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THE

CANON OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

EXAMINED IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY.

By Prof. L. GAUSSEN,
OF GENEVA, SWITZERLAND,
AUTHOR OP " THEOPNEUSTY," " BIRTH-DAT OF CREATION," ETC., ETC.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, AND ABRIDGED
Bt EDWARD N. KIRK, D. D. „

" Sicuti Deus solus de se idoneus est testis in suo sermoue, ita etiam non ante
fidem reperiet sermo in hominum cordibus quam interiore spiritus testimonio ob-
Bignetur," — Calvin's Iwstit. 1, 7, 4.

tf*5"

PUBLISHED BT THE
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,
28 Coenhill, Boston.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by the
American Tract Society,
a the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE '.
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT
HENRY O. HOUGHTON.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The question examined in this work is, What looks or
documents have a right to be placed in the Sacred Scrip
tures ? In other words, What constitutes our Bible ? It
was intended by the learned author as a sequel to the " The-
opneusty," published more than twenty years since. In the
original, the work consists of two volumes, octavo ; but, for
the purpose of bringing it within a more moderate price,
and thus gaining for it a wider circulation among all classes
of readers, we have preferred to make some abridgment of
it and condense the two volumes into one.
The argument in support of the claims of our Scriptures
is presented by the author in a twofold form, called by him,
The Method of Science, and The Method of Faith. The
former of these is the one most commonly employed in the
works which discuss this subject, showing the authenticity
of the several books of our Scriptures, and their right — and
theirs only — to a place in the Sacred Canon. The other,
which is addressed to those who already receive them as
divine, appeals to God's guardian care of his Word, since the
formation of the Canon, and the power of his grace working
through it upon the hearts of men, as his own recognition of
its genuineness and confirmation of its claims upon our faith.

iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
We have judged it best, for the reasons above stated, to give
in the present volume the former part only.
It should be remembered, however, that important as the
historical evidence on this subject is, it is nevertheless not
that upon which the vast majority of believers accept the
sacred volume as the Word of God. The latter rests on
what is termed the Internal Evidence, or the self-witnessing
of the Scriptures. It is the response which they compel
from the soul of the reader himself to their truths and pre
cepts. They are felt to be divine, — a vital force in him who
receives them, " quick and powerful, sharper than a two-
edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of. soul and
spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart."
Our eloquent author, in the preface to his second volume,
exhibits the value of this internal evidence with great force
and beauty, showing that even science itself will fail of prop
erly moving the heart, if there be not added to it this self-
witnessing of the Word under the teachings of the Holy
Spirit. Our space will permit us to cite but a few para
graphs. " Our faith requires a support altogether more sure than
that based on mere historical evidence. This is attested by
the experience of pious men in every age, and earnestly
expressed in the most accredited of our confessions of faith.
They say, ' We know these books to be canonical, and the
very sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common
agreement of the Church, as by the testimony of the Holy
Spirit.' (Conf. des Eglises Franc., Art. IV.)
" In speaking thus, they did not pretend that this testimony
to the Scriptures, given by the Holy Spirit in the heart of

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. v
every Christian truly converted by them, would apply. di
rectly and equally to every book, chapter, and sentence in
them. They meant merely, that for every Christian truly
converted, the Bible is seen by the soul to be a miraculous
book, a living and eflicacious word, penetrating even to the
dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and revealing to
man the very secrets of his own heart ; softening, persuading,
subduing him with incomparable power. Certainly, never book
spake like this book ! It ' hath told me all that ever I did.'
'Whence knowest thou me, Lord? Surely, thou art the
Son of God, thou art the king of Israel ! ' From that time
the soul can not be mistaken. For it, this book, in whole or
in part, is certainly from above. The seals of God Almighty
are upon it. Now this ' witness of the Spirit,' of which our
fathers spake, which has been more or less recognized by
every Christian when he has read his Bible with a living
heart, — this testimony can at first be heard by him nowhere
but in a page of the Scriptures ; and that page has sufficed
to shed an incomparable glory over the whole book. And
as to the divine authenticity of each of its parts, the Chris
tian reader has legitimate reasons for remaining convinced
that the inspiration of those passages in which the Holy
Spirit does speak to him, guarantees the remainder, and
that he can, moreover, rest in this matter upon the common
agreement of the churches and on the faithfulness of God ;
because a principle of his faith authorizes him to recognize,
in this common agreement, a work of divine wisdom. He
will then consider the whole book as inspired, long before
each of its parts may have been able by itself to prove its
divine origin to him. Is it not thus that the naturalist pro
ceeds, when he examines with the solar microscope, in a
1*

vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
living fish,"a spot of the size of a pin's point, and there con
templates fourteen streams of blood flowing constantly night
and day in two opposite directions, and accomplishing with
astonishing beauty the double prodigy of circulation ; is it
not thus, we say, that it suffices him to have had this specta
cle under his eyes, to conclude from it very legitimately
that this powerful mystery of the blood and the life is
equally accomplished in the whole body ? "
While the Scriptures thus address themselves to our faith
by their self-evidencing power, we are no less assured of
their divine character, as preserved by God's unceasing care,
uncorrupted and complete, from age to age. This, as we
have already intimated, is forcibly presented in our author's
argument in the second form, a summary of which is thus
given in his own glowing and eloquent language: — "Faith
contemplates that continued and manifestly divine action
which, for twenty-three centuries, has employed the almost
ever-rebellious people of the Jews to preserve the Canon
of the Old Testament free from all mixture. He who has
kept it twenty-three hundred years, faith says, can not fail
to keep to the end, by Christian people, the Canon of the
New Testament. He of whom it is said that, after his as
cension to heaven, he was still with his disciples, aiding them
and confirming their testimony by signs and wonders (Mark
xvi. 20), is not dead! No, it is he who lives; — and
has promised (Matt, xxviii. 20) to be with them to the end
of the world ; that is, not with their persons, but with their
testimony, and especially their books. He has not failed to
keep his promise, in defending his Church against the gates
of hell. He will not permit these gates, then, to prevail
against the sacred books, which gave it birth and preserve ita

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vii
life. Faith says to herself, How shall the elect be saved,
if they do not believe ? How shall they believe, if the truth
be not preached ? How shall the truth be preached, if the
books which contain it are not given ? How shall they be
given, if they are not preserved ? God, then, in promising
that his Church shall never perish, promises, also, that his
Word shall never fail. Heaven and earth shall sooner
perish !
" Such are the thoughts, and such the confidence of faith,
concerning the Canon."
The reader should be notified in advance, that several
of the technical terms employed by the author are consid
ered too serviceable to be relinquished, and that will need
no other explanation than this : Theopneusty means Inspira
tion ; Canonicity, the right to a place in the Bible ; Aposto-
licity, the fact that an apostle wrote the book ; Paulinity, the
fact that Paul wrote it; Anagnosis, the public reading of
the Scriptures ; Homologomens, uncontested books ; Anti-
legomens, contested books.

PEEEACE,

" God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto
the fathers by the prophets,
" Hath in these last days spoken unto us by Ms Son, whom be hath ap
pointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
" Who, being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his
person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had
by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on
high." — Heb. i. 1-3.
If I venture to publish a book on this subject, it is be
cause I have acquired the threefold persuasion of its present
importance, its adaptedness to the understanding of every
class of readers, and the abundance of evidence to establish
their convictions.
It is obscure only in the distance ; and if some regard it
as beset with difficulties and uncertainty, it is because they
have not studied it aright. Before my own closer examina
tion of it, I was not aware how full of fight it is. I have,
therefore, believed it my duty, in view of the numerous
attacks recently made upon it, to discuss it at length. My
reference at first was to the wants of the students in our
Theological Seminary. Afterward, I concluded to bring the
whole subject within the comprehension of all the members
of our churches.
To this end, I have endeavored, in constructing this work,
to make my meaning obvious to every serious reader, and I
have desired that all the unlearned who may have had their
faith disturbed by these attacks of modern skepticism, micht
find it confirmed by reading these pages.

PREFACE. kt
The proper treatment of such a subject requires a 4requent,
introduction of the writings of the Greek anassLafin Fathers,
which I have translated, and at the same trine ffjfnjshed
what information concerning them I deemed neceskaigrj;tf. an
understanding of my argument.
This work I intend as a sequel to the volume on the In
spiration of the Scriptures. That, indeed, remained incom
plete until accompanied by a Treatise on the Canon ; because,
after having proved that the Scriptures are inspired, the
most convinced reader might still object that he needed to
have it proved that Daniel, Esther, the Canticles, or any
other particular book of the Old Testament, was a portion
of this inspired book ; that the epistle of Jude, that of James,
the second of Peter, the second and third of John, or any
other book included in our New Testament, were legiti
mately there, and that the Apocryphal books were justly
excluded from it.
So long as these inquiries are not definitely resolved, and
we have only vague and unsatisfactory answers to them, the
privilege of having an inspired Bible, is deprived of much of
its value ; we lack confidence in using it, a discouraging
cloud of uncertainty floats between our heavens and the
earth ; and, while holding in our hands what we call the
Script ares, we yet walk with an infirm step.
It is the object of this work, with God's help, to show
the Canonicitt of the twenty-two books of the Old Testa
ment, and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament ;
that is, their exclusive right to hold a place in the sacred
collection of the divine oracles.
The Church (Eph. ii. 20) is "founded upon the apostles
and prophets," * who preached to it the gospel, " Jesus
Christ himself being the chief corner-stone, in whom all
the building fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy
temple." It is, then, on the foundation of Jesus Christ and
his apostles, or messengers, that the Church, by a constant use
1 Not the prophets, but prophets, or inspired men.

. X. PREFACE.
of the Holy Scriptures of both Testaments, has found, from
the beginning, and still finds, from age to age and from day
to day, her' life, her fullness, her power, and her beauty.
Having" shown, in a previous work, the divine inspiration
of all' these books, I shall now attempt to prove the integ
rity and authenticity, that is, the divine certainty, of both
volumes. And as the proofs which show the canonicity of the books
of the New Testament equally establish that of the Old, I
shall commence with the former.

CONTENTS.

BOOK FIRST.
Page
CANONIC1TY OE THE NEW TESTAMENT  17

CHAPTER I
GENERAL HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON... 17
Section I. Definition  17
II. The Notion of a Canon of the New Testa
ment TRACED TO THE DAYS OF THE APOSTLES 18
III. The Church has, from the Beginning, consid
ered the Collection of the Scriptures as
a Harmonious and Complete Whole  23
IV. First Formation of the Canon  24
V. Oral Preaching must precede it  28
VI. Historical Division of the Canon into Three
Distinct Parts, First, Second, and Second-
First  29
VH This Threefold Division required bt the
most Authentic Monuments  30
Three Ante-Nicene Catalogues  31
Catalogue of the Peshiio  32
Origen's Catalogue  • 36
Eusebius 's Catalogue  42
VIH. Of the Council of Nice and its Results ¦¦•• 52
The Council made no Decree on the Canon  53
All Differences in Regard to the Contested Books ceased
after this Council  56
IX. The Eleven Authentic Catalogues of the
Fourth Century  57
X. The Nine Catalogues of the Fourth Cen
tury given by the Fathers  58

12 CONTENTS.
Section Pa6e
Three of them omit only the Apocalypse  58
Cyril  •  58
Gregory Nazianzen  60
 63

All the Six other Catalogues of the Fourth Century
conformed to that of our Churches  64
Athanasius  64
Anonymous  67
Epiphanius  68
Jerome  70
Rufinus  73
Augustine  -¦ • • " 75
XI. Other Catalogues pretending to be of the
Fourth Century, and conformed to our
Canon, are Apocryphal or Forged  76
The Catalogue of Innocent I.  77
The Catalogue of Damasus  79
The Catalogue of Amphilochius  80
XII. The Two Catalogues of the Fourth Cen
tury given by Councils  81
Character of their Testimony  81
The Council of Laodicea  83
The Council of Carthage  90
XIII. Kecapitulation of the Testimonies of the
Fourth Century  92
XIV. Common Prejudices which the First Review
of these Facts should dissipate  93
XV. Conclusion from all these Testimonies  100
CHAPTER II.
OF THE FIRST CANON  102
I. The Perfect and Constant Unanimity df the
Churches  102
H. The New Testament in its Twenty-two Ho-
mologomenous books incomparably supe
rior to all the books of antiquity, in
the Evidence of its Authenticity  106

CONTENTS. 13
Section Page
IH. Three Causes which secured this Unanimity 115
The Long Career of ihe Apostles  115
The Immense Number of the Churches at the Time
of the Apostles' Death  123
The Anagnosis  131
IV. The Various Monuments of the Canon  145
Four Kinds of Monuments  145
The Field of Investigation  146
The Actors and Witnesses  148
V. Testimony of the Fathers of the Second
Half of the Second Century  156
The United Testimonies of Irenaius, Clement, and
Tertullian  156
Seven Characteristics of their Testimony  160
Tertullian  163
Clement of Alexandria  166
Irenceus  172
Other Cotemporary Fathers  186
Conclusion from all these Testimonies  188
VI. The Fragment called Muratori's  194
VH. Testimony of the Fathers of the First Half
of the Second Century  200
Justin Martyr  200
Objections to his Testimony  215
Other Historical Monuments  217
VHI. Testimony of the Infidel Pagans in the Sec
ond Century  220
Their Writings  220
Testimony of Celsus  221
Force of this Testimony  225
IX. Testimony of the Heretics in the First
Half of the Second Century  227
The Character of this Testimony  227
Marcion  231
Tatian  239
Valentinus and the Valenlinians  ;  241
Heracleon and Ptolemy  244
Basilides and his Son Isidore  246
X. Testimony of the Apostolical Fathers  248

14 CONTENTS.
Section Page
Their Limited Number and Value  248
Epistle to Diognetus  254
The Encyclical Epistle of the Church of Smyrna ¦ • • 256
The Epistle of Polyearp  258
Ignatius, his Martyrdom and Letters  263
Epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians  267
Conclusion from the Testimony of the Apostolical Fa
thers  -  §88
XI. The Last Books of the New Testament attest
the Existence of a Canon already begun 289
CHAPTER ni.
OF THE SECOND-FIRST CANON  293
I. The Apocalypse  294
Its First Reception  294
Its Date  297
The Apocalypse in the First Century • •  301
Witnesses of the First Half of the Second Century ¦ • 302
Witnesses of the Second Half of the Same Century- 306
Witnesses of the First Half of the Third Century ¦ ¦ • 308
Witnesses of the Second Half of the Third Century- 314
Witnesses of the Fourth Century  315
Witnesses of the Fifth Century  319
II. The Epistle to the Hebrews  320
' lis Character and History  320
Testimony of the East in the Fourth Century  322
Testimony of ihe East in the Third Century  324
Testimony of the East in the Second Century  326
Testimony of the East in the First Century  328
Western Testimonies  330
) Review of these. Testimonies  ¦  333
( Paulinity of this Epistle  335
/ Objections  342
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE SECOND CANON  347
I. General Facts  347

CONTENTS. 15
Section Page
II. The Epistle of James  350
Its Importance  •  350
Its Immediate Admission among those to whom it was
first addressed  352
Its Date  353
Cause of the Hesitation of some Churches  354
« Witnesses  355
Its Excellence  358
Which James was the Author ¦ • •  359
HI. The Second Epistle of Peter  365
The Study it claims  365
The Letter claims to be Peter's  366
The Majestic Character of the Epistle  367
Why its Acceptance was delayed  370
Its Style  370
Its History  372
The Definitive Agreement of all the Christian Churches
was late  373
The Successive Acceptance was gradual  374
The Assent was, in one Part of the Church, immedi
ate  380
IV. The Two Shorter Epistles of John  384
V. The Epistle of Jude  387
The Author of this Epistle  387
Its Date  388
Objections against this Epistle • ¦  391
Alleged Quotations from Apocryphal Books  392
Testimonies of the Second Century  403
Testimonies of the Third Century  405
Testimonies of the Fourth Century •  40§
VI. General Considerations on the Antilegomens 407
CHAPTER V.
HISTORY OF THE CANON SINCE THE FOURTH CEN
TURY  422
The Unanimity of all the Churches  422
The Exceptional Freedom accompanying the Forma
tion and Maintenance of the Canon  426

16 CONTENTS. Page
The Independence of the Church towards the Schools 429
Genuineness of the Text  434
The Books alleged to be lost  437

BOOK SECOND.
CANONICITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT  442
CHAPTER I.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE JEWS  442
CHAPTER H.
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST  445
CHAPTER III.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES  448
CHAPTER IV.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FOREGOING FACTS 449
CHAPTER V.
.OF THE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS  452
History of ihe Apocrypha before the Council of Trent 452
Reasons against ihe Decree of Trent  455
Unanimous Testimony of ihe Churches against the
Decree of Trent  457
CHAPTER VI.
CONCLUSION  460

BOOK FIRST.
CANONICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

CHAPTER FIRST.
GENERAL HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTA
MENT CANON.

SECTION I.
DEFINITION.

The term Canon, as employed in this sense, is traced back
to a remote antiquity. In Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the
words rop, Kawq, Kciwa, Kavurv, canna, having the same origin,
signify literally a reed, a straight rod, a cane, a measure, a
rule ; and more' especially, k<uw, in a metaphorical sense,
signifies every straight and perfect rule. In the proper sense
of this word, the terms cane and cannon, in the Middle Ages,
were applied to tubes intended to regulate, or render right'
or straight, the direction of projectiles thrown by the explo
sion of powder.1 Paul thus says to the Galatians, (Gal. vi.
16,) "As many as walk according to this rule, (i<a.v<bv,) peace
be on them." And to the Philippians, (Phil. iii. 16,) "Let
us walk by the same rule," (/cavwv.)
Even in the times of the apostles, the old grammarians
1 The application of this word to an instrument of war commenced in
Italy. It was there called cannone, or grande canna.
a*

18 THE CANON.
of Alexandria made use of the same term to designate model
authors, making rules in literature ; so that the ecclesiastical
writers early employed it to mean sometimes Christian doc
trine, the rule of our hfe ; sometimes, the divine booh, the
only rule of our faith; sometimes, in fine, the catalogue of
the sacred books composing this rule. This became at length
its almost exclusive religious meaning.1

SECTION H.
THE NOTION OF A CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TRACED
TO THE DAYS OF THE APOSTLES. ,
Before even consulting the ecclesiastical historians on-
this subject, we may already comprehend, from the nature
of things, that the idea of a divine collection of the writ
ings of the New Testament, must have early sprung up in
all the communities of those who believed in Christ. Is it
not evident that it must have originated as soon as these
churches saw the men, "apostles and prophets,"1 who an
nounced to them the gospel with the Holy Spirit sent down
from heaven,3 beginning to write to them apostolical let
ters, or transmit to them the history of the Saviour's life
and teachings ?
In fact, they were entirely prepared for it by having in
their hands the Old Testament. This collection, already
1 It should, however, be remarked, to avoid all mistake in examining the
writings of the Fathers, that while they had a distinct and definite cata
logue of books, which they regarded a* inspired, aud as distinguished from
the apocryphal or uninspired, but which were allowed to be -read in
churches, yet they did not at first agree in their use of the term canon.
From a varied application of it to lists of clergymen, and even of church
furniture, it came in the fourth century to be applied, as now, to the cata
logue of Scriptures. But then it will be found that some time elapsed
before Jerome's use of the term canonical, as being coextensive with inspired
was generally adopted. — Tr.
2 Eph. ii. 20. s i pet. i. 12.

NOTION OF A CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 19
formed for so many ages, and of the divinity of which there
was never but one opinion among the Jews, as Josephus
informs us;1 this collection, venerated by the people of
God in every age, venerated by the Apostles, who called
it ihe oracles of God;* venerated by the Son of God him
self, who called it the Law, your Law, the Scripture, the
Scriptures ; venerated by the Christian churches, who read
it in all their assemblies ; this collection, we say, must
necessarily have led all their company to the notion of an
analogous collection of the sacred books of the New Testa
ment. Was not the idea of a canon of the scriptures the charac
teristic trait of the people of God for fifteen hundred years ?
Had it not always appeared to them from the beginning of
their national existence, the very reason of their existence,
and the indispensable means of its continuance? Yet, at
the same time, this notion born in the desert with the Israel-
itish church, and always maintained by that church, had
never been that of a code completed by one hand, or in one
generation, or received in its fullness once for all. On the
contrary, it was that of a collection commencing with the
five books of Moses, and destined to grow from age to age ;
continued by the addition of new books, during eleven cen
turies, as God raised up new prophets, and not ceasing to
accumulate its treasures to the days of Malachi, when the
spirit of prophecy became silent for four centuries. It was
then very natural that the church, at the coming of the
Messiah, should look for new additions, since the ancient
spirit of prophecy had just been restored to her, and since
new men of God, " apostles and prophets," more miraculously
endowed than the ancients, had just been raised up. We
may go farther ; it was even impossible that she should not
expect it. Was not the epoch of Christ's advent much more
important and solemn than that of his annunciation ; were
1 Reply to Apion, Book I. chap. 2.
2 Rom. iii. 2; Heb. v. 12; 1 Pet. iv. 11.

20 THE CANON.
not the revelations more striking ; the objects more divine ;
the promises richer ; the prophets more powerful ; the signs
more marvelous ?
Nor should we forget that the church has already begun
in the synagogue and, for the first fifteen years of Chris
tianity, contains no other than Jewish members. All her
preachers and her first converts are Jews. At the last
voyage Paul made to meet the converts in Jerusalem, the
members of that church, mother of all the others, contained
already many thousands, (Acts xxi. 20, irdo-at fivpidSts.) In
all the cities of the Gentiles the apostles began their labors
among the children of Israel. And there they constantly
held in their hands the canon of the scriptures, and always
repeated the words of Jesus, " Search the Scriptures,"
(John v. 39.) Always they " expounded and testified the
kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both
out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets," (Acts
xxviii. 23.) " Saying none other things than those which
the prophets and Moses did say should come," (Acts xxvi.
22.) And even although they did not directly quote from
the sacred books, when preaching to pagan audiences, yet
they were very careful to do it as soon as these had been
brought to believe. We may select, as an instance, the
salutation of Paul in closing his epistle to the Romans:
" Now to him that is of power to establish you according to
my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to
the revelation of the mystery which is now made manifest
by the Scriptures of the Prophets, according to the com
mandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations,
for the obedience of faith. To God only wise, be glory through
Jesus Christ, for ever. Amen."
So then if, on the one hand, the notion of a canon of the
scriptures was, as it were, incarnated in the people of God, 
if it was with them inseparable from the notion of the church ;
on the other hand, the thought of incorporating the not less
sacred books of the New Testament with those of the Old,

NOTION OF A CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 21
as they were written successively, was with them equally
inseparable from their notion of the scriptures.
The history of primitive Christianity strongly confirms
this view of the notion of the sacred canon then prevalent
in the church. So far from being introduced at a later
period, as has been asserted by some, we find it constantly,
from the beginning, both in the church and in its enemies.
The evidence of this we shall produce at length, content
ing ourselves here with a few quotations. Peter, in closing
his career, in his Second Epistle, speaking of " all the epis
tles of Paul," calls them " the scriptures," comparing or
classing them with "the other scriptures."1
From the beginning, the writings of the apostles were
successively gathered into one collection, which was re
spected by the primitive Christians equally with the Old
Testament, which they read in their religious meetings, and
which, after Peter's example, they called the Scriptures ; or
after the example of the Fathers ihe Booh, (to, Bt/3A,ia,)
ihe New Testament,'1 the Divine Instrument? the Sacred Di
gest* the Divine Oracles ; or again, ihe Evangelists and the
Apostles ; 5 after the example of Jesus Christ, who had called
the Old Testament " ihe Law and ihe Prophets" They then
early adopted the custom of calling it the Canon, or the Rule,
1 2 Pet. iii. 16. This testimony, whatever objections any may have to
the canonicity of this Epistle, shows indisputably the antiquity of the usage
which ranks the books of the New Testament with the Scriptures; for We
shall hereafter establish the antiquity of this Epistle, even independently of
its canonicity.
2 See Lardner,' vol. viii. p. 197. See, also, vol. ii. p. 529. Paul having
given the name of Old Testament to the Book of Moses and the Prophets,
it was altogether natural that they should give to the book of the Evan
gelists and Apostles the name of New Testament, and that they should
call it intestamented, or hdta&ijicovc, (Euseb. H. E. vi. 25,) the books admit
ted into the canon.
8 Tertullian adv. Marcion, Lib. v. cap. 13.
* Ibid. Lib. iv. cap. 13.
6 Clement of Alexandria, Strom, vii. pp. 706, 757. Ignatius, Ep. to the
Philad. chap. v. Epis. to Diognet, chap. xi. Justin Martyr, Great Apol.
chap. 67. Tertullian, de Graec. Script, chap. 36. Apol. chap. 39. Hippo-
litus the Martyr, on Antichrist, chap. 58.

v22 ¦•'. THE CANON.
.'.,'* ¦•. it
'ikp&, ,v£ji#ever constituted a portion of this infallible code, Ca-
nanibefe Boohs.
'$%nceus, born in Greece a. d. 120 or 140, and martyred
'"in A. d. 202, speaking of the Scriptures as divine, calls them
the.BiMe, or the Canon of Truth ((cai/ora ri)s SX-qQetas) .l Ter
tullian, in the same century, opposing Valentinus to Marcion,
both deep in the Gnostic heresy, toward A. d. 138, says of
the former, that he at least appears to make use of a Complete
Instrument, meaning the collection of the books of the Ne\r
Testament then accepted by the church.2 Clement of Alex
andria, in the same century, speaking of a quotation taken
from an apocryphal book, is indignant that any one should
follow anything but " the true evangelical canon ; " and Ori-
gen, born a. d. 183, careful, as Eusebius s remarks, to follow
the ecclesiastical canon, rov iKKXno-io.o-Ti.Kov cfrvXarTiov Kavova,
" declares that he knows only the four Gospels, which alone,
he adds, are admitted without contradiction in the universal
church spread abroad under the whole heavens." The same
Origen, when giving us his catalogue of canonical Scriptures,
calls them al IvdiaO-rjKai ypa<j>a.l, the intestamented - Scrip
tures,4 that is, the books inserted in the New Testament.
Athanasius, in his Festal Epistle,5 speaks of three kinds of
books : the canonical, (which are those of our present Prot
estant Bible) ; the ecclesiastical, which were permitted to be
read in the Christian meetings ; and the apocryphal. And
when, at a later period, the Council of Laodicea, a. d. '364,
decreed that no other book than " the canonical Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments " should be read in the churches,
far from originating the distinction between canonical and un-
canonical books, this decree was but a sanctioning of the dis
tinction long before adopted by the universal church.
1 Adv. Hasreses, Book iii. chap. 11 ; Book iv. chaps. 35, 69.
- Tertullian De Prescript. Hosretic. chaps. 30-38.
8 Ecc. Hist. Book vi. chap. 25.
' Ibid.
6 Chap, xxxix. vol. ii. p. 961, Benedict, edit, rit Kavovi^ousva Kal
irapadodfara moTEvSevra re -&eZa dvai Bi/3?ua.

SCRIPTURES A HARMONIOUS AND COMPLETE
Jerome also frequently speaks of the canon of
He says, for instance, " Ecclesiasticus, Judith,
Pastor, . . . are not in the canon. The church permit!
books of Judith, Tobit, and the Maccabees to be read, but she*"
does not receive them as a part of the canonical ScrijJtqr.es.
The books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus may be read for
the edification of the people, but not as authority for estab
lishing doctrine." 1
Such is the origin of the notion of the canon, and such is
its meaning.

SECTION UI.
THE CHURCH HAS, FROM THE BEGINNING, CONSIDERED THE
COLLECTION OF THE SCRIPTURES AS A HARMONIOUS AND
COMPLETE WHOLE.
Although the books of the New Testament were given
successively to the primitive church, yet she always regarded,
from the beginning, the collection, as she received its portions
respectively, a complete whole, having God for its author, and
destined throughout to reveal Jesus Christ; just as ancient
Israel had regarded the collection of books forming the Old
Testament, received, in the same manner, in successive por
tions, as a single harmonious unit, having the same God for
its author, and destined, throughout all its parts, to reveal to
her the counsel of God for the redemption of his elect.
To give here but one or two examples, taken from the
first century of the church or the beginning of the second ;
let anyone read how, in his beautiful "Epistle to Diognetus,"2
the author, who styles himself one of the disciples of the
1 See, also, Lardner. vol. x. pp. 41, 43, 52.
2 The learned Galland (Bibl. Veterum Patrum, 1. c.) believes it to have
been written before the year 70. See, also, Hefele (Prolegom, p. 79, Patr. .
Apost.;, who (as BShl, Opusc. Patrum Sel.,) believed it to be cotemporary
with the days of the apostles.

24 THE CANON.
apostles,1 presents the Law and the Prophets, ihe Evangelists
and the Apostles, as acting together to bring into the church
grace and joy. He says,2 " Thus the fear of the Law is
proclaimed, and the grace of the Prophets is comprehended
and the faith of the Gospels is founded, and the instruction
of the Apostles is preserved, and the grace of the church
leaps for joy." Ignatius also, about A. d. 107, in one of
his epistles, said to the Philadelphians, (chap, v.) "Your
prayer will secure my completeness in God. . . . Giving me
refuge in the Gospel, as in the flesh of Jesus, and in the
Apostles, as in the presbytery of the church. And cling
also to the Prophets, because they have themselves an
nounced the gospel, hoped in Christ, looked for his coming
in the unity of Jesus Christ, and found their salvation in
him by faith." 3
The canon of the New Testament being then the collec
tion of the books written at various times, and in different
places, during the latter half of the apostolical century, by
eight inspired authors, must have been completed gradually ;
and have become complete toward the end of the first cen
tury, or the beginning of the second.

SECTION IV.
FIRST FORMATION OF THE CANON.
During the first fifteen years after our Saviour's death,
the church was begotten, nourished, and strengthened by the
1 Chap. xi. See, also, his chap, xii, 'AttootoXuv yevouevos ua-dTjT^c.
2 Chap. xi. elra (po/Sog NOMOT "aderai, not nPO$HTQN zapv yivuoKe-
Ttu, not EYArrEAIHN ramc lipierat, kuX AH02TOAQN Kapadoaie
tpvlacoerai, Kdl eKtikricia^ Xdptc OTaprp.
3 Ilpootyvyuv rib ETArrEAIQ die aapKi 'It/oov, xal TOIS AnOSTO-
AOIS <ic TrpeapvTepia kKHXr/aiac ¦ Kal rove nPO*HTA2, &c. Yet this
epistle is one of those which Cureton'has left out of his Syriac edition.

FIRST FORMATION OF THE CANON. 25
merely oral preaching of the truth, and by the Scriptures of
the Old Testament, explained either by themselves or by the
teachings of the apostles and evangelists ; " God bearing them
witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers mira
cles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will."
Heb. ii. 4. 2 Pet. i. 21. And when the apostles and
evangelists were preaching the Word to the churches " with
the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," (1 Pet. i. 12,) they
always appealed, as their Master had done, to the already
completed canon of the inspired Scriptures of the Old Testa
ment. They required men to study these continually ; they
declared them " able to make the man of God perfect," " wise
unto salvation," " thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
2 Tim. iii. 15, 17.
It was but fifteen years after the ascension of the Saviour,
that the ancient canon of " the Oracles of God," closed for
four hundred years, was reopened to receive the first Scrip
tures of the New Testament ; I mean the two epistles to|
the Thessalonians. This I say, because there are the most*
satisfactory reasons for believing that none of the gospels
preceded them. Thus, for two or three years, the canon of '
the New Testament consisted of only these two epistles, i
which Paul, assisted by Silas and Timothy, wrote to the
young church in Thessalonica, a. d. 48. It is therefore
very probable that it was because of their commencing the
new canon of the Oracles of God, that the apostle, from the
beginning, insisted so strongly upon their divine authority.
" I charge you by the Lord " to keep them, study them, read
them " unto all the holy brethren." 1 Thess. v. 27. He
adjures them solemnly by the invocation of that dreadful
name, to cause this first Scripture to be made known to all
Christendom. And he addresses this epistle to a church to
whom the gospel " came not in word only, but also in power,
and in the Holy Ghost." 1 Thess. i. 5. And he was careful
to remind them that the word which he had brought to them
was the word of God. He renders thanks that they received
3

26 THE CANON.
it, "not as the word of man, but, as it really is, the Word of
God." It was, then, during the sixteen or seventeen years between
the production of these first two books (a. d. 48,) and the
death of Paul, (a. d. 64 or 65,) that almost all the other
writings of the New Testament were produced ; at least the
twenty boohs which compose what we shall presently denomi
nate the first canon, that is, the four gospels, the Acts of
the Apostles, the first thirteen epistles of Paul, the first of
Peter, and the first of John. But it was later, and even
toward the latter years of the first century, that the seven
other books of the New Testament were published, except
ing perhaps the epistle of James, which may have been
written about a. d. 61 ; because, according to Josephus, this
martyr must have been stoned during the troubles preceding
the destruction of Jerusalem ; that is, immediately after the
death of Festus, the governor, and while they were awaiting
the arrival of Albinus in Judea.1
Thus the entire canon of the New Testament was begun
and completed during this last half of the first century. It
was then that the church, already formed, and not ceasing to
expand, had already reached the extremities of the known
world, through the incomparable labors of Paul, Peter, John,
Thomas, and the other apostles, as also of many other labor
ers, whose names, unknown to us, are written in heaven.
It must then be remembered that the primitive church, dur
ing its militant and victorious march across this first century
of its existence, saw its canon of the New Testament formed
in its hands, , as a bouquet is formed in the hands of a lady
who is passing through a garden, with its owner accompany
ing her. As she advances, he presents her one flower after
another, until the whole collection is made. And as the bou
quet already exists and is admired while yet incomplete, and
as soon as she has gathered the first flowers, so the New
Testament canon was in the hand of the church from the
1 Antiq. xx. chap. 8.

FfRST FORMATION OF THE CANON. 27
time when the first inspired books were placed in its hands.
Was it not also thus that, under the Old Testament, in the
days of David, and a thousand years before the apostles,
the Jewish church already had her sacred canon, consisting
of six or eight books, calling it the law, divine and perfect
law,1 although two thirds of the Old Testament were yet
wanting ? " It is a. lamp to my feet," she already exclaimed,
" it restores my soul ; I meditate therein all the day." Was
it not so, likewise, five hundred years before David, with the
church in the wilderness,2 in the days of Moses, with h >r
sacred canon consisting of five books, when she exclaimed,
" Happy art thou, 0 Israel ! who is like unto thee ? for it
(the law) is not a vain thing for you, it is your life ? " 3
The church is responsible for the books which God gives
her, and not for those he may intrust to a future generation.
In every age she has received from him those which she
needed ; and, in every age, too, she has had reason to say
with" David, " The law of the Lord is perfect." 4
How well it is for the confirmation of our faith, that, instead
of being given all at once, by the founder of our religion, con
taining his acts and his revelations, the New Testament was
given by him in a succession of twenty-seven writings, and
in the course of more than one half century, by eight differ
ent authors, separated from each other by great distances
and by very dissimilar circumstances ; some learned, others
unlearned; some in Judea, others in Rome; some within ten
or fifteen years of the Master's death, others even fifty-five
years after it ; some having been strangers to him person
ally — one, indeed, his most furious persecutor, — and others
his most devoted and assiduous friends. It results from this,
that the harmonj' of their accounts of his origin, life, char
acter, and doctrines ; their uniform agreement in presenting
1 Ps. xix. cxix. ; John x. 34; xii. 34.
2 Acts vii. 38.
8 Deut. xxxiii, 29 ; xxxii. 47,
* Ps. xix. 8.

28 THE CANON.
subjects the most transcendental as well as duties till then
unknown ; in a word, the marvelous and profound unity of
their instructions ; — all these appear at once more manifest
and more sublime.
Is it surprising that this book, which charms all nations,
even the most savage ; which every where responds to their
wants and adapts itself, from age to age, to every degree of
civilization, should every where elevate their characters,
produce always effects which no other instruction has ever
secured, changing the affections, subduing the wills, giving
birth to all the heroisms, and civilizing in a few years the
most barbarous nations ; as we see it in the very beginning,
overthrowing, among the most cultivated people of the world,
idolatries whose origin was lost in the night of time, and re
newing the face of the earth ?

SECTION V.
ORAL PREACHING MUST PRECEDE BY SEVERAL TEARS WRIT
TEN PREACHING, OR THE GIFT OF THE NEW SCRIPTURES.
It was proper that the apostles should preach with the
living voice several years before commencing the formation
of the New Testament ; for it was necessary before continuing
by new inspired writings the Sacred Book, interrupted by an
interval of four hundred years, that they should have living
churches widely scattered, to whom their treasure might be
committed. It was then necessary that a people of God, in
telligent and faithful, should have been already collected,
both among the Gentiles and the Jews. It was necessary
especially for two reasons : first, to settle solidly the convic
tion that the religion of Jesus Christ, so far from being in
opposition to that of Moses and the prophets, on the contrary,
is founded on them ; then, that wherever and whenever the
divine epistles with which the New Testament was to com-

HISTORICAL DIVISION OF THE CANON. 29
mence, should appear, there , should be a people ready to
receive, preserve, and transmit them. It was necessary that
there should be men truly converted, united in churches, to
whom these letters could be addressed, who should succes
sively receive these new Scriptures, and who should become
the vouchers for their authenticity, whether by reading them
every Sabbath or every Sunday in their holy assemblies (as
Justin Martyr, represents a) ; or by preserving the very
originals in their oratories, (as Tertullian affirms.2) Thus
the holy tradition of the written Word was to be transmitted
safely from age to age, to all the churches of God.

SECTION VI.
HISTORICAL DIVISION OF THE CANON INTO THREE DISTINCT
PARTS.
"--.' We shall call the first canon (or first rule) the col- -
lection of the twenty books above enumerated ; because,
the first distributed during the lifetime of the apostles and
by their _own direction, they were immediately received by
all Christendom, eastern and western, without having, from
the beginning, and for eighteen centuries, their divine au
thority ever called in question by the Christian churches.
This first canon of the undisputed books forms by itself
eight ninths of the New Testament, if we count by verses,
having 7059 out of 7959.
We shall cafll the second canon the collection of the five
brief later epistles of James,8 Peter, Jude, and John, be
cause written a short time before the deaths of these men of
God, and distributed after their deaths in a distracted period,
their authors could not be appealed to to confirm them ; so
i.lst Apol. 67.
2 See Canon, chap. ii. sec. iii.
¦ 8 We will explain hereafter in what sense this epistle is called later rela
tively to the churches of the Circumcision.

30 THE CANON.
that, not being written and directed like the first thirteen of
Paul to particular persons or churches who were charged to
preserve and circulate them, these five short letters were not
received immediately by the whole church, though by the
majority of the churches, (-rots 7roAA.ots, tois TrXeto-rovs, says
Eusebius) ; 1 another part of these churches having hesi
tated a longer or shorter time to receive them as divine,
until at length a universal acceptance of them took place
after the decision of the first general council. This sec
ond canon, measured by the number of its verses is only
the thirty-sixth part of the New Testament, or 222 to
7959. Finally we shall call the second-first canon the collec
tion of two books (Hebrews and Revelation) which could be
ranked absolutely in neither of the other classes. They can
not be placed in the second, because they were both recognized
universally and without dissent during the first two centuries
of the church, and because Eusebius places them, for this
reason, among the books which he calls homologomens, or un
disputed. Nor could we place them in the first canon, be
cause they were afterwards contested for a time, the one
principally in the West, the ether in the East. These facts
will be more exactly considered hereafter.

SECTION VII.
THIS THREEFOLD DIVISION OF THE CANON REQUIRED BT
THE MOST AUTHENTIC MONUMENTS OF THE CHURCH.
If we divide the canon into these three distinct parts, it
is not in order to attribute the less certainty of their divine
origin to some than to others ; for, although their certainty
is not the same in a purely historical point of view, we shall
hereafter show that our faith in the authority of all is founded
1 Canon, chap. i. sec. 7.

THREEFOLD DIVISION OF THE CANON. 31
upon the same solid bases. But we cordially adopt this three
fold division of our sacred books, both to conform to the facts
of ecclesiastical history, and to proceed with more method in
the demonstration of their canonicity.
Three Ante-Nicene Catalogues.
Besides the numerous testimonies drawn from the fathers,
to authorize this triple distinction, we have three ancient cat
alogues of the Scriptures, which, without being entirely
identical, equally lead us to adopt it. They are all anterior
to the famous council held in Nice. The first belongs to the
period of John's death, at the end of the first century ; the
second belongs to the commencement of the third century ;
the last to the beginning of the fourth century. The first is
furnished us by the ancient Syriac version of the New
Testament, called the Peshito.1 The second is given us
twice by Origen ; first directly, in a homily on Joshua,2
and then indirectly in the quotations which Eusebius has
made from his Commentaries on Matthew, John, and the
Epistle to the Hebrews.8 The third is furnished by Fuse-.
bius himself, in A. D. 324, in the third hpok of his Ecclesias
tical History.
These are the only catalogues anterior to the council of
Nice, and worthy of confidence, which have come down to us ;
for we do not here speak of either the catalogue introduced
in the apocryphal book of the Apostolical Canons, nor of
the anonymous Roman Catalogue discovered in 1738, by
Muratori, in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, and therefore
bearing his name.4 It is a fragment greatly mutilated,'the
date and author of which are absolutely unknown. The be
ginning and the end are lost ; and the Latin is exceedingly
1 St^ti??) *¦ "- The Simple, or literal.
2 Horn. 8, Op. xii. p. 410; Latin version of Rufinus.
* Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Lib. vi. chapv25.
* Muratori, Antiq. Italicae, Vol. iii. p. S54.

32 THE CANON.
barbarous and incorrect. This document, in a word, which
indeed gives us almost precisely the same canon as the Pe
shito, is in too disordered a condition to serve for an author-
ijyln determining the doubtful historical points of the canon ;
' but, as it may still be very useful in establishing the authen
ticity" of our Scriptures, we shall resume the consideration
of it with special care, in our second chapter.1
Catalogue of the Peshito?
The Peshito version of the New Testament is the most
ancient, the m©'st celebrated, the most respected of all. It
was not known in Europe until the mission of Moses of Mar-
din, deputed in 1552 by the patriarch of the Maronites to
Pope Julius III. Michaelis, who, in accordance with many
of the most eminent philologists, attributes it to the first
century, or, at latest, to the second, declares it to be the best
version known to him, whether in regard to its freedom, ele
gance, or fidelity as a translation. All who have studied it
admire the good sense and intelligence of its authors, their
independence, and accuracy. And, as to its antiquity, every
one will understand that the Aramean people must have had
the Scriptures in their own language, at an early day ; they
were, in fact, the first to receive the gospel; and their churches
abounded, not only in Syria, but also on the banks of the Eu
phrates and Tigris, in Adiabene, Orsoene, Edessa, Nisibis,'
and Carrse when their literature had become fully devel
oped. The Scriptures of the New Testament must, therefore, have
been translated very early in the midst of them in the very
language spoken by the primitive churches and by Jesus
1 See Canon, chap. ii. sec. vi.
2 See Murdock, Translation. New Haven. Adler, N. T. Vers. Svr. Co-
penh. 1789. Hug. Introd. 62. Wiseman, Hora Syriacaj, Rome" 1828
Wichelhaus, De N. T. Vers. Syriaca Peshito, Halle, 1850 .W. Cureton"
Remains of a very ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Svriac Loii'
don, 1858. '

CATALOGUE OF THE PESHITO. , 33
Christ.1 Thus we find toward the first half of th$- second
century, in the history of Eusebius, an interesting tiWe of
the usage already established in those countries, of reaaing
and quoting the Syriac Scriptures of the New Testament-'
In speaking of the celebrated Hegesippus, who wa«, the
earliest ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius, to show that this
author was unquestionably a Jewish Christian, remarks that
he takes his quotations either from the Hebrew or the Syriac
version. Now this Hegesippus, whose works are lost, and
who had written, in five books, the History of the Church,
under the title of Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles,
was, says Eusebius,2 very near the days of the apostles, for
he lived under Adrian, (from a. d. 117 to 138,) and also
under Anicet, (from a. d. 157 to 168). It is for this reason
Jerome, in his " Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers," places
him before Justin Martyr, born A. d. 103, and executed
a. d. 167. These facts then give us the evidence of the
high antiquity of the Peshito version.
But, more than this, we have additional testimony to its
remote origin. Universal opinion has always assigned it
that ; and even to our day the Syrian Christians regard the
Peshito as the original of the New Testament. They be
lieve this, because their language was that of the apostles
and primitive Christians of Jerusalem, whose churches, as
soon as they were formed, divided themselves into Hellenists
and Hebrews, or Arameans (Acts vi. 1) ; that, also, of the
greater part of the churches founded among the Oriental
Jews, especially in Babylon and Orsoene, where the Syriac
Old Testament had existed for ages. We know that, accord
ing to the testimony of all the Fathers, it was in Aramean that
Matthew first wrote his Gospel ; but it is more probable that
he issued an edition of his book in Greek, and another in
Aramean at the same time. It appears, at least, that, from
the days of the apostles, wherever either of the three Ara-
l Hist. Eccl. Lib. iv. chap. 22.
2 lb. Lib. ii. chap. 23.

