"The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself,
indirectly confesses that he has related what might rebound to the glory,
and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion.
Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion
that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other;
and the suspicion will derive additional credit from the character of Eusebius, which was less tinctured with credulity, and more practiced in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries".
--- Gibbon
"[Eusebius was] the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity." "not until the mass of inventions labelled 'Eusebius' shall be exposed,
can the pretended references to Christians in Pagan writers of the first three centuries be recognized for the forgeries they are."
--- Edwin Johnson, "Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins"
"The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related what might rebound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion. Such an acknowledgment will naturally excite a suspicion that a writer who has so openly violated one of the fundamental laws of history has not paid a very strict regard to the observance of the other; and the suspicion will derive additional credit from the character of Eusebius, which was less tinctured with credulity, and more practiced in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries"
(Gibbon, Rome, vol. ii., Philadelphia, 1876).
"It must be confessed that the ministers of the Catholic Church imitated the profane model which they were impatient to destroy. The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstitions of Paganism if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. The religion of Constantine achieved in less than a century the final conquest of the Roman empire; but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals"
(Gibbon, Rome, vol. iii. p. 163).
[FONT="]“Many manuscripts are available because their disciples zealously made copies of their "corrected" ― though really corrupted ― texts. This sinful impudence can hardly have been unknown to the copyists, who either do not believe the Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are unbelievers or deem themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit and are possessed.”
-Paul Maier[/FONT]
