cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who
thought the acceptance of their general statements of Christian
doctrine cheaply won by the help of some simple (and generally absurd)
inventions of detail respecting the life of the Virgin or the
Apostles.

[Footnote 7: Notes to Rogers' _Italy_.]

Indeed, I can hardly imagine the Bible to be ever read with true
interest, unless, in our reading, we feel some longing for further
knowledge of the minute incidents of the life of Christ,--for some
records of those things, which "if they had been written every one,"
the world could not have contained the books that should be written:
and they who have once felt this thirst for further truth, may surely
both conceive and pardon the earnest questioning of simple disciples
(who knew not, as we do, how much had been indeed revealed), and
measure with some justice the strength of the temptation which
betrayed these teachers into adding to the word of Revelation.
Together with this specious and subtle influence, we must allow for
the instinct of imagination exerting itself in the acknowledged
embellishment of beloved truths. If we reflect how much, even in this
age of accurate knowledge, the visions of Milton have become confused
in the minds of many persons with scriptural facts, we shall rather be
surprised, that in an age of legends so little should be added to the
Bible, than that occasionally we should be informed of important
circumstances in sacred history with the collateral warning, "This
Moses spake not of."[8]

[Footnote 8: These words are gravely added to some singular
particulars respecting the life of Adam, related in a MS. of the