"Scripture," canonical or uncanonical, there is evidence of authenticity so strong as for this; exactness of detail in names; absence of any exaggeration more than is implied in recounting any miracle; the transaction recorded in the public archives; seen there by Eusebius himself; copied down and translated by him; such evidence for any one of the Gospels would make belief far easier than it is at present. The assertion of Eusebius was easily verifiable at the time (to use the favourite argument of Christians for the truth of any account); and if Eusebius here wrote falsely, of what value is his evidence on any other point? A Freethinker may fairly urge that Eusebius is _not_ trustworthy, and that this assertion of his about the archives is as likely to be false as true; but the Christian can scarcely admit this, when so much depends, for him, on the reliability of the great Church historian, all whose evidence would become worthless if he be once allowed to have deliberately fabricated that which did not exist. We have already noticed the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, and pointed out the numerous forgeries circulated under their names, and the consequent haze hanging over all the early Christian writers, until we reach the time of Justin Martyr. Thus we entirely destroy the whole basis of Paley's argument, that "the historical books of the New Testament ... are quoted, or alluded to, by a series of Christian writers, beginning with those who were contemporary with the Apostles, or who immediately followed them" ("Evidences," page 111;) for we have no certain writings of any such contemporaries. In dealing with the positions _f_. and _h_., we shall seek to prove that in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers--taking them as genuine--as well as in Justin Martyr, and in other Christian works up to about A.D. 180, the quotations said to be from the canonical Gospels conclusively show that other Gospels were used, and not our present ones; but no further evidence than the long list of apocryphal writings, given on pp. 240-243 is needed in order to prove our first proposition, that _forgeries, bearing the name of Christ, of the apostles, and of the early fathers, were very common in the primitive Church_.