II. But beside certain histories which assumed the names of apostles,
and which were forgeries properly so called, there were some other
Christian writings, in the whole or in part of an historical nature,
which, though not forgeries, are denominated apocryphal, as being of
uncertain or of no authority.
Of this second class of writings, I have found only two which are
noticed by any author of the first three centuries without express terms
of condemnation: and these are, the one a book entitled the Preaching of
Peter, quoted repeatedly by Clemens Alexandrinus, A.D. 196; the other a
book entitled the Revelation of Peter, upon which the above-mentioned
Clemens Alexandrinus is said by Eusebius to have written notes; and
which is twice cited in a work still extant, ascribed to the same
author.
I conceive, therefore, that the proposition we have before advanced,
even after it hath been subjected to every exception of every kind that
can be alleged, separates, by a wide interval, our historical Scriptures
from all other writings which profess to give an account of the same
subject.
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