The Age of Reason [89]
[44] Mark says "a young man," and Luke "two men."—-Editor.
[45] This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which originally ended with xvi. 8.-—Editor.
[46] The last nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, "was carried up into heaven,"—words omitted by several ancient authorities.-—Editor.
[47] 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.
[48] I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger's Life of Paul, written 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 Manichæan," Augustine having entitled his book, Contra Faustum Manichæum Libri xxxiii., in which nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.—-Editor.
[49] 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 Manichæans, 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 Cerinthians, 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 Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other things, that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.-—Author. [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de St. Paul, by N.A. Boulanger, 1770.—-Editor.
[50] "It shall bruise thy head,