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Page 79
Though a little out of place, yet I will here adduce a fact which
illustrates and exemplifies the power of enthusiasm, to make
people believe they saw what they did not see. Lucian gives an
account of one Peregrinus, a philosophist very famous in his time,
who had a great number of disciples. He ended his life by throwing
himself, in the presence of assembled thousands, into a burning
pile. Yet such was the enthusiastic veneration of his followers,
that some of his disciples did solemnly aver, that they had seen
him after his death, clothed in white, and crowned; and they were
believed, insomuch that altars and statues were erected to
Peregrinus as to a demi-god. See Lucian�s account.
APPENDIX B.
See Cotelerius �Patres Apostolic,� Tom. 1, p. 602.
Extract of a letter from Peter to James, prefixed to the
Clementines.
�For, if this be not done, (says Peter, after entreating James not to
communicate his preachings to any Gentile without previous
examination,) our speech of truth will be divided into many
opinions, nor do I know this thing as being a prophet, but as seeing
even now the beginning of this evil. For some from among the
Gentiles have rejected my legal preaching, embracing the trifling,
and lawless doctrine of a man who is an enemy; and these
things, some have endeavoured to do now in my own lifetime,
transforming my words by various interpretations, to the
destruction of the Laws: as if I had been of the same mind, but
dared not openly profess it, (see Galatians ii. 11, 12, &c.,) which
be far from me! For this were to act against the law of God, spoken
by Moses, and which has the testimony of our Lord for its
perpetual duration; since he thus has said, �Heaven and earth shall
pass away, yet one jot, or one tittle, shall not pass from the law.�
But these, I know not how, promising to deliver my opinion, (see
Galatians as above) take upon them to explain the words they
heard from me, better than I that spoke them; telling their disciples,
my sense was that of which I had not so much as thought. Now, if
in my own life time, they dare feign such things, how much more
will those that come after, do the same.�
APPENDIX C.
Extract from Dodwell�s Dissertations on Irenaeus, Diss. 1, p.p. 38,
39.
�The Canonical writings (i. e. of the New Testament), lay
concealed in the coffers of private churches, or persons, till the
latter times of Trajan, or rather perhaps of Adrian; so that they
could not come to the knowledge of the church. For if they had
been published, they would have been overwhelmed under such a
multitude as were then of apocryphal and suppositious books, that
a new examination and a new testimony would be necessary to
distinguish them from these false ones. And it is from this new
testimony (whereby the genuine writings of the apostles were
distinguished from the spurious pieces which went under their
names,) that depends all the authority which the truly apostolic
writings have formerly obtained, or which they have at present in
the Catholic Church. But this fresh attestation of the canon is
subject to the same inconveniences with those traditions of the
ancient persons that I defend, and whom Irenaeus both heard and
saw; for it is equally distant from the original, and could not be
made except by such only as had reached those remote times. But
it is very certain that before the period I mentioned of Trajan�s
time, the canon of the sacred books, was not yet fixed, nor any
certain number of books received in the Catholic Church, whose
authority must ever after serve to determine matters of faith;
neither were the spurious pieces of heretics yet rejected, nor were
the faithful admonished to beware of them for the future. Likewise,
the true writings of the apostles used to be so bound up in one
volume with the apocryphal, that it was not manifest by any mark
of public censure which of them should be preferred to the other.
We have at this day, certain authentic writings of ecclesiastical
authors of those times, as Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, Hermas,
Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote in the same order wherein I
have named them, and after all the other writers of the New
Testament, except Jude, and the two Johns. But in Hermas you
shall not meet with one passage, or any mention of the New
Testament; nor in all the rest is any one of the evangelists called by
his own name. And if sometimes they cite any passages like those
we read in our gospels; yet, you will find them so much changed,
and for the most part so interpolated, that it cannot be known,
whether they produced them out of ours, or some apocryphal
gospels; nay, they sometimes cite passages which it is most certain
are not in the present gospels. From hence, therefore, it is evident
that no difference was yet put between the apocryphal and
canonical books of the New Testament, especially if it be
considered, that they pass no censure on the apocryphal, nor leave
any mark whereby the reader might discern whether they attributed
less authority to the spurious than to the genuine gospels; from
whence it may reasonably be suspected, that if they cite sometimes
any passages conformable to ours, it was not done through any
certain design, as if dubious things were to be confirmed only by
the canonical books, so as it is very possible that both those and the
like passages may have been borrowed from other gospels besides
these we now have. But what need I mention books that are not
canonical, when indeed it does not appear from those of our
canonical books which were last written, that the church knew any
thing of the gospels, or that the clergy made a common use of
them. The writers of these times do not chequer their works with
texts of the New Testament, which yet is the custom of the
moderns, and was also theirs in such books as they acknowledge
for scripture; for they most frequently cite the books of the Old
Testament, and would, doubtless, have done so by those of the
New, if they had then been received as canonical.�
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