says, "The genuine books of the Bible were but few compared with the spurious ones." This would be inferred from the circumstance of only four Gospels being adopted out of fifty, and only seventeen Epistles out of more than one hundred. Daille says, "The Christian fathers forged whole books; but neither he nor anybody else can furnish any rule for determining which they are."