Porphyry, who
kept alive in their breasts the nobler spirit of Grecian scepticism,
were answered by the destruction of their writings, a process which was
carried out with the cunning scent of a sleuth-hound and the remorseless
cruelty of a tiger.

The Church produced, quite as mysteriously as the _Times_, certain
documents which it said were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
Peter, Paul, and James. Others were written by Pagans like Pilate, and
one at least by Jesus Christ himself. No commission sat to examine and
investigate, no Sir Charles Russell cross-examined the witnesses.
The Pigotts, the Houstons, and the Macdonalds kept quietly in the
background, and were never dragged forth into the light of day. The Mr.
Walters took the full responsibility, which was very trifling; and
as Englishmen relied on the respectability of the _Times_, so the
illiterate and fanatical Christians relied on the respectability of the
Mother Church.

Some of those documents, so mysteriously produced, were as mysteriously
dropped when they had served their turn. Hence the so-called Apocryphal
New Testament, a collection of writings as ancient, and once as
accepted, as those found in the Canon. Hence also the relics, either in
name or in fragments, of a host of gospels, epistles, and revelations,
which primitive Pigottism manufactured for the behoof of Christianity,
Every single scrap no doubt subserved a useful end. But whatever was no
longer required was discarded like the scaffolding of a house. The real,
permanent work, all the while, was going on inside; and when the Church
faced the world with its completed edifice, it thought itself provided
with something that would stand all winds and weathers. It was found,
however, in the course of time, that Pigottism was still necessary.
Hence the Apostolic Constitutions, the Decretals, the Apostles' and the
Athanasian Creeds, and all the profitable relics of saints and martyrs.

About two hundred years ago an informal Commission began to sit on these
Christian documents. The precious letter of Jesus Christ to Abgarus
soon flew off with the Veronica handkerchief, and many other products
of Christian Pigottism shared the same fate. The witnesses were examined
and cross-examined, and the longer the process lasted the sorrier was
the spectacle they presented. Paul's epistles have been shockingly
handled. The Commission has positively declared that all but four of
them are forgeries, and is