B. "_That there is nothing to distinguish the canonical from the apocryphal writings_." "Their pretences are specious and plausible, for the most part going under the name of our Saviour himself, his apostles, their companions, or immediate successors. They are generally thought to be cited by the first Christian writers with the same authority (at least, many of them) as the sacred books we receive. This Mr. Toland labours hard to persuade us; but, what is more to be regarded, men of greater merit and probity have unwarily dropped expressions of the like nature. _Everybody knows_ (says the learned Casaubon against Cardinal Baronius) _that Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, and the rest of the primitive writers, were wont to approve and cite books which now all men know to be apocryphal. Clemens Alexandrinus_ (says his learned annotator, Sylburgius) _was too much pleased with apocryphal writings_. Mr. Dodwell (in his learned dissertation on Irenæus) tells us that, _till Trajan, or, perhaps, Adrian's time, no canon was fixed; the supposititious pieces of the heretics were received by the faithful, the apostles' writings bound up with theirs, and indifferently used in the churches._ To mention no more, the learned Mr. Spanheim observes, _that Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen very often cite apocryphal books under the express name of Scripture_.... How much Mr. Whiston has enlarged the Canon of the New Testament, is sufficiently known to the learned among us. For the sake of those who have not perused his truly valuable books I would observe, that he imagines the 'Constitutions of the Apostles' to be inspired, and of greater authority than the occasional writings of single Apostles and Evangelists. That the two Epistles of Clemens, the Doctrine of the Apostles, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the second book of Esdras, the Epistles of Ignatius, and the Epistle of Polycarp, are to be reckoned among the sacred authentic books of the New Testament; as also that the Acts of Paul, the Revelation, Preaching, Gospel and Acts of Peter, were sacred books, and, if they were extant, should be of the same authority as any of the rest" (J. Jones, on the "Canon," p. 4-6). This same learned writer further says: "That many, or most of the books of the New Testament, have been rejected by heretics in the first ages, is also certain. Faustus Manichæus and his followers are said to have rejected all the New Testament, as not written by the Apostles. Marcion rejected all, except St. Luke's Gospel. The Manichees disputed much against the authority of St. Matthew's Gospel. The Alogians rejected the Gospel of St. John as not his, but made by Cerinthus. The Acts of the Apostles were rejected by Severus, and the sect of his name. The same rejected all Paul's Epistles, as also did the Ebionites, and the Helkesaites. Others, who did not reject all, rejected some particular epistles.... Several of the