authority with Christians.

III. A third great writer against the Christian religion was the emperor
Julian, whose work was composed about a century after that of Porphyry.

In various long extracts, transcribed from this work by Cyril and
Jerome, it appears, (Jewish and Heathen Test. vol. iv. p. 77, et seq.)
that Julian noticed by name Matthew and Luke, in the difference between
their genealogies of Christ that he objected to Matthew's application of
the prophecy, "Out of Egypt have I called my son" (ii. 15), and to that
of "A virgin shall conceive" (i. 23); that he recited sayings of Christ,
and various passages of his history, in the very words of the
evangelists; in particular, that Jesus healed lame and blind people, and
exorcised demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany; that he
alleged that none of Christ's disciples ascribed to him the creation of
the world, except John; that neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor
Mark, have dared to call Jesus God; that John wrote later than the other
evangelists, and at a time when a great number of men in the cities of
Greece and Italy were converted; that he alludes to the conversion of
Cornelius and of Sergius Paulus, to Peter's vision, to the circular
letter sent by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, which are all
recorded in the Acts of the Apostles: by which quoting of the four
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and by quoting no other, Julian
shows that these were the historical books, and the only historical
books, received by Christians as of authority, and as the authentic
memoirs of Jesus Christ, of his apostles, and of the doctrines taught by
them. But Julian's testimony does something more than represent the
judgment of the Christian church in his time. It discovers also his own.
He himself expressly states the early date of these records; he calls
them by the names which they now bear. He all along supposes, he nowhere
attempts to question, their genuineness.

The argument in favour of the books of the New Testament, drawn from the
notice taken of their contents by the early writers against the
religion, is very considerable. It proves that the accounts which
Christians had then were the accounts which we have now; that our
present Scriptures were theirs. It proves, moreover, that neither Celsus
in the second, Porphyry in the third, nor Julian in the fourth century,
suspected the authenticity of these books, or ever insinuated that
Christians