Thus apologetically explains: “
The genuine Gospels are silent about long stretches of the life of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Joseph. This curiosity of many Christians eager for details. ... Enterprising spirits responded to this natural whatsapp number database craving by pretended gospels full of romantic fables, and fantastic and striking details; their fabrications were eagerly read and accepted as true by common folk who were devoid of any critical faculty and who were predisposed to believe what so luxuriously fed their pious curiosity. Both Catholics and Gnostics were concerned in writing these fictions. The former had no motive other than that of a PIOUS FRAUD.”
The motive above admitted for feeding
with pPdistinguished historian: “A vast and ever-increasing crowd of converts from paganism, who had become such from worldly considerations, and still hankered after wonders like those in which their forefathers had from time immemorial believed, lent a ready ear to assertions which, to more hesitating or better-instructed minds, would have seemed to carry imposture on their very face.” (Draper, The Intellectual Development of Europe, i, 309.) This being thus frankly confessed, our clerical writer describes the general character of these pious frauds: “The Christian apocryphal writings in general imitate the books of the N.T.