34 THE CANON.
mean dialects J was spoken, translations of the several books
of the New Testament were in use.
Edessa, where the Aramean literature had a remarkable
prevalence for a long period, and where the Apostle Thad-
deus 2 preached the Christian faith with so great success, is
often referred to as the place where the Peshito version was
made.8 It had become, from the second century, the site of
an important Christian school; it was called "the Holy
City," because of its unwavering zeal for the Christian faith ;
and even Eusebius said, as early as a. d. 324, that from the
days of Thaddeus's successful labors unto his time, " the en
tire city of the Edessans had continued to show themselves
attached to the name of Christ." Its antiquity, too, is
manifest from its being employed by all the different sects
into which the Syrian Christians were divided. The Nesto-
rians, the Jacobites, the Romanists, all equally agree to use
it in their respective worships ; although there were, as Wise
man declares, as many as twelve different versions of the Old
Testament, and three versions or revisions of the New Tes
tament. Yet none of them has ever supplanted the Peshito
for liturgical purposes. It must therefore have been in uni
versal use long before the origin of these different sects.
Now this ancient version already contained our canon
complete, with the single exception of the Revelation and
the four shorter and later Epistles of Jude, Peter, and
John. Such, then, at the beginning of the second century, or
rather at the end of the first, was the canon of the Syriac
churches. We find, this day, the Peshito version in two
forms of manuscript : the one in ancient Syriac characters ;
the other, (of Indian origin,) in Nestorian characters ; but
all of them contain the same canon.4
There are here two important facts to be noticed : 
1 Michaelis informs us that they differed from each other only in the
pronunciation. Lib. ii. chap. 23.
2 Hist. Eccl. Lib. ii. chap. 1.
8 Adler, N. T. Vers. Syr. etc. p. 42.
4 Adler, N. T. Vers. Syr. p. 3.

CATALOGUE OF THE PESHITO. 35
1. The absence of any non-canonical book ; although they
had begun in the East, from the second century, to publish
a great many, under false apostolical titles.
2. The order uniformly assigned to the sacred books. It
is always that found in the best and oldest Greek manu
scripts ; first, the four evangelists in their invariable order,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John ; then the Acts ; then the
cathohc epistles; and the fourteen epistles of Paul, always
in the same order as we now have, from Romans to He
brews.1 It is readily seen why the two smaller epistles of John,
written so late and so far from Babylonia, were not yet re
ceived there ; and, as to the Apocalypse, as we shall hereafter
see, it could not yet make a part of the canon, not having
appeared at Ephesus, on the coast of the .ZEgean Sea, until the
end of the first century or beginning of the second ; that is,
after the Peshito, or, at least, but shortly before this version
was made in the East. John had not his visions in Patmos
until near the close of Domitian's reign, as Irenasus clearly
shows ; 2 so that his book could not have appeared before the
last four years of the first century. And, what clearly
proves that the Apocalypse was not in the Peshito, only
because it was issued after it, is, that the Syrian churches,
so far from rejecting it when it appeared, on the contrary,
quoted from it as a divine book. Also Dr. Thiersch, who
gives the Peshito a later date than the Apocalypse, is per
suaded that the former originally contained the latter. " We
have no doubt of it," he says, " from the researches of Hug ;
otherwise, where did Ephraim obtain his Syriac Apoca-
1 This refers to the Greek Testament. For, in the Latin translations
anterior to Jerome, who restored the texts of the West to the original Greek
type, they had inverted the order of the four Gospels, (as may be seen in
the ancient MS. entitled that of Beza, or Cambridge.) Jerome, in his
preface, exhibits to Pope Damasus how greatly they had corrupted, even in
his day, the Latin copies of the Gospel. See Berger de Xivrey, Etudes sur
le Texte de N. T. Paris, 1856.
2 Adv. Hares. Lib. iii. chap. 30; Euseb. Hist. Lib. iii. chap. 18.

36 THE CANON.
lypse ? " x It must be remarked, moreover, that, if this
version did not yet contain the Apocalypse, it did contain
the epistle to the Hebrews and that of James ; since these
two letters, because late, and almost posthumous, were yet
both given before the death of Paul ; and also since they
were more properly accepted by the Syriac than by the
Gentile churches, having been more directly addressed to
them. It may then be concluded, from these facts, that the oldest
catalogue of New Testament books which has reached us —
this monument, so near the apostles' days as to have been
cotemporary with John — this first catalogue authorizes us
already to divide, as we have done, in a historical point of
view, the scriptural canon into three distinct parts : 1. The
twenty books always and universally received by every por
tion of the church. 2. Two other books not doubted among
the Aramean Christians in Palestine, Syria, Adiabene, Me
sopotamia, or Orsoene. 3. Five other books, whose right to
rank among the oracles of God was not yet established in
the -beginning of the second century.

Origen's Catalogue.
And now, if, from the opening of the second century, we
pass to the beginning of the third, an epoch so remarkable in
the history of the church for the great thinkers who were
then simultaneously raised up in the most distant countries
of the empire : Tertullian in Africa, Irenceus in Gaul, Hip-
polytus. in Arabia and at Rome, Clement, who closed his
career in Africa when Origen was there just commencing
his ; and, soon afterwards, Gregory in the kingdom of Pon
tes, and Cyprian in Carthage; if, I say, we pass to this
remarkable period, we shall receive, from the hands of the
great Origen, a second catalogue.
i Versuch zur Verstellung des hist. Standpuncts fur die Crit. der N.
T. Schriften, chap. vi.

ORIGEN'S CATALOGUE. 37
But, before opening it, it may be useful to consider how
valuable in this matter is his testimony, from the character
the piety, the learning, and the immense labors of this
extraordinary man. Origen, notwithstanding some errors
into which his piety was betrayed by his genius, is one of
the greatest lights of ancient Christianity, by reason of his
astonishing erudition, his skill in the sacred tongues/his re
spect for the Scriptures, his indefatigable ardor in studying
them, the clearness of his expositions ; as also the constant
purity of his life, his faithful confession of Jesus Christ, and
his holy firmness under persecution. If his dogmatic opin
ions on certain points have little worth, his testimony is of
the highest value to us in the matter before us. His labors
were, in fact, herculean. No other man has done so much to
collect, compare, explain, and circulate the Scriptures. Born
a. d. 185, he was made a martyr at sixty-eight years of age,
a. d. 253. From his eighteenth year, he was distinguished
for learning ; he instructed the catechumens in Alexandria ;
and, soon after, was invited, young as he was, to take the
pulpit of his master, the famous Clement of Alexandria. So
popular were his public catechizings, that the most illustrious
pagans attended them ; and the emperor Alexander, pagan
as he was, and his mother Mamsea, desirous of enjoying this
privilege, when in Syria, sent a military escort to bring him
to them at Antioch. He had visited the church in Rome
when he was twenty-eight years old; and it was after his
return to Alexandria that he undertook his vast labors on the
Scriptures. He was compelled to leave Egypt a. d. 233,
taking refuge first in Cesarea of Palestine, and then in Ces-
area of Cappadocia. Eusebius says,1 " So great was his
desire to understand the Scriptures, that he procured the most
authentic copies in the possession of the Jews, as well as the
best editions of the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old
Testament, that of Aquila, those of Symmachus and The-
odotion. He undertook to write a commentary on the whole
l Hist. Eccl. Lib. vi. chap. 23.
4

38 THE CANON.
Bible." Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome tell us : 1 " He
has commented on the whole Bible." Eusebius continues:
" Seven short-hand writers were at his side constantly while
he was dictating. They were relieved at regular intervals ;
and, at the same time, an equal number of copyists, as well
as several young girls, well practised in calligraphy, were at
work, perfecting the books. The expenses of all this, and
of his support, were provided by a friend who had been
converted under his labors ; so that he was free to be wholly
given with an amazing zeal to the study of the divine ora
cles, and the publishing of his commentaries."
The abundance of his labors on the Scriptures seems
to be superhuman ; and it is not without reason that anti
quity called him, " The man with entrails of brass," and
" The man of diamond," (^aAKen-epos, Adamantius.) Also,
although already in the time of Eusebius, that is, only a
century after him, a large portion of his works had been
lost, and although many others have disappeared since the
time of Eusebius, the collection made by Huet;2 of his
remaining exegetical works, makes two volumes folio, while
his complete works published by Delarue,3 consist of four
volumes. Without speaking of his famous Hexapla, or of
his immense labors on all the books of the Old Testament,
we may give an idea of what he has done for the New, by
quoting from Eusebius,4 and Cave,6 the list of merely his
exegetical works, his Scholia, (or collections of short notes,)
his volumes, (or extended commentaries,) and his homilies,
(or more popular treatises,) of which we have knowledge.
On the Gospel of John, thirty-two volumes of commentary,
composed between a. d. 222 and 237, with many homilies,
of which only two remain.
1 Epiph. Hares, chap. 64; Hist. Eccl. Lib. vi. chap. 23.
2 Rouen, 1668, with a Latin translation.
8 Paris, 1759.
* Hist. Eccl. Lib. vi. chap. 25.
t Hist. litt. Script. Eccl. p. 118. (Basle, 1741.)

ORIGEN'S CATALOGUE. 39
On Matthew, twenty-five books of commentary, A. d. 244,
besides scholia and many homilies.
On Luke, five volumes, besides thirty-nine homilies pre
served by Jerome, in Latin.
On the Acts, homilies.
On Romans, twenty volumes of commentaries, part of
which Rufinus has preserved to us in his Latin version.
On 1st Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians, many
books of commentaries.
On Galatians, five volumes, besides treatises and scholia.
On 1st Thessalonians and Titus, exegetical works, pre
served in part to us by Jerome and Pamphylus.
On Hebrews, commentaries, homilies, and exegeses.
, On Revelation, an exposition of which he himself speaks
in his treatise on Matthew, but of which we have no other
trace. It was necessary to enter into these details to show, by the
labors of merely one man, what was already, only one hun
dred and twenty years after the death of John, the ardent
desire of the churches to study the Scriptures of the New
Testament ; it was necessary to give an idea of the immen
sity of the researches made already, one hundred and three
years before the council of Nice, by this great man, in refer
ence to the sacred books ; all this was necessary to justify the
importance we attach to his testimony in regard to the canon
historically considered.
Now the writings of Origen twice give us the catalogue
of those books which were regarded in his time as canonical ;
first, by him directly, in the Eighth Homily on Joshua,1
(preserved to us in Rufinus's Latin version), and then, in
directly, in the quotations of Eusebius, a hundred years after
him.2 1 Origen, Op. xii. p. 410 (Berlin, 1831). Version of Rufinus. Doubts are
entertained of the accuracy of his translation of Origen. See, on this ver
sion, Canon, chap. iv. sec. iii.
2 Hist Eccl. Lib. vi. chap. 25.

40 THE CANON.
Here is the catalogue, given to us casually by him in his
commentary on the book of Joshua. It will be perceived
that he describes our entire canon, without the omission or
addition of a single book.
Alluding to the trumpets blown at the fall of Jericho, he
says, " When our Lord Jesus Christ came, whom Joshua
or Jesus the Son of Nun prefigured, he sent out his apos
tles as priests, bearing the trumpets of the magnificent and
celestial doctrine of grace. First comes Matthew, who, in
his Gospel, sounds the sacerdotal clarion. Then Mark, then
Luke, then John, sounds each his own trumpet ; then Peter
after them blows the two trumpets of his epistles. Then
James, as well as Jude. Then, notwithstanding his first
blasts, John sounds others in his epistles and Apocalypse, as
also Luke, when he. describes the Acts of the Apostles. Fi
nally comes in his turn he who said (1 Cor. iv. 9), ' I think
that God hath set forth us the apostles last ; ' and when he
sounds like thunder his fourteen epistles, the walls of Jericho
fall from their very foundations, — all the defenses and weap
ons of idolatry's war, and all the dogmas of philosophy."
This first catalogue of Origen contains then, as we see, all
the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, without one
exception ; but his testimony still in no wise contradicts the
historical distinction we have made between the several books
of the canon. All these books, we have said with Eusebius,
were received by the majority (TrAeto-rois) ; all, we here see,
were received by Origen ; the twenty books of the first canon
had never been contested by the Church, at that time, as
they have never been since ; nor do the two books of our
second-first canon appear to have been doubted in the early
part of the century, at the beginning of Origen's literary
career ; but they were soon going to be, the one in the East,
the other in the West. And we shall see in the second
form in which the catalogue has been preserved to us by
Origen, that, if he himself admitted the second epistle of
Peter, and the two shorter epistles of John, these two books

ORIGEN'S CATALOGUE. 41
were still, for some of his cotemporaries, a matter of hes
itation. Here is the second form, as we receive it from Eusebius,
who, in his sixth book of Eccl. Hist. chap. xxv. assures us
he took it from the writings of this Father, to wit : from his
first book on Matthew, his fifth book of exegesis on John,
and one of his homilies on Hebrews.
He says, " Origen, faithful to the ecclesiastical canon, at
tests that there are but four gospels, in saying, ' See what
I have learned from tradition regarding the four evangelists,
who also are the only authors universally acknowledged
without contradiction in the whole church of God.' Then,
after having spoken of these four evangelists, he takes care,
while showing his own firm attachment as before, to the
canonicity of the other books of the New Testament, to
distinguish the first epistle of Peter as incontestable (6/aoAo-
yov/xivrjv,) from the second, about which, others, he says, .
have doubts ; 1 and he is equally careful to say of the two
shorter epistles of John, that ' all do not regard them as
genuine.' " As to the Apocalypse, it was still in his time
universally received ; and he alludes to no contradiction,
when speaking of it. As to the epistle to the Hebrews, he^
indicates no doubt about its canonicity, only he remarks that
" many, on account of its elegant style, question not (notice
that) its canonicity, but its Paulinity." He expresses no
opinion himself on that, and he is careful to add, that " if
any church attributes it to Paul, they must honor it for
that ; for it is not in vain, or a light thing, that the men
of ancient times have handed it down to us as Paul's pro
duction." We may then conclude from this second catalogue of
Origen, as from the first, that our historical division of the
canon is legitimate ; and we see yet again at the beginning
of the third century,
1. That this great teacher received our entire canon.
1 See Canon, chap. iv. sec. iii.

42 THE CANON.
2. That then all the churches had continued to admit,
without any contradiction, as they have ever since done, the
twenty books of the first canon.
3. That they equally acknowledged the two books of our
second-first canon.
4. That some persons doubted the canonicity of Peter's
second epistle, and John's two smaller epistles.
5. But that Origen, according to Eusebius, speaks of no
opposition in his day to the epistles of James and Jude
Nor, indeed, does he there speak of his own acceptance of
these divine epistles : but this is an evident oversight of
Eusebius, since Origen more than fifteen times in his works
alludes to the epistle of Jude, and calls it a divine Scrip
ture.1 6. Finally, if many were led, in his day, by the beauty of
the style of the Hebrews, to doubt Paul's authorship, yet that
involved no doubt about its canonicity.
Eusebius's Catalogue.
The " Ecclesiastical History " of Eusebius, in which we
find before the Nicean Council, at the commencement of the
fourth century, our third catalogue of the New Testament,
being so indispensable to us in the study of the canon, we
would first fix our attention on the works of this author.
He was justly called " the father of ecclesiastical history ; "
for he was not merely the earliest, but also the only historian of
the primitive church. Hegesippus, a hundred years before,
had not known by any thing but " partial accounts " (//.epucas
hi-qyyo-eii)? to relate the more or less uncertain traditions, of
the apostolical times ; 8 whilst Eusebius, collecting all the
documents of the preceding ages, and consulting innumer-
1 See Canon, chap. iv. sec. 5.
2 It is the expression Eusebius employs. H. E. Lib. i. chap. 1.
s We may judge of his inaccuracy by the improbable or impossible stories
which Eusebius has quoted; e. g. that of the life and death of James. See ¦
Hist. Eccl. Lib. ii. chap. 23 ; and Scaliger Animad. Euseb. p. 178.

EUSEBIUS'S CATALOGUE. 43
able manuscripts, had undertaken to exhibit, in ten books,
the successive labors, sufferings, and triumphs of the church,
from the days of Jesus Christ to the fall of Licinius, a. d.
324. He adopted the rule, at the same time, of passing in
review all the writings of the Fathers, now lost to us. Also
Valesius (Henri de Valois), in the preface to his beautiful '
edition of the ecclesiastical histories,1 remarks that " none
of the succeeding historians of the church attempted to re
trace this ground ; but every one beginning where he ended,
left him the entire glory of his work."
The ten books of Eusebius will then ever remain the
great repertory where science must seek for almost all 'she
can learn about the first three centuries; and the student of
criticism or antiquity must constant^ keep Eusebius before
him, if he would refer to the sources, or speak pertinently
o£ the early history of the canon. If his book had perished
with so many others, the science of Christian antiquities,
already so meager, would have been reduced to the most
extreme penury ; for it is a very remarkable fact, to which
we shall again advert, that we have so few authentic docu
ments relating to the first half of the second century, and
the age of the apostles. When we have set aside, as we
should do, the Shepherd of Hernias, the Apostolical Consti
tutions, and the pretended epistles of Barnabas, Ignatius,
and Clement,2 what remains ? Only the five or six brief
authentic letters of Clement, Ignatius, and Polyearp, with
the accounts of their martyrdoms, and the beautiful anony
mous letter to Diognetus.
We have many other works of Eusebius written before
his Ecclesiastical History. They are his " Evangelical
Preparation," in fifteen books, written A. D. 315 ; his
" Evangelical Demonstration," in twenty books (only ten
remain), written about the same time; his precious " Chron-
1 Eusebii, Socratis, etc. 3 vol. fbl.; Moguntise, 1672, Pref. de Vita Eus.
p. 9.
2 See Patrum Apostol. Opera Josephi Hefele Proleg. Tubingae.

44 THE CANON.
icle," of which the text is lost, but an Armenian translation
of it has been found ; his " Apology of Origen ; " his " Life
(or panegyric) of Constantine ; " his " History of the Mar
tyrs of Palestine ; " and many commentaries on the Scrip
tures. But his great work will ever be his Ecclesiastical
History. None was better qualified for this important work than
this learned bishop. Born about A. D. 270 ; bishop from a. d.
315 of Syrian Cesarea, where his learned friend Pamphy-
lus, Origen's successor, had taught and suffered martyrdom,
Eusebius was at once a man of letters and a courtier, highly
esteemed by the emperor Constantine, who often invited
him to his imperial table, and honored him with his letters.
He therefore had access to the archives of the State, as he
had to the rich libraries established by Pamphylus in Cesa
rea, and at Jerusalem by Bishop Alexander. All these
books, lost to our learned men, are known to them only by
the fragments which Eusebius has quoted. The important
works of Aristion, Quadratus, Aristides, Hegesippus, Papias,
Meliton, Apollinarius, had all passed through his hands, so
that, in forming his judgments on the Scriptures, he had
advantages which we do not possess.
Eusebius, moreover, by his brilliant talents, as well as
by his rank, exerted a great influence over the church. He
was even offered the Patriarchate of Antioch, which he had
the wisdom to refuse ; and, in the famous Council of Nice,
we see him at the right of the emperor's golden throne, and
in the highest seat. We have in fact many of the emperor's
letters to him. We quote from one connected with our sub
ject.1 " My dear brother, I trust to your prudence the care
of having copied on precious parchments, and as you may
find best adapted for the use of the church, and for the
divine public readings (vapa tt)s tw Beuov drayiw/xa™v
hrivKcvrji), fifty copies (o-oyxcma) of the divine Scriptures
(tcov 6dm SjjAa&j ypatpw). You will employ for this pur-
1 Vita Constantini, Lib. iv. chaps. 35, 36.

EUSEBIUS'S CATALOGUE. 45
pose the amanuenses and others most skillful in their art;
and, to expedite the work, we have written in our clemency
letters to the State Treasurer, and two public conveyances
have been placed at your disposal."
" It would be a precious treasure if Providence had pre
served from time to time for the church, one of these old
manuscripts, mure ancient than ours, like those recently
found in Nineveh and Egypt.
There is, then, nothing lacking in the testimony of this
witness of the third and fourth centuries ; but, before inter
rogating him, we must not forget that, in other respects, his
judgment and his character are not always worthy of the
same confidence as his erudition.
As to the latter, every critic, even his most severe detractor,
fully concedes all we can claim.1 Jerome calls him 2 " a
most learned man." But he immediately adds, "I have
not said catholic, but most learned." " Whom could you
find," he says again, " more prudent, more learned, more
eloquent than Eusebius, that admirer of Origen ? " s Anti-
pater of Bozra says, " We grant him science, but deny his
theological skill." 4 Scaliger says : " If we call him learned
who has read much, we can not refuse that honor to Eusebius.
But if, to obtain it, it is requisite to unite judgment with
reading, reserve this title for some one else." Antipater
says, "That he was a man of great erudition, and that
nothing in the oldest authors escaped his notice, is what I
cheerfully accord to him ; for, by the imperial favor, he was
able to gather documents from every country."
It is important then, that, in giving all credit to the learn
ing of Eusebius,5 we should grant less to his judgment and
1 Valesius, Vet. Testimonia; (H. de Valois,) at the beginning of his
Eusebius. 2 Lib. ii. adv. Rufinum.
3 Ep. 65, ad Pammachium et Oceanum.
* Book i. against the Apol. of Origen, made by Eusebius.
6 We shall have to complain of him hereafter in reference to his treat
ment of Jude and Revelation.

46 THE CANON.
his religious character. He had, during the imperial perse
cutions,' led men to doubt his fidelity. The times were
difficult ; the philosophy of the last part of the third century
had' obscured his faith with that of many others, and pre
pared followers for the impieties of Arius, who, born in the
same year with Eusebius, (a. d. 270,) had spread his poison
from a. d. 312, and immediately found an army of accom
plices in the bishops of his day. Among the^e was Euse
bius. He publicly espoused the cause of Arius against the
Bishop of Alexandria, and afterwards became one of the
persecutors of Athanasius. Also, when, at the council of
Tyre, (a. d. 335,) the Bishop Potamon, who had lost one
of his eyes for the sake of the gospel, saw him sitting among
the judges against this eminent servant of God, he could
not suppress his indignation. '* Is it then for you, Eusebius,"
he cried out with tears, " to sit in this place to condemn the
innocent Athanasius ? Who can bear the sight ? Tell me,
were we not hoth cast into prison by persecution ? How,
then, came you out safe and sound, whilst I lost an eye for
maintaining the truth, if it is not that you have sacrificed to
idols, or have promised to do it ? "
The doctrinal statements of Eusebius, it is true, changed
greatly after the council of Nice ; but the times had
changed. " There were doubts about his sincerity," says
the historian Socrates.1 Thus was he named the double-
tongued man (hiyXuo-o-ov) ; for he had not ceased even then
to show himself the friend of the Arians and the enemy of
the orthodox. Nevertheless, and whatever may have been
his real character before God, his book will always have an
inestimable value for the history of the canon. We even
think that his prejudices against certain doctrines, and the
philosophical and latitudinarian tendency of his mind, by
inclining him to look mainly at the human side of the ques
tion, may, perhaps, render him a more valuable witness in
an investigation of this kind ; as has been said of Josephus
1 Hist. Eccl. Lib. i. chap. 23.

EUSEBIUS'S CATALOGUE. 47
and Gibbon in regard to the accomplishment of the proph
ecies. \
Now Eusebius, in the twenty-fifth chapter of thev third
book of his history, gives us, with great precision, an exposi
tion of the views of the ancient ecclesiastical writers in
regard to the canon. To express it more precisely, he
divides the Scriptures of the New Testament into books
recognized and books contested. But, as this invaluable
chapter is the starting point of almost all the works on the
canon, we must fix with definiteness, before going farther,
the meaning which. Eusebius attaches respectively to these
two expressions. From the etymology and common use of
the words, we might suppose that by the recognized books,
(bp.o\oyovpivoi) Eusebius meant only the Scriptures recog
nized without dispute in any part of the churches of God ;
and that by the contested, (oVnAeyo/iepoi) he meant only the
books not acknowledged. Yet this is not his meaning ; for,
with him, these distinctive terms relate only to the greater
or less universal extent of the acceptance of these sacred
books ' by the church.
Thus, then, in the mouth of Eusebius, the homologomens
are " the Scriptures universally, absolutely, and constantly
recognized from the beginning as divine by all the churches
and all ecclesiastical writers." Thus you hear him giving
them, in the same chapters, the titles of books ratified or
sanctioned (/cvpcoreoi/), books catholic or universal (KafloAifca),
books intestamented, or inserted in the collection of the New
Testament (IvSta^Ka), books uncontroverted (di/a/A^iAe/era),
books uncontradicted (oa/avTipprp-a.).
And, on the other hand, the contested or antilegomens, far
from being, in the language of Eusebius, books not recog
nized, (as mere etymology would indicate,) designate books
which, although recognized by the majority of the people and
ecclesiastical writers, were not universally received, or re
ceived with some reservation and hesitation. Now, those
books which Eusebius places among the recognized, ''because

48 THE CANON.
the ancient doctors and the ancient churches had constantly
regarded them as divine," are not only the twenty books of
which our first canon is composed, but also the two books
which constitute our second-first canon ; so that the class of
the recognized would contain thirty-five thirty-sixths of the
New Testament. It is certainly worth while to search here
for the literal meaning of the expressions used by Euse
bius. This is the title of his chapter : " Of the recognized di
vine Scriptures and of those which are not ; " and he begins
by saying, " It will be proper that at this point we should re
capitulate the Scriptures of the New Testament which we
have already made known. Now, we must rank in the first
class the holy group of the four Gospels, which are followed
by the Scripture of the Acts of the Apostles. After this
Scripture, we must insert in the catalogue the Epistles of
Paul ; then that of John, which is called the first ; and we
must equally ratify also the Epistle, of Peter. With these
books must be ranked, if you will, the Apocalypse of John, on
which we will take occasion to give our views. . Such are
then the books which belong to the recognized."
In the second place, the Scriptures which Eusebius places
among the antilegomens are the five small epistles, the sec
ond of Peter, those of James and Jude, and the two last of
John. " These contested Scriptures," he says, " which are
yet recognized by the great number of the people and the
majority of ecclesiastical writers, and publicly read with the
other catholic epistles in the majority of the churches,1 are
exposed to some contradictions, and less cited by the an
cient authors."
Outside of these twenty-seven books of the New Testa
ment, and even of the contested books, Eusebius places the
works whioh must be rejected, and which he calls (v66a) or
illegitimate. But at the same time he seems to have divided
this third class into two others : that of the illegitimate which
i Lib. ii. chap. 23. He says these last words of the seven catholic epistles,
with special reference to James and Jude.

EUSEBIUS'S CATALOGUE. 49
may be harmless, or even edifying, but which are improperly
attributed to Apostles or their companions, such as the Acts
of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Revelation of Peter,
the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apostolical Constitutions ; —
and that of the heretical and injurious illegitimate, which
he calls absurd and impious, such as the Gospels of Peter,
of Thomas, of Matthias, or the Acts of Andrew, of John,
and the other apostles.
" We see," says Doctor Thiersch,1 " by this subtle distinc
tion which Eusebius establishes, which we could have deduced
from neither the etymology of the terms nor the nature of
the subject, how clear and positive the judgment of the
church and the judgment of Eusebius then were on the
proper limits of the canon ; — limits which afterward be
came laws of the church."
If Eusebius included the epistle to the Hebrews among
the books certainly and incontestably recognized, although he
knew it to be the object of some doubts originating at Rome
and dating only from the days of Caius or the first half of
the third century, it was because he had seen it constantly
admitted from the days of the apostles in all the Greek and
Oriental churches. He took care to suggest " that while the
fourteen epistles of Paul are manifest and certain, it would
not be fair to overlook the fact that certain persons have
rejected the epistle to the Hebrews because the Church of
the Romans had denied that Paul was its author." 2 These
certain persons were evidently Greeks ; but neither their
opinion, nor even that of the Church of Rome had really
any weight with the churches of Greece and of Asia ; and
the learned Eusebius none the less declares that he regards
this epistle as manifest and certain.
And as to the Apocalypse, we may at first be astonished
that he, does not place it among the contested books, since
1 Versuch zur Verstellung des hist. Standpuncts fui die Critic der N. T.
Schr. 2 Hist. Eccl. Lib. iii. chap. 3.
5

50 THE CANON.
he speaks of it as divine in the view of some and false in
the view of others. But as the divine origin of the Apoc
alypse had never been denied in the East, until Dionysius
of Alexandria, in the middle of the third century, violently
maintained that it was the work of a common priest named
John, and consequently an illegitimate book, the dispute
being still at its hight while Eusebius was composing his
history, he could not, before the discussion had become
calm, rank the Apocalypse in the class • of contested books,
since all were equally decided, but from opposite motives, to
exclude it from this class ; some to place it decidedly among
the divine books, others, among those which are apocryphal.
The Apocalypse was regarded as divine to the middle of
the third century ; but then the party spirit of the philo
sophical theologians of Alexandria in their opposition to the
ancient millenarian doctrine, dared for the first time to deny
the authority of this book. This hostility caused the Greek
teachers to suspend their judgment. Nor did Eusebius re
main impartial in this strife, but he none the less presented
the historical state of the question with a fidelity worthy of
respect. If, then, we are asked why Eusebius placed the epistle to
the Hebrews and the Apocalypse in the canon of the uncon
tested Scriptures, we should reply by recapitulating what we
have just said, which is: —
1. Because these two books have from the beginnino-,
and for two centuries, been recognized as divine by all the
churches of the East and of the West.
2. Because from that time one of these books, the epistle
to the Hebrews, has never ceased to be received in the
Oriental churches, and the other, the Apocalypse, in the
Occidental churches.
13. Because, when, at a later period and for a brief season,
objections were raised in the East against the Apocalypse,
and in the West against the Hebrews, they were never able
to invoke against either of these two books the least testi-

EUSEBIUS'S CATALOGUE. 51
mony of antiquity, and could oppose to them only the diffi
culties of doctrine and of style which are urged by the critics
of our day. *
We shall hereafter enter into a more precise consideration
of these contested books, wishing here only to describe the
catalogue of Eusebius.
In taking, then, our point of departure with so many others,
from this historian, in establishing the divine canonicity of
the entire New Testament, and in thus placing ourselves with
this learned bishop in the year a. d. 324, five months. before
the council of Nice, we may say that we have chosen the
precise moment of all history, in which the objections against
these two books were at the culminating point. We could
not then give a more exact statement of these objections
than under this form, since our triple division of the canon
surpasses in rigor even that of Eusebius ; and that instead
of placing with him the Hebrews and the Apocalypse in the
rank of the uncontested books we assign them a separate
position, as not having been really uncontested, in the abso
lute sense of Eusebius, until the middle of the third century.
If you go upward from Eusebius, you see the objections
diminishing ; and if you descend from him you see them
diminishing still more rapidly. The great Origen, before
him, received, as we have said, our entire canon, and knew
no hesitation among his cotemporaries excepting in regard
to one eighty-ninth part of the New Testament ; that is,
Peter's second epistle and the last two of John. The great
Athanasius, only twenty-six years younger than he, al>o re
ceived our entire canon, and said in terminating the catalogue
of it x : — " These books are the fountain of salvation. Let
no one then add to, or retrench from them any thing." And
the famous council of Laodicea,2 only thirty-nine years after
1 In his Festal E/nstle xxxix'. Tom. ii. p. 961, edit. Bened.
2 It represented the different countries of Asia, and it was approved by
the fourth CEcumenical Council of Constantinople (in Trullo), by the fourth
of Chalcedon, and by the Imperial Law of Justinian. The Code of the Uni
versal Church itself places it in a. d. 364.

52 THE CANON.
that of Nice, admitted already, and without exception, into
its catalogues, as we sliall presently see, all the five smaller,
and later epistles which make our second canon.
It is then fully demonstrated that our division of the
twenty-seven books of the New Testament into three his
torically distinct canons, meets the most severe requirements
of sacred criticism, and that it represents very exactly the
history of the several books of Scripture; — twenty books
universally and constantly recognized without any contradic
tion, from the origin of the New Testament ; then, two other
books constantly and universally recognized also from the
beginning to the middle of the third century, when they
began to raise in one part of the church, and for one hun
dred and fifty years divers objections, not historical, but
critical, to their canonicity ; then, five brief epistles, recog
nized by the majority, still contested, however, in a part of
the church, until the council of Nice.1

SECTION VLTI.
OF THE COUNCIL OF NICE AND ITS RESULTS.
The oecumenical council of Nice is unquestionably one of
the most august assemblies which the pageantry of human
history presents to us. The world itself had never witnessed
any thing comparable to it. The three hundred and eighteen
bishops out of every country who composed it, and the elders
and deacons assembled with them, were anion a- the most
learned and holy in the church of God. Hosius. bishop of
Cordova, an old man venerated by all, who had already pre
sided over other synods, and whose name was the first en
rolled in this ; Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, who opened
the council with an address ; Alexander, that pious bishop
of Alexandria, who first combated Arius, and who took with
1 See Canon, chap. i. sec. xii.

THE COUNCIL MADE NO DECREE ON THE CANON. 53
him to Nice the famous Athanasius, then a young deacon of
Alexandria, twenty-nine years old ; James, bishop of Nisibis
in Mesopotamia ; Alexander, bishop of Byzantium ; Mar-
ceilus, bishop of Ancyra ; Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem ;
Oecilian, bishop of Carthage. There were seen there even
bishops from Persia, from Scythia, and the country of the
Goths, as well as a great number of the glorious confessors of
Jesus Christ who had suffered imprisonment and torture in
the previous persecutions ; three bishops named Nicholas ;
Spyridion, bishop of Cyprus, an aged man honored of all ;
Paphnutius, whose right eye had been taken out, and his left
leg mutilated with a hot iron ; Paul, of Neocesarea on the
Euphrates, who was maimed in both hands, Licinius having
ordered them to be burned. And besides these and so many
other faithful men, the council contained a great many at
tached to the party of Arius, yet illustrious by their talents
and their science, such as the two Eusebiuses, Maris of
Chalcedon, Paulinus of Tyre, Menophanlus of Ephesus,
Lucius, a Sarmatian bishop, and many others. The as
sembly was opened in the imperial palace, on the 22d
day of May, a. d. 325, and continued to the 25th of
August. The Council made no Decree on the Canon.
The canon of the New Testament is often spoken of as
if the first general council, convoked by Constantine to put
an end to the divisions then troubling the church, had
enacted some decree on the sacred catalogue of the Scrip
tures. Nothing is less true.
We see then, it is true, as Eusebius1 writes, "in this
convocation of the oecumenical world, an assembly in which
were gathered, from all the churches of Asia, Africa, and
Europe, the most eminent spirits of the ministry of God on
1 Eusebius, Life of Constant. Lib. iii. chap. 6. Socrates, Hist. Ecc. Lib. i.
chap. 8.

54 THE CANON.
earth." It is true, there were then taken resolutions con
cerning the disputes which were agitating the Christian
world of the Orient and the Occident ; and that frequent"
reference was made there to the Holy Scriptures, as to a
book common to the churches universal ; but there was
never a question raised about any difference in regard to the
canon. Not a document which has reached us from that
council contains a word of such discussion.
In the midst of that august assembly an elevated throne
was erected, and on that throne was laid the sacred volume
of the gospels,1 to signify, as was done in all the early
general councils,2 that the Scriptures are the supreme rule in
all controversies. And the great Constantine, in his address
to the assembled fathers,8 reminded them that they had " the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit written ; " and " that the books of
the evangelists and - of the apostles, and the oracles of the
prophets teach us clearly and certainly (o-a<£«s) what we must
believe concerning the things of God, so that all differences
must be determined by reference to the divinely inspired
words " (ck tgjj/ #eo7n'eu;Tajv Adycov). In fine, the council, in
accordance with its "Formula of Faith " (/m^/m-ros), attested
that it founded its doctrines solely on the divine Scriptures
(Qziwv ypacpwv), when, in its preamble proposed by Eusebius,
it said, " As we learned in the Holy Scriptures, this is our
creed : I believe in one only God, the Father Almighty," etc.
But, we repeat, amid all these professions, the council never
manifested the slightest thought of forming a decree on the
sacred catalogue of the New Testament.
It is true that many Romanist theologians, Bellarmine,4
1 Le Sueur, Hist, de l'Egl. et de l'Emp. tom. ii. p. 454; torn. iv.
pp. 275, 375; tom. vi. p. 220. YlvevaaTog ri/v oioaaKaXniv avaypairroi
EXovras. 2 This fact is affirmed of the council of Chalcedon and of many others.
Yet I have not been able to find in Eusebius, any more than in Socrates,
Sozomen, or Theodoret, the passage from which the historians have taken it
in regard to the Council of Nice.
s See Theodoret, Histor. Ecclesiast. Lib. i. chap. 7.
4 De Verbo Dei, Lib. i. chap. 10.

THE COUNCIL MADE NO DECREE ON THE CANON. 55
Baronius,1 Catharinus,2 Binius,8 incessantly aiming at estab
lishing the authority of human tribunals in matters of faith,
and committed to the cause of the apocryphal books, have
ventured some hazardous remarks on this point. In spite of
the silence of antiquity, and regardless of all the monuments
of the council of Nice which remain to us, they have pre
tended to find in one word of Jerome, the evidence that the
council passed- a decree on the canon. Jerome, in fact,
earnestly importuned by certain persons to prepare a com
mentary on the book of Judith (the canonicity of which
he firmly rejected), said, " But because the Synod of Nice
is said to have reckoned this book in the number of the
sacred Scriptures, I have yielded to your demand." 4 But it
is easy to demonstrate the fallacy of this conclusion from his
language. In fact —
1. No ancient ecclesiastical author ever appealed to the
council of Nice on the scriptural canon.
2. Not a word is found on this pretended decree in the
acts of the council.
3. Jerome is himself very explicit agamst the use of the
book of Judith ; and even in this preface from which the
pretended argument is taken, he is careful to say that " the
Hebrews put Judith among the books whose authority is of
no weight in determining religious controversies." 6 And in
his. Prologus Galeatus he says, " This book is not in the
canon." And in his commentary on the books of Solomon,
" The church, it is true, reads it, but does not receive it
among the canonical Scriptures." 6
4. The Roman doctors are so fully convinced of Jerome's
1 Annals, tom. iii. sec. 137.
2 In Cajetan.
8 Notes on the Council of Laodicea.
4 It is.in the preface to the book, " Sed quiahunc librum Synodus Nicsena,
in numero S. Scripturarum legitur computasse," etc.
6 Cujus auctoritas ad roboranda ilia quse in contentionem veniunt minus
idonea judicetur.
6 Sed eum inter canonicas Scripturas non recipit.

56 THE CANON.
opinion on this point, that they decline his testimony when
they are defending the apocryphal books.
5. Jerome, in the alleged passage, does not mean that the
council approved the book of Judith ; but simply " that cer
tain persons had so pretended (legitur)." Possibly some
bishop at Nice had made a quotation from the book ; but
that would not show that the council had recognized it to
be canonical, much less, had made a decree on this subject.
. 6. If the council of Nice had approved this history of
Judith as canonical, how could that of Laodicea, held forty
years afterward, and recognized by the general council of
Chalcedon, have excluded it from the canon ? How could
Eusebius and Athanasius, — both present and both powerful in
the council of Nice ; how could Epiphanius, who expressed
such respect for this assembly ; and how could Hilarius, who
suffered exile in defense of its decrees, — how could all these
four have equally excluded it? And how, again, could the
great Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Amphilochius, all three
nearer the time of the council than Jerome, have equally
omitted it in their catalogue of the sacred books ?

All Differences in Regard to the Contested Books ceased in
all the Christian Churches after this Council.
Whatever may have been (by the special providence of
God, as we shall hereafter show), the reserve of the councils
in regard to the canon, — a reserve unconscious, and so
much the more to be admired, — it is none the less true, that,
from the time of the Nicean assembly, there was an imme
diate and marked change in the dispositions of those who
had before manifested some uncertainty about this or that
of the contested books. Hesitations immediately began to
disappear, until, at -tost, the whole body of the Christian
church reached that admirable unanimity which they have
now manifested for fifteen hundred years among every tribe,

ELEVEN CATALOGUES OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 57
people, language, and nation. The council, without doubt,
contributed powerfully, though indirectly, to this important
result; because, by bringing together for three months, in
intimate intercourse, the most illustrious and learned rep
resentatives of Christianity, opportunity was furnished for
exchanging their views and comparing their respective
manuscripts, and thus removing "all unfounded prejudices,
and recognizing their universal agreement.
It will, then, be proper to confirm these results by cita
tions ; but only to the fourth century, since from that time
to the present, the testimonies are too continuous and abun
dant to be cited or counted.

SECTION IX.
THE ELEVEN AUTHENTIC CATALOGUES OF THE FOURTH
CENTURY.
The fathers and the councils of the fourth century have
left us not less than eleven catalogues of the sacred books,
without counting that of Eusebius.
All these, without exception, are unanimous in recogniz
ing as canonical, not only the twenty books constituting
our first canon, but also the Epistle to the Hebrews and all
the five books which Eusebius calls contested, and which
we have denominated the Second Canon. You will there
fore hear, from the time of the Nicean Council, only one
opinion throughout the world in regard to either the two
canons, or the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Of these eleven authentic catalogues of the fourth century,
nine are found in the writings of the fathers, and two in the
decrees of councils. We shall, therefore, pass both classes
in review in the following sections.

