in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings
of Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.--Author.]

This Bishop Faustus is usually styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine having
entitled his book, Contra Frustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which
nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.--Editor.]

The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the
books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as tales,
forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of God.
But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore
down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investigation. Miracles
followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to
say they believed whether they believed or not. But (by way of throwing
in a thought) the French Revolution has excommunicated the church
from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the
assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution
began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without
the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are
tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the
ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are
called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the
different sects of Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see
it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from the
second chapter of that work:

[The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were
filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous
sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New
Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for
authentic. The Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts
of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the
Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made
upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his time, about the year
400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St.
Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like
several other sects of the Christians, accused the scriptures of being
filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or
Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the