Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/26

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INTRODUCTION.

that this heterogeneous jumble should have remained alone, and no effort made to give the people the means of correcting its misrepresentations. Only think of the Apostolical Fathers figuring in an Apocryphal New Testament!

I am not quite correct in saying Hone's book has remained alone, for a mangled edition of it has appeared in a still more repulsive form. The new book is a reprint of Hone, with two or three fresh notes, and some old ones omitted, some inversion of order, misprints uncorrected, and new ones introduced. The preface is partly new, and partly reduced from that of Hone. A so-called "Poem," by the editor, has been appended, and a new title has been prefixed. The new title indicates the miserable character and spirit of this outrageous affair: "The suppressed Gospels and Epistles of the Original New Testament of Jesus Christ, and other portions of the ancient Holy Scriptures, now extant, attributed to His Apostles and their Disciples, and venerated by the primitive Christian Churches during the first four centuries; but since, after violent disputations, forbidden by the bishops of the Nicene Council, in the reign of the Emperor Constantine; and omitted from the Catholic and Protestant editions of the New Testament, by its