ference
between idolatry on the one hand, and impiety on the other, and so
involving their everlasting salvation or damnation, they had embraced
the first opportunity after the cessation of persecution, and the
accession of the first Christian Emperor, to assemble three hundred and
eighteen of their most learned clergymen, of both sides, and from all
countries between Spain and Persia, to discuss these solemn questions;
and that, through the whole of the discussions, both sides appealed to
the writings of the apostles, as being then well known, and of
unquestioned authority with every one who held the Christian name. These
facts, being utterly indisputable, are acknowledged by all persons,
Infidel or Christian, at all acquainted with history.[68]

Here, then, we have the books of the New Testament at the Council of
Nice well known to the whole world; and the Council, so far from
_giving_ any authority to them, _bowing to theirs_--both Arian and
Orthodox with one consent acknowledging that the whole Christian world
received them as the writings of the apostles of Christ. There were
venerable men of fourscore and ten at that Council; if these books had
been first introduced in their lifetime, they must have known it. There
were men there whose parents had heard the Scriptures read in church
from their childhood, and so could not be imposed upon with a new Bible.
The New Testament could not be less than three generations old, else one
or other of the disputants would have exposed the novelty of its
introduction, from his own information. The Council of Nice, then, did
not make the New Testament. It was a book well known, ancient, and of
undoubted authority among all Christians, ages before that Council. _The
existence of the New Testament Scriptures, then, ages before the Council
of Nice, is a great fact._

We next take up the assertions, propounded with a show of learning, that
the books of the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, were not in
use, and were not known till the third century; that they are not the
productions of contemporary writers; that the alleged ocular testimony
or proximity in point of time of the sacred historians to the events
recorded is mere assumption, originating in the titles which Biblical
books bear in our canon; that we stand here (in the gospel history),
upon purely mythical and poetical ground; and that the Gospels and
Epistles are a gradually formed collection of myths, having littl