So far Mr. Dodwell, and (excepting the genuineness of the writings of Barnabas and the rest, for they are incontestably ancient,) it is certain that the matters of fact with regard to the New Testament are all true. Whoever has an inclination to write on this subject, is furnished from this passage with a great many curious disquisitions wherein to show his penetration and his judgment, as--how the immediate successors and disciples of the apostles could so grossly confound the genuine writings of their masters with such as were falsely attributed to them; or since they were in the dark about these matters so early, how come such as followed them, by a better light; why all those books which are cited by the earliest fathers with the same respect as those now received, should not be accounted equally authentic by them; and what stress should be laid on the testimony of those fathers, who not only contradict one another, but are often inconsistent with themselves, in relating the very same facts; with a great many other difficulties, which deserve a clear solution from any capable person. I have said the ancient heretics asserted that the present gospels were forgeries. As an example of this, take the following, from the works of Faustus, quoted by Augustine, contra Faustum Lib. 32, c. 2. "You think, (says Faustus to his adversaries,) that of all the books in the world the Testament of the Son only, could not be corrupted; that it alone contains nothing which ought to be disallowed; especially when it appears, that it was not written by the apostles, but a long time after them, by certain obscure persons, who, lest no credit should be given to the stories they told of what they could not know, did prefix, to their writings, the names of the apostles, and partly of those who succeeded the apostles, affirming, that what they wrote themselves, was written by these. Wherein they seem to me to have been the more heinously injurious to the disciples of Christ, by attributing to them what they wrote themselves so dissonant and repugnant; and that they pretended to write those gospels under their names, which are so full of mistakes, of contradictory relations and opinions, that they are neither coherent with themselves, nor consistent with one another. What is this, therefore, but to throw a calumny on good men, and to fix the accusation of discord on the unanimous society of Christ's disciples."