58 THE CANON.

SECTION X.
THE NINE CATALOGUES OF THE FOURTH CENTUET GIVEN
BY THE FATHERS.
Three of them omit only the Apocalyse.
Of these nine catalogues, there are three — those of Cyril,
Gregory the theologian, and Philastrius — who, in agreeing
fully on every other point with the canon of our churches,
either do not name the Apocalypse, or, with Amphilochius,
state that some still doubted its canonicity. Hug, in his
Introduction, says, "Notwithstanding the unanimous opin
ion of the churches after the council of Nice, the discus
sions in opposition to the Millenarians, had been in some
places too vivid, and in all too recent, for this book to have
regained fully its place."
Cyril. — The first of these three catalogues is that of
Cyril, whom the Greek Church places at the head of hei
saints, and who was elected patriarch of Jerusalem only
twenty-four years after the council of Nice. He died
A. d. 386. Before being promoted to that important postj
he had successfully discharged the functions of catechist-
pastor, even in Jerusalem.1 His works consist almost ex
clusively of his eighteen Catechisms (or oral instructions),
addressed to catechumens on the principal points of Chris
tian doctrine ; and of five catechisms called " Mystagogic," 2
addressed to communicants on the two sacraments of the
church. He says, "They were prepared in the simplest
manner, to be understood of all." His term is improvised
(o-xeSiatfeio-ai). Now, his catalogue is found in his fourth
Catechism, under this title, "0/ the divine Scriptures."*
1 We learn that he was still catechizing in a. d. 347. See his sixth Cate
chism, or (Cave, Hist. Litt. tom. i. p. 211).
2 Published in Latin, at Paris, in 1564; in Latin and Greek, in 1720.
8 Chap. 33, et sea., ed. Bened. Venice, 1763.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 59
He remarks, " See, then, what the inspired Scriptures of
the Old and of .the New Testament teach us ; for there is
an both the one only and the same God, who, in advance,
announced in the Old the Christ of the New. Learn, then,
from the church, with a docile spirit, what are the books
of the Old and the New ; and read me nothing from the
Apocrypha. . . . Read the divine Scriptures, the twenty-two
books of the Old Testament ; 1 . . . but have nothing in
common with the Apocrypha. Apply thyself earnestly
only to those books which we also read and recognize in
the church. They were certainly more enlightened and
discreet than thou, the apostles and ancient bishops, those
rulers of the church who have transmitted them to us. Thou,
then, child of the church, do not put a false stamp on its
ordinances fju/i) Trapa^dparre toiis #e<r//.ovs.)"
Thus much he says for the twenty-two books of the Old
Testament. " And as to the New Testament, all gospels besides the
four are false and pernicious. The Manicheans,2 also, have
written a Gospel according to Thomas,3 which, under the
perfume of an evangelical surname, brings death to the souls
of the simple. But receive also the Acts of the twelve
apostles, and also the seven catholic epistles of James,
Peter, John, and Jude ; and, finally, as a seal put on all the
disciples, the fourteen epistles of Paul. But let all the
other books slide out into a second rank. And as to all
the books not read nor recognized,4 neither read nor acknow
ledge them for any thing that concerns thyself."
1 The Jews had the fancy of reducing the thirty-nine books to twenty-
two, to correspond to their alphabet. They therefore made one book of
the twelve minor Prophets, one book of Ruth and Judges, one of Ezra and
Nehemiah, one of Jeremiah and Lamentations, one of the two books ot
Samuel, one of the two Kings, and one of the two Chronicles.
2 End of the third century.
8 They were not speaking here of Thomas, cotemporary with Jesus Christ,
but of one Thomas, an immediate disciple of Manes (Cave, Hist. Litt. tom.
i. p. 141).
4 We employ these two terms, because the Greek uvayivaanerai includes
both.

60 THE CANON.
We see here, therefore, and shall again see it in the other
catalogues, that they then considered two sorts of books aa
outside of the canonical Scriptures : those which, without being
canonical, might be read in the churches, being placed in a
second rank, and accordingly called ecclesiastical books ; the
others, which were not admitted even into this second rank,
to be read in the churches, and -which they denominated
apocryphal books.
Cyril then, although conforming in every other point to
the canon of our churches, had not yet admitted the Apoca
lypse to the place it occupied in the preceding centuries;
but, with Eusebius, he gave it a secondary place, for he
quotes it very clearly three times in his Catechism xv. chap
ters 12, 13, 17. *
Gregory Nazianzen. The second catalogue is that of
the celebrated Gregory of Nazianzum, born, as Cave thinks,
at the time of the first oecumenical council, and promoted to
the patriarchate of Constantinople about the time of the
second, fifty-six years later. He died eight years afterwards,
A. d. 389, aged 64 years.1
This great man, son of the bishop of Nazianzum, by
whom he was ordained to the ministry, had finished his brill
iant academic career in the schools of Cesarea, Alexandria,
and Athens. He was already administering the diocese of
Nazianzum during the old age of his father ; and early made
himself known by his fidelity as much as by the eminence of
his gifts, when the council of Antioch commissioned him to
repair to Constantinople in a. d. 378, to combat Arianism
and raise the standard of God's truth. It was an arduous
task; his life was more than once put in danger. The
Arians had been possessors of all the temples for forty
years, and their audacity was great ; but Gregory had the
happiness to bring a large number, in a short time, to the
1 Fabricius differs from Cave in his dates; fixing his birth at 300 and
death at 391. Bib. Grac. viii. 384.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 61
profession of the truth. He assembled them at the house of
one of his kindred, in an independent oratory, afterwards
called the church of the Anastasis (or the Resurrection),
" because the resurrection of the national church of Con
stantinople from the dead was there witnessed." An earnest
multitude always attended his powerful preaching, until at
length the Emperor Theodosius declared himself his pro
tector, raised him to the patriarchate of Constantinople,
with the unanimous assent of one hundred and fifty bishops
convoked in an oecumenical council for this purpose. Yet,
at the close of this assembly, the arrival of the Egyptian
bishops at Constantinople having raised violent opposition to
this election, Gregory, for the peace of the church, resigned
his office, and went to finish his career in Cappadocia, in
devotion, labor, and retirement.
A man of piety, an elegant poet, a preacher full of majesty,
he was above all respected in his age as an unrivaled theolo
gian. They accordingly gave him the surname, " Theo-
logus." " Before the Lord and before the churches of God,"
says Rufinus,1 " to raise one's self in any point against the
teachings of Gregory, was to be a heretic." His writings
have almost all come down to us. They consist of sermons,
poetry, and letters.
Now his Catalogue, which is the sole theme of one of his
songs,2 is entitled : " Of the legitimate (yi/ijcaW) books of the
inspired Scripture. After a very exact enumeration of the
books of the Old Testament (in his first nineteen verses),
come these two distichs :
Applets pev tOrjKO, Svo> ko.1 eiKocri y8t/3Aovs,
Tots EySpauov ypap.pM.o-iv OA/TiOirovi.
Mar^atos phi eypcupev E/3paiois 6o.vp.aTO. Xpio-rov,
Ma^Kos S° 'IraXiq., AodkSs 'Ay/maSt.
naai 8' 'Imawns Krjpv£ fiiyai, ovpavocpoirrp . • •
1 Prolog, in lib. Greg.
2 It is the xxxiii. opp. tom. ii. p. 439. Colon. 1680.

62 THE CANON.
" I have given the twenty-two books of the Old Testament
corresponding'to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Then
Matthew wrote for the Hebrews the marvelous things of
Christ, Mark for Italy, Luke for Greece, but John for all ;
— he, this great herald-at-arms who has entered the heavens.
Then the Acts of the Apostles, and the fourteen letters of
Paul, and the seven Catholic Epistles ; one of James, two
of Peter, and three of John ; that of Jude being the seventh.
Thou hast them all ; and if any other is proposed to thee, it
is not in the number of the legitimate (ovk iv ¦yvno-loii)."
We see, then, the canon of Gregory is already complete,
with the single exception of the Apocalypse. And yet this
father (in his twenty-fourth verse) clearly enough refers to
the apostle John as the author of this book, when he names
him " the great herald who has entered the heavens."
Thus too Andreas, bishop of Cesarea, who commented on
the Apocalypse toward the close of the fifth century, de
clares that Gregory the divine regarded the Apocalypse as a
sacred book and worthy of faith.1 And we read in Lardner 2
two passages in which this same Gregory refers to the
Apocalypse of John. Once he says : " As John teaches
me by the Apocalypse" ('Os T<odvi^s oiSdo-Ku pe SiA rrjs
'ATroKaXvu/e'ojs). And again, when he cites this eighth verse
of the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse : Kat 6 wv, /cat 6 rjv,
ko! 6 ip^opevo';, 6 UavroKparoip.
However it may be, we are disposed rather to believe that,
with Cyril and Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen, at this epoch,
did not yet place this holy book in the rank of the canonical
books, properly so called, and gave it only a second rank
among the ecclesiastical books in the public reading in the
churches.8 1 Bibl. Pat. Max. v. 590. Constat namque beatos illos viros, . . . Gre-
gorium theologum, Cyrillum Alexandrinum, etc. . . . divinum fideque
dignum non uno loco tradere.
2 Tom. iv. p. 287.
8 We find, among the works of the same father, another catalogue which
some attribute to Amphilochius, and of which we shall speak hereafter.
Canon, chap. i. sec. xi.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 63
Philastrius. The third catalogue is that of Philastrius,
a friend of Ambrose, and bishop of Brescia. He flourished
about a. d. 380. He had traveled much to promote the
truth, and had valiantly combated against Arianism. Au
gustine mentions his meeting him at the house of Ambrose.1
There remains to us one of his books, " De Haeresibus,"
which is found in the fifth volume of the great Library of the
Fathers.2 In the 40th and 41st articles of this book we find
his Catalogue of the New Testament, as here quoted : " Ar
ticle 40. It has been established by the apostles and their
successors, that nothing should be read in the churches ex
cept the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels, the Acts, the
thirteen epistles of Paul, and seven others, two of Peter,
three of John, one of Jude, and one of James. As to the
concealed or apocryphal scriptures, although they may-Joe
read by the perfect for their sanctification, they should not be
read by all, because ignorant heretics have added and cut
out much in them at their pleasure."
To read, then, only this 40th article, we should suppose
that Philastrius, while accepting our first and second canons
entirely, did not accept our second-first ; but this would be a
mistake so far as regards the epistle to the Hebrews ; for, in
his 41st article, entitled : " Heresy of some concerning the
Epistle to the Hebrews," he adds :
" There are others who pretend that the letter of Paul to
the Hebrews is not his, but from Barnabas, or Clement,
bishop of Rome. Others, too, that Luke had written a letter
to the Laodiceans, and because evil-minded persons have
added some things to it, it is not read in the church ; or if
sometimes read, yet not always. It is because he has there
written in a beautiful style, that they have thought it was not
from him ; and because he calls Christ ' made of God,' (Heb.
i. 4,) that some do not read it ; and it is with others still, in
view of the Novatians, because he speaks as he does of
repentance in Heb. vi. 4, et seq."
1 At the commencement of his work " De Haeresibus."
2 Bibl. Pat. Max. p. 711.

64 THE CANON.
We see, then, the catalogue of Philastrius (the third and
last of those of the fourth century which still place the
Apocalypse outside of the canon) ranks at the same time
among the heretics those who deny the Pauline origin of
this epistle. Only, as to himself, while admitting it to the
canon, he is careful to indicate the three internal reasons
why many of the Latins refused it that rank. We shall
need to return to this subject in our third chapter.

All the Six other Catalogues of the Fathers of the Fourth
Century are entirely conformed to that of our Churches.
All the other catalogues of the fourth century, given by
the fathers, were already identical with those which the
church has accepted, now for fifteen hundred years. They
are : that, 1. Of the great Athanasius, only twenty-six years
younger than Eusebius ; 2. Of another cotemporary father,
whose name is unknown to us ; 3. Of Epiphanius, arch
bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and only fourteen or, as some
say, four years younger than Athanasius ; 4. Of Jerome,
secretary of Pope Damasus, and thirty-five years younger
than Epiphanius ; 5. Of Rufinus, priest of Aquillia, the inti
mate friend of Jerome before becoming his enemy, and in
structed like him in all the learning of the East and West
by his sojourn in Jerusalem, from a. d. 371, and at Rome,
from A. v. 396 ; 6. Of Augustine, the holy bishop of Hippo,
twenty-three years younger than Jerome.
It will be well to pass each in rapid review.
Athanasius. The testimony of this eminent man is of
the greatest importance, on account of his rank, his attain
ments, and the whole history of his life. He was unquestion
ably the most illustrious person of this epoch, not only on ac
count of his fidelity, his science, his firmness and clearness of
mind so much admired in all his works (Ae'yetv re rat vow

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 65
Ikovov, says Sozomen a), but also because his incessant
struggles against Arius and the powers of the age, almost
all favorable to the heresy of 'Arius, filled up fifty years of
his life, and obliged him to wander through every part of the
kingdom. From Alexandria he must go to Tyre, Constanti
nople, Rome, Belgium, and the deserts of the Thebaid. Born
A. d. 296, as is believed, he lived more than eighty years,
and was bishop more than half a century. We know to
what advantage he appeared in the oecumenical assembly of
Nice ; and how, in spite of his youth, (being not yet thirty
years old,) he was called, only five months after the council,
to the patriarchate of Alexandria. Persecuted by the two
Eusebiuses, more than once deposed, expelled, even con
demned to death, he had opportunity in his long journeys
and exiles of knowing better than any other man the view
of all the churches of the East and West in regard to the
Scriptures. So that his testimony is certainly one of the
most sure representations which we can obtain of the thought
of the universal church in the fourth century. " His life is:
the model of the episcopate," says Sozomen ; 2 " and his docJ
trine the law of orthodoxy."
Now we may see already the difference, as to the firm
ness of his faith in all the Scriptures, between his language
and that of Eusebius his cotemporary, but the friend of
Arius. In his Festal Epistle,3 he says : " As to us, we have for our
salvation the divine Scriptures ; but I fear that, as Paul
wrote to the Corinthians, a small number of the simple
are turned away from simplicity and from holiness by
the wicked malice of men, and have come to reading the
apocryphal books, deceived by the assumed names of the
true books. I believe then it would be useful to the church

i Lib. ii. chap. 17. Edit, of Valois, p. 466.
2 Cave (Script. Eccl. tom. i. p. 191) cites Sozomen, p. 397; but we have
not been able to find these words there.
3 Epitre Festale xxxix. tom. ii. p. 961, edit. Ben. Paris, 1698.
6

66 THE CANON.
to enumerate them ; but, to do it, I must borrow the words
of Luke, and say,1 ' Forasmuch as many have taken in
hand to set forth in order' a list of the apocryphal books,
and to mingle them with the inspired Scriptures which is
' most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them
unto ' the fathers, ' which from the beginning were eye-wit
nesses, and ministers of the word ; it seemed good to me
also,' urged by true brethren, to set in order the books held
as canonical, and transmitted and believed to be divine books,
that whoever may have been led into error may condemn his
false guides."
Then follows the list of the Old Testament. He adds,
" But I must not neglect to show also those of the New.
They are, the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ;
after these, the Acts of the Apostles, and the seven catholic
epistles, said to be of the apostles, as follows: one of James,
and two of Peter ; then, three of John, and after that, one
of Jude. There are, besides, fourteen of Paul, written, as to
their order (rfj rdfei ypa.tp6p.evcu ovrws), one to the Romans;
then two to the Corinthians ; then to the Galatians, Ephe-
sians, Philippians, Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, and
the Epistle to the Hebrews ; then also afterward, two to
Timothy, one to Titus, and the last, to Philemon ; and finally,
the Apocalypse of John.''
We take pleasure in giving an exact translation of these
catalogues, notwithstanding the repetition it involves, because
it impresses on the reader the firmness with which, from the
beginning, the order (ra^s) of the books was transmitted in
the church, although not conformed to their chronology. This
fact, we shall show, is not without significance in the history
of the canon.
Athanasius adds, " These books are the fountains of salva
tion, that whoever thirsts may there slake his thirst at the
oracles which they contain ; for it is in these books alone
that the school of piety is evangelized (iv rov'rois pW rd
1 Luke i. 1-3, paraphrased.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 67
riys euo"e/3eias BiSao-KaXeiov eiovyye\t£er<u). Let no one add
to or retrench from them.
" But, for greater exactness, we must necessarily add that
besides these books there are others which are not canonized,
it is true (ou Kavovi£cyx,eva p-ev), but which have been marked
by the fathers to be read by those who, recently come among
us, are desirous of being instructed in the word of piety ¦
the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Sirach, and
Esther,1 Judith, and Tobit, the Institutions called Apostolical,
and the Shepherd. Those, beloved, were regarded as canon
ical, these as readable ; while no mention must be made of the
apocryphal books. They are an invention of the heretics,
who have written them to their own taste, and have affixed
to them ancient dates, to deceive the simple."
We then clearly perceive that the collection of Athanasius
is complete, as was that of Origen, one hundred and fifty
years before him. But there had already been established
the custom of reckoning, outside of this collection of twenty-
seven canonical books, two kinds of writings : first, a small
number called ecclesiastical, or to be read in the churches ;
and secondly, others carefully distinguished as apocryphal.
We shall meet this distinction again in other catalogues.
Anonymous. The second catalogue is by a cotemporary
of Athanasius, often confounded with him. It is found in
Greek in the collection of his works, under the name of
" Synopsis of the Holy Scripture." 2 Its compilation is ad
mired: "a model of care, sagacity, and learning," say the
Benedictines. Here it is ; — " All the Scripture of us Chris
tians is inspired. It is composed, not of undefined books,
but rather of books determined and recognized as canonical.
First are those of the Old Testament ; " which he gives.
1 The seven apocryphal chapters are added to the book of Esther after
the tenth chapter. Having in view here only the New Testament, we shall
not linger on this detail.
2 Tom. ii. p. 125, edit. Bened. Paris, 1698.

68 THE CANON.
"Then, the determined and canonized books of the New
Testament, the," etc., giving our catalogue, though not in the
same order. " Such are the books of the New Testament,
books canonized, and as it were, the first-fruits, the anchors
and props of our faith, inasmuch as they were written by
the very Apostles of Jesus Christ, and left in charge by them "
(k<h e/cre^eVra.)
Epiphanius. The third catalogue, that of Epiphanius, is
found in his " Panarium," or book against the heresies.1
The writings of this father, born in Palestine and of
Jewish extraction, are likewise of great weight in the his
tory of the canon, because of his vast literary acquirements,
and his acknowledged skill in ecclesiastical antiquities.2 He
was a man of five languages, pentaglossal, as Jerome8 calls
him, master alike of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek, and
Latin. His book against the heresies, Photius4 says, is
richer and more useful than any before written on the same
subject, on account of his abundant quotations from Justin
Martyr, Irenajus, Hippolytus, and other ancient authors.
Jerome 5 says, " His writings are read and reread by the
learned, on account of the substance ; and by the unlearned,
on account of their form."
Brought up in Egypt, and converted to gnosticism before
he had reached the age of twenty, he returned to his own coun
try, in order to place himself under the direction of the cele
brated Hilarion, teacher of the monastic life in Palestine.
He himself had afterwards founded the monastery of Ad,
of which he was chief, when called to the important see of
Salamis in Cyprus. It was particularly in this maritime and
commercial town that he acquired a precocious celebrity by
his discourses and writings, as well as his fidelity in doctrine
i LXXVI. p. 941, edit. Petav. Colon. 1682.
2 Cave, tom. i. p. 232.
s Apol. i. adv. Rufin. p. 222; Apol. ii. p. 233.
4 Cod. 122.
s De Script. Eccl. chap. 114.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 69
and purity of life. This life was very long ; filling the
entire century ; some say even that in a. d. 402, when he
died, he had gone beyond the age of one hundred years.1
So that, born in the third century, he lived to see the fifth,
after thirty-six years in the episcopate. We see him occu
pying an important post at Rome and at Constantinople,
contending with great firmness against the evil tendencies
of his times, especially the heresy of Arius, as well as the
growing use of images, and the too accredited errors of
Origen. Hence his -debates with John of Jerusalem, and
even the illustrious Chrysostom, whom he reproached for
leniency toward error. He himself was censured for hav
ing made too much of tradition.
These are his words on the canon : 2 "If thou hast been
born of the Holy Spirit and taught by the prophets and
apostles, it must have been that, in going from the origin
of the world to the times of Esther, thou hast read the
twenty-seven books of the Old Testament (reckoned by the
Jews as twenty-two), and the four holy Gospels, and the
fourteen epistles of the holy apostle Paul, with the Acts
of the Apostles, and also the catholic epistles of James,
Peter, John, and Jude, and the Apocalypse of John, and
also the two books of Wisdom, that of Solomon and that
of the son of Sirach ; in a word (a7rAo>s), all the divine
scriptures." Such is the exact and complete catalogue of Epiphanius,
as to the New Testament ; for, to avoid complication, we will
not here touch the Old, nor speak of his error in recom
mending the apocryphal books Ecclesiasticus and the Wis
dom of Solomon. In his day they were placed in a separate
class (as we shall see in the catalogue of Rufinus) ; they were
called ecclesiastical ; admitted to be read in the churches,
1 Polvbius, his disciple, and companion of his last journey to Constanti
nople, says he told the emperor Arcadius that he had reached to one hun
dred and fifteen years and three months. — Cave, Hist. Litt. tom. i. p. 252.
2 Epiph. adv. Haeres. lxxvi. p. 941, edit. Petav.

70 THE CANON.
and distinguished from the apocryphal books. Epiphanius 1
says, /Beside the twenty-seven books which God gave to
the-Jews, there are also, independently of the apocrypha,
two others which are contested by them (iv apxpiXeKTw), the
Wisdom of Sirach and that of Solomon. These two books
are certainly useful,2 but not related to f,he number of those
which may be published (or fixed and agreed upon) ; and it
is therefore they were not put apart in the ark of the cove
nant." Jerome. The fourth catalogue is that of Jerome.
This famous divine is, without contradiction, of all the
fathers of the fourth century the best qualified to be heard
on the canon of the Scriptures, not for his candor or spiritual
understanding of the gospel ; not for his character or his
temper, nor even for his respect for the sacred authors, for
his language in this respect is often very improper ; but
for his constant clearness, his knowledge of Hebrew and
Greek, his learning, his travels, his immense labors, and
his long residence in Palestine, where he was constantly oc
cupied in making researches concerning the sacred hooks.
This celebrated man, who is equally Occidental and Ori
ental, was raised up by God to spread great light through
the church, by his recommending the study of the text in
the original languages, and by thus bringing back, especially
the Latins and Greeks, to the pure sources of the word of
truth. He also, like Epiphanius, accomplished a long career,
dying a. d. 420, at the age of eighty-nine years. Born in
upper Dalmatia, he went from Aquih-ia to Rome to prosecute
his studies under the eloquent Victorinus of Africa, whence
he departed for his first journeys, passing throughout France,
visiting everywhere the libraries, going even to Treves to
meet Hilary, and returning by Aquileia in Venice to see
Rufinus ; then going to Thrace, Asia, and even Antioch,
1 Adv. Hares, v. p. 19, edit. Colon. 1687.
2 De Meusuris, p. 180.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 71
in order to spend four years there in the solitude, of the
desert, and there to give himself entirely to the study of
the Holy Scriptures in their original languages. He wasXo-t
ordained, priest until he was forty -nine years old ; but already
celebrated throughout the Empire, he went to Constantinople
a little before the second oecumenical council held there a. d.
381. He attended with ardor on the instructions of Gregory
Nazianzen, until he left the city, and went, accompanied by
Epiphanius and Paulinus, to Rome, where he lived three
years, and where Bishop Damasus gave him the office of his
private secretary. In the mean time, profoundly disgusted
with that city after the death of Damasus, he left it for ever
A. D. 385 ; went to visit Epiphanius in Cyprus ; passed from
thence to Jerusalem, and the next year to Egypt, where he
listened to the instructions of the illustrious Didymus ; until
at length, returned to Palestine, he went to make his long
and last retreat in Bethlehem. It was there that, during
thirty-three years, were performed the greater part of his
immense labors, and that, visited by distinguished persons
from all parts, he became the oracle of his age.
Now Jerome has given us under several forms his sacred
catalogue ; and it may be said even, that the first volume
of his works is itself a catalogue. It is called Divinam
Hieronymi Bibliothecam ; because it contains all the books
of the Holy Scripture, translated by Jerome from the Hebrew
or the Greek, and preceded by important prefaces.1 It is
divided into three parts : the first containing the Hebrew
canon, or the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and Hagiographa ;
the second containing some books of the Old Testament,
which Jerome had translated from Chaldaic or from the
Greek of the Septuagint ; the third containing all the books
of the New Testament, with prologues and abundant notes.
In his prologue to the seven epistles, the author states that
having found in the Latin manuscripts the epistle of Peter
displaced and put before the others (by a mistaken jealousy
i Cave, Hist. Litt. tom. i. p. 269.

72 THE CANON.
for the supremacy of that apostle), he had taken care to
replace it in its rank, " that it might be in conformity with
the order always observed by the Greek manuscripts;" and
he warns us, at the same time, that unfaithful translators had
cut out from John's first epistle the passage of the three that
bear witness in heaven. Some have denied that Jerome
wrote this prologue. But we can not now delay to discuss
that question.
Besides this, Jerome has directly given us, and more than
once, his catalogue : first, in his book De Viris Illustribus,1
written a. d. 392, and afterwards in his epistle to Paulinus,2
written a. d. 397.
These are his words in this letter : " I shall merely touch
the New Testament. We have there first Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, the Lord's four-wheeled chariot, the true
cherubim" (alluding to the vision of Ezekiel). "Then Paul
writes to seven churches ; for the eighth, to the Hebrews, is
placed by most of the Latins out of this number. He writes
to Timothy and to Titus ; he recommends to Philemon a
fugitive slave. . . . The Acts of the Apostles appear to meet
the infancy of the growing church ; but when we shall have
learned that its author was a physician, ' whose praise is in
all the churches,' we shall also be assured that all his words
are the medicine of the languishing soul. The apostles
James, Peter, John, and Jude have published also seven
epistles, mystical but succinct, at once short and long, short
in words, long in sense. . . . The Apocalypse of John has
as many mysteries as words. I have said little of it in com
parison with its merit. In every word are many latent
meanings." We then see Jerome, with all the others, receiving the
seven uncontested and contested epistles ; for him their four
authors are all apostles ; he exalts the Apocalypse, and
equally indicates the fourteen epistles of Paul, contenting
1 Cap. v. (opp. tom. iv.)
2 Tom. iv. p. 574, edit. Bened. (llartianay), Paris, 1693.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 73
himself with saying of the Hebrews, " the greater part of
the Latins exclude it." But he is very far from excluding it
himself; for he is careful to repeat many times in his writ
ings that he regards it as canonical, and attributes it to Paul.
He wrote to Dardanus,1 about a. d. 414, " It must be said
to ours (the Latins) that this epistle to the Hebrews is not
only received by the Oriental churches as from Paul, but
also by all the Greek ecclesiastics of former days, although
many2 attribute it to Barnabas or Clement. And it must
also be said that it is of little consequence who the author
was, since he was an ecclesiastic, and since it is daily read
publicly in the churches. And if the Latin usage does not
receive it among the canonical Scriptures, and if, on the
other hand, the Greek churches do exclude the Apocalypse
which the Latins receive, yet, as to ourselves, we shall accept
them both, for we mean to follow, not the custom of the day,
but the authority of the ancient authors."
Rufinus. The fifth catalogue is that of Rufinus, priest
of Aquileia.
For a long time the friend of Jerome, he pursued with
him his first studies in the schools of Aquileia ; traveled,
as he did, in the East, (about a. i>. 371,) visited Egypt
also ; united himself there to Didymus ; established, like
him, a monastery in Palestine, in which he passed twenty-
five years ; but, having become the enemy of Epiphanius
from zeal for the memory and doctrine of Origen, he drew
on himself the hatred of Jerome, and returned to Italy a. d.
397, to die in Sicily a. d. 410.8
His catalogue, found in his " Exposition of the Apostolical
Symbol," 4 is so remarkable for the distinctness and precision
of its language that we shall translate the most of it.
i Tom. ii. p. 608, edit. Paris.
2 Since Mr. Gaussen's word "laplupart" would make a contradiction.
We venture to render it by " many." — TV.
8 Cave, Hist. Litt. p. 286.
1 In Cyprian's works, p. 26, edit, of Amsterd. 1691.
7

74 THE CANON.
"It is the Holy Spirit, who, in the Old Testament, inspired
the Law and the Prophets, in the New Testament, the
Evangelists and Apostles. Also the apostle says, ' All
Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for in
struction.' Wherefore it seems to me suitable here to
designate by a clear enumeration, as we have learned from
the monuments of the fathers, what are the books of each
Testament, (Instrument,) which, according to the tradition
of the ancients, are regarded as inspired by the Holy Ghost,
and transmitted to the churches of Christ. ... In the New
Testament there are four Gospels, Matihew, Mark, Luke,
and John ; the Acts of the Apostles described by Luke ; four
teen epistles of the apostle Paul ; two of the apostle Peter ;
one of James, apostle and brother of the Lord; one of Jude;
three of John, and the Apocalypse of John. Such are the
books which the fathers have included in the canon, and on
which they have endeavored to lay the foundations of our
faith 
" In the mean time it must be known that there are also
other books which the ancients (a majoribus) called not
canonical, but ecclesiastical. Such are the Wisdom of Solo
mon, and another Wisdom, entiiled of the son of Sirach, as
well as the little book of Tobit and Judith, and the books
of the Maccabees. In the New Testament, the little book
called The Shepherd of Hermas, (also The Two Ways, or
The Judgment of Peter). As to all these books, they have
wished them to be read in the churches, it is true ; but not
that they should be quoted as authority to establish the faith
(non tamen profrrri ad auctoritatem ex his fidei confir man-
dam). As to the other scriptures, they have called them
apocryphas, and have not permitted them to be read in the
churches 
11 1 have judged proper," Rufinus adds, " to mention here,
for the instruction of those who are not in the rudiments of
the church and of the faith, these facts which we hold from
the fathers ; in order to show to all from what fountain of the
word of God tb»" s-b«"M «!> m-.-.-~ . "

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 75
See then again the careful distinction already noticed, by
Athanasius and Epiphanius, between three sorts of books:
canonical, to the number of twenty-seven and divinely in
spired ; ecclesiastical, to be read in the churches for edifica
tion only ; and apocryphal, which are never to be read there.
Augustine. The sixth and last catalogue of the fathers
of the fourth century, still entirely conformed to our canon,
is that of the sublimest and the profoundest of the ancient
doctors, the illustrious bishop of Hippo. He is the most
recent of the fathers that we propose to quote in this re
search ; for, about a hundred years younger than Eusebius,
he belongs to the fourth and fifth, as Eusebius belonged to
the third and fourth, centuries.
Born of Christian parents in Numidia A. D. 355, but early
entrapped, in spite of his mother's tears, by the sad doctrines
and immoralities of Manicheism, he was publicly teaching
rhetoric in Carthage when, at the age of twenty-eight years,
leaving Africa, he went to Rome and'afterwards to Milan.
It was in this city that his relations with the illustrious Bishop
Ambrose, who received him with great cordiality, withdrew
him from his errors ; but it was not till A. d. 388, when he
had reached the age of thirty-three years, that he was
brought out of darkness into light by a manifest act of
the divine power. The next year he returned to Africa to
pass three years of retirement under his father's roof; after
which- he was consecrated to the sacred ministry at the age
of thirty-six years, to be called five years afterwards to the
episcopal see- of Hippo. He died a. d. 430, at the age of
seventy-five years, shut up in the city of Hippo, while be
sieged from sea and land by the Vandals, then masters of
Africa. This admirable man, who had never ceased, during
his long career, to labor by powerful writings for the defense
of the doctrines of grace and the edifying of the churches of
God throughout the earth, was raised up not only to over
throw in his age the heresy of Pelagius, but to project and

76 THE CANON.
leave after him on all the ages of the church a beneficent
track of light. His works form a collection of eleven folio
volumes.1 His " City of God," his commentaries on the Psalms, his
sermons, his letters, his retractions, his confessions, his tracts
on sin, and on grace, universally commend themselves by
two features: the devotion continually manifesting itself, and
the method of argument, which should ever serve as a model
to theologians, as it is a continued development of the word
of God, by the word of God. He was a pillar of the house
of God, and he remains a shining light.
Here then is his catalogue as found in his book " De Doc
trina Christiana," 2 one of the last of his works, begun a. d.
397 and finished a. d. 426.3 We omit for the present what
he says about the Old Testament, and quote only his testi
mony upon the New. " Here," he says, " are the books in
which the authority of the New Testament is included (ter-
minatur auctoritas). Four books of the Gospel (according
to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), fourteen epistles of Paul
the apostle (to the Romans, to the Corinthians two, to
the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Thessalonians two, to
the Colossians to Timothy two, to Titus, Philemon, He
brews), two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude, and one
of James, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse."
SECTION XI.
SOME OTHER CATALOGUES PRETENDING TO BE OP THE
FOURTH CENTURY, AND CONFORMED TO OUR CANON, ARE
APOCRYPHAL OR FORGED.
Besides these nine catalogues of the fathers of the fourth
century, there are three others that have an insufficient title
1 The best edition, that of the Benedictines (Paris, 1679 et seq.), was
reprinted at Antwerp, 1700-1703, and Paris, large 8vo., 1835-18,10.
- Lib. ii. vol. iii. part i. n. 13, p. 47, edit. Paris, 1836.
3 Cave, Hist. Litt. tom. i. p. 290, et seq.

THE NINE CATALOGUES GIVEN BY FATHERS. 77
to our confidence, the one being uncertain and the other two
forged. As in our sixth section on the second century we have not
quoted the book of the Apostolical Canons 1 because it is
apocryphal, although they pretend to give, in the name of the
apostles, " to all clergymen and laymen the catalogue of the
august and holy books of the Old and the New Testament,"
and which already contained the fourteen epistles of Paul,
and the seven apostolical epistles ; so also in this present
chapter, we abstain from mentioning the three catalogues
of the fourth century which are attributed respectively to
Pope Innocent I., to Pope Damasus, and to Bishop Amphi-
lochius, because we regaid the first as doubtful, and the other
two as forged.
So it is in the next century, with that which one ascribes
to Gelasius, but of which not the least mention is made in
the monuments of history before the time of Isidore the
merchant, in the ninth century.
The Catalogue of Innocent I.
And first, Pope Innocent I. (bishop of Rome A. d. 402)
is presented to us as having given, about the close of the
fourth century, a catalogue of the sacred canon. This cata
logue agrees entirely with ours as to the New Testament, but
as to the Old, it was invented in order to recommend the
apocryphas. We find it in a pretended epistle of Innocent to Exuperus,2
bishop of Toulouse ; but this epistle is pronounced entirely
spurious by William Cave,3 for the following reasons : 1. The
barbarity of the style, which could not have belonged to the
1 To the number of eighty-five. Athanasius calls it r/ Aidaxv ruv (ma
arokuv. At first very small, this book grew in Jbulk as it grew in age. See
Patres Apost. Cotter, i. p. 453, 480, edit. Amsterd. 1724.
2 Tom. ii. p. 1256, third Paris edit. 1671.
8 Hist. Litt. tom. i. p. 379.
7*

78- THE CANQN.
age of Innocent ; 2. Its absurd applications of Scripture ;
3. Its doctrinal errors, errors evidently anticipated ; 4. Its
very gross anachronisms ; 5. The mention of rites not yet
existing in the church. That, moreover, which proves the
fraudulent character of this decree, is, that the council of
Carthage, distrustful of its own judgment, decided to consult
Pope Boniface, who reigned only sixteen years after Inno
cent. Would the council have consulted him if a decree of
Innocent had been issued sixteen years before ? Bishop
Cosin * says that mention was never made of this letter until
Innocent had been dead for three hundred years; and no
mention was made of any catalogue in this epistle until a
century after it appeared !
The ancient church was governed for a long time by what
was called " The Universal Code of the Canons ; " a code
which was afterward confirmed by the emperor Justinian,
and which, composed by four general and five provincial
councils, contained two hundred and seven canons. These
canons were there arranged in exact order, so that the num
ber could be neither increased nor diminished ; and thus it
continued until the time of Dionysius the Less, abbot of Rome,
deceased a. d. 540. He assumed the task of translating it
from Greek into Latin, and of making alterations favorable to
the pretensions of the popes. He cut out, for instance, the
eight canons of the council of Ephesus, a large part of the
last canon of Laodicea, the last three of Constantinople, the
last two of Chalcedony ; and he added many others 2 of which
the Christian church knew nothing. And yet, let it be observed,
no decretal epistle of the popes had yet appeared ; so that,
for a hundred years, there was no mention, even in the Roman
code, of any epistle of Innocent. It was not then until two
hundred years after Dionysius, and three hundred after Inno
cent, that an abridgment of the canons (Brevarium Canonum)
composed A. d. 689, by Cresconius, an African bishop, added
1 On the Canon, p. 118, 130.
2 For instance, the canons called " apostolical."

- THE CATALOGUE OF DAMASUS. 79
to the code of Dionysius the Less the decretal epistles of six
popes, and among the others this epistle to Exuperus. And
even then, this pretended epistle of Innocent did not yet
contain his pretended catalogue ; for it was not until a cen
tury after Cresconius, or four hundred years after Innocent,
that Isidorus the merchant, in the year 800, made his collec
tion of the decretals ; " a collection," says Cosin, " which no
honest man would have consented to use, until the popes,
Leo IV. (a. d. 850) and Nicholas I. (a. d. 860), seeing the
powerful aid they would furnish the papal cause, published
them as a law." 1
We have entered into these details only to avoid repetition
when we shall come to speak of the false decretals, and of
the injurious use made of them in the question of the apoc
ryphal books. The Catalogue of Damasus.
For similar reasons we abstain from mentioning in this
fourth century the pretended catalogue of Pope Damasus,2
contained in a decree De explanatione fidei, which they say
must have been passed under this pope, in a council at
Rome (between A. d. 366 and 384). This catalogue was
equally conformed, for the New Testament, to that of our
churches, and was introduced in these terms : " Nunc vero
de scripturis divinis agendum est, quid universalis calholica
ecclesia teneat, et quid vitari debeat." We regard it as
spurious, like that of Innocent ; for we now know that all
the decretals anterior to Pope Syricus (a. d. 384 to 398)
must be ranked among those false decretals which no one,
not even in the Roman camp, can any longer undertake to
defend. 1 See the letter of Pope Leo IV. to the English churches (Canon de Li-
bellis, Dist. 20), and that of Nicholas I. to the Gallic bishops (C. si Rom.
Pist. 19, a. D. 860).
2 See Creduer, Geschichte des Kanons, iv. p. 187-196.

80 THE CANON.

The Catalogue of Amphilochius.1
In fine, as to the catalogue in Greek verse, mentioned
among the works of Gregory the theologian,2 under the title of
"Iambi ad Seleucum," which is often attributed to Amphilo
chius, bishop of Iconium, about A. d. 380, to whom we have al
ready referred, we regard it at least as apocryphal, if not forged.
Nothing definite is known of its date, author, or history ; it
abounds in errors of meter ; and there are no means of com
paring it with any authentic writing of Amphilochius, to prove
its origin from him. Many, again, attribute it to Gregory
Nazianzen, as if these iambics presented us a second poetical
expression of his views of the canon. Whoever, then, may
have been the author of this apocryphal catalogue, it compre
hends in " the true canon of the inspired scriptures " all our
twenty-seven books of the New Testament ; but at the same
time notifying us that others erroneously (ovk ev Xiyovres)
reject the Epistle to the Hebrews, and that some do not accept
the short epistles of John and Jude, and many more reject
the Apocalypse. After naming, then, our twenty-seven books,
and no others, he closes with these words :
Outos di/feuSe'o-ros
Kai/(uv av cur] tw OeoTrvevtrTiov Tpa<p<2v.
" Let this be the true canon of the inspired scriptures."
1 It is this Amphilochius, who, in order to obtain from the Emperor a de
cree against the Arians, long refused, came before him without offering any
homage to his son Arcadius, seated on n throne by his side. " You are
offended, Sire, at my irreverence," he then said to the emperor, "and not
without reason ; but what will the Father eternal, the King of kings, then
think of those who refuse honor to his only Son, and who blaspheme his
holy name? " — Sozomen, Lib. vii. chap. 9.
2 Colon. 1680, tom. ii. p. 193.

THE TWO CATALOGUES GIVEN BY COUNCILS. 81
SECTION xn.
THE TWO CATALOGUES OP THE POUETH CENTURY GIVEN
BY COUNCILS.
Character of their Testimony.
What we have now been hearing from the lips of all the
fathers of the fourth century who have transmitted to us
their views of the Scriptures, is precisely what has been re
peated by the declarations of the councils of this century,
which investigated the claims of the several books to a place
in the canon.
Only two councils of this period have expressed their
views on the canon : that of Laodicea, and that of Carthage ;
the one held in Asia Minor, on the river Lycus, in Phrygia,
thirty-nine years after the oecumenical council of Nice, A. D.
364 ; the other in Africa, thirty-three years later, having
Bishop Aurelius for its moderator, and, as is said, Augustine
of Hippo for assistant moderator, a. d. 397.
We have seen from all the catalogues of this century,
beginning with that of the Nicean council, what a remark
able and unconstrained unity of views concerning the canon
of the New Testament existed among the fathers. The
only and slight exception is found in regard to the Apoca
lypse, on the part of a few ; a harmony uninterrupted, as
from the beginning, on the twenty books of the first canon ;
a harmony, from that time universal, on the five antilegomens
of Eusebius, that is, the second canon ; a harmony, not less
entire, on the Epistle to the Hebrews. We find no more
hesitation, real or apparent, excepting in regard to the
Apocalypse. And if we say real or apparent, it is because
very different causes can at different times produce the one
or the other. On the one hand, with some persons, the dis
pute against the Millenarians was then too recent, and the
contest too severe, especially in the East, to allow of an

82 THE CANON.
immediate reception of that book on which they founded
their doctrines. And, on the other side, even with many
of those churches which were the most firmly convinced of
the canonicity of the Apocalypse, this book was too mystical
to be publicly read in their popular assemblies. At the
same time, while these two causes produced a diversity of
language in the church concerning the Apocalypse, this
very diversity had now ceased, and all the churches, in
this respect, as in every other, had become harmonious,
and were presenting to the world but one and the same
doctrine. This we shall find in the decisions of the councils of
Laodicea and Carthage. They will but confirm the testi
mony of the fathers.
Before hearing them, however, we should distinctly under
stand their object. It was evidently, not the announcing of
a dogma for the church, but the instituting of a discipline ;
for their language is constantly that of testimony and not
of authority. Neither of them speaks as pretending to de
termine what books shall thenceforth be regarded by the
church as divine, and which as not divine. Their sole
object is to regulate the public reading of the scriptures,
and therefore to state what was the opinion of cotemporary
churches, and what the testimony of antiquity concerning
the books authorized to be publicly read ; for, says the
council of Carthage, " we have received from the fathers
that these are the books to be read in the church." Thus
it will be noticed that not a word of their language resem
bles the proud utterances of the council of Trent, deciding
for the universal church, as God alone can do, the canonicity
of such and such a book, and uttering then its anathema
(post j actum fidei confessionis fundamentum1) against any
one who should dare to differ from their opinion on that
point : " Si quis libros (istos) pro sacris et canonicis non
i Words of the Council of Trent, (Sess. iv.) April 8, 1546, Labbe, Concilia,
tom. xiv. p. 746.

THE COUNCIL OF LAODICEA. 83
susceperit, . . . anathema sit! . . . ." The de
cree of Carthage, like that of Laodicea, attests, then, that
they wished to declare, not what books should be received as
divine, but what books, already acknowledged as divine by
the church of God, from the traditions of history, should be
publicly read in the sacred assemblies of Asia Minor and
of Northern Africa.
The council of Laodicea says, " In the church there
should be read, neither private psalms (that is, composed
by uninspired persons), nor uncanonical books (aKavoVioTa) ;
but only the canonical books of the Old and New Testa
ments ; and these are all that should be read." x . . etc.
" It has appeared to us proper," say the council of Car
thage, " that, except the canonical scriptures, nothing
should be read in the church, under the name of di
vine scriptures ; except that the acts of the martyrs 2 may
be read on the anniversaries of their deaths."
Two facts characterize the catalogue of Laodicea ; and
also two that of Carthage :
For the Old Testament, the council of Laodicea entirely
excluded the apocryphal books ; and for the New Testa
ment, it did not mention the Apocalypse ; while in every
other respect fully agreeing with the canon of our churches.
For the Old Testament, on the contrary, the council of
Carthage admits the apocryphal books ; and for the New
Testament, it names the Apocalypse ; so that in the latter it
is in perfect harmony with our canon.
But these two classes of facts fully examined will show
an entire accordance, as we shall presently demonstrate.
Their contradiction is only in appearance.
The Council of Laodicea.
The council of Laodicea was convoked a. d. 364, , to rep
resent the different countries of Asia Minor, and to promote
1 Cave, Hist. Litt. p. 362. 2 Mansi, iii. p. 891.

