“It was an established maxim with many Christians, that it was pardonable in an advocate for religion to avail himself of fraud and deception, if it were likely they might conduce toward the attainment of any considerable good.”
Dean Milman, in his “History of Christianity,” says: “It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself.”
Dr. Lardner says: “Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud.”
Bishop Fell writes: “In the first ages of the church, so extensive was the license of forging, so credulous were the people in believing that the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured.”
M. Daillé, one of the most distinguished of French Protestants, says: “For a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books.”
Dr. Gieseler says they “quieted their conscience respecting the forgery with the idea of their good intention.”
Dr. Priestley says they “thought it innocent and commendable to lie for the sake of truth.”
Scaliger says: “They distrusted the success of Christ’s kingdom without the aid of lying.”
That these admissions are true, that primitive Christianity was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tacitly admitted by all Christians. They characterize as forgeries, or unworthy of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings.
The thirty-second chapter of the Twelfth Book of Eusebius’s “Evangelical Preparation” bears this significant title: “How far it may be proper to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who require to be deceived.”