Another strong contrast between the two sets of scriptures emerges when we attempt to fix the dates at which the earliest Buddhist works were produced. The New Testament is admitted by authorities who cannot be accused of prejudice in favour of Christianity and even by antichristian critics, to contain the actual writings of some of the original disciples of Jesus. The very latest of the books which compose it was in circulation within a century after His death, while the great bulk of them were accepted before half a century had passed as the testimonies of those who were eye-witnesses of the rise of our religion.[68] M. Renan admits that the three Synoptical Gospels are the “tender remembrances and simple narratives of the first and second generations of Christians, written in substantially their present form by the men whose names they bear.”[69] The epistle of St. James and several of the epistles of St. Paul are almost now unanimously accepted as the products of the first generation. Mons. E. Burnouf therefore may safely aver that “the history of Christian doctrine and worship bears the crown over all others in respect that its records are complete.”[70] What of these records are comprised in the New Testament, though tried by the severest of tests, continues to-day as they were eighteen centuries ago delivered to the Church. Though the various readings in the mss. are said to be counted by 200,000, hardly one of them can be said to affect a fundamental doctrinal or historical statement; and so outstanding and distinct is their canonical character that it requires no external authority, but only comparison with them, to disclose what of early Christian literature is to be regarded as apocryphal.