84 THE CANON.
ecclesiastical discipline in their churches. Thirty-two bishops
were there under their metropolitan Nunechius. This date
is furnished us by the ancient code of the canons of the
universal church, which early admitted the canons of
Laodicea, and which controlled all the churches to the sixth
century. Larger than any provincial council, because it
was composed of deputies from the whole of Asia Minor,
the council of Laodicea was from the beginning an object
of very great respect in all the churches ; and its decisions
were at once regarded by the Latins as well as the Greeks,1
as making part of " the Ecclesiastical Regulations," imposed
on all bishops. This is fully seen in the letter of Pope Leo
IV., about A. D. 850, to the clergy of Great Britain.2 In
fact, it is not only by the sixth oecumenical council of
Constantinople" that the canons of Laodicea were placed
in " the code of the universal church," but also by the fourth
oecumenical council of Chalcedon, A. D. 451, and by a
decree of the emperor Justinian, A. d. 536 ; 4 so that they
had in the churches the authority even of general councils
and of the imperial laws which sanctioned them. The clear
and conclusive writings of Justel 6 and Le Chassier 6 may be
consulted on these facts ; as also the learned expositions of
Bishop Cosin, in his book on the canon.7
Nevertheless, whatever may have been the veneration
of the ancient church for the council of Laodicea, we must
confidently expect to find the Roman leaders attempting to

1 Hoc concilium antiqua nobilitate celeber'rimum, says Binius, Gr&corum
atque Laiinorum scriptis celebri memorial commendatum fecit. (Ex Baronio,
note i. in Laod. Cone.)
" Canon de Libellis, Dist. 20.
8 Quinisexta Synodus in Trullo (692); its canons sometimes objected to.
1 Novel. 131.
6 Prsefat. in Codic. Ecclesia; Univers  Testimonia prsefixa ante Codi-
cem Dion. Exigui.
6 Opusc. in Consult, de Controversies, inter Papain Paulum V. et Rempubl.
Venetam. 7 Art. lix.-lxiii.

THE COUNCIL OF LAODICEA. 85
destroy its authority ; l because it absolutely excludes from
the canon the apocryphal books of the Old Testament can
onized twelve hundred years afterward, by the council of
Trent. Their arguments on this point have been power
fully contested by Bishop Cosin. They say,
1. That Dionysius the Less omitted this catalogue in his'
" Universal Code of the Canons."
But Dionysius is well known to have made many other
alterations and retrenchments.
2. The Roman code,2 they say, does not contain it.
But our appeal should be to the Greeks rather than the
Latins, to the universal code much more than to the Roman
code. For has not the latter in like manner omitted eight
canons of the council of Ephesus, the last three of the
council of Constantinople, and the last two of the council
of Chalcedon? '
Cosin also declares that the fraud is betrayed by a
remarkable imprudence ; for, in removing the catalogue of
the scriptures from the 59th canon of Laodicea, they have
inadvertently left the preface and title, which distinctly allude
to the books enumerated afterward in all the other editions
of the council. Those which we receive from Mercator,
Merlin, Crab, Surius, Du Tillier, Binius, as also those of
Balsamon and Zonaras, all alike contain the catalogue
omitted in the Roman code.8
1 It is marked as suspicious, in many editions of the councils, for exam
ple, in Harduin. (i. 79.)
2 " Codex Canonum et Decretorum Ecclesia; Romana;."
8 It must, however, be admitted that the authenticity of the catalogue as
an integral part of the 59th canon of Laodicea has been contested more
recently, in two opposite directions, by learned men : on the one side Spitt-
ler (Saemmtl. Werke, 1776 and 1835, viii: 66), and Bickel on the other
(Stud, und Krit. 1830, p. 591) ; that they have marked its absence from many
Greek MSS. of the eleventh century, and from some of the ancient Latin
versions ; and, in fine, that Mr. Westcott, (Hist, of Canon, Cambridge, 1855, )
having consulted the Syriac versions in the Brit. Museum, and not having
found it there, thinks that the external proofs are rather against the authen
ticity of the catalogue. — Pages 500-502.

86 THE CANON.
3. Catharinus, to escape the decree of Laodicea, has re
course, on the contrary, to the supposition that the catalogue
was originally more extended ; and that, in order to remove
the apocryphal books, they made the retrenchment. " Vehe-
menler suspicor," he says,1 " I strongly suspect."
But, by a similar process, any one can add or remove
whatever suits his wishes.
4. Finally, Baronius, in his "Annals," is still more daring.
He imagines the council of Laodicea to have preceded that
of Niee,.and the latter to have made a decree on the apoc
rypha ! He hopes also to overthrow the authority of the
former by that of the latter, which would, as an oecumenical
council, revoke the decisions of a merely provincial council.
But, in the first place, we have already shown * how this
supposition of a decree of Nice upon the book of Judith is
without foundation. In the second place the code of the
universal church, in giving the canons of Laodicea, itself
assigns to the council the date of a. d. 364. In the third
place, all the ancient Greek and Latin collections of the
synodal canons have always placed those of Laodicea
after those of the council of Antioch ; and we know that
this was held sixteen years after that of Nice. In fine, the
Photinians are condemned in the 7th canon of Laodicea.
Now they are not spoken of before a. d. 345 ; that is, twenty
years after the council of Nice.
We give here the fifty-ninth and sixtieth canons of the
decree of Laodicea ; they are, in fact, the last two of the
council, but are numbered 163 and 164 in the Universal
Code, which contained 207 before the time of Dionysius the
Less. " Private psalms are not to be read in the church, nor
any uncanonical books, but only the canonical books -of the
Old and New Testaments. These are the books of the
Old Testament to be recognized : 1. The Genesis of the
1 De Script. Canonic.
2 Canon, chap. i. sec. viii.

THE COUNCIL OF LAODICEA. 87
world; 2. The Exodus from Egypt ; 3. Leviticus; 4. Num
bers; 5. Deuteronomy; 6. Joshua; 7. Judges; 8. Ruth;
9. Esther; 10. Four Books of Kings; 11. Two Books of
Chronicles ; 12. First and Second of Ezra (Ezra and Nehe
miah) ; 13. Book of one hundred and fifty Psalms ; 14.
Proverbs of Solomon ; 15. Ecclesiastes ; 16. Song of Songs;
17. Job; 18. Twelve Prophets; 19. Isaiah; 20. Jeremiah
and Baruch,1 Lamentations, and Epistles; 21..Ezekiel;
22. Daniel. The books of the New Testament are, the four
Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John ; the Acts
of the Apostles ; the seven catholic epistles, namely, one of'
James, two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude ; fourteen
epistles of Paul, one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians,
one to the Galatians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Philip
pians, one to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, one to
the Hebrews, two to Timothy, one to Titus, one to Phile
mon." Why did the bishops in this council omit the Apocalypse,
since this is the, only imperfection in their catalogue ?
Many will attribute this silence to their. not having yet
restored the Apocalypse to the canon ; but this explanation
is entirely incompatible with cotemporary facts. And we
believe it a much more satisfactory reason to assign, that the*
fathers of this council, while admitting the canonicity of this *•
sacred book, judged it too symbolical and mystical for public
reading in the churches.
In fact, we must not lose sight of the end which the
1 It must not be imagined that the book of Baruch is here intended, but
simply an exegetical manner of indicating more explicitly that which,
according to the Jewish reckoning, the twentieth book contained, which
we call Jeremiah and his Lamentations. It was nearly in the same terms
that Origen already, a hundred years before, designated this same book.
(Euseb. Hist. Ecc. Lib. vi. chap. 25.) He says, " Jeremiah with his Epistles
and Lamentations (chap, xxx.) forms but one book." Athanasius and
Cyril, in their designation of the book of Jeremiah, add, with the Laodicean
Council, the indication of the twenty-ninth chapter and of that which
relates to Baruch. Besides, we see the council has carefully numbered all
of Jeremiah as the twentieth book.

88 THE CANON.
fathers of this council had in view. Occupied with the
single question, what books were to be read in the churches,
they contented themselves with two declarations. By the
first they forbade the reading of any non-canonical book ;
by the second they ordered the reading of the twenty-two
books of the Old Testament, and twenty-six books of the
New. But they no where said that they did not consider
the twenty-seventh, although they did not name it, as
' canonical ; any more than the church of England says it,
when, on the one hand, in her Prayer-Book, (in the sixth
of the thirty-nine articles of faith,) she ranks the Apoca
lypse among the canonical books, and, on the other, in the
calendar and the preface to the same liturgy, she does not
allow the Apocalypse to be read in public.
Certainly, if the bishops of Laodicea, instead of making
a simple decree on the readings in the temple, had pretended
to exclude the Apocalypse from the canon, they would have
caused a clamor of remonstrance from every quarter, so
earnest that the sound of it would have reached our ears.
How, indeed, could a council have set itself against the
powerful testimony rendered by the earliest martyrs and the
most venerable fathers of the church to the Apocalypse?
How could they have given this solemn contradiction to the
Justin Martyrs, the Irenasuses, the Methodiuses, the Hippo-
lytes, the Melitos, the Alexandrian Clements, the Antiochan
Theophiluses, the Origens, and the Tertullians, without caus
ing remonstrances and protestations to be heard in every
part and section of the church ? Had not Tertullian de
clared the rejection of this book to stand among " the her
esies ? " 1
Now, on the contrary, during all this epoch, you hear
only one complaint from any of the illustrious admirers of
the Apocalypse. Yet they were flourishing at the time of
' the council ; they were filling the Christian world with their
writings. Athanasius was still living ; Epiphanius, Basil the
1 Against Marcion, Lib. iv.

THE COUNCIL OF LAODICEA. 89
Great, St. Ephraim, all equally attached to the canonicity,
of this book, were still living ; x Jerome and Rufinus were
then in their full vigor.8 And, not only has none of these (
eminent men raised his voice against a decision so contrary
to his belief, but we can not find even one writer opposed to (
the readmission of the Apocalypse, who justifies his views by
an appeal to the decree of Laodicea.
But still farther : it was but thirty-three years afterward
when the council of Carthage named the Apocalypse in its
decree, yet no one spoke of that as contradicting the council
of Laodicea, so much respected by the Eastern and Western
churches. It is then merely a difference of view concerning
the public services of the sanctuary which we find in the
action of these two councils; a point on which churches
might innocently hold different opinions.
There is, however, another authentic fact which proves
that the two councils were considered at that period, as not
at all discordant on articles of faith, but as differing only on
points of external service in which unity was not required.
We allude to the action of the sixth general council of
Constantinople ; 3 in the seventh century. This great assem
bly, " composed of two hundred and twenty-seven bishops,
solemnly confirmed, in its second canon, the council of La
odicea, as well as the letters of Athanasius, Gregory Nazi
anzen, and Amphilochius, (which exclude the apocryphal
books from the scriptures,) but at the same time equally
recognized the council of Carthage. This fact appears to
us conclusive. We see that, to approve of both these
assemblies at the same time, the council saw in the Car
thaginian decree relative to reading the scriptures in the
church a measure entirely reconcilable with the Laodicean
decree. It is therefore evident that both decrees had refer- !
ence, not to doctrine, but to discipline.
1 They died twelve, fifteen, and thirty-eight years afterward.
2 Thirty-three years of age.
8 Quinisextum, in Trullo, 692.
8*

90 THE CANON.
The Council of Carthage.
All the histories of the council of Carthage show that it
took place in the beginning of September, a. d. 397, during
the consulship of Caesarius and Atticus. And yet it ordains,
in its forty-seventh canon, that " The bishops shall consult on
their resolutions the church beyond sea, as well as their
brethren and colleagues Boniface, and other bishops of
those countries."
Now this Boniface, forty-third bishop of Rome, did not
begin his reign until twenty-one years after the date of
this decree. It is then evident, that we have here another
instance of those fraudulent interpolations so frequently
made by the Roman hierarchy, or the blunder of some com
piler who has introduced into the canon the decree of a
council held perhaps a century afterward.
Another article of the same council here comes in to con
firm this explanation ; it is the forty-eighth canon, which
ordains in its turn that the bishops of the council " take
the advices of their brethren Siricius and Simplicius,"
bishops of Bome and Milan. Now, between this Siricius
referred to in the forty-eighth canon, and this Boniface con
sulted by order of the forty-seventh canon, there were at
least three popes ; the first dying a. d. 398, a year after the
council ; and the other beginning his reign a. d. 418.
Whatever may be the date of this forty-seventh canon,
it is to us a monument of the universal thought of the
churches of this epoch. In fact, not only does it furnish
us the same catalogue of the sacred books which are now
universally acknowledged, but it also enumerates them all
exactly to the twenty-seventh in the order of our modern
bibles. We give it then as found in the edition of the
councils by Labbe and Cossart (tom. ii. p. 1177).1 " Canon
47th. It has pleased the council to decree that, besides the
1 See also p. 106, Integer Codex Canonum Ecclesia; Africans, Greek and
Latin, cap. xxxiv.

THE COUNCIL OF CARTHAGE. 91
canonical scriptures, nothing shall be read in the church
under the name of divine scriptures.
" Now these are the canonical scriptures of the Old
Testament 
" And as to the New Testament : four gospels ; one book
of the Acts of the Apostles ; thirteen epistles of Paul ; with
one of the same to the Hebrews ; two of Peter ; three of
the apostle John ; one of Jude, one of James ; ] and one
only of the Apocalypse of John."2 The council adds,
" Let this be to make known to our brother and priest
Boniface 3 or other bishops of those countries the confirma
tion of this canon, because we have learned from the fathers
that they are the books to be read in the church. At the
same time permission is granted to read the sufferings of the
martyrs on the anniversaries of their death."
As we shall have hereafter to resume the consideration of
the Carthaginian catalogue in reference to the apocryphal
books, it would but embarrass us to dwell farther on it now.
Only we would remark, before passing from it, that if this
catalogue seems to differ from that of Laodicea on a fact and
a name, the disagreement is totally external and in appear
ance. As to Ihe fact, the council decides that the ecclesiasti
cal books shall be read in worship, the reading of which had
already been frequently permitted by the aneients, but which
Laodicea thought it better no longer to permit. And as to
the name, it is wrong to employ the word canonical as the
iRirchhofer (p. 12) and Wordsworth (append, p. 33), professing to fol
low Mansi's edition (tom. iii. p. 891), have omitted the Ep. of James. But
the Greek code of the canons of the African church (chap. 34) says,
'lanupov (moaTokov pia. Also the code of Camb. Univ. library, EE. iv.
29, ( Westcott, Gen. Survey of the Canon, 185). Kirchhofer gives this canon
twice in his collection, (p. 13, according to Bruns. and p. 503, after Gerhard
Von Maestricht, Brem. 1772). The Epistle of James is in the one, and
wanting in the other.
2 An old manuscript (vetustus codex), says Labbe, (Concil. ii. p. 1177);
contains these words (sic habet): '^that to confirm this canon the transma
rine church be consulted."
8 Other editions, as that of Binius, say, et consacerdoli nostro.

92 THE CANON.
title of these books in a broader sense than it had had for
four centuries ; applying it in the sense of libri regulares,
or books adapted to be the rule of life. Such a use of this
word, says Cosin, was not made until after the fourth
century, and then rarely. We shall have to show hereafter
the thought of the council in their use of this term, by the
fact that Augustine, present (they say) in this assembly, never
ceased to establish an essential difference between the divine
scriptures and the canonical books, and that never does he ap
peal on this question to the decisions of Carthage, as if this
council had settled it. SECTION xm.
RECAPITULATION OF ALL THE TESTIMONIES OF THF, FOURTH
CENTURY.
We are now enabled to see that the voice of the universal
church, from the times of the apostles always unanimous in
regard to the first canon, already unanimous also from the
days of the council of Nice in regard to the second, has
ended by pronouncing definitely on the second-first, in the
course of the fourth century. The temporary and later
hesitations of the Western church in regard to the Epistle
to the Hebrews had already almost entirely ceased, from
the end of the century ; and the temporary and late hesita
tions of the Eastei-n church in regard to the Apocalypse also
soon ceased, so that the canon was thenceforward univer
sally and for ever recognized in all the Christian churches.

COMMON PREJUDICES. 93

SECTION XIV.

COMMON PREJUDICES WHICH THE FIRST REVIEW OF THESE
FACTS SHOULD DISSIPATE.
It may be profitable to review these facts, and notice here
some of the inexact notions and unfounded fears which too
often find currency among us. The believer must guard
against the confused echoes of history, which, by being often
repeated, come to gain a usurped credit, and assume the
dangerous appearance of a historic reality. Thus arise
prejudices of long endurance, enfeeblement of principles,
hurtful doubts. Let a sciolist with a pretentious air spread
among some churches hazardous assertions and inaccurate
declarations, and the unwary are sure to be entrapped ; it
seems to them that such or such a scholar, in his lofty retreat,
possesses irrefragable facts, unanswerable discoveries against
this or that scripture declaration ; they are persuaded that no
one dares to confront him face to face, and that prudence
requires silence ; whilst, on the contrary, if you approach to
study the matter closely, you find all these phantoms vanish,
and these difficulties disappear. This has been witnessed
now for two centuries, in regard to the variations. Would
you not have imagined, a hundred years ago, that critical
science, according to its own pretensions, had irresistible
facts against the scriptures,- and that their authority was
about to be entirely overthrown ? And what has come to
pass then ? It is that, in marching straight up to these
facts, in passing thus from half-science to a complete science,
we have soon seen all the pretensions of the adversaries
vanish in smoke ; so that their efforts to overthrow our
faith on that side, have in the end only served to confirm it.
So will it be with the canon.

94 THE CANON.
Dr. Thiersch says,1 " We do not hesitate to maintain, with
out the fear of appearing to be presumptuous, that there is
not in all the range of historical research a field in which
a greater mass of prejudices and misconceptions has found
entrance, than in this ; forming a system which even now
exerts a tyrannical influence over men of some eminence."
Some of these false notions and injurious prejudices we
will now examine.
1. Many speak of the sacred collection as if it had been
a matter of uncertainty to Christian people for three cen
turies, and as if the books of the New Testament had not
,been decidedly recognized as divine before the end of the
fourth century ; whereas it is, on the contrary, a constant fact
that the first canon was never and no where an object of un
certainty for the churches, of God, but that all the writings
which compose it, that is to say, the eight ninths of the New
Testament, have been, from their first appearing and during
all the succeeding ages, universally recognized as divine by
all the Christian churches.
2. Many persons speak of five antilegomens, or of the five
' brief later epistles, which we denominate the second canon; and
which form only the thirty-sixth part of the New Testament,
as if they had not been recognized from the apostolical times.
This is also a misapprehension. It is true, they were not
universally acknowledged (the cause of which we will show) ;
but they were acknowledged from the beginning by the great
number of the churches (rah ttcXXci ) and by the largest
number (rot; 7rAa'cn-ois) of ecclesiastical writers.
3. They also speak of the second-first canon as if the two
books composing it had not been universally recognized as
canonical until a late period ; whereas, on the contrary, they
began by being universally acknowledged in both the East
and the West; and it was only later, at the beginning of
the third century, and simply from considerations of inter-
1 "Essny on the Canon." " Versuch zur Verstellung des historischen
Standpunkts fur die Critik der Neu-Testamentlichen Schriften."

COMMON PREJUDICES. 95
nal criticism, (never from testimony,) that one of these books,
always regarded in the East as divine, was contested for a
time in the West, and the other of these books, always
regarded as divine in the West, was for a time disputed in
the East.
4. Many speak of this hesitation of a small portion of the
churches on the subject of the antilegomens as having been
prolonged into the fourth century. This is, however, an
error ; for we have found by all the catalogues of the fourth
century, that this disagreement ceased as soon as the churches
were assembled in the first universal council.
5. Many, too, represent the hesitation of a part of the
primitive churches in regard fo the second canon, as a fact
very grievous to our religious feelings. This, too, is a great
mistake. We shall show, on the contrary, that, far from dis
turbing our faith, this fact rather tends to confirm it, since it
attests to us clearly, on the one hand, the firmness, the holy
jealousy, and the constant vigilance of the primitive Chris
tians, in regard to the canon ; and, on the other, the entire-
freedom with which they examined its claims, studied its
peculiar features, and even in some cases contested its legiti
macy. All these facts prove to us, then, with great force,
that if, notwithstanding this continual jealousy of the primitive
churches, and with this perfect liberty granted them, they al
ways manifested such entire unanimity in receiving the
twenty books of the first canon, it was not blindh', not with
out examination, not to obey human authority ; it was, on the
contrary, only from having had before their eyes solid rea
sons, manifest and thoroughly convincing, which forced them
to come to the same conclusion. That view alone can ex
plain an agreement so full, so prompt, so universal among
men so vigilant, so jealous, and so free.
Thus, then, these very doubt^, entertained for a time by a
minority of the churches in regard to the five later epistles,
doubly aid our faith ; since, on the one hand, the existence
of these doubts assures us that, in receiving universally the

96 THE CANON.
first twenty books of the New Testament, these churches had
not been able to discover the least cause of hesitation in regard
to them ; and, on the other, the universal cessation of these
very doubts equally attests that they must have felt them
selves constrained by the most powerful reasons, when they
all finally received, without exception, the second canon, as
in the beginning they had received the first.
6. Man}', again, to diminish the authority of the scrip
tures, or to exalt that of tradition, have insisted that the
church, during her first and most glorious years, lived long
without a written word, having only the spoken word and tra
dition. That, too, is a mistake. The primitive church never
assembled without making the reading of the Old Testament
the most prominent part of her service ; for she always be
lieved that these " holy scriptures are able to make the man
of God wise unto salvation," "furnished unto all good works,"
" through faith which is in Christ Jesus." After the example
of Jesus and his apostles, she has always nourished herself
on the written word ; and by it constantly fortified her faith
and hope. These scriptures have never ceased to be a
lamp to her feet. " Search them," Jesus says, " for they are
they which testify of me."
7. Many, too, speak of the canon as if its definitive form
had been fixed by the councils, — the act of the church pro
nouncing decrees. This, too, is a mistake ; nothing indeed
is more contrary to the real facts ; and this we must show
now, although we must resume this point when we come to
treat of the veritable foundation of our faith in the canon of
the scriptures.
No human authority interfered in this matter. It was the
pure and simple product of the conscience, of research, of
freedom. The churches of God, enlightened by the mutual
testimony of their members, judged in this case only by their
own wisdom, under the secret and powerful direction of that
Providence which will always watch over the written word.
The universal reception of the first canon preceded all the

COMMON PREJUDICES. 97
councils ; and these when they came together were occupied
with every other question but that of the canon. We shall
yet show with more precision, that the general councils never
passed a decree on this subject for fourteen centuries ; as we
have already shown that even the two provincial councils
of Laodicea and Carthage, too often cited, can no more be
regarded as authority on the question before us.
Lardner 1 has demonstrated, by long quotations from the
fathers, that the canon of the New Testament has in no
degree been formed by human authority. Basnage a has
given three chapters of his church history to this point.
John Le Clerc 3 has said, " There has been no need of a
council of grammarians, to declare magisterially which are
the works of Cicero or of Virgil. So, too, the authenticity
of the Gospels was established, and has continued without
any decree of the rulers of the church. We may say the
same of the apostolical epistles, which owe all their authority,
not to the decisions of any ecclesiastical assembly, but to the
concordant testimony of all Christians, and to the very char
acter of their contents." Augustine, too, thirteen centuries
before Le Clerc, said, " We know the writings of the
apostles as we know those of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro,
and others ; and as we know the writings of different eccle
siastical authors, because they have the testimony of their
cotemporaries and of the men who lived immediately after
them." Let us content ourselves with remarking here that the
ancient fathers, in their judgments on the canon, appealed
only to the free and uninterrupted testimony of the churches,
at the same time making an attentive examination of the
books proposed for their acceptance. When they give us a
1 Supplement, 50-52 ; 2d part, tom. i. ; edit. 8, tom. vi. pp. 325, 381 ; tom.
ii. pp. 325, 496, 529, 576; tom. viii. pp. 102, 225, 268; tom. x. pp. 193, 207,
208. 2 Lib. viii. chap. v. vi. vii.
8 In the years 29 and 100 of his Hist. Eccl.
9

98 THE CANON.
catalogue, it is never as the fruit of their discoveries, nor as
the decisions of any authority whatever; they report to us
only the thoughts of the preceding ages ; the free testimony
of the primitive churches ; that which they have received
from their predecessors, by a transmission continued from
the days of the apostles.
When Origen, born 142 years before the council of Nice,
gives us his catalogue of the canonical Scriptures (tw ivSia-
6-fjKw ypa<piov), he appeals to no decisions of any council, but
merely to the ancient men of the church (01 dpxaioi avSpes)
and to tradition (uis iv 7rapa8oo-et padtiiv). It is Eusebius
who has preserved his words to us, and who adds, in report
ing his testimony on the four Gospels : " Origen preserves
tradition and the ecclesiastical canon ; x and he attests that
there are but four Gospels, alone received without any
contradiction by all the church of God which is under the
heavens." Also Eusebius himself, when giving his opinion on the
collection of books in the New Testament and on the dis
tinction between the books universally received and those
which are contested, refers neither to any authority nor
council, and declares that he receives the canon from eccle
siastical tradition (Kara, -rijv iKKXT)o-Lao-TLKr]V 7rapd8ocnv).2
Thus Athanasius, born in 296, in giving his canon com
pletely conformed to ours, attributes it " to the transmission
to the fathers by those who were eye-witnesses and minis
ters of the Word from the beginning ; " s but he refers to no
Council, and gives us only what he calls books recognized as
authoritative, transmitted and received as divine.
None of the authors, even of the centuries which followed,
to the fourth, fifth, or sixth, ever appeals on this point to the
decisions of any council. Thus, when Cyril, patriarch of
Jerusalem, born twenty years after Athanasius, gives us his
catalogue of the theopneustic books (at fedVi/euoroi Tpacpai),
1 Hist. Eccl. vi. 25. 2 Hist. Eccl. iii. 25.
8 Festal Epistle, xxxix.

COMMON PREJUDICES. 99
he refers to no council, and appeals only " to the apostles
and ancient bishops who presided over the churches, and
who have transmitted them to us." x Thus, when Augus
tine, at the end of the same century, or rather at the begin
ning of the fifth, wrote his directions to certain persons who
had consulted him " on the books really canonical," he ap
pealed only to the testimony of the different churches of
Christendom, and referred to no council.2 Thus when Ru
finus, priest in Aquileia toward the year a. d. 340, gives us
in his turn a catalogue (also exactly conformed to ours), he
attributes it " only to the tradition of the ancients, who had
transmitted them to the churches of Christ as divinely in
spired ; " and he declares that he gives it as he found it
in the monuments of the fathers.3
And when Cassiodorus, Roman consul in the sixth cen
tury, gives us three catalogues of the New Testament (one
of Jerome, one of Augustine, and one of an ancient version),
he likewise makes no reference to any decree or any coun
cil.4 Let us then hear no more about councils fixing au
thoritatively the canon of the Scriptures. This canon is
undoubtedly fixed ; but not by any authority of councils.
God determined that Christians and churches, enlightened
by the testimony of Christian generations, should form their
own convictions on this subject, in complete freedom of judg
ment," in order that the authenticity of the sacred books
might thereby be made the more manifest.
We shall hereafter examine this important fact from
another point of view ; but it should suffice us here to
learn from these testimonies how erroneous and contrary
i Catech. iv. 33.
2 De Doct. Christ. Lib. ii. vol. iii. part i. p. 47. Paris, 1836. (He began
this book in 397, and finished it in 407.) See also Lardner, tom. x. p. 207.
8 In. Symbol. Apost. p. 26. "Quae secundum majorum traditionem per
ipsum Spiritum Sanctum inspirata creduntur et ecclesiis Christi tradita,
competens videatur in hoc loco evidenti numero siCut ex Patrum monu
mentis accepimus designare."
4 Lardner, tom. xi. p. 303; Cassiod. De Instit. Divin. Litterar. cap. xi.

100 THE CANON.
to facts is the pretension of seeking the origin or the de
termination of the canon in any ecclesiastical decree.

SECTION XV.
CONCLUSION FROM ALL THESE TESTIMONIES OF THE FIRST
FOUR CENTURIES.
From this long review, and from the united testimony of
all these fourteen catalogues, the inheritance of four centu
ries, the first to the death of John, toward the end of the
first century ; the second to the death of Irenaeus and of
Clement of Alexandria, toward the end of the second cen
tury ; the next to the approaches of the ruin of Roman pa
ganism, toward the end of the third century ; and the eleven
others in the course of the fourth century, from the days of
Eusebius to the death of Gregory Nazianzen, or even to
the council of Carthage ; — from these fourteen catalogues,
we say, arise three cardinal facts and three important ques
tions. First, from this permanent and universal unanimity of the
churches in maintaining in all parts of the world the twenty
books of the first canon, — from this striking and permanent
fact, which no one disputes, arises this question : On what
foundation rests this unanimity, so constant, free, astonish
ing, and universal ? How was it formed ?
The reply to this will form the subject of our second
chapter ; it will confirm our confidence in the complete au
thenticity of the first canon ; it will increase our respect for
the Holy Scriptures, and our regard for their authority.
From this first fact arises another ; that, beside the twenty
books of the first canon, the two epistles which form our
second-first canon participated from the beginning, and to
the middle of the third century, in this universal recognition.
Hence this second question : Whence arose, after this epoch,
the objections in regard to these two Scriptures ? What was

CONCLUSION FROM THESE TESTIMONIES. 101
their weight ? and how was the authenticity of the second-
first canon at length established in the presence of this later
and temporary opposition ?
The answer to this second question will be the subject of
our third chapter.
Finally, from the same testimonies springs a third fact,
equally important ; it is, that five short epistles, constituting
the second canon, and containing in themselves only the
thirty-sixth part of the New Testament, recognized by the
greater portion of the churches, were nevertheless not ac
knowledged by some. This continued to the time of the coun
cil of Nice, twenty-five years after the third century. Hence
arises another questiqn, the third and last : How is it pos
sible that the antilegomens, if authentic, were not universally
received from the time of the apostles' death ? How came
they to be acknowdedged afterward ? and how does this fact
of the partial resistance they met consist with the perfect
certainty we entertain of their authenticity, and that of the
other books of the canon ?
The reply to the several phases of this question will be
the subject of our fourth chapter.

9 *

102 THE CANON.

CHAPTER SECOND.
OF THE FIRST CANON.
We have already showed in our first chapter, — and it
will be well to bear it in mind throughout the course of this,
— that almost all our arguments in favor of the first canon
apply equally, so far as the first two centuries of the church
are concerned, to the two books of the second-first canon ;
and that Eusebius for this reason placed them in the rank of
the homologomens. We shall commence with the evidence,
which is so abundant, of the primitive, constant, and universal
unanimity of the churches in regard to these twenty books.

SECTION I.
THE PERFECT ASD CONSTANT UNANIMITY OF THE CHURCHES.
The simple review which we have made in our first chap
ter of all the authentic catalogues furnished by the first ages
of the church, must powerfully affect every attentive reader.
At least fourteen catalogues have been given to us by the
three centuries immediately succeeding the age of the apos
tles, — for we might add the two anonymous catalogues at
tributed to Amphilochius and Muratori.1 They are the
unanimous testimony of the most learned and venerable men
1 See Canon, chap. i. sec. vii. x. xi. ; chap. ii. sec. v. vi.

UNANIMITY OF THE CHURCHES. 103
of the East and the West. And this testimony, too, is not only
on their part a public attestation of their personal conviction :
it is a public declaration of the common conviction ; it is
their unanimous recognition of a great historical fact, — a
fact uncontested and incontestable : the agreement of all the
churches of the world as to the first canon. " Such is," they
say, " the voice of the ages which have gone before us, the
voice of the churches from one end of the earth to the other,
since the times of the apostles ; a voice ever definite, clear,
and unhesitating. We have all listened to all the traditions
of ancient times, to observe if there would reach us, from
the midst of the ancient churches, one solitary discordant
cry, — and we have heard nothing of the kind. We have
looked into the depths of times past to see if we could dis
cover any thing which would authorize the slightest doubt,
and we have seen in all the vast horizon not even the small
est cloud of contradiction, — not a cloud even as large as the
hand of a man."
And what witnesses of the opinion of their period: Ori
gen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Cyril, Gregory Nazianzen, Je
rome, Epiphanius, Augustine ! Could there be any better
situated, more competent, more credible ? Better situated?
They occupied the highest positions, they were scattered
over all the known world and at great distances from each
other ; — these on the banks of the Euphrates or the Nile,
of the Save or the Rhone ; those on the borders of the
African Syrtes or of the Euxine Sea. More worthy of faith ?
They were almost all confessors or martyrs ; almost all so
penetrated with a love for the Scriptures that they defended
them with their lives ; all so sincere and free in their re
searches that they report to us without reserve all they
know about it, and that they are prompt to inform us that
by the side of the homologomens are five later short epistles
which, although received by the majority, are not acknowl
edged by all ; whilst they declare that they have never heard
in any church in the world the least opposition to the other

104 ; THE CANON.
twenty books. More competent, or better informed ? There
nover were any such. They are all learned men; all have
searched the Scriptures ; all have traveled on account of the
Word of God, in the East and the West ; they have seen
Rome and Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem ; they
have met each other in councils; and they have all, concern
ing Christian antiquities, an amount of knowledge before
which our modern scholars are but children. What a wit
ness, for instance, at the opening of the fourth century is
Eusebius, who, in order to write, in A. D. 324, his history of
the beginnings of Christianity, put himself in possession of
all ancient literature ; examined thoroughly the libraries
gathered in Cassarea by Pamphilus, and in Jeru-alem by
Alexander ; read all the now lost works of Aristion, Quad-
ratus, Aristides, Hegesippus, Papias, Tatian, Melito, —
known to our modern scholars only through him ! And
what a witness, yet a century earlier than Eusebius, is Ori
gen, that " scholar with entrails of brass," as he has been
called, who, from the close of the second century, conse
crated all the resources of his genius to the study of the
Scriptures, and who himself was an immediate disciple of
that Clement of Alexandria who was born only forty years
after the death of the Apostle John !
We may, then, from this imposing testimony, deduce the
four following conclusions : —
1. When so large a number of men, so learned, so sin
cere and so independent, inform us from all quarters of the
earth, that, after having diligently studied all the history
of the churches of God from the days of the apostles, they
have not been able to find among them, up to the beginning
of the third century, anything but the most perfect unanimity
in regard to all the books of the first canon, then, surely, we
must acknowledge that all antiquity no where presents us a
single historical fact so superabundantly demonstrated as this
constant unanimity of the churches.
2. This very unanimity is so perfect that it excludes all

UNANIMITY OF THE CHURCHES. I* 105"

possibility that any one of these homologomens coulckhave
obtained it, if it had not been received at first by the churSfees
while the apostles were living, and with their sanction.
3. It would likewise have been absolutely impossible
that, after the death of the apostles, so many thousands of
churches, then spread over all the earth, could immediately
have consented to receive any additional book into their
canon, even though that book had already been received
by a great part of them with the best marks of its apostoli
cal authenticity, — as was afterward the case with the anti
legomens. One such book could never have been accepted
by so many thousand churches in Egypt, in Asia Minor, in
Mesopotamia, in Greece, in Spain, in Africa, in Italy and in
Gaul, without having to pass through a long period of scru
ples, oppositions, and hesitations, the noise of which would
have reached the ears of such men as Origen, Cyril, Atha
nasius, and Eusebius.
4. If such a posthumous acceptance by all the churches was
at length consummated in regard to the antilegomens, and if
it finally silenced all opposition, it is surely an extraordinary
fact highly improbable before the event, and humanly inex
plicable except by the abundance of the evidences of legiti
macy which these later books were found to possess.
But if, shortly after the death of the apostles, any one had
attempted to add to the primitive canon of the twenty-two ho
mologomens, transmitted to all the cotemporary churches by
the apostles themselves, any new work, even if it had the
most satisfactory titles of authenticity, and though accepted
by a majority of the existing churches, it is impossible to
admit that this additional book could have been immedi
ately accepted by all the churches to the very ends of
the earth. And not only is this true ; but if we should go
still farther, and even imagine such a book, after the death
of the apostles, to have been accepted by churches the most
independent of each other without resistance or objection,
without discussion or hesitation, — yea, without leaving one

106 THE CANON.
trace of any resistance or objection, yet it is utterly impossi
ble to believe that this new book would have been immedi
ately and universally placed in the collection of the primitive
apostolical books, and in the same rank with them.
And yet this must be admitted if the primitive introduc
tion of the twenty-two homologomens was not anterior to the
deaths of the apostles, and accomplished during their min
istry. It is, then, well established, by the force of historical tes
timony, that none of the homologomens was introduced into
the sacred collection after the death of the apostles.

SECTION H.
THE NEW TESTAMENT IN ITS TWENTY-TWO HOMOLOGOME-
NOUS BOOKS INCOMPARABLY SUPERIOR TO ALL THE BOOKS
OF ANTIQUITY, IN THE EVIDENCE OF ITS AUTHENTICITY.
Sustained, then, by the testimony of this majestic una
nimity, we may boldly affirm that, in all the field of ancient
literature, there is not a single book comparable — even re
motely — to our first canon, as to the perfect certainty of its
authenticity. History will never present any thing like it in
point of literary legitimacy ; and we may fearlessly challenge
the production of any one book among all those that are now
most fully acknowledged by learned men to be the genuine
productions of antiquity, which can show one tenth of the
scientific vouchers that sustain the claims of our first canon.
Michaelis1 has remarked: "The testimonial proof of its
legitimacy is infinitely superior, in many particulars, to all
that ancient literature can present us even for the works
most abundantly attested."
This enormous inequality may be seen in at least ten or
eleven of its different features.
1 Introd. to the New Test. vol. i. p. 21, etc.

SUPERIOR EVIDENCE OF AUTHENTICITY. 107
Profane works, even the most eminent, were directed only
to individuals, by isolated authors ; or rather, most frequent
ly, to no one ; whereas the books of the New Testament
were written by the apostles to the churches of their own
day ; that is, by great public personages to great associations
of men who knew them, who were known by them, who
were scattered over the earth, permanent, free, bound to
them and each other by ties the most intimate and sacred.
First and potent guaranty of the authenticity peculiar to the
Scriptures of the New Testament.
The books of antiquity, even the most authentic and cele
brated, however cordially welcomed by their cotemporary
readers, have never excited an interest even remotely com
parable to that felt by- the primitive Christians in their
Scriptures. What solicitude had the readers of the former,
after all, about being preserved from error in regard to the
legitimacy of the books ? Their indifference on this point
is exhibited and measured by the lightness of their re
searches in respect to it. Suppose they should mistake
the author of a book, and attribute to Tacitus or Pliny,
Plutarch or Cicero the work of another, what would be
the injury ? All their efforts to be informed on the point
of authorship accordingly amounted to nothing more than
brief Investigations. But how different it was with the
primitive Christians, to whom were transmitted, in the
name of the apostles, the books in which these holy men
had spoken as they were moved by the Holy Ghost ! It
was a vital question to determine, whether such an epistle or
such a gospel was indeed the work of those apostles and
prophets on whom the church of the living God is built as
its foundation, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner
stone. (Eph. ii. 20.) For these living oracles was not
every one of them ready to offer his life ? And if so, was
not the question of the origin of these books a matter of su
preme moment with them? Their Christianity, their faith,
their salvation, were all involved in it. A second and po-

108 THE CANON.
tent guaranty, which belongs exclusively to our sacred
books. When the writings of antiquity were issued, their cotem-
porary readers were generally neither eye-witnesses nor com
petent judges of the facts which they there found reported ;
whereas, on the contrary, our sacred books made their ap
peals to facts which the entire church and every believer in
the church could confirm by his own eyes. They quote liv
ing witnesses, actors in the scenes, ministers known for thirty
years by all cotemporary Christians, miracles performed in
their own day, congregations who had witnesses among them
selves, prophecies, tongues, healings, which continued through
all the lives of the apostles,1 and during the generation that
succeeded them, that is, to the commencement of the second
century. A third guaranty, which made a mistake in regard
to the canon in the primitive churches impossible.
The writings of the ancient literature now extant were
published without the authorization of any body of men, and
without any security for their transmission ; whereas, on the
contrary, the books of the New Testament had for these, on
the one hand, the churches with their bishops, and on the
other, the college of the apostles whose protracted lives ex
tended to the end of the first century. Paul alone had car
ried the gospel from Arabia to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem
to Illyricum, and thence to Italy, and perhaps farther west,
(Rom. xv. 19, 21,) charged as he was with the care of all
the churches (2 Cor. xi. 28) ; Peter was thirty years at
the head of the evangelization of the Jews, as Paul of the
Gentiles (Gal. ii. 8, 9) ; and John was, till the opening of
the second century, at the head of the churches of Asia.
Fourth guaranty of authenticity, which not even the least-
contested of profane books have ever offered.
The most celebrated works of the ancient world were read
and reread, without doubt, eagerly, by their cotemporaries ;
but to make way afterward for other writings no less es-
1 See Gal. iii. 2; Acts xix. 2; 1 Cor. xiv. 27.

