Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

Barnabas and the Early Christians 75

In order to amaze the simple and such as are ignorant

of the Scriptures of Truth, they obtrude upon them an

inexpressible multitude of apocryphal and spurious

scriptures of their own devising.

Toland continues:

Weknow already to what degree imposture and credu­

lity went hand in hand in the primitive times of the

Christian Church, the last being as ready to receive as

the first was to forge books ... This evil grew afterwards

not only greater when the Monks were the sole tran­

scribers and the sole keepers of all books good or bad,

but in process of time it became almost absolutely im­

possible to distinguish history from fable, or truth from

error as to the beginning and original monuments of

Christianity ...

How immediate successors of the Apostles could sa

grossly confound the genuine teaching of their masters

with such as were falsely attributed to them? Or since

they were in the dark about these matters so early how

came such as followed them by a better light? And ob­

serving that such Apocryphal books were often put upon

the same footing with the canonical books by the Fa­

thers, and the first cited as Divine Scriptures no less than

the last, or sometimes, when such as we reckon divine

were disallowed by them. l propose these two other

questions: Why all the books cited as genuine by Clem­

ent of Alexander, Origen, Tertullian and the rest of such

writers should not be accounted equally authentic? And

what stress should be laid on the testimony of those

Fathers who not only contradiet one another but are also

often inconsistent with themselves in their relations of

the very same faets?

Toland goes on to say that when these questions are asked of the
'wooden priests and divinilings,' instead of meeting the arguments,
they reaet by calling those who raise the questions 'hereticks or
concealed atheists.' He continues: