12
LIFE OF MOHAMMED.
images, saints and angels, transubstantiation, the deification of the Virgin Mary, amongst the Collyridian heretics, and purgatory, were the hateful offspring of this and the preceding centuries. Gregory the Great compares the Church to a rotten and leaky ship, hourly threatened with wreck. Ichabod, thy glory is departed, may be considered as a suitable emblem.
"I saw thy glory as a shooting star
Fall to the base earth from the firmament."
Various writings were current[1] amongst the different sects, and interpolated to answer particular purposes, such as the Gospel of Cerinthus, or the Nazarenes, the Preaching and Revelation of Peter; the Gospel of Barnabas; the Prot-Evangelion of James, or
- ↑ For an account of all the Apocryphal pieces, and an able confutation, see Jones on the Canonical Authority of the New Testament.
