Others place the authorship with Averroes, Peter Arretin and Petrus Pomponatius. Heinrich Ernst accuses the above mentioned Postel. Postel attributes it to Servetus, who, in turn, places it at the door of the Huguenot Barnaud.
The instigator of the treatise, it is claimed, should have been Julius Cesar Vanini, who was burned at Toulouse in 1619, or Ryswick, who suffered at the stake in Rome in 1612.
Other persons accused of the authorship are Macchiavelli, Rabelais, Erasmus, Milton (John, born 1608,) a Mahometan named Merula, Dolet, and Giordano Bruno.
According to Campanella, to whom the authorship was attributed occasionally, Muret, or Joh. Franz. Poggio, were responsible. Browne says it was Bernhard Ochini, and Maresius lays it to Johann Boccaccio.
The “three cheats” are Moses, Jesus and Mahomet, but the tracts of each of the latter alleged authors treat only of Moses, of whom they say that his assertions in Genesis will not hold water, and cannot be proved.
Weller, in his edition of 1876, speaking of the copy of 1598, says that this issue should never be compared with any of the foregoing.
Many authors have written “de Tribus Impostoribus” because they had some special object in view; for instance, John Bapt. Morinus, when he edited, under the name of Vincentius Panurgius, in Paris, 1654, an argument against Gassendi, Neure, and Bernier.
Joh. Evelyn with a “Historia de tribus hujus seculi famosis Impostoribus,” Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei, otherwise Joh. Mich. Cigala, and Sabbatai Sevi (English 1680, German 1669,)[1] Christian Kortholt “de Tribus Impostoribus Magnus,” (Kiel 1680 and Hamburg 1701,) against Herbert, Hobbes and Spinosa, Hadrian Beverland, Perini del Vago, Equitis de Malta, “Epistolium ad Batavum in Brittania hospitem de tribus Impostoribus,” (Latin and English 1709.)
Finally, Michael Alberti, under the name of Andronicus, published a “Tractatus Medico-historicus de tribus Impostoribus,” which he named the three great Tempters of Humanity: 1. Tea and Coffee. 2. Laziness. 3. Home apothecaries.
Cosmopoli Bey (Peter Martin Roman), issued at Russworn in Rostock in 1731, and a new edition of same treatise—De Trib. Imp.—1738 and 1756.