Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by ANDREWS NORTON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 558.5 CAMBRIDGE: METCALF, KEITH, AND NICHOLS, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. PREFACE. THE evidence of the genuineness of the Gospels to be derived from the early Gnostic heretics, which I expected to comprise in one volume, has extended to two. Concerning the heretical Jewish Christians, the Ebionites, and their use of the Gospel of St. Matthew, little remains to be added to what has been said in the first volume. Among the Gentile Christians, there was, I believe, no other body of men beside the Gnostics, who were generally regarded as heretics before the close of the second century. It may, perhaps, be doubted, whether the Montanists should not be considered as forming an exception to this remark; but, whether they were or were not generally regarded as heretics before the period mentioned, is unimportant to our present argument, since there is no doubt that, in common with the catholic Christians, they received |