SUPERIOR EVIDENCE OF AUTHENTICITY. 109
teemed, and then to be neglected for ages. But how totally
different it was with the holy scriptures of the New Testa
ment ! They were constantly read ; incessantly copied for
personal use ; continually studied ; the most barbarous people
learned to read, merely that they might the better compre
hend them ; they were meditated night and day (Ps. i. 1-3),
from church to church, from generation to generation ; for this
was then, always, as in the days of David, the mark of the
righteous man, who constantly made them the light of his
feet and the lamp of his path. Fifth guaranty of an au
thenticity belonging exclusively to our canon.
The writings of the ancients, however eminent, might, at
the end of a few years, be lost and perish, without exciting
any regret ; and it is thus that so great a number of the
finest works of antiquity have for ever disappeared ; and
among them even those which were at first preserved with
the greatest care: the Hortensius of Cicero; almost all of
Varro; even the writings of Menander, which were gener
ally known by heart ; those of Ennius and Pacuvius ; three
fourths of Titus Livy ; the great History of Sallust ; the
greater part of Tacitus ; the books of the elder Pliny on the
German war ; the latter part of the Fasti of Ovid ; sixty
books of the Roman history of Dion Cassius ; twenty-five
books of the historical library of Diodorus Siculus ; and al
most the whole of Polybius. Whatever may have been the
regard of antiquity for these admirable books, still they have
perished. But it could not be so with our sacred books ; for,
besides the desire of every Christian to possess them, they
were preserved for public worship in the numberless ora
tories scattered over the earth ; and every true minister of
Jesus Christ, history shows us, would sooner yield his life
than his Bible. Sixth guaranty of authenticity, which per
tains exclusively to the books of the canon.
While the greater part of even the masterpieces of an
tiquity were translated into different languages only long
after their production, the books of the New Testament were
10

110 THE CANON.
translated into all the languages of the East even in the
first century : first, in Syriac, then in Arabic, Coptic, Sahi-
dic, Armenian, Persian, later in Ethiopian ; and also in the
Westernlongues : in Latin, in Gothic, Sclavonic, _Gallo-Cel-
tic, Anglo-Saxon. We have already spoken of the Peshito,
and of its high antiquity.1 A Latin version was made from
the earliest days of Christianity ; it is believed that the Ve-
tus Itala, which was used before the days of Jerome, was
composed before the end of the first century ; and we find
lNote by ihe Translator. — The Nestorians inhabiting the Koordish
mountains and the country lying around the lake of Oroomiah have, from
the early ages of Christianity, remained a separate and independent church.
They speak a modern dialect of the old Syriac tongue, which was that used
by our Saviour. One of the earliest translations of the New Testament
¦was made in that language. It is called the Peshito. Several copies of it,
dating back to A. r>. 1200, are still carefully preserved by the Nestorians.
The Peshito version is generalby admitted to have been made early in
the second century. Hence it omits the Apocalypse, 2d Peter, 2d and 3d
John. A copy of this venerable work is now in the library of the A. B. C. F. M.,
in Boston. Dr. Justin Perkins thus relates the account of its transfer to this
country : " This copy was presented to Dr. Grant by Mar Shimon when that
heroic missionary-traveller first visited the patriarch,— the first Western man
whom he had ever seen ; it may be, the first who has penetrated the central
portion of Koordistan since the days of Xenophon. These rare copies were
kept by the Nestorians, wrapped in a large number of cloth envelopes and
hidden away in secret places in their ancient churches, to save them from
the ravages of the Mohammedans. The word of the Lord was precious in
those days. The patriarch was so much pleased with his missionary vis
itor that he presented to him this his choicest treasure. This copy has a
questionable label, giving its date as A. d. 1200. The antiquarians at Ox
ford, to whom I showed it, thought it must be much older. I have seen no
parchment copy among the Nestorians of a date later than the commence
ment of the thirteenth century.
" This copy contains the books usually found in the Peshito version,
which correspond minutely with our canon, except that Revelation, 2d
Peter, 2d and 3d John are wanting. This circumstance confirms the gen
uineness of the copy, as the Peshito, being one of the earliest— perhaps
the earliest — translation made, the books latest written had perhaps not
then been incorporated into the canon.
"This volume is beautifully written in the ancient Syriac language, in
the Estrangelo character. The parchment is deer-skin, the deer being still
an inhabitant of Koordistan."

SUPERIOR EVIDENCE OF AUTHENTICITY. Ill
Tertullian quoting it, toward the end of the second century.
This is then a seventh guaranty of authenticity belonging
only to the sacred canon.
The works of ancient literature have not, like the books
of the New Testament, provoked controversies at their very
appearing, the noise of which, still reaching us, establishes
indirectly, and so much the more forcibly, their authenticity.
The New Testament, on the contrary, by the very attacks
of its first adversaries, proves the anterior existence of its
canons, the apostolicity of its authors, and the faith which
the primitive Christians placed in it ; so that the first unbe
lievers and heretics attest to us with irresistible force, by
their very hostility, the apostolical authenticity of our sacred
books. In the very act of combating their doctrines they
recognized their authors, and testified unwittingly to all
coming ages that, before them, these books were already the
object of the respect of the whole Christian church, and the
code of its faith. They contested their teachings, not their
authenticity ; rejected them as erroneous, never as spurious ;
while spitefully contradicting, they still regarded them as the
works of the apostles whose names they bear.
We shall treat this point at greater length hereafter, but
must refer to it in this connection ; for this striking testimony
of enemies, being less expected, is perhaps weightier than
that of all the orthodox fathers. This is an eighth guar
anty of authenticity, which has no equivalent in the case of
any books of ancient literature.
The books of the ancients — even the most distinguished
— are comparatively little quoted .by the authors of subse
quent ages ; it is totally otherwise with our holy Scriptures.
Cited, explained, interpreted, taught by an uninterrupted
, succession of ecclesiastical writers, they might, if we had lost
them, be entirely recomposed, as Lardner has affirmed, from
! the authors who have quoted them. The whole succession
! of the fathers is employed in reproducing them. We have
already spoken of the prodigious labors of Origen on all the

112 THE CANON.
Scriptures. Irenasus, before him, in Gaul, in the second
century, cited abundantly all our homologomenous books.
At the same time Clement was quoting them in Egypt ;
and as to Tertullian, in Africa, born about the middle of
the second century, he so abundantly quotes by name all the
sacred books of the first canon and of the second-first canon,
that, in the words of Lardner,1 " if one should gather the
passages of the New Testament introduced into his writings,
it would make a collection more extensive than that of all
the quotations from Cicero made by all known writers for
two thousand years." This is then, for the ninth time, a
special guaranty that the New Testament is authentic.
In the mean time there is a tenth feature which alone
would establish an immense distance between the scriptures
of the New Testament and the other books of ancient litera
ture : it is, that the latter, however abundantly they may
have been read, were read by individuals detached from
one another ; and they thus presented no collective guaranty
"of their legitimacy ; whilst our Scriptures were read, from
the days of the apostles, by permanent societies which were
organized for this very purpose ; read without interruption,
from Sunday to Sunday, and from day to day ; read in every
country then known ; read even so abundantly that many
men knew them by heart ; read in every assembly of wor
shipers from the days of the apostles, as they are now
still read, and as they will continue to be read in every
living church until the day when the Lord shall descend
from heaven. This tenth guaranty, perhaps more power
ful than all the others, must be more fully considered here
after. Finally, one last testimony which powerfully sustains the
claims of the New Testament, but which is wanting to all
the other monuments of classical antiquity, is, that the latter,
beside their mere readers, had no continuous order of men
seriously and jealously engaged in confirming and controlling
i Vol. ii. pp. 250-287.

SUPERIOR EVIDENCE OF AUTHENTICITY. 113
their titles, with a holy severity, in order to prevent the ad
mission of any doubtful books, and to exclude any book until
its authenticity could be positively ascertained ; while, on the
contrary, for the New Testament, we can trace the uninter
rupted succession of such examiners from the very days of
the apostles.
If we study the history of the churches minutely, we shall
see, from the beginning, twenty-two books in their hands, re
ceived during the lives of the apostles, without the whisper
of a contradiction in regard to any of them for two centuries ;
but at the same time we shall hear them speak of five brief
letters written to some persons or some churches, and which,
received by the greater part (jrAeiorois), yet did not meet the
same reception by the churches situated at a great distance,
which for a time hesitated to receive them. This fact shows
at once that there was a conscientious and untrammeled cau
tion exercised by individual churches in forming the canon
for themselves. And this want of unanimity in regard to
one thirty-sixth portion of the canon gives the more weight
to the unanimous assent of the Christian world to the other
portions of the New Testament. Thiersch,1 in his valuable
work on the canon, remarks : " At the close of the first cen
tury, the churches, thenceforward left to themselves, and more
jealous than ever of their sacred deposit, manifested them
selves fearful of .innovations, controlled by a conservative
spirit, and disposed to keep their collection as for ever com
pleted, until it was abundantly proved to them that this or
that later epistle was, as commended to them by a great num
ber of churches, apostolic." Thus, unwilling themselves to
decide upon its authenticity, they refused, notwithstanding
the advice of the majority, to admit it into the sacred canon ;
and, without rejecting it, contented themselves with declaring
that, not having received it at the beginning of their exist
ence as a church, they would wait until sufficient proofs of
l Chap. IV. Versuch zur Wiederherstellung des hist. Standpuncts fiir
die Kritik der N. T. Schriften. 1845.
10*

114 THE CANON.
its authenticity should be presented. It is thus that, on the
one hand, their admirable firmness in regard to the first
canon, and on the other their holy vigilance and jealousy
in regard to the second, furnish the same testimony, and
serve equally to confirm our faith.
If there had been no resistance on the part of any of the
churches to the later epistles, we might have suspected a too
ready compliance on their part, and too much carelessness in
accepting doubtful books and in the transmission of the canon.
But, on the contrary, this control, exercised during two cen
turies by a certain number among them over the five epistles,
this holy reluctance to receive them, united to their fear of
rejecting them ; this disposition, at once prudent and respect
ful, at once unwilling for a time either to abandon or adopt
them ; this long and religious reserve, sufficiently show with
what wisdom they proceeded, with what freedom they exam
ined, with what mature judgment they finally decided the
question. It is thus that all these remarkable facts combine to fur
nish a new force to the testimony of their complete unanimity
in regard to the first canon.
What we have now said, therefore, may entirely answer
all demands for proof to establish our position, and permit us
confidently to maintain that this unanimity of the churches
throughout the entire world, joined to all the peculiar cir
cumstances which accompanied them, gives to the first canon,
or rather the twenty-two homologomens, a certainty which
can be equaled by nothing in the entire field of literature.
And yet, however complete a guaranty this may furnish
us, it will be made still more complete by the study we are
about to make of the causes of so marvelous an agreement.
To what human causes must we attribute this grand histori
cal phenomenon ? This is the point we are now about to
examine; and the research will develop new sources of
proof for the authenticity of our canon.
We shall first examine three other historical facts, which,

THREE CAUSES X)F THIS UNANIMITY. 115
while characterizing the primitive church, explain to us how
this astonishing unanimity of all the people of God in rcard
to the first canon was so promptly secured.

SECTION III.
THREE CAUSES PARTICULARLY HAVE PROVIDENTIALLY SE
CURED THIS UNANIMITY.
The long Career of the Apostles.
The first fact, which characterizes and controls the history
of the primitive church, and which was necessary to secure this
unanimity, is the lengthened duration of the lives of the apos
tles, notwithstanding their trials and the innumerable perils
of their ministry. It becomes the more remarkable when
we remember their position in the world : " as sheep in
the midst of wolves ; " as they themselves said, " delivered
unto death for Jesus' sake ; persecuted, but not forsaken ;
cast down, but not destroyed ; accounted as sheep for the
slaughter," they were almost all preserved by the mighty
providence of God for a ministry of thirty, fifty, and sixty
years. It has been remarked that whenever God purposed to
produce some important and durable reformation in the
church, he has always taken care to give a long career to
the men destined to accomplish it ; because he wished to fur
nish them all the time needed for consummating and confirm
ing it.
When he had driven man out of paradise, he gave each
of the early patriarchs nearly nine centuries of life, to put
them in a condition for preserving among their children's
children to the twentieth generation the knowledge of their
fall and of the promise. The son of Enoch, who had lived
with Adam nearly two hundred and fifty years, might live

116 THE CANON.
also nearly six centuries with Noah, who was to be for the
new world a preacher " of the righteousness which is by
faith." And, when the earth had been renewed by the del
uge, God purposed that Noah too should instruct the new
generations descending from him for three hundred and fifty
years ; and that Shem, his second son, should survive him
seventy-five years, to the calling of Abraham, — the father
of the faithful. Still later, when God brought his people out
of Egypt, to give them his institutions, his laws, and his gra
cious promises, he added forty years to the ripened age of
Moses, and sixty-four to that of Joshua the son of Nun, in
order that these two great men might have sufficient time, in
the wilderness or in Canaan, to accustom Israel to the new
discipline of his written word. When, in fine, at the close
of the long career of the judges, he chose, in order to prepare
for the rigime of the prophets, to effect that revival in which
we see " all the house of Israel lamenting after the Lord,"
(1 Sam. vii. 2,) he continued the prophet Samuel at the head
of the nation for more than fifty years. Then, when he in
troduced the rigime of the kings and the temple service, he
gave them two prophet kings, each of whom reigned forty
years. And when finally he determined to reconstitute the
nation around his living Word in the" Babylonian exile, he
preserved Daniel to them for seventy years.
And when we come to more recent times, we see also that,
in the holy Reformation of his church by the gospel, God
gave, on the one hand, to the churches of Germany, and, on
the other, to those of Geneva and France, thirty years of the
ministry of Luther, thirty years of that of Calvin, thirty-
three of that of Farel, and forty-six of that of Beza.
Now if this longevity was so frequently adapted to ac
complish in the church the great changes divinely decreed, it
was much more requisite in the first century, when the church
was to be formed from the Gentile races as well as the Jews,
for giving to it for the benefit of coming ages the oracles of
the New Testament, and thus securing to it, amid the great

THE LONG CAREER OF THE APOSTLES. 117
revolutions then taking place, a powerful and majestic unity.
It was necessary that the apostles, charged with this great
work, should enjoy a long life, in order to watch, continu
ously and unitedly, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
over the progress of the churches, their methods of worship,
and especially their universal reception of the Holy Scrip
tures. It was necessary that the churches should be duly
exercised in the life of faith while the apostles were yet with
them, since they were after that to be left, until the return of
Jesus Christ, to the sole direction of the Holy Spirit and of
the written word. And thus it has in fact occurred.
With the sole exception of John's brother, James the
Great, (martyr under Herod Agrrppa, only ten years after
the ascension of the Saviour,) all the apostles exercised a
very long ministry in the church.
James the Less, the brother of the Lord and the first of the
three pillars of the church (Gal. ii. 9), remained for twenty-
eight years at the head of the Jewish Christian churches ;
and yet all the other apostles survived him, — some of them
forty years. Esteemed by the Jews, called by them " the
Just," and so revered that the Talmud cites some miracles
" wrought by James, the disciple of Jesus the carpenter," *
and that Josephus, in recounting his martyrdom (Antiq.
xx. 8), declares that " the wisest of the nation deplored his
deatli as one of the principal causes of the ruin of Jerusalem,
and of God's anger against the Jews." Simeon, also one of
our Lord's brothers, became, the historians say,2 bishop of
Jerusalem immediately after the death of James, and lived,
if we may credit Eusebius, to be more than a hundred years
old, not beings crucified until A. d. 107, after having fed the
flock in Jerusalem forty-five years. Peter and Paul minis
tered to the Jewish and Gentile churches thirty and more
years; for we must place their martyrdoms between the
burning of Rome in July, a. d. 64, and the death of Nero,
1 Calmet's Dictionary, Art. James.
2_Eusebius, H. E. Lib. iii. chap. 2, 11, 32.

118 THE CANON.
June, a. d. 68. Moreover, it appears that the larger portion
of the apostles lived still longer ; for, although it is impossi
ble to credit the contradictory traditions of the fathers, who
date the death of Mark at Alexandria, a. d. 68, Timothy
a. d. 97, Thomas and Bartholomew in India, Jude in Lybia,
Matthew either in Ethiopia or in Parthia, yet we have the
infallible books of the Acts and Revelation, which show us
that all the other apostles survived Paul, Peter, and the two
Jameses, and that John, exiled in Patmos during a persecu
tion which did not begin before Domitian's reign, nor end
before A. d. 96, returned to the coast of Asia in order to com
plete the Revelation, and to die there. If his brother James,
sixty years before, (A. d. 43,) had begun the list of apostolical
martyrs, it is he himself who was to terminate the catalogue
of their sufferings so long afterwards,1 at the beginning of the
second century. All the traditions of antiquity agree in ac
cording to him an extreme old age. Jerome says 2 he could
not walk, but was carried to the meetings of the church. He
is said to have preached among the Parthians and Indians ;
but what appears incontestable is, that he lived to an ad
vanced age. Jerome speaks of his sepulcher in Ephesus,
whither he had gone to join the family of Mary, our Lord's
mother. Irenasus and Eusebius" affirm that he died in the
third year of Trajan ; others say, a. d. 103. If we must
believe Epiphanius (Hasres. 51), he was then ninety-four
years old ; others say still older.
Now this fact of the protracted career of the apostles has
great weight when we remember what relations these men
of God constantly sustained to the churches which they had
founded. For it gives irresistible force to the unanimous tes
timony of Christianity concerning the twenty-two homolog
omens ; it explains this otherwise inexplicable unanimity;
1 He underwent many severe condemnations, but alone died a natural
death. 2 See Jerome on Galat. vi. and De Viris Illustr. cap. ix.
siren. H«res. iii. 3; ii. 39. Euseb. H. E. iii. 23. Chron. Euseb. See also
Augustine, Serm. 253, chap. iv.

THE LONG CAREER OF THE APOSTLES. 119
it makes it not only explicable, but indispensable. When
we remember that the apostles and all their inspired assist
ants exercised in the church so long and so faithful a minis
try during more than half a century, it becomes manifest
how all the churches in the world came to be perfectly
agreed in accepting the twenty-two books given to them by
the apostles before their deaths. And, on the other hand, by
an opposite reasoning, if we consider the astonishing fact of
this unanimous belief by the churches of the inspiration of
these twenty-two books, we see the necessity for the con
tinued presence of the apostles, and their approval of the
introduction and use of these books in the churches. We
can see, also, how impossible it was that, after so long a min
istry, any one should, subsequent to their death, have induced
any church to accept any new book to whose inspiration the
apostles had not testified ; impossible that many of them in
such circumstances should have accepted them ; still more
impossible that they should have received all without excep
tion, nay, without objection ; all, too, without leaving to us
one sign of hesitation.
Surely (we have already said it, but must repeat it), there
is not in history or in criticism an absurdity which may not be
admitted, if we allow to this supposition the slightest degree
of probability. Let us place ourselves for a moment in the
circumstances of those primitive Christians, and inquire how,
after a half-century of progress under the ministry of so many
inspired men, we should have received, our apostles being
dead, any new book which they had not given us in their life
time ; let us ask with what spirit of jealousy, on the contrary,
we should have been armed, after their decease, to repel
every novelty, to protest against every intrusion, to reject
every scripture which did not bear the unquestionable sanc
tion of those men of God.
We shall presently show how much the history of the five
later epistles adds to the weight of this argument.
We see, therefore, that there exists a logical and necessary

120 THE CANON.
connection between these two uncontested facts : the long
ministry of the apostles in the primitive church and the per
fect unanimity of this entire church on the homologomens;
and then another connection, still more necessary, between
these two facts and the authenticity of all these books.
If any one should to-day tell us that the author of a mod
ern book had watched for forty years over all its successive
editions in all Europe, that at the end of that time no one
could find among any of the booksellers of Europe the least
doubt concerning the authenticity of the book bearing his
name, should we not regard such unanimity as a sufficient
and unquestionable proof of its authenticity ? And yet, how
much more powerfully is this double guaranty given us for
the New Testament in the long superintendence of the authors
and the unanimity of the publishers and guardians of these
books ! Instead of one author, we have eight ; we have all
the apostles, vouchers one for the other ; we have men of
God ; we have their inspired companions, Mark, Luke, Sim
eon (Niger), Timothy, Apollos, Silas, Barnabas,1 and so many
others, who presided for half a century over the churches
of God. And, instead of the booksellers of Europe, we have
all the churches of Asia, and Europe, and Africa. And, in
stead of a single book, we have twenty, in respect to which
the most perfect unanimity of testimony is immediate, uni
versal, constant, and incontestable.
Still further : to appreciate more perfectly this double
guaranty, of so long a superintendence and of so perfect a
unanimity, there is one other characteristic feature of the
primitive church which we must keep in view. That is, the
relations so continued, so intimate, and so numerous, which
the apostles sustained to the churches, and the churches to
one another. This feature results from all the events of
their history, and all the traditions belonging to it. Many
examples of it are furnished, the exactness of which we can
not guarantee. They tell us, for instance, how the apostle
1 Acts xiii. 1, KpoQi/Tai; 2 Tim. i. 6; 1 Tim. iv. 14.

THE LONG CAREER OF THE APOSTLES. 121
John, in the close, of his career, chose for his residence that
great city of Ephesus, as the center of the oriental and occi
dental Christianity, from which he could stretch out his hand
to the churches of the two worlds. They tell us — and these
witnesses are both ancient and numerous (Caius,1 Eusebius,2
Jerome,8 Victorinus,4 Chrysostom,5 Theodore of Mopsuesta6)
— that the bishops of Asia presented themselves to him
in Ephesus, and requested that he would himself leave to
the churches of God a gospel which should complete the
others.' They tell us (Tertullian and Jerome 8 ) how a
priest of Ephesus had published, under the name of Paul,
a book entitled The Acts of Paul ; and, when the apostle
accused him of the imposture, he pleaded in his defense the
pious intention of honoring the memory of Paul. We re
call these statements among so many others, only to show
more distinctly the vigilance with which the apostles watched
the formation of the canon for half a century ; for we prefer
always to pass by traditions when we have the Scriptures
testifying on any point. The Epistles, in fact, and the Acts
of the Apostles sufficiently inform us of the constant care of
these men of God, and more especially of Paul, toward the
churches they founded. He himself declares, (2 Cor. xi. 28,)
"The care of the churches cometh daily upon me." And
these churches extended from Jerusalem to Illyricum, from
Rome to Macedonia and Galatia. He visited them continu
ally ; for this purpose he traversed the empire ; he was ship
wrecked four times in this service ; in perils of water, in
perils of robbers ; in perils of Jews and of Gentiles, in cities
1 About the year 196. In the famous canon called Muratori's, which
many attribute to him. (Kirchhofer, Geschichte des Canons, p. 1.)
2 H. E. iii. 24.
3 In Math. Procem.
4 In Apocal. Bibl. Patr. iii. 418.
» Auct. Incert. Montfaucon, viii. 132.
6 Catena in Joan, Corderii. Mill. N. T. p. 198; edit. 1723.
' If this were admitted to be true, it would not be inconsistent with the
theopneusty of this fourth gospel.
8 Tertullian De Baptism., 15 and 17. Jerome, Catal. Vir. 111. in Lnc. 7.
11

122 THE CANON.
and deserts ; in perils among false brethren ; in weariness
and painfulness, in cold and nakedness. He sent them his
fellow-laborers ; he received from them letters and messages ;
he inquired earnestly after their condition (1 Thess. iii. 5-8 ;
Phil. ii. 19-29) ; he wept in the prison in Rome on hearing
that some of his Philippian converts had gone astray; he
lived again if he heard that they stood fast in the Lord ; he
had a continual conflict of prayer for each one of them, and
even for such as- had never seen him ; he adjured them in
the Lord's name that his letters should be read by all the
brethren in one church, and then be sent to another ; like
Peter, recommending that all those of Paul be read with the
rest of the Scriptures (2 Pet. iii. 16). He constantly in
quired after them with the solicitude of a mother for the
infant she had nourished ; he watched with jealousy over
their doctrines ; was in anguish when they wandered ; — " who
is offended, and I burn not ?" he inquires ; — he travailed in
birth again for those who had strayed, until Christ should
be formed in them. These statements concerning this one
apostle are so abundantly sustained by his epistles, that we
need not indicate the particular passages in this place.
It is then fully manifest how, under the influence of such
a ministry, prolonged, in some cases, to fifty, sixty, and al
most to seventy years, it was impossible that any book should
be fraudulently or carelessly imposed upon the churches,
impossible that they should unanimously accept any book
which had not received the sanction of these men of God.
We can equally comprehend that, after the death of the
apostles, at the close of so long a ministry, it was inevita
ble that all these very churches should be penetrated, not
only with a religious respect for all the apostolical institutions,
but also with a jealous distrust of all instructions which had
not been sanctioned by them while on earth, especially of
every book which they had not placed in the sacred canon.
Thus it was that the last writings of those who survived the
greater part of the apostles, written at the close of their

NUMBER OF CHURCHES AT APOSTLES' DEATH. 123
lives, were seriously distrusted, even to the time of the
council of Nice, as we shall presently show at greater
length. But we shall also show that these five shorter books
of the second canon were, nevertheless, received by the great
majority, on account of the positive proofs of their authen
ticity which accompanied them ; and received especially by
those churches which were the best situated to judge of them,
since they were first directly addressed to them, and since
they were the most interested to reject them, if they had been
spurious. And we shall show that these very facts present
to us an admirable guaranty of the vigilance of the churches,
of the freedom of their action, and of the confidence with
which their unanimity for the twenty-two homologomens was
formed. In the mean time, we have to consider two other historical
facts still more important, which will furnish us new warrants
of our sacred canon, and which, joined to the great fact of
the unanimity of all the churches of the first centuries on the
twenty-two homologomens, prove, with an incomparable force,
the authenticity of all these books.
The Immense Number of the Churches at the Time of the
Apostles' Death.
The great rapidity of the church's conquests before the
death of the apostles, and her immense expansion before the
end of the first ceutury, is an astonishing fact, but as well
demonstrated as it is marvelous.
This new religion, which promised to annihilate every
other, and which, springing up amid the poor and the most
despised of the people, attacked all errors, stood face to face
against every passion of the human heart, and made no com
promise with the pride of the great, the pretensions of the
priesthood, or the prejudices of the people ; this religion,
which, while openly undertaking the overthrow of every false
god, however powerful its supporters, however splendid its

124 THE CANON.
rites, however ancient its worship ; this religion which was
preached at first only by the poor, and which commanded the
human race to recognize their God in the person of a Jew
ish carpenter, whom his own nation had rejected «nd executed
as an impostor; this religion, which had against it the peo
ple, their priests, their teachers, their magistrates, and kings ;
this religion, which required every man to take before God
the place of a criminal, and to renounce for it his goods and
his life ; this religion, always persecuted, without having
shed for three centuries any other blood than its own, — this
religion had, in forty years, already manifested a power
which presaged the conquest of the human race. In forty
year-:, it had spread over the earth ; like the Nile in Egypt, it
had flowed through the world with the waters of life. The
apostles had not yet finished their course, when missionary
churches, devoted and numerous, were seen in every country.
This remarkable fact has perhaps been too little noticed in
the study of the canon. Yet it is very significant in that
connection; while it is abundantly proved to us by both the
declarations of Scripture and the testimony of history.
The Scriptures leave us no doubt on this point. Paul,
after only seventeen years of his ministry, wrote to the Ro
mans (xvi. 26,) that then already the gospel was made
known to all nations; that he himself (xv. 19) had fully
preached it from Jerusalem, and round about, unto Illyricum ;
yea, where Christ was not named. The voice of the messen
gers of the glad tidings had gone out, like the sun (Ps. xix. 5),
to the ends of the earth (Rom. x. 18). Nor was this, in the
mouth of Paul, a poetical exaggeration. Judge then from
his labors what the whole college of apostles must have ac-
compli>hed. Moreover, in thus spreading the gospel over the
earth, the apostles had only done what their Lord had both
commanded them to do, and predicted should be accomplished.
Jcmis. in foretelling to them the destruction of Jerusalem,
which was to take place in thirty-six years, had declared to
them : " the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the

NUMBER OF CHURCHES AT APOSTLES' DEATH. 125
world, for a witness unto all nations ; and then shall the end
come" (Matt. xxiv. 14). "Go ye therefore and teach [or
disciple] all nations" (xxviii. 19). And this command
was so fully accomplished in a short time, that Mark, in
writing his gospel, could already say of the apostles,
(xvi. 20,) " And they went forth, and preached every
where " (Travray(pv) ; and that Paul, writing to the Colos-
sians, (about a.d. 60,) said to them, (i. 6,) " The gospel is
come unto you, as it is in all the world ; and bringeth forth
fruit." He even added, (verse 23,) " The gospel which ye
have heard, was preached to every creature which is under
heaven." And only four years after these words had been
written, this same gospel, violently persecuted by Nero, al
ready counted, Tacitus says, in the city of Rome alone, " an
immense multitude." Paul, six years before thus writing,
was preparing to go into Spain (Rom. xv. 24) ; and we may
even suppose that he did in fact preach there, when we hear
Clement of Rome (chap. v. of his 1st Epist. to Corinth.)
affirm that he went to the farthest limits of the West
(iwl to Tippa tt)s (Si'creojs) . But if the fact of this journey
of Paul into Spain remains uncertain, this is sure, that, in
the very year when he was preparing to visit Spain, the
Jewish Christians assembled in the city of Jerusalem alone
were more than fifty thousand, " a great many myriads."
James says (Acts xxi. 20 : irocrai pvpiddes). And at the
same time, so extensive had been the propagation of the
word of God in Italy by the obscure but incessant labor of
Christian fidelity, that, long before the appearance of any
apostle in the country, (Rom. xv. 20; 2 Cor. x. 15, 16.)
very many conversions had preceded the coming of Paul.
The faith of" the Romans was already famed through the
world when he wrote them his epistle (Rom. i. 8). And
when, three years later, he arrived for the first time in
Italy, he already found brethren near Naples, at the port of
Puteoli, ready to receive him ; and also at the Appii Forum,
seventeen leagues from Rome , and, yet nearer, at the Three
11*

126 THE CANON.
Taverns. And, only six or seven years later, before the
apostle had laid down his life for Jesus Christ, the Christians
of that great capital, forming an immense multitude, were
already suffering, in crowds, the most horrible persecutions at
the hand of imperial cruelty.
We have already remarked that, to render these impor
tant facts incontestable, we still have, besides the testimony
of Scripture, that of two of the most shining names of Roman
antiquity, both cotemporary with Paul, both pagans, both pro
foundly prejudiced against Christianity, both consular men,
both men of letters, but engaged in the leading events of
their time, and writing only what they had witnessed. I
speak of Tacitus and of the younger Pliny ; the one born
A. D. 61, the other A. d. 64; the one consul a. d. 97, the
other three years later.
Tacitus wrote, under the form of " annals," the history of
his day, from the death of Augustus to that of Nero. In
his XV.th book, having reached the eleventh year of this
prince, that is, A. d. 64, when Paul was still preaching, he
speaks of the terrible fire which ravaged almost the whole
capital of the empire, and which all attributed to the malice
of Nero. " Eleven of the fourteen sections of Rome had
then been burned. To put a stop to the public rumors, Nero
sought out criminals, and subjected to the most cruel tortures
the infamous and despised wretches whom the people called
Christians. Christ, whose name they bore, had been con
demned to death by Pontius Pilate under Tiberius ; which
for the moment suppressed this execrable superstition. But
quickly the torrent broke forth anew, not only in Judea,
where it began, but even in Rome itself, where all the
sewers of the universe meet and disgorge their contents.
They began by seizing those who avowed themselves Chris
tians, and then, on their deposition, an immense multi
tude, convicted less of burning Rome than of hating man
kind." An immense multitude (multitudo ingens) : such is the
language of Tacitus as to the number of the Christians that

NUMBER OF CHURCHES AT APOSTLES' DEATH. 127
Rome contained already even in Paul's lifetime. The in
credulous Gibbon says on this subject : " The most obstinate
skepticism is compelled to respect the truth of this extraor
dinary fact, which is also confirmed to us by the exact Sueto
nius ; for this historian also mentions the punishments which
Nero inflicted on the Christians."
At the same time we also have, in regard to the multitude
of Christians in Asia, a testimony of Pliny which is equally
authentic and valuable. The intimate friend of Tacitus, and
standing high in the confidence of Trajan, Pliny was the pro
consul of the beautiful provinces of Bithynia and Pontus,
and he had received from his master an order to exterminate
the Christians. But, when he had entered on this iniquitous
work, his conscience was affrighted by the immense number
of the victims, and he wrote the emperor a letter, which is
still extant, (L. x. Epist. 97.) seeking to obtain some abate
ment from the rigor of the original orders. This remarkable
letter should be read. It was written in the year 103, while
John was yet living. We shall, for brevity's sake, cite only
so much as relates to the immense number of Christians, and
their fidelity ; for, on the shores of the Black Sea, as on the
banks of the Tiber, to use the language attributed to Julian
the Apostate, their persecutors saw them " arrive in swarms
driven to martyrdom, as bees to their hive (tanquam apes ad
alvearia, sic illi ad martyria)."
" What, then, Sire, shall I do ? " writes Pliny to Trajan.
" This has been my course toward those brought before me
.as Christians. I have asked them, Are you Christians ? On
their affirmative response I have repeated the question a
second and a third time ; meanwhile threatening them with
death. If they persisted, I had them executed ; for, what
ever might be the nature of their belief, I deemed at least
their resistance and obstinacy worthy of punishment. They
affirm that their whole crime consists in meeting together on
a certain day before sunrise, to sing alternately hymns to
Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves with an oath to

128 7 THE CANON.
commjt no perjury, adultery, theft, or falsehood. After that
they separate, to meet again without disorder at a repast of
which they partake in common. These statements having
been made by them, I deemed it advisable to examine under
torture two of their female servants, who, they said, exercised
a certain kind of ministry among them ; but I was able to
find nothing more than an excessive and miserable supersti
tion. What, then, was to be done ? For it seemed to me an
exceedingly grave case, particularly in view of the great
numbers of both sexes, of every rank and age, who are either
now exposed to death, or who will be (multi enim omnis aeta-
tis, omnis ordinis, utriusque sexus, etiam vocantur in pericu
lum et vocabuntur). Nor is it merely in the cities that the
contagion of this superstition is spread ; it is also in the vil
lages, and even the rural districts (neque enim civitates tan
tum, sed vicos etiam atque agros, superstitionis istius contagio
pervagata est)."
In a word, this great fact which we point out is constantly
produced by all the ancient apologists as an incomparable
event; often eloquently, triumphantly, as it should be. Read,
for example, the beautiful pages of Tertullian, or those of
Arnobius,1 or those of Minutius Felix.2 " We are so nu
merous," they said to the Romans, " that if we should leave
your state, we should bring it to ruin."
" We are but of yesterday," says Tertullian to the Roman
government,8 " and we have filled every part of your domin
ion (hesterni sumus et vestra omnia implevimus), your cities,
your islands, your fortresses, your guilds, your council-cham
bers, your regiments, your palace, your senate, your forum.
We leave you only your temples (sola vobis relinquimus
templa).! AVe could even make war on you without taking
arms ; it would sutfice merely to cease to live with you ; for,
if the Christians who compo.-e so great a multitude (tanta
1 Adv. Gentes, Lib. ii. p. 44, Lugd. Batav. 1651.
2 Dialog, of Octavius.
8 Apol. Lib. ii. chap, xxxvii.

NUMBER OF CHURCHES AT APOSTLES' DEAT^H. ,129
vis hominum) had abandoned you to retreat into some" other.
country, it would have been the ruin of your power, and your
solitude would have terrified you." Again he says else
where,1 " The Gothic peoples, the various tribes of the Moors,
all the regions of Spain, all those of Gaul, and even those
of Britain, yet inaccessible to the Romans, have submitted
to Christ, as well as the Sarmatians, the Dacii, the Ger
mans, the Scythians, and nations yet unknown." Wherefore
this father expresses his wonder that the empire of Jesus
Christ should have extended itself in so short a time far
ther than that of Nebuchadnezzar, of Alexander, or of the
Romans. This period of the church, signalized by such prodigious
accessions, extends to the reign of Adrian (a. d. 117-138).
Christianity had then abundantly penetrated even to the bar
barians, and numerous churches had been founded among the
Egyptians, the Celts, and the Germans. We may here cite
the words of Irenajus 2 against the gnostics of his day,8 ap
pealing to " the great number of barbarous nations " (ttoXXo.
edvrj twv Bap/Sdpoiv), who, he affirms, had already been Chris
tianized before the appearing of the gnostic sects. Now it
is perfectly understood that the origin of these sects is placed
by the learned in the age of John, even before the publica
tion of his gospel.4
If we credit the respectable Armenian scholar, Moses of
Chorene,6 Christianity had penetrated among the Syrians,
Armenians, and Persians at a very early period. In fine, we
must read the thirty-seventh chapter of the third book of
i Adv. Jud. Lib. i.
2 Haeres. iii. 402. He speaks, too, (Lib. i. chap. 2,) of the church dissem
inated through all the habitable' world (na&' btyc rr/c olnovpivng) and even
to the ends of the earth (Sag nepdruv -fng ytjg).
8 The heretics of his time, like those of our day, called their systems the
Science (TvCimc), called themselves " the Men of Science."
1 See Bunsen's Hippolytus, tom. i. p. 236.
6 He has left a History of Armenia. Born, it is said, in A. d. 370, he kept
the arcliives before being himself archbishop of PakreVant.

130 THE CANON.
Eusebius to form any just conception of both the prodigious
extension of the gospel under Trajan, and the admirable
activity of the churches to promote that end. Through
some inflated language you will discover this great histori
cal fact, "that the immediate disciples of the apostles, build
ing on the foundation laid by these men of God, had scat
tered the seed of the kingdom of heaven in every part of
the inhabited world (to. o-oirfipio. o-n-eppara ttJs tuV oipaviav
/3ao-iA«'as dva. Tracrav eis ttAcitos iirio-rreipovTes rnv o'lKOvpevnv).
Many of them had given away their property to labor as
evangelists, to announce Christ to those who did not yet
know him, and to make them acquainted with the scrip
tures of the divine gospels."
It is, then, obvious that this wonderful fact gives immense
weight to the testimony of the universal church to the ho
mologomens of our sacred canon. But, to seize the argument
in all its force, we must consider in their unity the three
great facts which we just noticed ; for we think they form by
their triple influence a powerful three-stranded cable around
these twenty-two homologomens, maintaining their apostoli
cal authenticity and rendering it indestructible. First, the
continuance of the personal ministry of the apostles among
(Ihe churches during the entire first century ; next, the im
mense number of the churches founded by them throughout
the world during this long ministry ; lastly, the constant,
^perfect, and universal unanimity of these innumerable
churches in regard to these books, both during the lives
of the apostles and in the succeeding age. Whoever will
, attentively regard these three facts thus together will recog
nize that, in respect to brilliant testimony, literary history
offers nothing comparable to it in any age or part of the
i world. We here gladly introduce the words of Thiersch 1 after he
had presented similar arguments : " I trust it has now been
i Versuch zur Wiederherstellung des hist. Standpuncts fur die Kritik der
N. T. Schriften (1845) ; chap. vi.

THE ANAGNOSIS. 131
shown to the opponents of the first canon how, in their sup
positions respecting the characteristics of the first half- cen
tury, they have left the domain of history to amuse them
selves in that of fable. They would fain suppose that in a
time when the body of Christians and their bishops were
certainly not a band of counterfeiters, we had men of such
extraordinary skill (yet religious men) that they could, in a
manner altogether incomprehensible, impose their fictions on
all the Christians of the world, as on a stupid mass, blind
and dumb to idiocy, and make them accept with closed eyes
these spurious documents as apostolical scriptures, and those
transmitted them from a believing antiquity ! To this issue
must come this strange idea that any one of the homologo
mens could have been a spurious book, if you bring it into
the light of history. And we must avow that the incredulity
in respect to the first canon, when perseveringly maintained,
requires such a belief of things incredible and monstrous,
that, in comparison with this complaisance, the blindest cre
dulity of certain Christians for certain miraculous legends is
a mere trifle."
But we have not yet completed our array of facts ; for
we have one still more important to present, which gives
a superabundant weight to our proof. We allude to the
anagnosis (di/ayvoio-ts), or public reading of the scrip
tures.

The Anagnosis.
The regular and constant usage of publicly reading the
scriptures in all the Christian churches is a cardinal and
creative fact in respect to the canon. This fact is so impor
tant as not only to entitle it to the first place, but we must
see that on this usage rests the entire history of this sacred
collection. The anagnosis is the formative cause and real
foundation of the canon, the only explanation of its origin ;
it alone secured its preservation ; alone caused the admirable

132 THE CANON.
unanimity of the churches in regard to all the homologomens
from the beginning, and for two centuries ; alone, too, secured
afterward the oecumenical unanimity of all the churches in
regard to the entire canon.
The modern opponents of our holy books, especially in
Germany, have so well perceived the invincible force of
this usage in establishing the authenticity of the first canon,
that they have applied all their strength to disprove the fact
that the New Testament Scriptures were read in the primitive
churches, and to show that it began in the latter half of the
second century. But these efforts have been fruitless ; the
existence of this usage from the earliest period, and its uni
versality, can be fully demonstrated. We shall see that it
mounts up to the apostolical times ; that it belongs to the
very genesis of the church universal ; that, at the beginning
of the second century, in all the then ancient churches, they
were perfectly attached to it ; and that in all those afterwards
founded by the thousands under Trajan and Adrian, that is,
from a. d. 98 to 138, the anagnosis commenced with and
constituted their very existence.
Very naturally, therefore, and in the logical course of
events, this usage commenced with the church itself. The
apostles and their divine Master had already found it estab
lished in their national synagogues. The anagnosis had
existed for ages in respect to Moses and the prophets ; all
the synagogues were founded for this purpose ; it was or
dained, the Jewish doctors say, that wherever ten Israelites
were found, a synagogue should be established, and that in
every synagogue there should be an ark containing the
Scriptures, and that everywhere these Scriptures should be
publicly read to the faithful every Sabbath. Now it is well
known that in our Saviour's day the Jews were scattered
every where, and that, as James says (Acts xv. 21), "Moses
of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being
read in the synagogues every Sabbath day."
And, on the other hand, it is a historical fact that the

THE ANAGNOSIS. 133
primitive church was modeled after the pattern of the syn
agogue.1 All the Christian churches for many years con
sisted entirely of converted Jews, whether in Judea, Sama-
"ria, or the Gentile cities. In receiving the gospel, all the
new Christians preserved the forms and habits of their wor
ship as practiced in the synagogue : their ministers were
called chazan among the congregations in Aramean, or bish
ops among the Hellenists. Each of them had three parna-
sin or deacons. The chazan every Sabbath selected seven
coreim or anagnosis (readers) to read the holy Scriptures.
He stood near the reader, watching and correcting his read
ing. The other days of the week he had readers also, but
not so many.2 Thus this holy usage, which had existed in
all the synagogues as their most indispensable act, passed into
the Christian churches formed in the synagogue, continued
in its likeness, and composed of converted Jews exclusively.
These first Christians could not imagine a meeting without
these holy readings ; and no one would have entertained the
idea of a religious assembly without the anagnosis. It was
thus that this institution, naturally established in all the
assemblies of the new people of God, necessarily so consti
tuted them that it would at once be practiced in the natural
course of things, even if there had been no requirement of
the kind in the apostolical writings. But there was such
requirement, as we shall show.
The anagnosis, or scripture-reading in the Christian assem
blies, then, preceded the appearing of the New Testament,
instead, as some have pretended, of having been introduced
at a later period. They read in them the Old Testament,
just as in the synagogues ; and this regular reading of Moses,
the Psalms, and the Prophets was exclusively in use for the
fifteen years which preceded the appearing of the first apos
tolical epistles in the innumerable churches formed by the
1 Whately's Essay on the Kingdom of Christ.
2 See Lightfoot, Harm., p. 479 ; Hebr. and Talmud. Studies on the Gos
pels, vol. xi. p. 88. Whately too.
12

134 THE CANON.
apostles, and particularly in those which Paul had gathered,
before A. d. 49 or 51, in Samaria, Syria, Arabia, Cyprus,
Galatia, Lycaonia, Mysia, Pisidia, Thrace, and Macedon.
It is, in fact, in A. d. 49 that we place (after Orosus1 ) the
decree of Claudius against the Jews in Rome (Acts xviii.
2) ; and we know that it was then that Paul, with Silas and
Timothy, wrote to the Thessalonians the two beautiful epis
tles which were, as it appears, the beginning of the written
word of the New Testament.2
The practice of reading the Old Testament must, as al
ready remarked, have passed from the assemblies of the
synagogue to the assemblies of the church, from the very
time of the apostles and the beginning of evangelical preach
ing ; for, the year 70 having come, Jerusalem having been
destroyed, the temple burned, the Jewish congregations scat
tered, and all the apostles dead, the spirit of the Christian
churches (as all their history shows) had become too hostile
to the Jews and Judaizing Christians to have admitted of
borrowing any thing further from them, or copying from
their institutions.
But also, in these very assemblies of the church, the cus
tom of reading, besides the Scriptures of the old dispensa
tion, the Scriptures of the apostles and prophets of the new
(so far as then published), was necessarily adopted by all
the churches and believers as at once most natural and in
dispensable. Were not the writings of the apostles in their
1 VII. 6. The year 3 of Claudius. Orosus derives it from Josephus.
Others place it in 2. Suetonius (25) speaks of this decree, in the life of
Claudius, without mentioning the date.
2 We make no pretensions to determine here the epoch when the gospel
of Matthew was written; for it is very probable, as Lardner supposes, that
no one of the four gospels preceded the council of Jerusalem (Acts xv.), if
that of Mark should be placed later (Mark xvi. 20), and that of Luke shortly
after the book of Acts appeared (A. d. 60, 61, or 62). Yet the fact related
by Eusebius (H. E. Lib. v. chap. 10) of the gospel of Matthew having been
written in Hebrew, which the apostle Bartholomew must have carried into
India, would seem to place the first gospel very near the first epistles of
Paul, or rather, even before these.

