Wesley Corpus

(3.) You cannot but know it has always been the judgment of learned men, (which you are at liberty to refute if you are able,) that the far greater part of those spurious books have been forged by heretics; and that many more were compiled by weak, well-meaning men, from what had been orally delivered down from the Apostles. But, (4.) There have been in the Church from the beginning men who had only the name of Christians. And these, doubtless, were capable of pious frauds, so called. But this ought not to be charged upon the whole body. Add to this, (5.) What is observed by Mr. Daillé: “I impute a great part of this mischief to those men who, before the invention of printing, were the transcribers and copiers out of manuscripts. We may well presume that these men took the same liberty in forging as St. Jerome complains they did in corrupting books; especially since this course was beneficial to them, which the other was not.” Much more to the same effect we have in his treatise “Of the Right Use of the Fathers,” Part I., chap. iii. N.B. These transcribers were not all Christians; no, not in name; perhaps few, if any of them, in the first century. (6.) By what evidences do you prove, that these spurious books “are frequently cited by the most eminent Fathers, as not only genuine, but of equal authority with the Scriptures themselves?” or, Lastly, that they either forged these books themselves, or made use of what they knew to be forged ? These things also you are not to take for granted, but to prove, before your argument can be of force. 12. We are come at last to your general conclusion: “There is no sufficient reason to believe, that any miraculous powers subsisted in any age of the Church after the times of the Apostles.” (Page 91.) But pretended miracles, you say, arose thus: “As the high authority of the apostolic writings excited some of the most learned Christians” (prove that !) “to forge books under their names; so the great fame of the apostolic miracles would naturally excite some of the most crafty, when the Apostles were dead, to attempt some juggling tricks in imitation of them.