es of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now
called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian
Church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they
pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount Sinai, and given to Moses,
are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no
possibility of proving the hand-writing in either case. At the time
those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently
there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which
any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can
we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit
himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that
it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We
cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass
that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily
as words of man. [The former part of the 'Age of Reason' has not been
published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is
not mine. The expression is: The book of Luke was carried by a majority
of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said it.
Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note
at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in
England or in America; and the printers, after that, have erected it
into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has
happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of
printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may
not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no
printing, and when any man who could write could make a written copy and
call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?--Author.]

[The spurious addition to Paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on
him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical
Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in
his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added
by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added:
"Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern
American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the
above footnote.--Editor.]

About three hundred and fifty years after the time