THE ANAGNOSIS. 135
eyes of superior authority to even the writings of the Old
Testament ? Did not these men of God, in the time when
they were writing them, perform miracles displaying even
greater power than was shown by the mightiest of the old
prophets ? Were they not themselves, as apostles and proph
ets, the twelve founders of the church ? (Eph. ii. 20.) And
moreover, did not their writings (the gospel of John, for
example, and his Apocalypse) claim to be as truly inspired
from heaven as Isaiah or the Pentateuch ? Why, then, and
how, by what right and for what reasons, could they, whilst
reading every Sabbath the Scriptures of the old prophets,
leave in silence the Scriptures of the new ; and, whilst
hearing those of the prophets who had divinely announced
the Son of Man, could they leave in silence those prophets
who had heard him himself and had divinely proclaimed him,
" God bearing them witness, both with signs and gifts of the
Holy Spirit " (Heb. ii. 4) ?
Can we imagine that all these congregations, after the
death of the apostles who had founded them, would content
themselves with reading publicly only the Old Testament,
to be followed by merely the Xoyov, the unpremeditated dis
courses1 of ministers having neither the miraculous powers
of the apostles nor the charisms of those who immediately
followed them ; and all this to the utter neglect of the apos
tolical writings ? The thought is inadmissible.
If, as some opponents of the canon say, the public recog
nition of the books of the New Testament by having them
read did not exist until the close of the second century, then
two historical impossibilities must be disposed of. First, that
a revolution could take place in the public worship of all the
churches in the world so utterly incompatible with the con
servative and traditional spirit which history attributes to
the Christians of that epoch. Second, that so great an
event, unequaled in the records of that period, could be
accomplished without producing any excitement, without
i Justin Martyr in his great Apol. chap. 67.

136 THE CANON.
being mentioned by any one of the fathers, even by Eusebius,
who records so minutely the recollections of those primitive
days, and without being mentioned by Irenasus, in whose
youth this astonishing fact must have occurred? These
difficulties need only to be mentioned to show the error of
the theory in question. No one has ever been able to
remove them.
Thus, to him who contemplates in the light of these facts
the primitive churches engaged in their worship, and lending
every Sunday a respectful ear to the voice of their readers,
nothing is more simple to imagine than the gradual forma
tion of the first canon ; nothing is more naturally explained
than the unanimity of all the churches in regard to it, and
their constant preservation of it. It was all done without
dispute and without noise, by the calm and regular process
of the anagnosis or weekly reading. Let us merely be pres
ent at these meetings of the primitive period, and everything
is explained. To arrange this matter there was no need of
councils, of agitation, of efforts, or of decrees. The apostles
had no occasion to issue any orders to institute this reading
(although they did give them) : it existed before them, " of
old time" (Acts xv. 21) ; it was practised during their lives;
it was continued after their death. They had, at most, only
to sanction it by their approbation and their participation in
it. And when they had all disappeared from the earth, the
Christian churches had everywhere acquired such a perfect
knowdedge of their sacred canon in consequence of this con
tinual reading during half a century, that you would often
have seen simple believers who knew the whole Bible by
heart, and could correct the reader if he made a mistake in
a single word.1 This the historians attest. It is apparent
that there was no need of anything else to make the canon
i Such, for example, in Palestine, as John the Blind; St. Anthony in
Egypt; Servulus in Rome, (Euseb. De Martyris PaUsst, cap. xiii. p. 344;
Augustine ; De Doctr. Christ, in Prologo, tom. iii. p. 3. — Greg. Mag. Horn.
xv. in Evangelia, tom. iii. p. 40.)

THE ANAGNOSIS. 137
and publish it ; to publish it in its purity ; to sanction it
everywhere ; to render it irrevocable.
We see, then, that the reading of the Old Testament had
never ceased, either in the synagogue or in the church ; it
was practised in the first assembling of Christians in Jerusa
lem ; it was always an indispensable part of the public ser
vice ; it afterward passed from the congregations of the Jew
ish Christians to those of the Gentile converts ; it followed,
for example, the faithful of Corinth in the house of Justus
(Acts xviii. 7), and of the synagogue of Ephesus to the
school of Tyrannus (Acts xix. 9, 10) ; for all knew, as Paul
had said (2 Tim. iii. 15), that by the reading of the Scrip
tures the man of God is reproved, instructed in righteousness,
made wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. And afterward, as one new epistle or a new gospel
was given by an apostle to the churches, they hastened to
unite with the reading of the Old Testament that of the new
prophets, which they recognized as proceeding from the same
divine spirit, and which they knew to contain even a greater
degree of his influence.
Perhaps, though we do not affirm it, the reading of these new
books was not as frequent during the time when the churches
still had in the midst of them either apostles possessing emi
nent signs of apostleship (2 Cor. xii. 12), or men endowed
with gifts conferred on them for general edification through
the laying of hands by these very apostles. At the same time
it remains always evident that the churches, once deprived
of the personal instruction of these men of God, and having
no longer in their possession only the writings left by them,
were very careful not to abandon their use to the personal
piety of each Christian in his house, but required them to be
publicly and solemnly read for the edification of all.
Thus powerfully but silently was effected in the churches
of God the successive recognition of all the books of our
sacred canon; and, as Dr. Hug says,1 "just as the publi-
1 Leonard Hug, Einleit. Stuttgard, 1, 108.
12*

138 THE CANON.
cation of a work of profane literature was anciently made
by its being recited before the assembled friends of the au
thor,1 so for the books of the New Testament, it was their
anagnosis in the church to which they were respectively sent,
that caused them quickly to pass into the common treasury
of the sacred books for the whole church of God."
At the same time, while we have showed how, by the sim
ple logic of facts, this anagnosis of the apostolical Scriptures
would already by necessity have been established in the
primitive churches, even if there had been no order of the
apostles to that effect, yet we must bear in mind that this
order was given by them ; and we easily believe that they
composed their epistles and other writings with the intention
of having them read in the religious assemblies.
As to the apostolical requirement, we must notice with
what remarkable solemnity it was made by Paul in that
very epistle which was the first book of the New Testa
ment published (1 Thess. v. 27).2 " I charge you by the
Lord" he writes to the Thessalonians, " that this epistle be
read unto all the holy brethren." He adjures them by the
Lord ; and when, toward the end of his course he wrote from
Rome to the Colossians. he gave them the same command :
" When this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read
also in the church of the Laodiceans (ko! iv rfj AaoSuceW
iKKXna-ia, avayvwcrGfj) ; and that ye likewise read the epistle
(which will be sent you) from Laodicea." (Col. iv. 16.)8
Could the churches, in receiving such directions or orders,
fail to understand that these letters of the apostles of Christ
should stand with the other sacred writings in the public
readings? It must also be remarked that the greater part of these
books were addressed not to individuals, but to public men,
or particular churches, or to all the church as a body. We
1 See an example of this in Tacitus. De Oratorib. cap. 7.
2 Canon, Lib. i. chap. iv.
8 T#v in Aaodiiceiag, believed to be the Epistle to the Ephesians.

THE ANAGNOSIS. 139
might, moreover, point out, as Thiersch has done, in our
Scriptures many allusions to the anagnosis as an existing fact
in the worship of the times. We there see that the apostles,
without giving any superfluous orders about doing that which
was already in universal usage, speak as if they expected
their books to be publicly read in the assemblies of the church.
It is to this usage, for instance, that allusion is made in the
beginning of the Apocalypse, (Rev. i. 3,) " Blessed is he
that readeth." Here the verb, Mr. Thiersch observes, is in
the singular, as designating the anagnost, or public reader.
And blessed are " they that hear the words of this prophecy."
Here the verb is plural, as designating the audience. Why,
says Mr. Thiersch, the change from the singular number to
the plural, if not in reference to the public reading ? The
seven appeals in the same book (ii. 7, 11, 17, 29 ; iii. 6, 13,
22) refer equally to this usage : "He that hath an ear, let
him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches" or assemblies.
To this usage, reference is made in those words of John's
gospel, (xx. 31 ; xix. 35,) which show very clearly that the
apostle, in writing them, had before his mental eyes the pub
lic meeting of the saints, and the public scriptural readings.
Now these things " are written that ye might believe." To
this usage again those words refer in the epistle to the Colos-
sians, (iv. 17,) addressed to Archippus, and are immediately
connected by the copulative with the order he had just given
for the public reading of this letter : " Likewise read the
epistle [which will come to you] from Laodicea, and say to
Archippus, ' Take heed to the ministry which thou hast re
ceived in the Lord, that thou fulfil it.' " Dr. Thiersch1 here
remarks again : " Placed as they are, these words appear to
be addressed to Archippus, as to the person directing the
public readings, and to exhort him to discharge this impor
tant ministry faithfully.
But what quotation of Scripture can be comparable, as a
1 Versuch zur Wiederherstellung des hist. Standpuncts. Die. p. 349,
et seq.

140 THE CANON.
monument of the anagnosis, to this famous passage in Peter,
(2 Pet. iii. 16,) in which the author mentions " all the epis
tles of Paul," and complains of the abuse of them by many
rash men. You can there behold the church in the very
attitude of the anagnosis. It is apparent from this passage
that, — 1. The author here addresses himself to the whole body
of the sacred assemblies. 2. Paul had already, in his day,
written to those assemblies, and all his epistles then known
were read in the midst of them ; for the author mentions
them all, (irao-as,) without designating their number. 3. Paul
had written them a sufficient time before this period, to have
them become known through the anagnosis by all the
churches. 4. If many members of these churches did not
understand the doctrines, and wrested them to their own de
struction, yet it was a thing already received among them,
according to the intention of the author, that all these letters
of Paul should be ranked among " the other Scriptures" of
the Old Testament, (cos kcu tos Xoi-n-a.^ ypcupds,) which had
been read for so many centuries in the public assemblies of
the church.
There could scarcely be conceived a testimony more posi
tive, if we regard this epistle merely as a document of the
first century, and without reference to its author ; for we
show elsewhere (chap. iv. sees. 3 and 5) its priority to the
epistle of Jude ; and Thiersch also, in citing it as we do, and
for the- same purpose, is careful to add : " And if any one
should here deny the canonicity of Jude, what difference
does it make, since even the most incredulous critic can be
forced not to place this writing later than the appearing of
the gnostic sect ; that is to say, in the second part of the
apostolical age ? "
Thus, then, this epistle, even for those who would refuse
to attribute it to the apostle Peter, whose work it claims to
be, is an irrefutable monument of the anagnosis in the first
century of the church.
We should, moreover, if we studied the primitive Chris-

THE ANAGNOSIS. 141
tians in their habits and their language, find them universally
a people who, for a long time, were accustomed to the public
reading of the Scriptures. For instance, the frequent men
tion of the anagnosts, or readers,1 who held rank above the
deacons : 2 in the East, the custom in all Christian congrega
tions, even the poorest, of preserving in their oratories a copy
of the sacred books ; 8 the mention of persons, and even of
blind men, entirely unlettered, who, like John, the martyr of
Palestine, had learned the Scriptures by heart, simply by
hearing them read in the churches ; 4 the fact of those mem
bers of the church who corrected the reader if he merely
substituted one word for that in the text ; 5 those translators
whom they took care to keep in their meetings, for such of
the audience as did not understand the language read, — as
in Syria for those who did not understand the Greek or
Aramean, and in Africa for those who spoke only the Punic
or the Latin ; 6 and, finally, the usage continued even to the
time of Tertullian,7 among the churches founded by the
apostles, of respectfully preserving the original letters re
ceived by them from these men of God. This appears to be
his meaning in the following words : " Go through the apos-
1 Cyprian Epis. 24, 33, 34, 29, 38, [others 33] ; Bingham, Antiq. vol. ii.
p. 27."
2 Hodie Diaconus qui eras Lector. Tertull. de Prescript, cap. 41.
8 Scholtz prolog, to Crit. edit, of the N. T.
< Euseb. de Mart. Palest, cap. 13.
5 Bingham, xii. 3, 17 ; xiii. 4, 10. We might cite still later, as a contin
uation of the habits thus contracted, and as an example of this earnest
solicitude to prevent the slightest change of the sacred text, with what
zeal Spiridion resisted Triphilus when in a discourse pronounced before the
bishops, he, for a phrase of the gospel, substituted a term which he deemed
more, elegant, (Sozomen, Hist. XI. chap. i.). We might cite also with Au
gustine, (Epist. 71 and 85,) what a commotion was made in the church of
Africa by the change of a single word, which affected neither faith nor
morals. The faithful demanded Ifls reasons, and obliged their bishop to
remove the scandal by a serious apology. We see from all these facts how
familiar the text of the Scriptures was rendered to the Christians of the first
centuries. 6 Bingham, Ibid., xiii. 4, 5; iii. 13, 4.
' De Prescript. Hajretic. chap. 30, p. 212.

142 THE CANON.
tolical churches, where you find still the very pulpits of the
apostles,1 and where you will hear read their authentic letters
(apud quas authenticce litterce eorum recitantur)."
But what may still more fully satisfy certain persons in
regard to the high antiquity of the anagnosis of the New
Testament is, the testimony of Justin Martyr, only thirty-six
years after the death of the apostle John. This distinguished
man belonged to Palestine by his birth, to Egypt by his
studies, to Asia Minor by his travels, and to the church of
Italy by his long residence in Rome as head of a Christian
school. He was converted from Pagan philosophy to the
Christian faith, a. d. 133 ; and it was in his famous apology,2
presented to Antoninus Pius, (a. d. 139,) that he speaks of
the anagnosis. His defence of primitive Christianity is the
most ancient which has come down to us ; and that which
renders it particularly valuable in the question before us is,
neither its high antiquity alone, nor its eminently public, not
to say official character, but the fact that the monuments of
that period, whether in profane or ecclesiastical history, are
very rare. The epoch of the deaths of the later apostles,
as that of the cotemporary reigns of Nerva and Trajan,8 is
historically very obscure,4 although immediately preceded
and followed by very brilliant periods, for both the records
of the church and of the empire. As to the documents
which might make us acquainted with the habits of the first
Christians in their worship, we are reduced to great poverty.
1 Percurre ecclesias apostolicas apud quas ipsae adhuc cathedrae aposto
lorum suis locis president (or prsesidentur).
2 In chap. 67. — We refer to the greater apology, which was also the first,
although generally printed after the other, composed twenty-four years
later, and presented to the Roman Senate under the reign of Marcus
Aurelius. 8 From a. D. 96 to 117.
* The great number of the eminent historians of this epoch, so brilliant in
the archives of Rome, has not prevented this obscurity; the greater part have
perished; and you can find nothing scarcely of the glorious reign of Trajan,
but in the letters of Pliny, in the medals, and in the abridgment which we
have of the works of Dion.

THE ANAGNOSIS. 143
Commencing with a. d. 53, when Paul describes to us what
took place in the church of Corinth, (1 Cor. xi. xiv.) and
going forward to A. D. 217, when Tertullian, in his turn,
reveals to us the worship of his time, we can find only two
other descriptions of the Christian assemblies of those remote
days. And of these, the first is only that of a Pagan (the
proconsul Pliny) ; J the other that of Justin Martyr, thirty-two
years after Pliny.
Let it then be noticed in the testimony of Justin, that if
he there is describing the worship of Christians in his day,
it is not for the purpose of informing future generations, but
simply to prove their innocence to their persecutors, and es
pecially to the emperor Antoninus.
" On the day called Sunday," he says, " there is an assem
bly2 of all those residing in cities and the country ; and then
the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets
are read as long as possible.8 Then, when the reader has
finished his part, the president (irpoeo-Tois) delivers an exhor
tation to encourage the audience in the imitation of these
noble examples." *
Nothing more decisive could be had than this brief descrip
tion to show us the rank and the important place which " the
reading of the apostles and prophets " already held, in the
religious assemblies only thirty-six years after the death of
John. We may here also recognize, at first glance, the perfect
resemblance of this primitive worship to that of the syna
gogue ; for, in reading Justin Martyr here, we should imagine
we were present with Paul and Barnabas in that meeting in
Pisidia, which Luke has so well described, seventy-five years
i Lib. i. chap. iv. See Canon, chap. ii. sec. 2.
2 o-weXevau; yiverai.
3 Kal ra cmouvnuovevp-aTa r&v (moorohuv fj to. ovyyp&uuara .ruv
ispotynTOV iivayivitdKerai pexpt iyXaPeL-
4 AUt Tubyov rnv vovdeaiav xal izpoKhjaiv ri/g ruv Kak&v rovrov
jupqaeag •Koieirai.

144 THE CANON.
before. He says, they " went into the synagogue on the
Sabbath-day, and sat down. And after the reading of the
law and the prophets, (or, as Justin says, ' the anagnost hav
ing finished,') the rulers of the synagogue (the- 7rjooeoT(uYes
of Justin) sent unto them, saying, ' Ye men and brethren, if
ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on,'
(el eo-Ti Adyos iv vpiv TrapaKXyjcrecos,) (it is the Sta Xoyov of
Justin)." Many efforts have been recently made in Germany to
avoid the pressure of this testimony of Justin. Some have
tried to see in the phrase " memoirs of the apostles " nothing
but apocryphal gospels ; but Hug, Winer, Biedermann, Otto,
and others have done justice to this singular evasion. Others
still have tried to find ill it the four gospels merely, to the
exclusion of the other books of the New Testament ; but
Credner1 and Thiersch 2 have not found it difficult to show,
by felicitous citations from Irenasus, (Lib. ii. chap. 27,) and
from the apostolical constitutions, (Lib. ii. chap. 59,) that, by
such expressions, Justin means evidently the Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments.
Let us, then, adopt the conclusion, that this great fact of
the regular and public reading of the New Testament is an
institution beginning with the church itself; that it explains
the perfect unanimity (otherwise inexplicable) of all the
churches in regard to the twenty-two homologomens ; that,
in connection with this unanimity, it would by itself be an
irrefragable proof of the authenticity of these sacred books,
and that it makes the intrusion of any illegitimate book into
the sacred canon, after the death of the apostles, an impossi
bility, — an impossibility that such an intrusion should have
been allowed in all the churches of the world, and peculiarly
an impossibility that this could have been effected without
causing innumerable remonstrances ; an impossibility, in
1 Beitrage zur Einleit. in die biblischen Schriften, I. (1832,) p. 60.
Credner speaks only of Irenasus.
2 The same work as quoted above, VI. p. 350, etc.

FOUR KINDS OF MONUMENTS. 145
fine, that the clamor of these remonstrances, if they had taken
place, should not have reached us.
But we pass to the monuments of the canon ; that is to
say, to the traces it has left in the literature of the first Chris
tian centuries.

SECTION IV.
THE VARIOUS MONUMENTS OF THE CANON.
Four kinds of Monuments.
However powerful the arguments thus far presented by
us, we are still called on to adduce new proofs taken from the
writers of the primitive church ; and complaints have often
been made of the pretended insufficiency of the testimonies
to the first canon furnished by its literature. We shall now
produce those testimonies.
The monuments which the canon has left us of its oecu
menical use and its authority are of four or five orders.
First, the versions of the New Testament which were early
made in various languages, particularly in Latin and in Sy
riac. But we have spoken sufficiently of these in our first
chapter. In the second place, the few but very conclusive writings
of the second century. We shall there distinguish the Chris
tians whose writings remain as belonging to the first or the
second half of the century.
Thirdly, the numerous and involuntary testimonies ren
dered to the New Testament by the ancient opponents of the
truth ; that is, on the one side, the skeptics of the second
century who attacked Christianity; and, on the other, the
heretics who at that time tormented the church.
Fourthly, the apostolical fathers, and even the more recent
Scriptures of the New Testament.
13

146 THE CANON.
To enter upon this review, however, with the more clear
ness, and to avoid superfluous citations, let us first fix the
bounds of our field of research.

The Field of Investigation.
This field ought not to extend beyond the first and second
centuries. It would be useless to go farther, since the ration
alists, who are the most violent against the authenticity of our
sacred books, recognize that, from the days of Origen, or the
beginning of the third century, everything was settled in the
church concerning this great question. It is not until we
come down to the celebrated Strauss,1 that we find a denial
of the fact, that, " at the time of this father, our sacred books
were universally received as coming from the apostles or
their companions." That, then, which our adversaries con
test is, the anterior testimonies, the voice of the first and
second centuries. Thus, in order to establish our proofs by
the literature of the church, we have only to pass it in re
view, commencing with the closing part of the reign of Sep
timus Severus, about A. d. 203, and going backward to the
close of Paul's ministry and Nero's reign, a. d. 68. It is
between these two terms, over the only interval about which
our adversaries pretend not to be satisfied, that we are going
to erect a bridge, solidly suspended by a triple chain of testi
monies. We set out from a. d. 203, in which the great
Origen, after having witnessed the martyrdom of his father,
began, at the age of eighteen years, his career of instruction
in Alexandria; and we come to about a. d. 103, when John
in his old age finished his course in Ephesus, or even back
to A. d. 68, when Peter and Paul terminated their labors in
the city of Rome, after having written, as we think, very
shortly before, the one his second epistle, the other his letter
to the Hebrews. In other words, we follow the track of our
holy books from the last days of Septimus Severus to the
1 Leben Jesu, part 1.

THE FIELD OF INVESTIGATION. 147
last days of Nero. Our opponents pretend that over that
whole interval they were lost ; we must adduce them again,
as others have often done, under various forms. For, after
all, the history of the church, despite the poverty of its liter
ature at this epoch, still furnishes us abundant material for
constructing a continuous road over a firm and secure
bridge. It must not be forgotten, in order to give these historical
monuments their true significance and their just value, that
the labor of studying them should always be accompanied by
a vivid apprehension of the interior life of the church in its
totality and its specific character. Dr. Thiersch has set forth
among the Germans the importance of this rule, and the mis
takes of the men who have disregarded it.
In the mean time, also, to bring the persons and the dates
of this important epoch more vividly before the reader's
mind, we deem it, well to present, in a synoptical table, the
series of the only witnesses who can be produced in this
research. For that purpose, we place in the order of time,
opposite the succession of the emperors : —
1. The fathers, who have left us authentic writings in the
first and second centuries.
2. The heretics, who, while combating the truths of the
holy Scripture, have rendered testimony to the sacred canon
by their very attacks.
3. The enemies of Christianity who, in the very act of
assailing it, recognized our holy books as its founda
tion. 4. The great persecutions which the church has under
gone. 5. The apologists who have publicly defended it.1
1 It might have been more logical, but less clear, to leave them in the
rank of the Fathers.

148

THE CANON.

3. The Actors and Witnesses of the first two Cen-

Reigns.

1st cent.
Nero, A. r>. 54 to 68.
ian, A. D. 69

to 79.
Titus, a. d. 79 to 81,

Domitian, a. d. 81
to 96.

Nerva, A. D. 96 to
98.

Trajan, a. d. 98 to
100, when Taci
tus, Pliny, Plu
tarch and Sue
tonius were writ
ing.

Fathers whose authentic writings we have.

1st cent.
James died a. d. 61 ; Paul and Peter between
64 and 68 ; Jude much later ; and John in
103.
Clement, companion of Paul, as is believed
(Phil. iv. 3), and bishop of Rome for nine
years (a. d. 91 to 101, according to Euse
bius ; from 68 to 77, according to Jerome),
has left a beautiful letter to the Corin
thians.
Ignatius, hearer of the apostle John, bishop
of Antioch in A. r>. 68, martyr in 107 or
116, has left seven authentic letters, (some
say three,) (to the Romans, Ephesians, and
Polyearp,) and we have an authentic co-
temporary account of his martyrdom.
Letter to Diognetus. — The unknown author
styles himself disciple of the apostles. It
is very beautiful, and was probably written
before the year 70. Others refer it to Tra
jan's reign.
Polyearp, born in a. d. 71, martyr in 166,
having known John the apostle. He has
left an epistle to the Philippians, and we
have a beautiful circular letter of the
church in Smyrna, recounting his mar
tyrdom to the churches of that day.

ACTORS AND WITNESSES.

149

turies of the Church, beginning at the death of Paul.

Enemies of the Church.

1st cent.
Prom the apostolical times, be
sides the Nicolaitans (Rev. ii.
6), the Balaamites (14), the dis
ciples of Simon, (Acts viii. 13),
and of Menander (Iren. Haeres.
i. 21), those of Phrygellus and
Hermogenes (2 Tim. i. 15; ii.
17), of Hymeneus and Philetus,
all sects, of which nothing re
mains, the church was afflicted
from the days of John by two
numerous orders of heretics, —
the Ebionites and the Gnostics.
The Ebionites embraced several
Judaizing sects, who denied the
divinity of Jesus Christ. The
Fathers attribute their name,
some to Ebion, the Hebrew
word for poor; others to the
name of a leader now un
known, who, Lardner believes,
was a disciple of Cerinthus.
The Gnostics, or Men of gnosis
(science), " falsely so called,"
(1 Tim. vi. 20,) were almost all
Docetists or Phantasists, that
is, affirmers of the mere ap
pearance of a Christ without
any real existence. They said
the revelation was imperfect,
and they completed it by their
philosophy, pretending that they
alone possessed the true gnosis
(science), whether by direct and
interior intuition or by a tra
dition going back to the Crea
tion.
Cerinthus, a Jewish philosopher,
having studied in Egypt, went
to Asia Minor, where he op
posed the divinity of Jesus
Christ, being so far an Ebion-
ite. According to Irenseus,
John wrote the opening of his
gospel to refute this error.
13*

Persecutions.

1st cent.
The first
under Nero,
a. d. 64 to
68.

The second
under Do-
mitian. A. i>.
93 to 96.

Apologists.

1st cent.

150

THE CANON.

Reigns

Fathers whose authentic writings we have.

2d cent.
Trajan still, a. d.
100 to 117.

Adrian, A. D. 117
to 138.

Antoninus Pius,
a.d. 138 to 161.

I Marcus Aurelius,
. a. d. 161 to 180.

Conrmodus, a. d.
180 to 193.

Septimus Severus,
from A. D. 193 to
200.

2d cent.
Justin Martyr, born in Samaria or Sychem
about A. d. 103, a philosopher, converted in
133, came at the commencement of Anto-
nine's reign to lecture at Rome, where he
suffered martyrdom in 167 under Marcus
Aurelius. We have two of his Apologies,
a treatise on the Monarchy of God. a Dia
logue with Trypho the Jew. His other
works, such as his Exposition of the Apoc
alypse, are now lost.
Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, born a. d.
110, converted in 150, died in 170, has left
an Apology for Christianity, and some
other writings.
Irenasus, born in Asia or Greece a.d. 120,
came to Gaul in 177, and was martyred, it is
said, in 202. His principal work, Against
the Heresies, is in five books. Of all the
early fathers one of the firmest and purest,
he represents the opinion of the church the
most faithfully.
Athenagoras, a platonie philosopher, born in
Athens, became a Christian, established
himself in Alexandria, addressed an Apol
ogy for Christianity to Marcus Aurelius
and his son Commodus. We have also
his treatise on the Resurrection.
Clement of Alexandria, a platonie philoso
pher converted, born about A. d. 150 and
died in 217; wrote much (Stromata, Ex
hortations to the Gentiles, &c). Jerome
and Theodoret praise his knowledge and
genius highly.
Tertullian, (the oldest Latin Father), born
in Carthage A. d. 160, was converted from
paganism in 185. He went afterward to
Rome ; but, dissatisfied with the Roman
clergy, he returned to Africa, where he
embraced Montanist views on the subject
of church government. He died about the
year 220. Many of his works have come
down to us (Apology, five books against
Marcion, &c.j.

ACTORS AND WITNESSES.

151

Enemies of the Cfiurch.

2d cent.
gnostics.
Basilides of Alexandria, disciple
of Menander, was one of the
principal. Born in the first
century and died a. d. 130 ; he
taught his doctrine of magic
under Trajan and Adrian. Is-
idorus, his son, added other
reveries, and made a sect.
Cerdo came from Asia Minor to
teach in Rome a. d. 132. Hy-
ginus, bishop of Rome, excom
municated him about 140.
Marcion, born in Sy nope, of which
his father was bishop, became
a pupil of Basilides, taught in
Alexandria A. D. 117, wrote
twenty-four books of Commen
taries on the Gospels, of which
Clement and Epiphanius have
preserved fragments. He came
to join Cerdo in Rome about
140, being there at the same
time with Valentine and Justin
Martyr under Antoninus Pius.
Valentine, of Egypt, came also
to instruct in Rome under the
bishops Hyginus and Anicet,
(from A. D. 139 to 157,) and
finished his course in Cyprus.
He fancied thirty CEons, or in
ferior deities. He had many
followers, who originated sev
eral sects, as the Colobarsa ;
Ptolemy in 140 ; Heracleon ;
Tatian, who, at least, adopted
his GSons ; Bardesanes, a Sy
rian who lived in Edessa, in
172, and who closed by com
bating his master. He wrote
much and ably.
Carpocrates the Egyptian, and
his son Epiphanes. He taught
under Adrian a mystic and li
centious antinomianism.
Tatian, born in Mesopotamia, or
ator and philosopher, at first
pagan, came to Rome, and be-

Persecuiions.

2d cent.
The third
under Tra
jan, from
A. D. 107 to
117 ; under
Adrian, to
136. The fourth
under Mar
cus Aure
lius, from
a. d. 163,
because Christians
abstained from the so
lemnities of
his triumph.
The fifth
under Septi
mus Seve
rus, from
A. D. 202,
throughoutthe empire.

2d cent.
Quadratus,
bishop of Ath
ens, presented
an Apology to
Adrian in A. d.
131. Eusebius
preserved a frag
ment of it.
Aristides, a. d.
175, a converted
philosopher. Justin Martyr
made two, which
we have : one to
Antonine in a. d.
139, the other to
Marcus Aurelius
in 163.
Theophilus,
bishop of Anti
och, presented
one at the same
time. Apollinarius,
bishop of Hie-
rapolis, during
the persecution
of Marcus Aure
lius in 169.
Melito, bishop
of Sardis, pre
sented one in
172. It has per
ished. Tatian, before
his fall, compos
ed a " Discourse
against the
Greeks." Athenagoras,
an Athenian
philosopher,taught in Alex
andria in A. d.
177, presented an
Apology to Mar
cus Aurelius en
titled " Deputa-

152

THE CANON.

Reigns. ^Fathers whose authentic writings we have.
2d cent. 2d cent.

ACTORS AND WITNESSES.

153

Enemies of the Church.

2d cent.
came a professed Christian. Af
ter having heard Justin Martyr,
he for a long time gave himself
out as his disciple, and com
posed a, Discourse against the
Greeks, dying in 178. But he
had fallen into gnostic errors,
and became in the East head
of the Encratites. He wrote,
besides a. multitude of other
works, a. Harmony of the four
Gospels, now lost, but extant
in the time of Eusebius. There
is supposed to be an apocryphal
Latin translation of it.
ebionitic-gnostic sects.
Theodore, a tanner of Byzan
tium, came a. d. 192 to Rome,
where he was excommunicated
by Victor in 194. He said that
Jesus Christ was created by
the Father, but before the cre
ation of the world.
Artemon, his disciple, accused of
removing the passage 1 John
v. 7 from the text.
PAGAN ADVERSARIES OF CHRIS
TIANITY.
Celsus, an epicurean philosopher
under Trajan and his succes
sors. An ardent enemy of
Christianity, he assailed it with
the weapons of reason and ridi
cule in his Logos Alethes, of
which we have only fragments
in Origen's refutation.
Lucian of Samosata, born about
a. d. 120, composed satirical
dialogues, in which he at
tacked Christianity. He ded
icated his False Prophet to
Celsus.

Persecutions.

2d cent.

Apologists. 2d cent.
tion in favor of
the Christians,"
and a treatise
"On the Resur
rection," which
is also an apolo
gy. We have
them still.

154

THE CANON.

Reigns.

3d cent.
Septimus Severus,
from a. d. 200 to
211.
Caracalla, a. d. 211
to 217.
Heliogabalus, A. D.
218 to 222.
Alex. Severus, a.d.
222 to 235.
Maximin, A. D. 230
to 237.
Gordian, a.d. 237
to 244.
Philippus, a.d. 244
to 249.
Decius, A. D. 249 to
251.

Fathers whose authentic writings we have.

1st half of 3d cent.
Origen, born in Alexandria in A. d. 185, saw
the martyrdom of his father in 202, took
the place of Clement of Alexandria in his
school, traveled much, accomplished im
mense labors, and died in 253.
Hippolytus, bishop, first in Arabia (as Euse
bius says), an intimate friend of Origen, a
Greek theologian, distinguished historian
and mathematician, came afterward to
Italy about a. d. 222, and martyred be
tween 235 and 240.
Julius Africanus, a Greek historian and chro-
nologer, converted to Christianity about
a. d. 231, a friend of Origen ; he wrote Com
mentaries on the N. T. We have only
fragments in Eusebius.
Dionysius of Alexandria, bishop A. d. 232,
died in 247. His numerous works are
lost, though often cited by Eusebius.
Caius, priest of Rome, A. d. 210. Fragments
only in Eusebius.
Cyprian, born in Carthage a. d. 202, bishop
in 248, died in 258. His works, in Latin
(sola clariora, says Jerome), form a large
volume.

N. B. Let us carefully notice that, if in this table we have sought to
coordinate the dates of the heresies of the second century, it should be re-

We hope that this chronological table of the reigns, the
fathers, the adversaries, and the heretics, may throw a useful
hght over the study we are about to pursue, by reducing its
elements to the most precise terms, by showing their limited
number, and by arranging them coordinately. We have
omitted, in the column of the reigns, those of less than a
year's duration ; in the column of the heresies, those which
did not last a year, (like the Ophites, whom Hippolytus

ACTORS AND WITNESSES.

155

Enemies of the Church.

1st half of 3d cent.
Manes, born in Persia, founder of
Manichaeism, which he partly
borrowed from Zoroaster. They
say he was flayed alive in Per
sia a. d. 271.
Porphyry (Malchus), a neopla-
tonic philosopher, horn in Tyre
A. d. 233, pupil of Longinus
and Plotinus at Athens, and
mystical philosopher in Rome,
where he died in 304. He com
posed five books against the
Christians. Theodosius had
them burned ; but fragments
survive in Eusebius and Je
rome. In the first book he
had collected the apparent con
tradictions of Scripture ; in the
fourth he attacked Moses ; in
the thirteenth, Daniel.
Amelius, a Tuscan, disciple of
Plotinus from A. d. 246 to 270,
when he went to live at Apa-
mea. He was, like Porphyry,
an enemy of Christianity.

Persecutions.

3d cent.
The sixth
persecutionunder Maxi-
min in 235.
The sev
enth under
Decius from
250 to 253.
The eighth
under Vale
rian, in 257.
The ninth
under Aure-
lian, from
272 to 275.
The tenth
in the fourth
century,through the
whole em
pire, from
a. d. 303.

3d cent.
Ammonius
Saccas, (or Sac-
cophorus) a phil
osopher, founder
of eclecticism,
composed at the
beginning of the
century a hook
" of the Agree
ment of Moses
and Jesus
Christ." Noth
ing of it remains.
Tertullian
made his beauti
ful Apology in
Latin in 202.
Minucius Fe
lix, an African
orator, in A. D.
220 composed
(in Latin) his
Apology at
Rome in the
form of a dia
logue, entitled
Oetavius. We
have it entire.

membered (as Cave and others complain) that their chronology is utterly
confused.

places in John's day,) or those who, sound in the doctrines
of God and Christ, were only wrong in discipline,1 (as the
Montanists,2 Quartodecimans 8) ; and, in the column of the
fathers, on the one side, those whose books have perished, or

1 See in Bunsen's Hippolytus, torch i. p. 231, the thirty-two sects which
this father counted in his day.
2 Or Cataphrygians, toward the year 161.
8 In the dispute of the Passover, in second and third centuries

156 THE CANON.
are found only in small fragments in Eusebius and elsewhere,
(as Papias,1 Hegesippus,2 Pantaenus,8 Melito,4 Dionysius of
Corinth,5 Asterius Urbanus,6) and, on the other hand, those
whose pretended writings are recognized by the most es
teemed critics 7 as not attributable to them.
To render our review of all these monuments of antiquity
more clear and impressive, we begin with the most recent ;
and mounting upward in the order of time, we first consult
the least ancient of the Fathers to reach those of the last
half of the second century, from them to those of the first
half, then to the apostolical fathers, and finally to the apos
tles themselves who wrote the last books of the New Tes
tament.

SECTION V.
TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE
SECOND CENTURY.
The united testimonies of Irenaeus, Clement, and Tertullian.
If we place ourselves at the opening of the third century,
A. d. 202, whilst the terrible persecution of Septimus Severus
was bursting forth over the whole breadth of the empire, and
whilst the young Origen, who had just witnessed the decapi-

1 Bishop of Hierapolis, in 118. He had heard John, (dfCovarr/g) Irenssus
says, was a friend (halpog) of Polyearp. He had composed five books.
(Euseb. ii.; E. iii. 39).
2 The earliest church historian. He lived from A. D. 100 to 170, having
traveled ^much to see the apostles and prepare his history, fragments of
which Eusebius and Photius have preserved.
8 Head of the Alexandrian School, about the year 179.
4 Bishop of Sardis, about 170.
5 Bishop of Corinth, about the same time.
6 Bishnp in Galatia, about 186.
7 See Hefele, (Pair. Apostol. Opera,) Proleg. pp. 9, 80.

TESTIMONY OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 157
tation of his father Leonidas, was beginning in Alexandria his
long and brilliant career, we find on the scene of the world
three great lights in high places, that have ever since that
day been illuminating the church : Irenaeus, Clement of Alex
andria, and Tertullian. While Origen was making those
immense researches in biblical science, which, notwithstand
ing his errors, will for ever render his name dear to the
churches of God, these three great men had been attract
ing the attention of all Christian people, and their writings
were scattered into every part of the empire. Like three
light-houses, they stood at great intervals, casting their beams
far and wide : Irenasus beyond the Alps, in the distant me
tropolis of the Gauls, where Latin, Greek, and Celtic were
spoken ; Clement in the learned Alexandria, where they spoke
Coptic and Greek ; and Tertullian in Carthage, the metrop
olis of proconsular Africa, where they spoke the Latin and
Punic tongues. Irenseus, upwards of eighty years old, had
for a quarter of a century been feeding the flocks of Lyons,
and was to terminate in this very year 202 his long career
by martyrdom : J Clement, at the age of fifty-two, was not to
die until a.d. 217, and the great Tertullian, the oldest of the
Latin Fathers, then in his forty-second year, but converted
seventeen years before and priest of Carthage ten years, was
about to exercise in Africa, as in all the Latin church of
the West, a long and beneficent influence. We remember
the respect for his memory afterward expressed by the bishop
and martyr, Cyprian, in this very Carthage. Two centuries
later the famous Vincent of Lerins 2 said, " What Origen
was for the Greeks, Tertullian was for us Latins, that is
to say, incontestably the first among us (nostrorum om
nium facile princeps). Who was more learned than this
man, and who was more exercised in things divine and
human ? "
It would be impossible to imagine, for the second half of
1 Yet the fact of this martyrdom is not quite certain.
a Edit, of Baluze (1663), p. 323.
14

158 THE CANON.
the second century, three men more competent to testify
concerning cotemporary belief in regard to the sacred Scrip
tures. Everything commends them to our confidence in this
respect, — their character, their erudition, their labors, their
travels, the esteem which they enjoyed, and all the sacrifices
they had themselves made for the sake of the Scriptures.
Besides, if we designate them as representatives of the sec
ond century in its second half, their testimony (especially
that of Irenasus) goes back, by the circumstances of their
lives, much farther than the commencement of their minis
tries. It extends even to the times of the apostles. We
know, in fact, the famous letter of Irenseus to Florinus,1 in
which he recounts his familiarity in early life with Polyearp,
who himself, he says, had been a hearer of John, and who
related to him his pious reminiscences, " wholly conformed
to the Holy Scriptures," as he was careful to add. Besides
this, what gives the greater weight to the testimony of these
three men, is that their still extant writings are very copious.
Those of Irenseus (Grabe's edition,) form one folio volume
of about five hundred pages ; the best edition of Tertullian
(Venice, 1746,) is also in large folio ; and the best of Clem
ent of Alexandria (Greek-Latin) in two folio volumes.
Moreover, these three witnesses, particularly Clement and
Tertullian, would not have been converted from the pagan
ism of their age to the profession of the gospel, but for the
powerful testimony to the sacred books which they found, and
for the common, constant, and undisputed conviction of the
cotemporary churches which they saw. They had had be
fore their eyes conclusive reasons for abjuring their ancient
errors, and for believing in the divinity of the Scriptures.
All three, practised from their youth in scientific investiga
tions, had possessed every facility for determining the cer
tainty of these books which were to form thenceforward the
rule of their lives. All three had visited Asia, Greece, and
Italy ; they were in intimate relations with the men of every
l Hist. Eccl. i. 5; chap. 19, 20; Iren. Adv. Haa-es, Lib. iii. chap. 3.

TESTIMONY OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 159
country who represented the science of their times. They
lived, also, very near the sources of information, being almost
cotemporary with the immediate successors of the apostles ;
so that in submitting themselves to the Scriptures already
received as divine, and embracing this universally perse
cuted faith, they were in possession of all the means, as
well as all the motives, for testing the legitimacy of the sway
which the sacred books had obtained throughout the Christian
churches. Would we now hear the voice of the second century, and
take, as it were, its vote on the canon of the Scriptures ?
Let us open one of the important works of these great di
vines, and say if it would be possible to imagine fuller testi
mony, either to their personal convictions, or to the universal
persuasion which prevailed in their day among all the church
es of the East and of the West. Indeed, we shall find our
selves embarrassed with the very abundance of this testimony.
It seems to us that it is to neglect, and enfeeble it even, to
make quotations from it ; and all we can say will ever be
wholly below the impression which every one must receive
from a simple reading of their books. Let them be taken
up for one day only, and they will make a deeper impression
than all cjur words. You fairly swim in the Scriptures, as
you read their pages. You find yourself transported into the
midst of a generation which saw things in the light of the
New Testament. You there hear the men of that genera
tion appealing to our sacred books to establish a truth, as we
appeal for a visible object to the sunlight around us. All
their pages show them to us as constantly resting on the
oracles of God, as on the only foundation of their faith, and
of the faith of all ; they are ministers of this word only ;
and if they quote it as their rule, it is because it is equally
the rule of every one, and that to oppose it is, they say, " to
avow yourself a heretic," " to forsake the church ; " for all
the church ranks itself, in this matter, as one man. This
word is for them the sovereign law which must judge every

160 THE CANON.
heresy, past, present, or future, as it is that which will shortly
judge the living and the dead. We do not think that
a modern author can be found who has made in his writings
more frequent appeals, or with such absolute deference to the
infallible authority of this holy word. Not only the large
volumes of these three men are entirely penetrated with
them ; not only is it a tapestry in which the passages of Scrip
ture are constantly interlaced like threads of gold, strengthen
ing and enriching the tissue, but you feel instinctively that
such language could have been employed only among a peo
ple long submissive to the written word, and accustomed to
bow, as one man, to its authority.1
But, before giving specimens of their testimony, it may be
well to notice some general traits which characterize it.

