CHAPTER II. Opinions of the first Christians upon the Acts of the

Apostles, and upon the Epistles and Person of St. Paul.

It is in the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul, that we find the details of his life and the system of his doctrine; but, how can we be certain of the authenticity of these works, whilst we see many of the first Christians doubt and reject them as apocryphal? We find, in fact, that from the earliest period of the church, entire sects of Christians, who believed that many of the Epistles published under the name of this Apostle, were not really his. The Marcionites were confident that the gospels were filled with falshoods, and Marcion, their head, pretended that his gospel was the only true one.

The Manicheans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false, all the New Testament, and produced other writings, quite different, which they gave as authentic. The Corinthians, as well as the Marcionites, did not admit the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Severians did not adopt either the Acts or the Epistles of St. Paul. St. John