30. Out of forty Gospels we receive four as canonical; the rest are the fruitful produce of that spirit of forgery which the Christian world has always been celebrated for. Their piety was indefatigable in burning the books of the heretics and unbelievers, and the same piety was not sparing in furnishing apocryphal books. It is for the salvation of mankind that Christianity should prevail; and how can its propagation be advanced, and its dominion confirmed, more than by preventing the arguments against it from being exposed to view? Some may indeed pretend, that this mode of proceeding is tyrannical, and destructive of the rights of mankind; but we, the faithful, insist that it is zealous and politic. How can a man be said to be injured, even if we allow that he is cheated, since he is cheated into salvation, though perhaps against his will? Yet it will be doing a singular service to us weaker Christians, if your Lordships will point out by what particular emanation of the Holy Spirit the Church was enabled to select the divine out of such a number of apocryphal writings. * John i. 21. ** Matt. xi. 14. Our enemies, the infidels, say, that time has obliterated the primitive disputes on this subject, and that the sanction of custom has confirmed the authority of the four Gospels, which, so far from external and historical, have not even the internal evidence of truth. They observe, that the gospel of Mark, though evidently an abridgement of that of Matthew, yet differs from it in many very material particulars; that the grand circumstance of the conspiracy by which Christ lost his life, is told differently and discordantly by all the four. They express the highest astonishment that the sending of Jesus to Herod by Pilate should be related by Luke, and that the other three Evangelists should not only omit that occurrence, but relate the proceedings in this affair so as entirely to exclude the possibility of its insertion. They think it also impossible that an earthquake should rend rocks, and that many saints should arise from the dead, and go into the holy city, as Matthew relates; and yet that these great events should not only have escaped contemporary historians, but even the other three Evangelists. And to this they add, that it is particularly strange and amazing that John, who was present at the crucifixion,* should not only forbear to mention any one of the terrible appearances recorded in Matthew on that occasion, but that even the darkness of three hours' duration, which must have made the most lasting impression on every individual in Judea, should also be by him totally unnoticed. * Such as we behold even in the present enlightened day by that great prophetess, Joanna Southcott, and her followers! who are now deceiving the people of this kingdom with her prophecies. Edit.