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His next Recourse for Testimonies against thisEpistle is to the Moderns, of whom he produces, ashe calls them, a Triumvirate, Grotius , Saim asmsand Scaliger . Not that all these are full to hisPurpose. For Grotius , who was much the great-est Man of the three in sacred Criticism, allowsthe Canonical Authority of this Epistle, tho’ fromcertain internal Characters, he guesses it was writ-ten after the Destruction of Jerusalem, and con-sequently after the Death of Peter the Apostle .A Conceit however, highly unworthy of the Gro-tian Name. For there are many Passages in thisEpistle, which evidently suppose Peter the Apostle to have been the Author of it, and that theyshould be all Interpolations is much harder to ac-count for, than the Difficulty that first gave Birthto Grotius'5 Hypothesis But to return. Grotius ,he fays, Salmajius and Scaliger were but zTrium-virate , the Fathers were Duumvirate. There cer-tainly is Sneer in this Passage, and there may beWit, tho’ I own I have not Line enough to fa-thom it. But this I am sure of, that to opposeModerns, however considerable, to Ancients, in aQuestion of Fact that depends upon Tradition andthe Testimonies of early Antiquity, is to compareThings that are utterly disparate. He should haveconfronted Ancients with Ancients, and then theOdds, ac first Sight, would have appeared to begreatly on the Side of the contested Epistle . Afterthat he might have compared the Moderns on both