Seven Characteristics of their Testimony.
1. These fathers do not confine themselves simply to
quotations of the twenty books of our first canon ; they speak
very frequently of the collection itself of these books as
forming one entire book, a New Testament, which the church
of their day has fully accepted, which she has united to the
sacred oracles of the old covenant, and which she calls the
Scripture, or the Scriptures, the New Instrument,
the New Testament, the Lord's Scriptures, (ras
KvpiaKas ypatpds, Dominicas Scripturas, ) the Divine
Scriptures, (ras #«as ypa<pds,) the Gospel, and the
Apostle. For these fathers hold equally all the epistles as
forming one single book, which they call the Apostle ;
and the four evangelists also as forming one single tetramor-
phous Gospel, (a gospel in four forms,) to which they join
the Acts of the Apostles.
1 See Mr. Kirchhofer's precious collection of what he deemed the most
remarkable passages of these fathers on each of the books of the canon:
" Quellensammlung zur Gescluchte des Neutestamentlichen Canons bis
auf Hieronymus: Zurich, 1842." See passim, pp. 17 to 29.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS TESTIMONY. 161
2. Another feature of their testimony is, that they habitually
associate the Old and the New Testaments as a succession of
books of the same origin and of equal authority.
3. They invariably declare their faith in the divine and
complete inspiration of all these Scriptures ; they rank them
with those of the other prophets ; they distinguish them from
every uninspired book, and from- all pretended tradition which
is not conformed to them ; they call them " the oracles of
God," " the pillar and ground of the faith," " the rule of
truth,'' " the theopneustic Scriptures," " the perfect Scrip
tures," " the Scriptures pronounced by the word of God and
by his Spirit ; " and they declare of the sacred writers, that
" they were all pneumataphores, (bearers of the Holy Spirit,)
and all speak by one and the same Spirit of God."
4. Moreover, they profess this perfect faith in the divine
inspiration of all these books, in connection with the entire
church ; they present it as the faith common to every Chris
tian in the world ; they declare that to raise one's self
against this oecumenical rule of the truth is, in the view of
each of them, no longer to belong to the Christian church ;
it is to abandon it, (exeuntes,) because there can be found in
no cotemporary church the least dissent from it.
5. So calm and sure is their persuasion in this matter, so
universally peaceful is this conviction among the Christians
of their time, that you will never find them occupied with
defending it. Why should they ? The point is everywhere
firmly settled; it is in every conscience that professes the
truth ; it is nowhere contested in the church of the second
century ; and you can nowhere hear against one of the
twenty books of the canon a single one of those objections
which are started by the biblical critics of our day. They
hold them as the universal and uncontested code ; when they
adduce a passage to establish some disputed truth, it is always
as when one puts a lamp in a dark place to reveal something
that had been hidden. One may dispute with you about the
object, but no one thinks of questioning the light ; that is the
14*

162 THE CANON.
same for every one. The Scriptures, — they are the light.
This confidence, common to every one in the second century,
is always taken for granted ; they never demonstrate it. If
I am speaking of the Rhone in Geneva, do I stop to prove
that it runs through this city, and -that you will find water
there ? Why, then, should these three doctors demonstrate
to the men of their day that the river of Scripture runs
through the city of God, and that you may there find abun
dance of the living waters of grace? They never do it.
In all their folios, they discuss the biblical meaning of such
and such a word, never its divinity ; they profess to be the
interpreters of the New Testament, never its defenders.
Why should they defend it ? No one in the church had
attacked it ; and if you will meet despisers of the Word, you
must go out and search for them in the Roman schools of
Cerdo, Marcion, or Valentinus.1
6. Still, a sixth feature is, that in religious matters every
thing is decided for them, and should be for the whole church,
as soon as it is known that the Scripture has spoken on it.
" The Scriptures," they say, " are a perfect revelation of Chris
tian truth ; '' " their instruction is abundant," (scripturarum
tractatio plenissima,) " admitting neither of addition nor re
trenchment." " I adore," they say, " the fullness of the
Scriptures." " Let no one,'' they add, " teach anything, un
less he can say of it, ' It is written.' " Let no one allege
any tradition ; for them there is none which can stand against
the declarations of the written Word. 2
7. Finally, they say, "It is to the Scriptures that every
appeal must be made for explaining the Scriptures, (aV
avTwy rrepl avruiv,) if we would arrive at the truth in a con
vincing manner (airoheiKTiKoJi)."
Let us, then, hear more minutely these three great divines
1 Leaders of three heretical sects, bearing their respective names, taught
in Rome during the second half of the second century.
2 These various expressions we shall meet again, and indicate their
places.

TERTULLIAN. 163
of the second century, by briefly citing them in turn. These
quotations could be indefinitely multiplied ; our difficulty lies
only in selecting, for they abound in all their writings, and
even stronger than we quote could be found ; but we have
selected those which put in the strongest light the six or seven
features we have here specified. We shall commence with
the youngest, Tertullian, priest of Carthage.
Tertullian.
Although the youngest of these three divines, Tertullian is
the oldest of the Latin fathers whose writings we possess.
Born in paganism, only about fifty years after the death of
John, this eminent man, whose father was a centurion in the
African army, was instructed in pagan philosophy and juris
prudence. At the age of thirty-five years, he was converted,
by witnessing the execution and the Christian constancy of
some of the martyrs. From this time, he consecrated to the
gospel of Christ his genius and his strength, with all the de
votion of a resolute heart. The injurious treatment which
he considered himself as receiving from the clergy of Rome
obliged him, about a. d. 207, to take his pen against the
corruptions of the church; and soon he became a Montanist.
This severe sect appears to have erred especially in its ex
cessive views of discipline, and in exalting the visions of its
prophets to the rank of the Scriptures. Tertullian died
about A. d. 220. His principal works are five books
" Against Marcion," written (as he informs us) the fifteenth
year of Severus, A. b. 207 ; x his admirable " Apology,"
about a.d. 217 ; his books "Against the Jews" and
" Against the Heretics," his treatises on Shows, the Soul,
Monogamy, the Soldier's Crown, the Cloak, the Resurrec
tion, etc.
1 The dates we find in a very able dissertation on Tertullian, an extract
of which is in the beginning of his "Apology" (translated by Giry: Am
sterdam, 1712), the fanciful dates of Pamelius and Baronius are there re
futed.

164 THE CANON.
Now Tertullian made constant use of the Scriptures ; he
distinctly quotes each one of the twenty books of the first
canon,1 without forgetting even the short letter to Philemon ;2
and we have already showed the words of the learned Lard
ner * in reference to these innumerable testimonies of Tertul
lian to the canon : " The citations from the New Testament
made by this father alone are more extensive and more
abundant than those from the books of Cicero by all the
writers of every class and age."
Tertullian, in his book of " Prescriptions," 4 exclaims,
" How happy is this church, how happy ! She knows one
only God, creator of all things ; a Christ Jesus, born of a
virgin, Son of the God Creator ; and a resurrection of the
body. She blends the law and the prophets with the writings
of the evangelists and apostles; and it is thence she refreshes
her faith, (legem et prophetas cum evangelicis et apostolicis
miscet ; et inde potat fidem)." In his book on Monogamy,6
speaking of second marriages, and quoting a sentence of the
New Testament (1 Cor. vii. 39), he uses, he says, "a Latin
version which is not very- accurately conformed to the authen
tic Greek text in the translation of this passage, (sciamus
plane non sic esse in Grseco authentico)."
The expression " New Testament," for the collection of
our holy books, was already in use in his day ; but they had
previously called the two volumes " the one and the other
Instrument," and Tertullian gives his testimony to the
antiquity of the usage, not only of having a collection of
our Scriptures, but of uniting this new collection with the
old. ,
1 We speak here only of the first canon, without saying, with Kirchho-
fer (p. 263, Quellensammlung: Zurich, 1812), " that he cites equally all the
canonical books of the New Testament; " if it is not (as this author also
observes) that we there find only three allusions more or less questionable
to the epistle of James.
2 Adv. Marcion, Lib. v. cap. 42.
8 Canon, chap. ii. sec. 2.
4 De Prasscript. Hsereditor. chap, xxxvi.
5 Chap. xi. p. 532, of the edit, of Basle, 1515.

TERTULLIAN. 165
In his fourth book " Against Marcion," (chap, i.) in com
plaining of the heresy of this man who pretended to establish
an opposition between the God of the law and the God of
the gospel, he calls the law and the gospel " the one and the
other Instrument, as it is now more usual to say the one and
the other Testament," (alterum alterius Instrument, vel, quod
magis usui est Testamenti).1 And in his book of the " Pre
scriptions," 2 he exclaims : " If Marcion has separated the
New Testament from the Old, (Novum Testamentum a Vet-
ere,) he is then later than the book which he divides ; for we
can separate only what has been united."
A dogma, according to Tertullian, ought not to be preached
unless we can say of it, " it is written." " Woe to them who
add or retrench anything to or from that which is written."
"To wish to believe without the Scriptures (of the New
Testament) is to wish to believe against them."
In his treatise " Against Hermogenes," 8 in speaking of a
certain doctrine, he says : " We can affirm nothing in regard
td it, because the Scriptures do not explain it, (Nihil de eo
constat, quia Scrip tura non exhibet)." So, too, in his book
" Of the Body of Christ : " 4 " They prove nothing, because
that is not written (Non probant, quia nee scriptum est, nee,
etc.)." In his essay " Against Praxeas : " 6 " Thou shalt also
prove thy sayings, by the Scriptures, not less clearly than we
prove that God has made his Son of his own Word." " Let
us refer these questions to the Scriptures of God (Revocando
quaestiones ad Dei literas)." 6
In refuting an error of Hermogenes,' he says : " Let the
1 Observe him, in the same manner, employing many times elsewhere
this term of "New Testament" to designate the canon. Thus, ad Prax-
eam, chap. xv. p. 508, edit, of Rigalt, Paris, 1634.
2 Chap. xxx. p. 212, Paris edit. 1629.
8 Chap. i. p. 233, Paris edit. 1664.
« Chap. vi. p. 312.
6 Chap. xi. p. 505. 6 De Anima, chap. ii. p. 265.
1 Adv. Hermogenem, chap. xxii. p. 241.

166 THE CANON.
heretics bring their doctrines to the Scriptures alone : then
they can not stand."
In the same book, in speaking first of all the Scriptures,
then in opposing to their whole body the New Testament, or
the gospel, he exclaims, " I adore the fullness of Scripture ;
but, besides, in the gospel, I find the same word of the Cre
ator as minister and judge (In Evangelio vero amplius et
ministrum atque arbitrum Factoris invenio sermonem.) '*
He says again, " And as to the point in question, let the
workshop of Hermogenes show us that it is written. But if
it is not written, let him fear that ' woe unto you ' uttered
against all that shall add to or take from the words of the
book." 1 And again, in his book of the " Prescriptions,"
indignant at the rashness of the heretics whom he is refuting,
and holding the axiom that " all faith should be founded on
the Scriptures," he exclaims, " Well, if they will believe
contrary to the Scriptures, let them believe without the
Scriptures ! " 2
And now, if from proconsular Africa, we pass over into
Egypt, we hear Clement of Alexandria rendering, with equal
affluence, similar testimony. Clement of Alexandria.
This father, older than Tertullian, died only three years
before him, about A. d. 207. In his first book, " Stfomata," 8
he speaks of himself as " very near to the time of the apos
tles." Born in paganism, and versed in all the science of
the Greeks, he had long been teaching their philosophy when
he was converted in Egypt through Pantaenus, the pious and
distinguished head of the Christian school of Alexandria.
And when Pantaenus left that city, about a.d. 189, to carry
1 Alluding to Rev. xxii. 18, 19.
2 Chap, xxiii. p. 210; and chap. viii. p. 205. Seeahso Euseb. H. E.Lib. v.
chap. 11; and Lib. vi. chap. 13.
8 Strom. Lib. i. p. 274.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 167
the gospel to India, Clement took his master's place in that
institution. By his philosophical science and the charm of
his instructions, its fame was greatly raised. Many ancient
authors1 assure us that he was born in Athens, and that it
was in that famous city he had acquired his learning and
formed his eloquence. However that may be, it had long
been the custom to call him Alexandrinus, to distinguish him
from the celebrated Clement of Rome, whom all the church
had honored a hundred years before. In A. d. 202, being
forced by the persecution of Septimus Severus to fly from
Egypt, he went to Jerusalem, and thence to Antioch ; but he
afterwards returned to Alexandria to resume his instructions,
which he continued until his death, toward the end of Cara-
calla's reign. He had an active mind, a prodigious memory,
and great zeal for promoting the faith. Unhappily for the
church and for himself, but to the great admiration of his
age, he employed his genius in seeking to form an alliance
between the religion of Jesus Christ and the philosophy he
had always taught. He attempted to use his Platonism as
an introduction to Christianity ; and it is thus that this man,
otherwise pious, powerfully contributed to lower the faith and
spiritual life of the Eastern churches. Never and nowhere
was such an effort made without altering the doctrines of orig
inal sin, the foundation of all the teachings of Jesus Christ,
but a foundation universally rejected by human wisdom. We
cite this author here only as a very faithful representative of
the views of his age in regard to the canon of the Scriptures,
not as an interpreter of Christian truth. He received, in
fact, the suffrages of all the ecclesiastical authors who came
after him. Eusebius2 says, "His writings are full of the
most varied and useful erudition ; " " full of erudition and
eloquence," Jerome8 says, " as well on the divine Scriptures
as on all the documents of secular literature." " What is
1 See, among others, Epiphan. Hasres. xxxii. n. 6.
2 He particularly speaks of the Stromata, H. E. vi. 13.
8 The Scrip. Eccl. chap. 18 ; and Ep. ad Magnum, chap. 2.

168 THE CANON.
there in these writings which is not learned, and even which
does not come as from the center of philosophy ? "
His principal writings that have come to us, are his " Ex
hortation to the Gentiles ; " his " Pedagogue," in three books ;
his " Rich Man Saved," a treatise addressed to the rich ; espe
cially his " Stromata " (or Tapestries), in eight books, a collec
tion abounding in his Christian or philosophic thoughts. He
attempts there to introduce his readers in some measure to
what he calls a gnosis (or science) more profound ; and this
work, as he himself informs us,1 must have made its appear
ance a. d. 192, "two hundred and twenty-two years after the
battle of Actium," he says. It is believed also that Cassio-
dorus 2 has presented a fragment of his " Adumbrationes " or
Sketches on the Catholic epistles — only brief fragments of
his " Hypotyposes " remain. It was a concise exposition of
the contents of the New Testament.8
Now the use made of the New Testament Scriptures, the
quotations from them, the appeals to their infallibility as to
the sovereign judge of controversies, and to the only source
of all divine truth even of the mystic traditions which Clem
ent admitted ; in fine, the frequent expression of his confi
dence in their universal inspiration, all these are found in
abundance in the writings of Clement. And it is not only
his personal faith in the whole Bible which he expresses on
almost every page ; it is not only his faith in each of their
books (for he never ceases to cite them) ; it is the faith of
the Church. You may read in the useful collection of Mr.
Kirchhofer,4 an abundant array of these quotations. In
speaking of the Stromata this professor remarks, " Clement,
on almost every page, quotes sentences taken from the New
Testament, from all the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles,
each of Paul's letters, the first of Peter, the first and second
1 Strom. Lib. i. p. 339.
2 Therefore with a Latin title.
8 Potter's Oxford edit. 2 vol. fol. 1715, is the best.
4 Quellcnsammlung, etc., p. 22.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 169
of John, that of Jude, that to the Hebrews, and the Apoca
lypse." Nothing of the first canon is left unquoted except I
the short epistle to Philemon. But this is a mere accident,
due entirely to the brevity of this letter, which contains only
twenty-five verses, and has nothing doctrinal in it. It ap
pears even, according to Eusebius, that it was cited in his
Hypotyposes, now lost ; and as we have just seen, it was
mentioned by Tertullian in Africa at that very time,1 and at
the same time also, it was so well known throughout Chris
tendom, that at Rome the audacious Marcion himself reck
oned it the ninth of Paul's epistles.2 " It is only the dimin
utive size of this epistle," writes Tertullian,8 " that saved it
from the forgeries of Marcion." And Jerome,4 in his eulo-
gium upon it, tells us that if it had not been believed to be
from Paul, " it would not have been received by all the
churches throughout the world."
" In his book of Hypotyposes," says Eusebius,6 " Clement '
has made very abundant expositions of all the Canonical
Scriptures, not even excepting the antilegomens."
Rather then than exhibit here the principal passages in
which each one of our sacred books is mentioned by Clement,
we think it will be more useful to show simply by some cita
tions in what terms this father constantly speaks of the Scrip
tures of the New Testament.
In the third book of the Stromata,6 Clement distinguishes
expressly the four canonical gospels from the apocryphal gos
pel of the Egyptians. Speaking of a strange sentence at
tributed to our Saviour by Cassianus the heretic, he says,
" And first we find this passage nowhere in the four gospels
transmitted to us, (Tra.paSeh'op.evoK) ; but it is found in that
which is called the gospel according to the Egyptians."
1 Tertul. adv. Marcion, Lib. v. chap. 42. See, too, Epiph. Hasres. 42, 9.
2 Epiph. Hasres. 42, 9, p. 310, 373.
8 Adv. Marcion, torn. v. chap. 42.
4 Comm. in Ep. ad Philem. proem. (Opp., tom. iv. p. 442.)
8 Hist. Ecc, Lib. vi. chap. 14.
8 Strom. Lib. iii. p. 465 ; edit, of Paris, 1629.
15

170 THE CANON.
He always places both Testaments in the same rank, as the
word of God. Thus in his second book of the Stromata x he
says, " The man justified by faith shall live by that faith
which is according to the Testament and the Commandments ;
for these two testaments which are two as to name and date,
having been given by a wise economy according to the age
and its wants, are only one in their power (ovvdpei p.La. ovo-ai).
Both the Old Testament and the New are equally bestowed
through the Son, by one and the same God." He also calls
the collection of the canon, the " gospel of the Apostle,"
" the Lord's writings," " the New Testament."
In the seventh book of the Stromata,2 he compares them
to the Virgin Mary, conceiving the Lord, while remaining
a virgin. " Such are the Lord's Scriptures (at KvpiaKal
ypcupai.) ; they conceive the truth and remain virgins, by con
cealing the mysteries of the truth.'- He says, " We have,
for a principle of doctrine the Lord himself, who leads us in
various measures and ways from the beginning to the end
of knowledge, whether by means of the Prophets, or the Gos
pel, or the blessed Apostles." He says again, " Both the
Gospel and the Apostle bid us mortify the old man." "
It is always to the Scriptures that he appeals against his
opponents, as to an inspired book, a universal rule, the only
rule of faith, the infallible judge of controversies.
In his seventh book of the Stromata, he says,4 "They
who do not follow God wherever he leads, fall from that ele-
l vated state I have described ; now God guides by the divinely
(inspired Scriptures." And again,6 " When we have over
thrown them by showing their evident opposition to the
Scriptures, you will see their leaders always doing one of
two things : showing contempt either for the consequences of
their own doctrines, or for the prophecy itself, or rather for
their own hope."
It is to the Scriptures, also, that Clement always appeals.
1 Page 756, Paris edit. 1629. 2 Page 757. 8 page 706.
4 Book vii. 5, 16, chap. xvi. p. 894 (or 761). 8 ]

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 171
" We then too, when, in regard to the Scriptures, we give a
perfect demonstration drawn from the Scriptures themselves,
— we then form our persuasion in a convincing manner by
faith." " For those who, in order to benefit others, give themselves
to writing or preaching the word, if it is useful to acquire
some other kind of instruction, it is necessary to know the
Scriptures of the Lord for the demonstration of what they
say." J " The truth is found in confirming each of the things ,
demonstrated according to the Scriptures, by the allegation '
of similar Scriptures." 2
Clement in his philosophy on Christian gnosis, as he calls
it, admitted the existence of a certain mystical tradition which
Christ gave to four of his apostles only concerning the hidden
sense of Scripture, and which has been transmitted only to
certain rabbis of the church, to pass from age to age to a
certain number of initiated persons, whom he calls gnostics
or scientific men. And in the mean time, in spite of this
system of tradition, sustained by him alone, and strongly com
bated by both Irenseus and Tertullian,3 Clement has not
ceased to declare that the Scriptures are the universal rule
of faith as well for the gnostic, initiated in their profoundest
meanings, as for the simple believer. " For the gnostic knows
according to the Scripture." 4
In the seventh book of the " Stromata," he says again,5
" They are the believers who have only tasted the Scrip
tures ; but they are the gnostics who have advanced still far
ther, and become exact gnomons of the truth ; they there
discover hidden meanings not perceived by the vulgar."
1 Strom. Lib. vi. sec. ii. p. 786.
2 Strom. Lib. vii. sec. xvi. p. S91.
8 Irenseus adv. Haeres. Lib. i. cap. 242, p. 101; Lib. iii. cap. 14, 15, pp.
235, 237 ; Tertullian de Pra?script., chaps. 8 and 25. The pretense that the
apostles had not revealed the same things to all, but had taught certain
things in secret and to a small number, he denominates a falsehood.
4 Strom. Lib. vi. sec. 11.
8 Sec. 16, p. 891 ; Edit. Potter, Oxford, 1715, p. 757. Edit. Heinsins,
Paris, 1629.

172 THE CANON.
But we pass to the pious Irenseus, still nearer than Clem
ent or Tertullian to the times of the apostles.

Irenceus.
Irenseus, born among the Greeks of Asia about A. d. 120,
that is, only seventeen years after the death of John, and in
the very place where this apostle finished his course, had re
ceived from childhood a Greek and at the same time a Chris
tian education ; for he had the happiness, as he says, " when
yet an infant," of being frequently with the martyr Polyearp
the holy bishop of Smyrna. " This Polyearp," he says,1
" taught by the apostles and intimate with many of the men
who had seen the Lord, and placed by apostles over the
province of Asia as bishop of Smyrna, we have seen in our
infancy, teaching all the things he had learned of the apos
tles." — And now see what he wrote about him still later in
the interesting fragment of his works which comes to us
through Eusebius.2
" 0 Florinus, these impious dogmas (of the gnostics) are
not those taught you by them who were disciples of the apos
tles ; for I have seen thee, while I was yet an infant, in Asia
Minor near Polyearp, whilst thou wert still shining at the
imperial court and seeking to be agreeable to it. I remem
ber better what passed at that time than more recently ; for
the things learned in childhood take root in the soul. I could
describe both the place where this blessed Polyearp was sit
ting, and his manner of entering and of retiring, his mode
of life, his appearance, his discourses to the people, his famil
iar relations with John, and with those who had seen the Lord,
and how he used to repeat their discourses and all they had
said to him about the Lord, his miracles and his doctrine.
Now these things which Polyearp used to state were all in
accordance with the Scriptures. By the goodness of God,
I even then listened attentively to them, recording their
1 Hseres. Lib. iii. chap. 3. 2 Hist. Eccl. Lib. v. chaps. 19, 20.

IRENSEUS. 173
words, not on paper, but in my heart ; and by the grace of
God, I can accurately run over them in my memory."
We have not shrunk from dwelling on these long details,
because they show how near to the very origin of Christian
ity these testimonies began to be uttered. Irenaeus even in
forms us that he lived in a period when you could still meet
with men having the charisms or miraculous powers received
from the imposition of the apostles' hands.1 He says, " We
ourselves have heard in the Church many brethren who had
prophetic gifts, and who spoke various languages by the
Holy Spirit."2
We see in his books 8 that he had at the same time studied
the literature and philosophy of his times. Tertullian calls
him " a zealous explorer of all knowledge." 4 He had thor
oughly learned the Celtic language, to become more useful
as a preacher of the gospel, and he spoke it habitually.
Thus, at the commencement of his book5 he excuses him
self for having neither the habit of writing nor the elegancies
of language ; " because, living among the Celts, I am obliged
to converse generally in a barbarous tongue."
Irenaeus was then an eminent man, admired by all the ¦
church for his missionary zeal, as well as his wisdom and
charity. He had first preached the gospel to the pagans ;
and it is said to have been by the advice of Polyearp that
he left Smyrna with Pothinus to go and preach the Word
to the Gauls, and soon to take charge, at the peril of his life,
of the church just formed amidst the idolatrous people of
Lyons. In a. d. 178, when Pothinus, who was much older
than he, (being born fifteen years before the death of John,)
had suffered martyrdom with so many other believers of
1 Acts viii. 17.
2 Euseb., H. E., v. 7. See also in Iren. Hasres. Lib. v. chap. 6.
8 See his quotations from the ancient poets and philosophers, particularly
in chap. 19 of his Book ii.
4 Or of all doctrines, doctrinarum omnium curiosissimus explorator. Con
tra Valentinianos, cap. v.
8 P. 3, Grabe, Oxf. 1702. 15*

174 THE CANON.
Lyons, Irenasus succeeded him in his charge of bishop, and
afterwards also in his prison ; for they decapitated him under
Septimus Severus, some say, a.d. 197, after the bloody vic
tory of this Emperor at the gates of Lyons ; others say, in
A. d. 202, at the time of the general persecution. Irenseus,
a.d. 177, during the captivity of Pothinus, had been de
puted by the churches of Gaul to visit the Asiatic bishops
and the bishop of Rome (Eleutherus). He had afterward to
reprimand the successor of the latter for his intolerance. " So
far," he said, " as one has it in his power to do good to his
neighbor, and refuses to do it, he must be held as a stranger
to the love of the Lord." 1
All his ministry was a blessing to the Gallic churches as
well as the general cause of truth. " He was the illumina
tor (<pu>o-Trip) of the Galatians (Gauls) of the West," says
Theodoret. He had written commentaries and many other
works, but almost all has perished except his work " Against
the Heresies," written particularly against the Valentinians,
who had penetrated in his day from Rome into Gaul, pervert
ing the faith of a great number, especially women. Irenseus
composed this great work carefully. Only brief fragments
of the original Greek are found ; but the entire work is pre
served to us in a Latin translation bearing the date a.d.
1400.2 Let any one then take up the folio volume of Irenseus,
and open it at random anywhere, excepting in the first pages
devoted to the exposition of Valentinian gnosticism and its
impious fantasies ; (of his thirty 33011s, of Mother Achamoth
or the thirtieth seon, and the substances produced by her,)
we venture to say that it will be rare to find a page on which
our Scriptures are not quoted. We know no modern author

1 Fragments of his letter to Victor, in the Works of Irenseus, p. 466,
Grabe's edition, 1702.
2 We generally quote from Grabe's edition, large folio, Oxford, 1702,
which is the best. Others recommend that of the Benedictines of Mas-
suet, Paris, folio, 1710. We have sometimes employed it.

IREN.EUS. 175
who has made so constant a use of them. And the reader,
in view of such a book, will be soon constrained to recognize
that the Christian people of the second century were, as to
their knowledge and their interest in the Scriptures, superior
to the Christian people of the nineteenth.
From the first page you will discover what is the charac
ter of the whole book in this respect. Already the first line
of the preface quotes the first epistle of Paul to Timothy :
" Considering, that certain persons sent among you to attack j
the truth, introduce, as the Apostle says, words of falsehood j
and ' endless genealogies, which minister questions rather than
godly edifying, which is in faith,' leading the simple astray,
falsifying the oracles of the Lord (rd Xoyio. Kvpiov) and per
verting many, (2 Tim. xi. 18,) after having led them, under a
vain pretense of science (gnosis), far from Him who has crea
ted and arranged the universe ; as if they had something bet
ter or greater to show them  I have thought necessary,
beloved, after having read the commentaries of the followers
of Valentinus, (as they call themselves,) to acquaint thee
with these monstrous mysteries ; that thou mayest speak of
them to those around thee, and that thou mayest exhort
them to keep themselves from these depths of folly and from
this blasphemy againsj; Christ."
And if from these first lines you pass to the last, you will
still have some glimpse of the abundant, indeed I should
say the exuberant, quotations of our Holy Books which are
made by this bishop of the second century. Open at the
beautiful chapter xxxvi., in which he describes the scenes
of the last day. This chapter contains only fifty-four lines ;
and yet he has there found room to quote at length, besides
two books of the Old Testament, (Ex. xxxv. 40, and Isa.
lxvi. 32,) twelve passages of the New. To convey some
idea of it, I will quote the last thirty lines : 1
" Then, as the ministers of the Word teaeh us, ' they who
1 Translating from their obscure and antique Latin, as the Greek is lost.

176 THE CANON.
shall have been counted worthy J to inhabit heaven shall be
carried thither, some to taste there the delights of paradise ;
others to partake of the glory of the celestial city. In each
place they will see God ; but they will see him in proportion
to their knowledge of him here ; for in this blessed abode of
heaven there will be a proportionate degree of separation
from God, according as they may have brought forth fruit ;
some a hundred, some sixty, some thirty.' (Matt. xiii. 8, and
Mark iv. 8.) And it is in view of this that the Loed has
said, ' In my Father's house are many mansions.' (John
xiv. 2.) All these joys in fact shall come to them from
God, who assigns to each his appropriate residence. It is
therefore his Word 2 has said, that the Father distributes to
every one according as he is worthy. And that is this tri
clinium, this table at which are seated the guests who are to
partake of the wedding feast (Matt. xxii. 2 ; Luke xiv. 16) ;
for the ministers of the Word, disciples of the Apostles, tell
us that such is the law of coordination (adordinationem) by
which the redeemed will be ranked. They are thus ad
vanced by degrees, rising by the Spirit to the Son, and by
the Son to the Father ; the Son at length yielding his work
to the Father, as the Apostle has said (1 Cor. xv. 25,
26) : He must reign till he hath put .all enemies under his
feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, for in
the time of this kingdom the just man shall no more know 8
on earth what it is to die. Yet, the Apostle adds, when
he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he
is excepted which did put all things under him. And when
all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also
himself be subject unto him that put all things under him,
that God may be all in all. For this reason John foretold a
first resurrection of the just (Rev. xx. 5) and an inheritance
of a kingdom on the earth (Rev. v. 10). For this reason
i Or, judged worthy (mTa^ia&evreg). It is the very expression of Luke
xx. 35 ; xxi. 36.
2 Yerbum ejus. s Obliviscetur.

IREN.EUS. 177
the Prophets also, in the harmony of their revelations
(concordantes), have predicted it ; and it is this, too, which
the Loed himself teaches, when he promises to his
disciples the new cup which he will drink with them in his
Father's kingdom (Matt. xxvi. 29). Thus the Apostle*
declares that the time shall come when the creature shall be
delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the children of God (Rom. viii. 21.) In all and
by all these revelations, one and ^he same God and Father
is showed to us who formed man by his hands (qui plasma-
vit hominem), who promised to the fathers the heritage of
the earth, who dispenses it to them in the resurrection of
the just, and who, fulfilling thus the promises which he has
made to them for the kingdom of his Son, accomplishes
finally the things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor
have entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. ii. 9). Thus,
then, there is an only Son, who has perfectly fulfilled the
will of the Father, and one only human race in which are
consummated the mysteries of God, mysteries into which the
angels desire to look (1 Pet. i. 12), although it is impossible
for them to find out to perfection the wisdom of God by
which is completed that creature he has formed with his
hands (plasma ejus), to be made conformable to the Son,
and of the same body with him (concorporatum Filio) ; in
order that his first begotten, the Word, may descend into his
creature formed by his hands, that it may be received by
him (capiatur ab eo), and that in its turn the creature may
receive the Word, rise up to it, rise above the angels and be
made in the image and likeness of God."
Such, then, was Irenseus, and such was the canon in his
time. All our Scriptures abound in his books — the four
Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Apocalypse.
And first, as to the four Gospels, Irenaeus quotes them
constantly ; and what will show us how deeply, in days so
near the time of the Apostles, the use of them, and the use
of four exclusively, had rooted itself in the thought of the

178 THE CANON.
church, it is not only that Irenteus has written a long chap
ter x entitled, " Proof of there being four and only four Gos
pels ; " and it is not only that always regarding them as one
indivisible whole, he has for that reason called them "the
I Gospel under four forms ;" he even goes so far as to seek
I for this quadruple form mystical reasons, which, while value-
' less in our eyes, none the less strongly attest the conviction
of Irenaeus, and of his age. As Olshausen says,2 in order
that Irenaeus should so express himself to the men of his
epoch concerning the four Gospels, it must have been that
the church then existing knew no period when she had not
had them. Irenaeus compares the quadriform gospel (rerpd-
pop<pov) to the four quarters of the globe, to the four uni
versal spirits, to the cherubim with four faces, etc. " The
church is scattered over the earth ; but the pillar and ground
of the church is the gospel and the spirit of life. It was
then proper that it should have four pillars, promoting purity
and quickening humanity. And hence it is manifest that the
Word, creator of all things, who is seated on the cherubim,
and who sustains all things, when he proposed to make himself
known to men, chose to give us the gospel under a quadruple
form, while at the same time it is sustained in unity by one
only and identical Spirit.8 Now we have showed by very
many and very powerful reasons, on the one hand, that there
are not more than four, and on the other, that there are not
less ; because they alone are true and solid (quoniam sola
ilia vera et firma)."
He adds, " Matters being thus, very vain and very igno
rant, yes, very audacious are all they who would change this
form (iStav) of the gospel, and give it more or less than these
four visages. And so great in respect to the gospels is this
firmness of which we are speaking, that the heretics them-
1 Lib. iii. chap. 2, sec. 7.
2 jEchtheit d. 4 Ev. sec. 272.
8 It is the 9th chap, of Book iii. in the Massuet Bened. edit. 1710; the
11th, in Grabe's Oxford edit. 1702, pp. 214, 221.

IRENiEUS. 179
selves 1 render it their testimony, and that you see every one
of them, when he comes forth to daylight, supporting his j
positions by these very gospels."
And what we affirm concerning the persuasion of Irenaeus
and his age as to the four gospels, is not less true as regards
the book of Acts. He cites it more than sixty-four times,
and even labors in his third book to show by numerous cita- i
tions the harmony of this book of Luke with the epistles of '
Paul. Nor is this persuasion less in regard to the other books of
the canon. He quotes also abundantly from them. We
have, for instance, counted in the index of Grabe 2 a hun- j
dred and seven quotations which Irenseus has made from the
first epistle to the Corinthians, eighty-eight from the epistle
to the Romans, thirty-four from the Ephesians, twenty-nine /
from the Galatians, twenty from Colossians, eighteen from
second Corinthians, eleven from Philippians, eleven from
first Peter, ten from second Thessalonians, five from first
Timothy, four from second Timothy, three from Titus, three
from first John, and two from first Thessalonians. In a
word, he quotes all the books of the Canon. He omits only
the letter to Philemon. Are we surprised ? This brief
epistle, treating only of a question of domestic morals, and
having nothing dogmatic in it, had no chance of being quoted
in a book of controversy ; and we have said elsewhere that at
the same time Tertullian mentioned it in Africa, and that it
was not until the audacious Marcion that any one questioned
its authenticity.8
This testimony of Irenssus to the canon of the second cen
tury is, then, irrefragable ; but, to render it complete, we must
still show, by a few quotations selected from the multitude in
his book, how firm was the faith of that age in the divine
inspiration of all these books, their sufficiency and their au-
1 He says, the Ebionites, Marcion, Marcus, and Valentinus.
2 P. 473. And we know Grabe has frequently omitted passages.
8 Canon, chap. 2, sec. 3.

180 THE CANON.
thority. The passages which prove it are so numerous in
the course of his book that we are embarrassed in selecting.
Everywhere with him it belongs to the Scriptures to lay the
foundation of faith, reestablish it in overthrowing error, to
be its sole, universal and divine rule ; and it is always, as
Erasmus says,1 " by the garrisons of Scripture alone that
Irenaeus attacks the squadrons of the heretics."
" In employing 2 these proofs which are taken from the
Scriptures, you easily overthrow, as we have showed, all these
sentences of the heretics afterward invented."
The collection of our Scriptures was already called the
New Testament ; and everywhere Irenseus places them in
the same rank of authority with those of Moses and the
prophets. " The precepts of perfect life," he says in the fourth book,8
" being the same in both Testaments, have revealed to us the
same God."
In his first book, Irenaeus exposes the doctrines of Valen-
tinus and his acolytes ; in the second, he shows their evil
character ; in the third, he refutes them by the Scriptures.
" We have learned the plan of salvation only by those who
have brought us the gospel. They first proclaimed it by their
voices ; then they left us the tradition of it in the Scriptures
by the will of God, to be after them the pillar and ground
of the faith."
He says again,4 " In opposing the sound doctrine to the
contradictions of heretics, following only one teacher, the only
and true God, and having his words for the rule of truth, we
all and always say the same things on the same points." —
And again : " If we can not find solutions for everything we
meet in the Scriptures, we ought to resign those questions to
God, who also hath created us ; knowing that the Scriptures
1 Prsef. in Irenseum.
2 Chap. xiv. p. 422; Grabe's edit. 1702.
8 It is chap. xii. Bened. edit. Paris, 1710 ; it is the xxvith in that of Grabe,
Oxford, 1702, p. 312.
4 Lib. iv. chap. 69, Grabe, Oxford, p. 368.

IRENiEUS. 181
are certainly perfect, because they were spoken by the Word I
of God and his Spirit." 1
In all the course of his five books you meet expressions
like these : " We prove by the Scriptures ; as we learn from
the Scriptures ; we have proved from the Scriptures ; we
have demonstrated by the Lord's Scriptures ; we must ex
plain everything that lies in the Scriptures ; if they had
known the Scriptures, they would have known . . . ;
let us return to the proof which is drawn from the Scrip
tures ; having for ourselves these proofs which are drawn
from the Scriptures. — Firm, real, not imaginary, alone true,
is the faith which we sustain ; this faith receiving from the
Scriptures a manifest demonstration."
He says elsewhere : " John wishing to establish a rule of
truth in the church, has thus spoken."
" When we have refuted them by the Scriptures," he says
of the heretics, " they turn and question the Scriptures them- '
selves as if they erred or expressed themselves erroneously,'
or lacked authority, or had divers senses, or were insufficient'
for the discovery of truth for those who have not tradition ;
because, they say, the truth was not given by writing, but
by the living voice."
At the same time, before passing further, we must notice
those passages in which this father appeals to apostolical tra
dition, and from which the doctors of Rome have derived the
sanction of their views of tradition. It is easy to see that
Irenseus had in view a totally different matter. He never
means by this term, as they do at Rome, an oral transmission,
apocryphal and continued, no one knows by whom, of dogmas
not contained in the Scriptures, or of dogmas even opposed
to its teachings. On the contrary, with him as with all the
other fathers, this term is employed most commonly to desig
nate the Scriptures. We have just quoted his words : " The
apostles, after having preached the gospel with the living
voice, have left us by the Divine will the tradition of it in
1 Lib. ii. chap. 47, p. 173; Grabe, 1702.
16

182 THE CANON.
the Scriptures, (Evangelium . . postea per voluntatem Dei in
Scripturis nobis tradiderunt), to be after them the pillar and
ground of faith." The Scriptures, — that is Irenseus' tradi
tion, the true tradition, " given by the will of God to be after
them the pillar and ground of faith."
" This interpretation of which we speak, agrees with the
tradition of the apostles," he says : 1 " for Peter and John and
Matthew and Paul and others have thus spoken. In fact,
the same spirit of God which has spoken in the prophets,
has also announced in the apostles the fullness of times and
the approach of the kingdom of heaven."
" The Fathers," remarks the learned Mr. Goode, in his
Divine Rule,2 (speaking of Irenaeus and especially of his fol
lowers,) " constantly employ the terms tradition and apostoli
cal tradition to designate the Scriptures ; and it is by a strange
abuse that Messrs. Newman and Keble cite them to sustain
the meaning totally different given to this expression by the
doctors of Rome." Mr. Goode even shows that the passages
of Athanasius alleged by these authors as favoring tradition
in the Roman sense, say precisely the contrary, and recom
mend only the written Word. It may be seen by numerous
quotations from Irenaeus, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen,
Cyril of Alexandria, Socrates the historian, Cyprian, and
even Jerome, that, by evangelical tradition, the Fathers
meant the gospels, as distinct from the Acts and Epistles ; and
by apostolical tradition, the Acts and Epistles of the apos
tles. It is very true that Irenaeus, with the other fathers, also
sometimes uses this expression to designate a still recent
recollection of the apostles and their teachings, which was
preserved in those places where they had labored ; but even
then he employs it still in a sense totally opposed to that of
the Roman doctors. The heretics, confounded by the quo
tations from the Scriptures, produced the traditions of the
i Lib. iii. chap. 25, p. 256; Grabe, 1702.
2 London, 1853, vol. i. p. 68.

IREN.&US. 183
apostles to sanction their errors, and pretended to appeal
from the written to the oral testimony of these men of God.
Irenseus, to refute them, himself urged an appeal to the still
accessible tradition of the apostles ; that is, to the recollection
still preserved in his time among the churches which they
had founded. Nothing was more rational. If in our days,
for example, one should affirm some historical falsehood con
cerning the passage of the Alps by Bonaparte, fifty or sixty
years ago, in his campaign of Marengo ; and if the authors
of the falsehood, rejecting the testimony of books, should ap
peal from it to the oral traditions gathered in those places,
we might with Irenseus, accept the challenge ; we might op
pose with confidence this source of information to their state
ments, and defy them to find in it any trustworthy support
of those statements. But if, instead of Napoleon, the ques
tion was about Hannibal ; and if instead of the passage of
the Alps by the French, it referred to that by the Cartha
ginians more than two thousand years ago, we should scarcely
be so absurd as to refer to local traditions, which could be of
no value in the case. It was so with Irenaeus.
He never dreamed of a tradition perpetual, infallible,
transmitted from generation to generation, no one knows how.
But when the Valentinians, incapable of resisting his argu
ments, pretended to set against them the oral instruction of
the apostles, he replied, " We know it better than you, and
we can easily find this teaching in the churches founded by
them." They were then only in the second century of
Christianity ; they still preserved the living remembrance
of the succession of bishops after the apostles ; they still
found in many places, as Irenaeus affirms, " men endowed
with charisms or miraculous powers received from some apos
tle, or even old believers who had conversed with the imme
diate disciples of Jesus Christ." It was then quite legitimate
for this father to appeal to such reminiscences. He exclaims
at the beginning of his third book,1 in complaining of the
l Chap. II., p. 200. Grabe, 1702.

184 THE CANON.
Gnostics and their bad faith: "O dearly beloved, see the
men with whom we have to contend ! They slip away from
all our proofs like snakes ; and will submit to neither scrip
ture nor tradition. Thus in all the church, men who desire
to know the truth, may recognize the tradition of the apos
tles rendered manifest in all the world. We have only to
count the bishops ordained by them in divers churches, and
their successors to our day. They have never taught or
known anything like the absurdities which these doctors de
liriously utter." And in the two following chapters,1 Irenaeus
still is seeking to confound his adversaries, the Marcionites
and Valentinians, by this very testimony which they had the
audacity to invoke : in the first, which he entitles " Of the
succession of bishops from the apostles ; " and in the second,
entitled, " Testimony of those who saw the apostles, as to
the preaching of the truth."
We see then that Irenseus in the second century referred
to a tradition, recent and traceable ; (veterem traditionem
apostolorum) but not to one modern, apocryphal and of
unknown origin, such as the Roman bishops invoke after
seventeen centuries have passed away. It was with him a
tradition human and fallible, although well informed; not one
self-styled divine and infallible, although very defectively in
formed, such as that which the Council of Trent has pretended
to place on the level of the Scriptures,2 and even above them.3
But further, these very recollections of the apostles still
discoverable in local traditions, Irenaeus, however much he
respected them, never ceased to subject to the control of the
Holy Scripture. He never admits that any tradition, how
ever early it may be, can teach what the written Word does
not teach. And in that famous letter to Florinus which we
have already quoted,4 you see that as soon as he has quoted
1 III. & IV. p. 200, 205, Oxford edit. 1706.
2 Pari pietatis et reverential affectu (Session 4, first decree).
8 Ibid, second decree of April 28, 1546.
4 Canon, chap. II., sec. 5.

