s periods and places,
toward the close of the first century. There is a general opinion among
all Christians that the Book was composed then, and by these persons. We
want to know why they think so? In short, is it a genuine book, or
merely a collection of myths with the apostles' names appended to them
by some lying monks? Is it a fact, or a forgery?

In any historical inquiry, we want some fixed point of time from which
to take our departure; and in this case we want to know if there is any
period of antiquity in which undeniably this Book was in existence, and
received as genuine by Christian societies. For I will not suppose my
readers as ignorant as some of those Infidels who allege that it was
made by the Bible Society. It used to be the fashion with those of them
who pretended to learning, to affirm that it was made by the Council of
Laodicea, in A. D. 364; because, in order to guard the churches against
spurious epistles and gospels, that Council published a list of those
which the apostles did actually write, which thenceforth were generally
bound in one volume.

Before that time, the four Gospels were always bound in one volume and
called "The Gospel." The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles
universally and undoubtedly known to be written by Paul, to the churches
of Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and
to Philemon, a well-known resident of that city, and those to Timothy
and Titus, missionaries of world-wide celebrity, the First General
Epistle of Peter, and the First General Epistle of John, which were at
once widely circulated to check prevailing heresies--were bound in
another volume and called "The Apostle." The Epistle to the Hebrews,
being general, and anonymous, _i. e._, not bearing the name of any
particular church, or person, to whom anybody who merely looked at it
could refer for proof of its genuineness, as in the case of the other
Epistles--was not so soon known by the European churches to be written
by Paul. The General Epistles of James, Jude, and the Second General
Epistle of Peter, lying under the same difficulty, and besides being
very disagreeable to easy-going Christians, from their sharp rebukes of
hypocrisy, and the Second and Third Epistles of John, from their
brevity, and the Revelation of John, being one of the last written of
all the books of the New Testament, and the most mysterious--were not so
generally known beyond the churches where the origina