Section 247
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21$ ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. without foundation, whoever wishes may learn ; for should any one collect and compare their copies one with another, he would find them greatly at variance among themselves. For the copies of Asclepiodotus will be found to differ from those of Theodotus. Copies of many you may find in abundance, al tered, by the eagerness of their disciples to insert each one his own corrections, as they call them, i. e. their corruptions. Again, the copies of Hermophilus do not agree with these, for those of Appollonius are not consistent with themselves. For one may compare those which were prepared before by them, with those which they afterwards perverted for their own objects, and you will find them widely differing. But what a stretch of audacity this aberration indicates, it is hardly probable themselves can be ignorant For either they do not believe that the holy Scriptures were uttered by the holy Spirit, and they are thus infidels, or they deem themselves wiser than the holy Spirit, and what alternative is there but to pronounce them demoniacs? *For neither can they deny that they have been guilty of the daring act, when the copies were written with their own hand, nor did they receive such Scriptures from those by whom they were instructed in the elements of the faith ; nor can they show copies from which they were transcribed. But some of them did not even deign, or think it worth while, to mutilate the Scriptures, but directly de nying the law and the prophets by their lawless and impious doctrine, under the pretext of grace, they sunk down to the low est depths of perdition." But let this suffice on this subject.