It is an obvious rule in the admission of evidence in any cause whatsoever, that the more important the matter to be determined by it is, the more unsullied and unexceptionable ought the characters of the witnesses to be.  And when no court of Justice, in determining a question of fraud to the amount of six pence, will admit the’ testimony of witnesses who are themselves notoriously convicted of the same offence of which the defendant is accused; how can it be expected, that any reasonable, unprejudiced person, should admit similar evidence to be of weight, in a case of the greatest importance possible, not to himself only; but to the whole human race?

But there is still a greater defect in the testimony of those early writers, than their superstitious credulity, I mean their disregard of honour, and veracity, in whatever concerned the cause of their particular system.

Though Luke asserts, that many (even before he wrote his histories for the use of Theophilus,) had written upon the same subject:  (who of course must have been of the Jewish nation,) and many more must have been written afterwards, whose writings must have been particularly valuable yet so singularly industrious have the fathers, and succeeding sons of the orthodox church been, in destroying every writing upon the subject of Christianity, which they could not by some means, or other, apply to the support of their own unholy superstition, that no work of importance of any Christian writer, within the three first centuries, hath been permitted to come down to us, except those books which they have thought fit to adopt, and transmit to us as the canon of apostolic scripture; and the works of a few other writers, who were all of them, not only converts from Paganism, but men who had been educated and well instructed in the Philosophic Schools of the latter Platonists, and Pythagoreans.

The established maxim of these schools was, that it was not lawful only, but commendable to deceive, and assert falsehoods for the sake of promoting what they considered as the cause of truth and piety, and the effects of this maxim, which was fully acted upon by both orthodox Christians, and heretics, produced a multiplicity of false, and spurious writings wherewith the second century abounded.

Nay, they did not spare from the operation of this maxim, the scriptures themselves.  For they stuffed their copies of the Septuagint with a number of interpolated pretended prophecies concerning Jesus, and his death upon the cross; forgeries as weak, and contemptible, and clumsy in themselves, as they were impious and wicked.  Whoever desires to see a number of them; may find them in the dispute, or dialogue of Justin with Trypho the Jew; where he will see the simple Justin bringing them out passage after passage against the stubborn Israelite, who contents himself with coolly answering, that these marvellous prophecies were not to be found in his Hebrew bible!