Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/15

Rh abhorrence, a vocabulary by no means limited in its extent, or culpably weak in its expressions, has been expended upon these unfortunate compositions, individually and collectively." (p. 154.)

Once more:—

"From all alike — from orthodox fathers, from early historians, from popes, from councils, from Romanist divines and Protestant commentators — the same amount of contempt and reprobation has been expended on the Apocryphal Gospels, and yet they live and thrive, and are, perhaps, now as much and as curiously read as ever." (p. 155.)

As I have in the present volume mainly to do with the spurious Gospels, and documents closely allied with them, I shall chiefly limit my remarks to them. It has been said then, in opposition to what Lardner, Jones, Ellicott, and others have affirmed, that the Churches once received these spurious Gospels. Writers who have been hostile to the four Canonical Gospels have been very anxious to prove that either fewer or more than four were originally accepted, and they have not been over anxious which of these they proved. For popular purposes much use has been made of this argument, on the faith of an idle story quoted by Pappus