LRENJEUS. 185
Polycarp's reminiscences of John, and John's remarks on
Christ, he takes care to add that they were " all conformed
to the Scriptures (rravro. crvp<pa>va rats ypcupcus). So sensi
tive was his holy jealousy for the sovereignty of the written
Word. " Having then for our rule," he says in his second book,1
" the very truth and the testimony of God fully revealed, we
ought not to reject the firm and true knowledge of God by
permitting ourselves to go and seek for other solutions of the
questions, here and there. If we can not find the reply to all
the difficult questions which the Scriptures suggest, ... we
must commit them to God who also created us; knowing
fully that the Scriptures are perfect, because they were
spoken by the Word of God and by his Spirit."
" It is thus that by using these proofs which are derived
from the Scriptures, you easily overthrow all those false
notions of the heretics which have been more recently im
agined." " And if any one asks,2 Before God created the world
what was he doing ? we will reply that is for God to answer.
For the Scriptures teach us that this world, created perfect,
began in time; but what God was doing before that, no
Scripture informs us. It is then a question which belongs
, only to God, and which we must leave to his sovereign
disposal." And to sum up all, Irenaeus declares that the Valentinians,
in building on traditions not contained in the Scriptures,
spin ropes of sand. " When they do this," says he, " and
advance what is not taught by the prophets, the Lord Jesus,
nor the apostles, pretending to know more ,than other Chris
tians, and making allegations which are not taken from that
which is written ; they but spin, as it is said, ropes from
sand." 3 (i£ app.ov o~xoivia rrXeKeiv iirurrfievovrK^)
i Chap. 67, p. 173. Oxford edit., 1702.
2 Lib. ii., chap. 47, p. 175.
8 Lib. i., chap. 1, sec. 15. Oxford edit., 1702.
16*

186 THE CANON.
Other Cotemporary Fathers.
Such then was Irenaeus ; such were Clement and Tertul
lian ; such, the latter half of the second century in the east
and the west, and such its canon. But if we have deemed
it best to cite more abundantly these three illustrious fathers
on account of the immense weight of their testimony, it is
not that we could not find others of the same period, of whose
writings we retain fragments or extracts in Eusebius. W
refer to Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, converted A. d. 150
and author of an apology still in existence ; to Athenagoras,
an Athenian philosopher converted to Christianity, and flour
ishing a. d. 177 ; to Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, about a. d.
170, and martyred in 178 ; and finally to Asterius Urbanus,
bishop or teacher of the Galatian churches, who preached
with power in the city of Ancyra about A. d. 188.
Dionsysius of Corinth, Eusebius says (Hist. Eccl. IV.
23), complains that having written some letters, "there
were ministers of Satan who had changed them. But should
I be astonished, since some have even ventured to falsify
the very Scriptures of the Lord ! " It is thus he refers to
the New Testament.
Asterius Urbanus wrote, according to Eusebius ; J three
books against the Montanists. " I hesitated for a long time,
to publish them ; not that I doubted about the duty of ren
dering testimony to the truth, but from the fear of appearing
in some measure to go beyond what is written, and to decide
something beyond the Word of the New Testament of the
Gospel, from which nothing must be taken, to which nothing'
must be added, when one has resolved to govern his life
by that gospel." Thus spoke this teacher in Galatia, nearly
a century after Paul. He not only wished to govern his
life by the word of the New Testament, but he admitted no
other tradition of Jesus Christ and his apostles.
Athenagoras, although less called by the nature of his
1 Hist. Ecc. Lib. v. chap. 16. Reading edit., vol. 1.

OTHER COTEMPORARY FATHERS. 187
¦writings to quote the Scriptures, presents us also himself
many passages borrowed either from the gospels or the epis
tles. He says, for example, in a treatise on the resurrection
of the dead, (pages 61, 62,) " This mortal must, according to
the apostle, put on immortality, in order that the dead being
restored to life by the resurrection . . . every one may
receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath
done, whether it be good or bad."
Theophilus of Antioch is still more definite. Converted,
it is said, in mature life by the power of the Scriptures, a. d.
150, he had composed, as Jerome tells us, Commentaries on
the four Gospels,1 books against Marcion and Hermogenes,
and catechisms now entirely lost. But we may produce here
numerous passages from the " Apologetic Treatise," which he
addressed in three books to his old friend Autolycus, still a
pagan and violently opposed to Christianity. He there fre
quently quotes both the gospels and Epistles, but referring to
them in general terms, as should be done in dealings with
pagans. We give some examples.
See how, among others, he recommends to Autolycus 2 the
inspiration of the Old and the New Testaments. " Now, as
to the justice of which the law has spoken, we find analogous
things both in the Prophets and the Evangelists ; because all
the inspired men (Tn>evpctTo<p6povs) have spoken by one only
and the same Spirit of God."
See too how he quotes the fifth chapter of Matthew, " Now
the Evangelical Voice recommends chastity still more
forcibly when it says, Whosoever looketh on a woman to
lust after her, etc. And whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced, committeth adultery, etc. And still further, in re
gard to charity, the Evangelical History says, Love your ene
mies, pray for them who persecute you, etc. — and as respects
humility, the Gospel says, Let not thy right hand know," etc.
And see, moreover, how he quotes the epistle to the Ro-
i Letter to Algasius (tom. iv. p. 197; Bale, 1537.) See Prcem in Matt
2 Lib. iii. p. 126.

188 THE CANON.
mans (xiii. 7, 8) : " The Divine Wisdom (Divina Sapientia in
the Latin version) requires us to render to all their dues ;
tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom, honor to
whom honor, fear to whom fear, and to owe no man anything,
but to love them all." And the first to Timothy (ii. 2) ;
" Besides that Our Divine Word, as to our duty to magis
trates, ordains even that we should pray for them, that we
may lead a quiet and peaceable life." And in his second
book, speaking of the body of inspired Scriptures and of
John's gospel : : " Behold what the Holy Scriptures teach and
all the pneumatophoric men (spirit-bearing) of whom was
John who said, " In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was God," etc.
Such was the second century in its latter half, and such
the firmness of its faith in the first canon.
What shall we then conclude from all these testimonies so
unanimous and so powerful which speak at once from Antioch,
Galatia, Macedonia, Carthage, and Gaul ?
Conclusion from all these Testimonies.
We must first fully perceive that these quotations not only
express the unanimous personal persuasion of all those great
teachers, so different in their positions, characters, and nation
alities ; not only even the faith of the cotemporary church ;
not only " the very great firmness " as Irenaeus terms it of
this faith in the four gospels ; its very great firmness in re
gard to the book of Acts and the thirteen Pauline epistles,
as also the two epistles of Peter and John ; but they also
especially show with a resistless power, the historical legiti
macy of this faith ; the origin, necessarily apostolical, of all
these twenty books, and their perfect and incontestable au
thenticity. And this proof is so powerful, that it might, we
think, suffice of itself even if we had no other, either pre
ceding or succeeding it. 1 Lib. ii. p. 100.

CONCLUSION FROM ALL THESE TESTIMONIES. 1J39 .,'
In fact let us go back in imagination to the epoch\ so near
the time of the apostles when these fathers were living, and ,
inquire how, if the unanimity of all the churches in regard;
to the twenty books had not commenced in the apostles' time,
it would have been possible that, only fifty years after the
death of John, a conviction so perfectly unanimous, so calm
and so sure of itself could, in so short a period, have entirely
pervaded Christendom. Who otherwise can explain this vast
phenomenon ? Who can say by what other process this per
suasion could have been formed from one end of the empire
to the other ; formed among the Latins as among the Greeks,
among the Celts as among the Syrians ; formed in such a
way that these books were not only everywhere received as
inspired, but everywhere received without question, every
where with an acknowledgment of the same authors (although
then without their names attached to them as now,) every
where with the same order of arrangement in the canon ;
everywhere four gospels, " no less, no more,'' says Irenaeus ;
everywhere, Matthew first, then Mark, then Luke, then John ;
and everywhere attributing the first and fourth to apostles, the
second and the third to inspired men who were not apostles,
whilst no index designated the authors in any one of the three
synoptical gospels ; everywhere the book of Acts attributed to
Luke ; then everywhere the thirteen epistles of Paul, always
classed in the same order, which was by no means their chron
ological order ; everywhere the epistle first in order, that to
the Romans, then Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philip
pians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon ;
then the first epistle of Peter and the first of John ; (for, as
we have affirmed before, these twenty books have never
changed their respective places ; 1 ) that one of these three let
ters which was written from Babylon having made its regular
way among the churches of Africa or of Gaul to take its own
1 Some have placed the Acts after the Epistles, and some others, the cath
olic letters before the thirteen letters of Paul ; but these moreover, have
always, with the four gospels, preserved their respective order.

190 THE CANON.
rank, as well as the letters sent from the prisons of Rome,
had made their way among the Greek churches of Egypt or
the Syriac churches of Adiabene.
How then can any one account for this unanimity at once
so peaceful and so firm in regard to the twenty books, unless
by admitting the only reasonable explanation which is possi
ble, I mean the recognition in this universal agreement of a
concert, commenced during the life of the apostles, and ex
tending without opposition under their influence into every
part of the world where the church existed? This results
moreover naturally, as already remarked, from the fact that
the apostles had presided over the innumerable churches
founded by them for more than thirty years ; some longer
still, and John for seventy years. Without this explanation,
which harmonizes all the facts in the case, how can we ex
plain the fact that in the short space of a half century, any
one of the twenty books of the canon had come, without any
opposition, to be received everywhere, by all the ministers,
by all the bishops, by all the churches ; everywhere in the
same order in the canon ; everywhere by silent consent ;
everywhere at least without leaving in the church one sign
of remonstrance ? — and that also, among believers such as
were the Christians of the second century ; among teachers,
influential, learned, dwelling in the East and the West, vigi
lant, zealous, ready for martyrdom ; among men even so
jealous of the smallest apostolical reminiscences that you see
them at the same time holding councils and coming near sep^
arating 1 the East from the West, for what ? for an insignifi
cant difference as to the day of Easter ; the one party having
learned from their ancestors to celebrate it, as the Jews, on
the fourteenth day of March moon ; the others having learned
from theirs in the West, to defer it to the following Sunday?
— a dispute in which Victor was so vehement that Irenaeus

1 Eusebius, H. E. Lib. v-. chap. 23. See what he says of Irenauis, Polyc
rates, Palmas, Victor, Bacchylus.

CONCLUSION FROM ALL THESE TESTIMONIES. 191
was obliged to exercise his pious wisdom, and many other
bishops to sharply enjoin him to change his language.1
Has there ever been seen in the church a concert so sud
denly originating, and so perfect in regard to a point of such
importance as the apostolical authenticity of twenty sacred
books? Would it be easy in our- days to deceive all Europe
in regard to the works which she has agreed to ascribe to
men who died only in 1800 — Lavater, De Saussure, Mallet-
Dupan, Kant, Necker, Blair, or Klopstock ? Could any one
make us receive without remonstrance these new books un
known to their cotemporaries, unknown to all the world to
this day ? Could any make us readily receive, and without
discussion, in literature, apocryphal works of Voltaire or
Rousseau, dead now more than eighty years ? And yet the
world is to-day very slightly interested in deciding the legiti
macy of the books ascribed to such men ; whereas in the
times of Irenaeus and Tertullian, all the churches, all the
Christians of the world were deeply solicitous for the sacred
books ; to them the question concerned the Word of life ;
they would willingly shed their blood to confess it or de
fend it.
Nor let any one imagine that he can oppose to this in
comparable unanimity of the second century, concerning the
canon, that of the Roman Church in our day on all those
dogmas which separate it from evangelical Christianity. Do
we not know what a noise every one of these heresies made
in the world before it could be foisted in ? Do we not know
that councils and popes had to agitate kingdoms by protracted
wars before they could make them introduce first, the worship
of images, the invocation of the dead, then the celibacy of the
clergy, the subordination of bishops, the removal of the cup
in the Lord's Supper, and transubstantiation ? And even in
our day, do we not know that it is only after ages of fierce
disputations that Rome has been able to proclaim her dogma
1 Socrates, H. E. Lib. v. chap. 22. This controversy was not settled un
til thirty years later at the Council of Nice.

192 THE CANON.
of the immaculate conception ? * How different it was in the
second century with the unanimity of the churches on the
first canon ! You then find in all Christendom not the faint
est trace of a controversy on this subject, either in the East
or the West ; and you know that one hundred and fifty years
afterward, when Eusebius called the twenty-two books of
the first and second-first canons, homologomens, he intended
to say that those Scriptures had never been anywhere dis
puted, while in speaking of the five shorter and later epistles,
he called them antilegomens, to show that, while accepted by
the majority, they were still questioned by some. But when
he looked back to the farthest horizon of history, he could
not find the slightest vestige of opposition to the twenty-two
homologomens. We have here, then, the right to demand how this univer
sal agreement is to be explained, if it is not by acknowl
edging that these books had been already received by
all the churches before the apostles finished their career.
Without this, what a prodigious influence on the one side
and imbecility on the other would have been necessary in
order that any one of the four gospels or the book of the
Acts, or any one of the fifteen apostolical epistles, should
take its present position in the canon of every church with
out a breath of opposition. In fact, this double miracle of
skill and of stupidity would far surpass in improbability all
the legends of the Middle Ages, and would require in the ad
versaries more credulity than the gospel proposes to believ
ers, to make them admit that our holy books were given by
the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.
To say that, from the death of John, the Christians of the
whole world had received, as apostolical, books which the
apostles had not given them ; had, without examination, re
ceived them from one end of the empire to the other, and
caused them everywhere to be publicly read ; had caused
1 See the learned work recently published on this subject by L. Durand,
Brussels, 1859

CONCLUSION FROM ALL THESE TESTIMONIES. il93
even the apostolical churches of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus,
Philippi, Thessalonica, and Galatia to receive them as if they
had been given eighty years earlier, while in reality they
knew nothing of them through half the second century;
• — to say that all these churches had agreed to give these
new books in the body of the canon a rank everywhere the
same, and everywhere invariable ; to say that they were all
deceived at once and in the same manner, in Egypt, in Gaul,
in Greece, in Africa — all brought to the most silent sub
mission in regard to the same books, and even the same
names of authors ; .... in fact this surpasses all the limits
of possibility.
Surely, we must all admit, it is not thus that men deceive ;
and it is not thus men act when they are deceived. So
many persons engaged in the paths of falsehood do not reach
this universal agreement in a great mass of errors, especially
when those errors respect multiplied and specific facts, as
that of accepting twenty-two books, attributed to five differ
ent authors. The chances of error are diverse among a
scattered multitude ; and we may here apply to this unanim
ity what the great Tertullian said in the same century,1 when,
speaking of it in reference to another subject, he exclaimed,
" Is it probable that so great a number of churches, and of
such important churches, would arrive at one single faith, if
all were walking after a falsehood ? Among so many per
sons and such diverse chances the result could not be the same
in every case ; for when you find among the great number
one single and identical thought, it must be that which comes
from, not an error, but a tradition."
Let us then conclude, after hearing all these voices of the
latter half of the second century, that we must, to be reason
able, simply recognize the fact, (confirmed by so many othet
considerations,) the only fact which can account for it, to wit,
that all the homologomenous Scriptures were already col
lected before the death of John, and that the Christians of
1 De Prescript. Ha;reticor. cap. xxviii.
17

194 THE CANON.
the second century held them so firmly only because their
predecessors had received them from the apostles.
And let us conclude also that the testimony of the latter
half of the second century would suffice of itself to establish
the historical certainty of the first canon, that is, the incon
testable apostolical authenticity of all the sacred books it
contains. They are the eight ninths of the New Testament ; but
since almost all these historical proofs belong (as will pres
ently be shown) to the two other books which Eusebius de
clares to, have been always undisputed during the first two
centuries of the church, it results that already our proofs
attest, by history alone, the authenticity of the thirty-five
thirty-sixths of the New Testament.
At the same time we will also furnish new proofs ; for our
monuments date back still farther and give us witnesses of
the first half of the second century and even of the latter
years of the first. These will give the hand to the apostoli
cal Fathers, who, with their own eyes, saw the ambassadors
of the Lord ; and these Fathers in their turn will extend the
hand to the apostles who will sometimes speak to us them
selves of some of the books of the New Testament.
It will, however, be desirable, before hearing the writers
of the first half of the second century, to examine more
closely the very remarkable monument which we owe to the
researches of Muratori; for it seems to belong to the middle
of the second century.

SECTION VI.
THE FRAGMENT CALLED MUKATOEl'S.
More than a century ago this document was known to the
world only through the publication l of the celebrated anti-
l Antiquit. Ital. Medii OJvi; Milan, 1740.

THE FRAGMENT CALLED MURATORI'S. 195
quarian who discovered it in 1738 in a very ancient Latin
manuscript of the Ambrosian library in Milan. But, in
these later days, there have appeared three independent edi
tions taken from the original, by Messrs. Nott,1 Wieseler,2
and Hertz.8
The manuscript itself, in uncial letters and without' spaces
between the words, presents us an extraordinary specimen of
confusion, both by the blunders of the translator, which are
enormous, and by those of the editor and copyist, whose
sentences appear very frequently to be transposed and ab
ruptly broken off.4 This state of the manuscript, as well
as our ignorance of its precise date, of its author and even
of the character of the entire writing (which seems to have
been a part of an apologetic dialogue against some cotempo
rary heretic) ; all these things united, we have already re
marked, forbids our deducing from it very exact conclusions
in our history of the canon ; but it does not hinder us from
regarding the manuscript as a document very worthy of
attention on account of its incontestable antiquity.
Muratori attributes it to Caius ; Bunsen to Hippolytus ;
others give it a more recent origin. These are all conjec
tures ; it is enough for us to know that the author calls him
self a cotemporary of Pius I., ninth bishop of Rome, from
A. d. 142 to 157, and that he must have been younger than
the heretics of the second century whose, striking testimony
we shall soon examine, for he speaks of Marcion, Valentinus,
Basilides, and even of the Cataphrygians ; wherefore we
shall assign him his place here.
It is conceded that the original was in Greek ; for this
language was then most spoken in the Church of Rome ;
the language of Paul, of Peter, of Timothy, and of Luke ; the
i See Reliquiae Sacrse of Dr. Routh (2d edit., 1846), i. 394.
2 See Stud, and Kritik, 1847, p. 815, and Ibid. 1856, 1st number.
8 See Analecta ante-Nicama of Chev. Bunsen, i., p. 137, etc.
4 It can not be well judged of but by a personal inspection in Credner's
exact copy, Zur Geschichte des Canons, p. 71, etc., 1847. — It will be found
also in the Essay of M. "VVestcott on tho Canon, p. 557; Cambridge, 1855.

196 THE CANON.
language of Clement, and of Pius I., as of Justin Martyr,
of Hermas, Tatian, Caius, and Hippolytus. It was the lan
guage of Irenaeus when he wrote from Lyons, though' at
Lyons he habitually conversed in Celtic.1 It was also the
language of the first liturgies and discourses of the Roman
church.2 Now this ancient fragment, in its obscure language renders
a very clear testimony to our first canon ; and we there find,
as we shall show, a remarkable enumeration of our sacred
books. Although the beginning is lost, and the book com
mences in the middle of a sentence, you see at once that it
shows how the four gospels were given. " The Gospel ac
cording to Luke," he says, " is the third " — (these words are
there written in red capitals) ; and the author, from this
statement, enters immediately into details on the person of
Luke. " The fourth gospel," he adds (again in red ink), "is
that of John, one of the disciples." Then follow, on the
person of John, new details in which are found these two
important declarations.
The first is that, " in the very variety of the instructions
of each of the gospels, there is no difference as to the faith
of believers (nihil tamen differt credentium fidei) ; since, in
all, by one and the same sovereign Spirit all things are de
clared concerning the nativity of our Lord, his passion, his
resurrection, his interviews with his disciples, and his double
advent ; the first now passed, in his humiliation ; the second,
yet to come, in the glory of his regal power." The second
declaration is that " John calls himself not only the spectator
and hearer, but also the narrator of all the wonders of the
Lord, since he declares the same things in his epistles (sin
gula etiam in epistolis suis proferat3), and since he says in
speaking of himself: ' The things which we have seen with
1 Irenaeus, Haeres., Lib. i. Trpooipiov, p. 3.
2 Bunsen, Hippolytus, ii. 123. (French edition.)
3 The text has profaram ; but, in these quotations, we, with Bunsen,
Hertz, and Wieseler, correct the manifest errors and barbarisms of the text.

THE FRAGMENT CALLED MURATORI'S. 197
our eyes, which our ears have heard, and our hands have
handled (palpaverunt), is that which we have written.' "
See then already, on one side, the four gospels proclaimed
in this fragment as forming a unity distinct and universally
recognized as to their end, their contents and their inspira
tion. No distinction is made between the authority of the
gospels of the two apostles (Matthew and John) and those
of the two evangelists (Mark and Luke) ; they all four have
the same authority in the church ; they are all the work of
one and the same Spirit ; no doubt is admitted, none is men
tioned. And see, on the other hand, the epistles of John
recognized equally as written by the same apostle, to give us
the same instructions as his gospel. The fragment even
quotes for us the first verse of the first of these epistles.
After the Gospels come the Acts. " Now, the Acts of all
the apostles (says the fragment), were written in one single
book by Luke, who writes to the excellent Theophilus, re
counting to him the events he had witnessed, and therefore
relating neither the martyrdom of Peter nor the voyage of
Paul into Spain."
Next come the thirteen epistles of Paul. 'The fragment
continues, " Now the epistles of Paul, declare to those who
wish to know, from what place and for what reasons they
were written."
The author here enumerates them all, but in a different
order from the usual arrangement, and manifestly according
to the particular motive he imagined the author of each to
have had in writing it. " Paul addressed his letters to seven
churches, doubling those he wrote to Corinth and Thessalo-
nica. In the mean time, we must remember thafthere is but
one church spread over the entire globe ; and therefore John
in the Apocalypse, although writing to seven churches, ad
dresses all. But, besides these letters to the seven churches,
Paul writes one to Philemon, one to Titus, and two to Tim
othy." Let it be noticed here that the fragment has already
17*

198 THE CANON.
brought forward our first canon entire except the first epistle
of Peter, which certainly had its place in some other part of
this document, as we are to show ; and notice too we may
say in passing the Apocalypse, and the two lesser epistles of
John, and even the catholic epistle of Jude equally recog
nized.1 But the fragment in its disorder now comes to speak of
some other books, in its view, spurious. It says, " An epistle
to the Laodiceans, is spoken of (fertur etiam), and another to
the Alexandrians, invented under the name of Paul to aid
the heresy of Marcion, and many others which can not be
received in the Catholic church ; for it is not seemly to min-
' gle gall with honey." He adds, " The epistle of Jude, how
ever, (sane), and two epistles of John,2 of which we have
spoken above are received into the number of the catholic
epistles." We must carefully remark here that the fragment which
places Jude and John" among the catholic epistles, at the same
time does not preserve their group in its usual place. This
grpup should ordinarily follow either the Acts or the Epistles
of Paul. It is universally admitted that the document in its
present disordered condition, betrays many transpositions and
omissions. This accounts for the fact, that the first catholic
epistle of Peter, which was never contested anywhere, and
which, with the first of John, makes the nucleus of the cath
olic epistles of which mention had just been made, is not
named here, any more than that of James, while the first of
John is mentioned only incidentally and out of its place.
This omission is easily explained by the fragmentary condi
tion of the document, in which the connection of the parts
is so frequently interrupted.

1 Mr. Wieseler (Stud. & Krit, 1856), p. 98, thinks that the epistle to the
Hebrews was there meant by the words Alia ad Alexahdrinos. He says
the hearers were the Christian Jews of Alexandria.
2 The Latin having no articles, it may be two or the two epistles. Mr.
Bunsen alone has written in Catholicis.

THE FRAGMENT CALLED MURATORI'S. 199
In fact, at this point the pamphlet continues with thi3
strange sentence on the book of Proverbs : " And the wis
dom written by the friends of Solomon in honor of him."
This phrase, which comes in so unexpectedly to every reader,
would be absolutely unintelligible if we could not discover
in it, as Mr. Bunsen thinks, a fragmentary allusion to the
epistle to the Hebrews, which, like the book of Solomon,
must have been written by some friend of Paul, and not by
himself. Finally, the document adds, " We receive only the Apoca
lypses of John and of Peter ; and some among us do not
wish the latter to be read in the church."
It is after these words that he mentions, on the one hand,
Hermas, and on the other, the principal heretics of the age.
" Hermas," he says, " wrote the Shepherd in Rome in our
day, while Pius his brother was head of the church of Rome.
It must be read, but it can not be published to the people in
the church, neither among the prophets, the number of which
is complete, nor among the apostles, to the end of time; As
to Arsinoiis or Valentinus or Miltiades, we receive absolutely
nothing of theirs. Mention too is made of the Psalms at
tributed to Marcion as well as to Basilides ; and as to the
head of the Cataphrygians of Asia ....
There the fragment is abruptly terminated.
As to these latter details at which we have no desire to
pause now, we see clearly the remarkable testimony which
this ancient document, however disordered, renders to our
first canon.
We now ascend to the first half of the second century.

200 THE CANON.

SECTION VH.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS OF THE FIRST HALF OF
THE SECOND CENTURY.
We have during this epoch important witnesses to pro
duce ; but we should remark that the chronological divisions
of those early times were necessarily wanting in precision.
It appears to us desirable to classify the witnesses according
to the periods of their greatest activity.
Justin Martyr.
If we go back from the middle of the second century
toward the end of Trajan's reign (a. d. 117) in passing over
the long reigns of Antoninus Pius and Adrian, we come to the
most rapid advances of the Gospel, the first general persecu
tions, the first apologies written to arrest them as also the
first great gnostic sects and to the already numerous writings
which combated them. This period, so important from its
proximity to the beginnings of Christianity, and yet already
so harassed by imperial violence without and heresies within,
produces numerous writings now lost, letters, chronicles,
controversial essays, aud especially apologies, all written in
Greek. This was therefore called " the period of the Greek
apologists." Nearly all these books have perished, and we
know scarcely anything either of the writings or writers but
by the accounts of Eusebius. If we look over our table of
the Fathers (chap. ii. sec. 4,) it will be noticed that if our
attention is confined to those born in the second century, and
if we reserve the apostolical Fathers for a following section,
there will remain to be studied scarcely any but Justin Mar
tyr. In fact, although Theophilus of Antioch was born
about a.d. 110, we have not been able to place him any
where but in the latter half of the second century, because
he was not converted from paganism until about a. d. 150.

JUSTIN MARTYR. 201
And, on the other hand, we can not summon as witnesses any
of the authors cotemporary with Justin, who are mentioned
by Eusebius because there is none remaining ; neither that
Hegesippus who was, after Luke, the earliest ecclesiastical
historian ; nor that Dionysius of Corinth whose eight let
ters are mentioned by Eusebius (H. E. iv. 23), and by
Jerome (De Script. Illust. cap. 27), and of which we par
ticularly regret to have lost that which he wrote to the
church of the Nicomedians against the errors of Marcion,
because it certainly would have furnished us abundant quo
tations from the New Testament ; nor that Quadratus, bishop
of Athens, who by his apology, presented a. d. 131 to the
emperor Adrian, arrested, it is said, the course of the perse
cution; nor that Aristides, a Christian philosopher of the
same city, who had addressed his to the same prince five
years before, A. d. 125 ; nor even, which is still more to be
regretted, that Philip, (Euseb. H. E. Lib. iv. 25), bishop of
Gortyna, who had also written against Marcion ; nor that
Agrippa Castor, yet earlier, whom Eusebius calls very dis
tinguished (yvopipuyrarov), and who had composed, he says,
twenty-four books on the gospel.1 The " Skillful Refutation "
(tKavan-ai-os eXeyxos) published by him, about A. d. 132, against
the exegetical books of Basilides, would undoubtedly have
furnished us abundant quotations from the Scriptures of the
New Testament.2
At the same time, we shall have occasion hereafter to say
a few more things of those authors now lost ; because the
fragments which Eusebius has transmitted to us will remark
ably confirm, even in their brevity, the testimony of Justin
Martyr, and will excite our admiration of the beautiful and
strong chain of testimonies which, by connected links, extends
without a break from Origen to the apostles.
Nevertheless, if, by the loss of these literary monuments,
Justin comes to us in this important epoch as an almost iso-
1 Lib. iv. chap. 7, etc. ; chap. 25.
2 " Nor many others," we may add with Eusebius (ml uMoi Se nfaiovg. )

202 THE CANON.
lated witness, it would be difficult to imagine one better
qualified. We will not here repeat our remarks about his
testimony on the anagnosis. His career includes the first
sixty-seven years of the second century, and more particu
larly the thirty-four years between his conversion and his
martyrdom. The son of a Greek family living in Samaria,
Justin was born at Neapolis (Shechem) in the reign of
Trajan, in the very year of John the apostle's death (a.d.
103). He lived so near the apostles' days that he witnessed
the prophetic charisms or gifts. Thirty years afterward,
converted in Egypt from the pagan philosophy of Plato to
the living faith of Jesus Christ-, he came at the end of seven
years to establish himself in Italy, at Rome, upon Mount
Viminal, to teach, in a bathing-house, what he called " the
Christian philosophy." There, about the year 144, he had
the courage to present to the emperor, to his sons and the
Roman senate, his first and most valuable " Apology." 1 Af
terward, having passed into Asia Minor, he held in the Xysta
of Ephesus, with the most celebrated Jew of his day, that
apologetic conference which he published f'under the title of
" Dialogue with Trypho the Jew." He returned into Italy
to continue his public instructions ; and it was a.d. 163 that
he published his second Apology, addressed to Marcus Aure
lius. At length, four years after this new act of his fidelity,
Justin, accused to the praefect of Rome by the malicious
Crescens, a cynical philosopher, suffered martyrdom a. d. 167,
when Clement of Alexandria was but seventeen years old.
He wrote much. Eusebius, (H. E. iv. 18,) who gives us the
titles of ten of his works, and who recommends the reading
of them to the men of his day, adds that they had been much
sought for even by the ancients, and that Irenaeus quoted
them. Other writings of Justin, not mentioned by Eusebius,
were then also in circulation among many of the brethren.
1 It is the largest, which the old editions of Paris (1636) and of Cologne
(1686) ordinarily print after the other. The London edition, however,
(1722) places it before the other.

JUSTIN MARTYR. " 203
Before his conversion he had been an ardent student of
the divers systems of philosophy propagated in his day, espe
cially of Platonism ; but he did not cease after his conversion
to allow to this human wisdom more weight than we think
becoming in a minister of the holy Word. We know, too,
that through life he preserved the costume and gait of the
philosophers. It was a means of recommending himself to
the attention of the Greeks, as also of avoiding the violence
of a persecuting government. At the same time he blames
in his writings the Christians who concealed their faith to
save their lives ; and he himself did not hesitate to confess it
before the governor of Rome. An oriental and a western
man, he taught twenty-seven years in Rome, after having
made himself personally known in the then most renowned
churches of Africa, Europe, and Asia. He had written
against the pagans who persecuted the church, the Jews who
excited them to it, and the heretics who were then making a
bold stand in Rome. He had therefore better means of in
formation than any one else, and he is consequently emi
nently qualified to stand as the representative of the opinions
of his age.
Let us now admire the fullness with which the only three
writings of this eminent man remaining to us testify to the
Scriptures, and especially to the gospels.
And first, as to the Scriptures in general, he openly and in
various forms declares their moral excellence and divine in
spiration. We must hear him recount in his " Dialogue with
Trypho " his own happy escape from darkness into light !
He had long been seeking rest for his soul and the truth of
God in all the Grecian philosophies, when he finally met an
old man in a solitary place, who entertained him, he says,
" with the holy books, written by men who were friends of
God, who had spoken by the divine Spirit (8uu> Trvevpan
XaXrjo-avTes), and who had uttered prophecies still being ful
filled. They alone," he adds, " have seen the truth and have
declared it to men, fearing none, seeking not their own glory,

204 THE CANON.
and speaking only the things which they had seen and heard,
being filled with the Holy Ghost  And besides, they
were very worthy of belief on account of the miracles which
they performed ; they glorified the God and Father, Creator
of all things, and the Christ his Son whom he had sent. But
before all things," added this venerable Christian, " pray that
the gates of light may be opened for thee ; for these things
are not comprehended of all ; they are understood only by
the men to whom God and his Christ give the knowledge of
them." Justin prayed, and the gates of light were opened to
him. " Then I found," he says, " that there was the only sure
and profitable philosophy. It is thus and by these means that
I am a philosopher. And I would, too, that all, entering into
the same thoughts, had decided with me no longer to hold
themselves aloof from the Saviour's words, for they have in
them an inexpressible majesty ; they are sufficient to alarm
those who turn from the right way, while a very sweet peace
becomes the portion of those who meditate them." And still
; further, when Trypho assures him that he is deceived, he
replies, " I will show you, if you will listen, that we have
not believed vain fables nor words not susceptible of dem
onstration (ov&k avaTToSeiKTots Aoyois), but words full of the
divine Spirit, flowing with power and flourishing with grace."
j Thus he distinctly appeals to the intrinsic excellence of
| the New Testament as a foundation of our faith in its di
vinity. Again, in this same dialogue,1 Justin, speaking to the Jews
of those passages of Scripture which prove the divinity of our
Saviour, says, " Attend then to these words which I am
going to bring to you from the Holy Scriptures ; they need
not to be explained, but only heard."
Still further,2 he speaks of the absurdity of those who im
agine themselves capable of producing something better than
the Scriptures. 1 Dial., edit, of Cologne, p. 274. 2 Ibid. pp. 311, 312.

JUSTIN MARTYR. 205
In his " Exhortation to the Gentiles," 1 after having showed
how little confidence is to be placed in their philosophies, so
contradictory to each other, he describes on the contrary the
complete harmony of the sacred writers. " For, having re
ceived the knowledge which comes from God, they teach it
without dispute and without division.. In fact, it is not nat
urally, nor by human meditation, that men can arrive at the
knowledge of such great and divine things, but by a gift
which then descended from on high on the holy men of
God." We perceive that it is not to tradition, it is to divine grace,
it is to the influence of the Holy Spirit imparted to indi
viduals, that Justin appeals, as the interpreter of the Scrip
tures. In his Dialogue 2 he exclaims, " O man, think you then
that we ever should have found these things in the Scriptures,
if, by the will of Him who has chosen to give them, we had
not received the grace to understand them ? "
And in his " Discourse to the Greeks : " " Come and suffer
yourselves to be taught ; be as I, for I am also as you ! "
(These are in Greek the very words of Paul to the Gala-
tians — iv. 12.) "See what has elevated me; it is the in
ternal divinity of the doctrine, and the power of the Word."
The divine Word, he exclaimed, " the Word which puts to
flight the evil passions, the doctrine which extinguishes, the
fire in the soul."
In the second place, we have already seen that the books
of Justin, only thirty-seven years after the death of John,
solemnly attested, in the name of all the cotemporary
church, and before the emperor and the Roman senate, .he
public use which was then made, by all the Christians in the
world, of the apostolical Scriptures in their worshiping as
semblies.3 This was in the year 140. Justin bad heard
them read every Sunday in Rome, in Egypt, in Palestine, in
1 Edit, of Cologne, p. 9. * Idem, p. 346.
« Apol. 1st (the large one), sec. 67 (Ed. Bened., Paris, 1742), p. 98, Co
logne edit. 1686. 18

206 THE CANON.
Asia Minor, and in Greece. He says, "They read there
the Memoirs of the Apostles, or the Gospels ; they read
them each Sunday, in the cities and in the rural districts ;
they read them with the books of the prophets ; and in every
assembly where they had been read the president (6 rrpoeo--
tws) took the subject of his exhortations from them."
These " Memoirs of the Apostles," of which Justin Martyr
speaks three times to the emperor Antonine in his Apology,
could not be better indicated to a pagan stranger. We should
do the same in our day in a defense of Christianity which
we should address to the king of Siam or the Burmese em
peror. But Justin took pains to add twice, that these me
moirs were called Gospels, and were written by the apostles.
" At that time," he says,1 " an angel of God, sent to this vir
gin, announced to her this good news, saying, Behold, thou
shalt conceive in thy womb by the Holy Spirit, and thou
shalt bring forth a son, and he shall be called the Son of the
Highest, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sins, as those have taught us 2 who
have written memoirs on all the things which concern our
Saviour Jesus Christ, and to which we have given faith." 3
And again, explaining afterward to the same emperor what
the Lord's Supper is, he says, " For the apostles, in the me
moirs which were composed by them, and which are called
Gospels* have related to us that Jesus had thus instituted
this ordinance ; having taken bread and having rendered
thanks, he said, Do this in remembrance of me."
Also, in bis Dialogue, Justin speaks fifteen times of the
Memoirs of the Apostles, but he takes care to repeat ten
times that the apostles wrote them. He goes even so far as
to make a more precise distinction between those of the gos-
1 Idem, p. 75, Cologne edit. 1686.
2 He here combines the narratives of Luke i. 3, and Matt. i. 20, 21.
6 Qf ol diropvnpovevcavTeg navTa rh mpl rov Zurr/pog rjpav 'Inaov
Xpiorov edidai;qv olg imoTevoauev.
4 a KaXurai Eiayye/l«r. This is the common name of these Memoirs
among Christians.

JUSTIN MARTYR. 207
pels which had for their authors apostles properly called (as
Matthew or John), and those which (such as the two gospels
of Luke and Mark) were composed by their companions.
" In the . Memoirs which I have said were written by his
apostles and by those who accompanied them, (it is written)
that the sweat as drops (of blood) came forth from him while
he was praying and saying, Let this cup pass from me!"1
And this distinction which Justin established is so much more
worthy of attention since of the many false gospels which
were thrown upon the world in the second century, none
pretended to be the work " of one of the companions of the
apostles." Moreover, the Jew Trypho himself recognized also our gos
pels ; for he says to Justin, " I know (iirlo-Tapai) that even
your precepts, contained in that which is called the Gospel?
are so grand and so admirable that no one can keep them.
For I have informed myself carefully of them." 3
We have entered into such details only to meet the diffi
culties which in Germany a zealous negative criticism has
aimed to raise up against these testimonies of Justin. We
shall hereafter quote them.
In the third place, the books of Justin, although addressed,
all three, to men hostile to Christianity, present, considering
their limited extent, an extraordinary abundance of evangel
ical quotations. We count more than seventy in his Dia
logue, and at least fifty in his Apology. Now these quo
tations are evidently almost entirely taken from our three
synoptical gospels, and relate with much detail the facts of
our Saviour's life and death, as also the greater part of his
moral teachings. It was his rational task in a defense of
Christianity. He had to show to his opponents, in all the
1 'Ev rolg dirouv ... a <j>r/pi inb tuv ukootoXuv avroii nal rav ixrivoig
^apaKO?.ov&nodvTav owTerdx&ai . . .
2 Cologne edit. 1686, p. 227. "TpCrv (Se nal rd kv t<2 \eyopi.vip eiayye-
Tiia ¦KapayyeXuara.
8 ipol yap kpzKnaev ivrvxsiv avrolg.

208 THE CANON.
facts relating to Christ, the striking fulfillment of the ancient
prophecies, and, in the incomparable excellence of his teach
ings, the divine character of a religion descended from
heaven. This guided him in the choice of his quotations.
He borrows them almost exclusively, we have said, from our
three synoptical gospels : that of John (the spiritual gospel,
as it has been called) entering too far into the doctrine of
Christ's divinity to be often quoted in an apology addressed to
pagans or Jews. Notwithstanding that, many of the expres
sions of Justin remind us of one who is familiar with John ;
he even names this apostle and his apocalypse. He says to
Trypho, " There is also'among us a man named John, one of
the apostles of Christ, who, in a revelation (an apocalypse)
which was made to him, has prophesied that those who shall
have believed in our Christ sliall pass a thousand years in Je
rusalem." 1 But the principal citations of Justin are taken
from Matthew and Luke ; they are made with freedom, and
often at great length. Addressed to pagans and Jews, there
was no necessity for literal exactness, if the sense was given.
Never, in these one hundred and twenty citations, will you find
a single passage which borders on the legend or can be traced
to apocryphal gospels. They are all derived from our gospels ;
he knows only what they know ; he relates only what they re
late ; the infancy of Jesus according to the gospels of Matthew
and Luke, his descent from Abraham by Mary ; 2 the visit
of the angel Gabriel, the accomplishment of Isaiah's proph
ecy (vii. 14), the vision granted Joseph to prevent his repu
diation of his wife, Micab's prediction about Bethlehem, the
census, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Cyrenius,
the inn, the stable, the manger, the wise men, their offerings
and adorations ; the name of " Saviour " given to the holy
infant, the flight into Egypt, Jeremiah's prophecy upon the
1 "E?t«to Kal Trap' i/fuv dvr/p Tig, $ ovopa 'ludvvng . . . kv dooicalvijiei
yevopivn avrCi . . . Trpoecnjrevoe.
2 'Ef uv, he says, nardyei r/ Mapia rb yevog. Descent, according to
him, by Mary. (Dial., chap. 100, 120.)

JUSTIN MARTYR. 209
mourning of Rachel, Archelaus, the return, the thirty years
of Jesus, all the history of John the Baptist, the Elijah that
was to come, the baptism of Jesus, his temptation in the des
ert, his miracles of healing, the dance of Herodias's daughter,
and the death of the prophet.
Justin, too, in his Dialogue, mentions with no less detail
the close of the Lord's career ; his triumphant arrival in
Jerusalem, fulfilling a prophecy, his entrance into the temple,
the institution of the Supper, the singing of the hymn, the
three disciples taken aside, the prayers and agony in Geth-
semane, the bloody sweat, the arrival of Judas, the flightof
the disciples, the silence of Jesus before Pilate, his being
sent to Herod, the cross, the casting of lots for his garments,
the mockings,1 the cry of Jesus, his last words, his burial on
Friday evening, his resurrection on Sunday,2 his appearing,
his explaining the Scriptures to the apostles,3 the calumnies
of the Jews, the commission given to the apostles, the ascen
sion. Again, the most abundant quotations of Justin embrace
the very teachings of the Saviour. We find there, for in
stance, almost the entire Sermon on the Mount, his invita
tions to repentance, his instructions to the seventy disciples,
his remarks on the sign of Jonah, on the worth of the soul,
on marriage, on tribute to Caesar, on false teachers, on the
resurrection, on chastity, on love to enemies, on the future
punishment of the wicked, on the Scribes and Pharisees, on
his divinity. " It is written in the Gospel, All things are
given to me of my Father ; and no man knoweth the Father
but the Son, nor the Son but the Father and those to whom
the Father hath revealed him." 4
In his great Apology,6 to show the admirable morality of
the Scriptures, he quotes a large part of the Sermon on the
Mount, "If ye love only those who love you, what do ye
more than others, for sinners love those who love them ?
1 And also in the Apol. i. chap. 38. 2 Ibid. chap. 69.
8 Ibid. chap. 50. * Dial. p. 326, Paris, 1636. 6 Apol. i. p. 23.
18*

210 THE CANON.
But I say unto you, pray for your enemies, bless those who
persecute you . . . . " And on the duty of giving away
our goods and doing nothing for our own glory, he adds,
" Behold what Jesus has said : Give to them who ask of you,
and turn not away. . . . And lay ye not up treasures on
earth, where the moth and the rust corrupt. . . . And what
will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his
own soul ? "
Besides these extended quotations, we find also in Justin
many passages reminding us of the other books of the New
Testament. His work as an apologist did not require him
to speak of the Acts or the epistles of Paul ; but his lan
guage often reveals to us incidentally that his spirit has been
nourished by them. It is thus that with the epistle to the
Colossians (i. 15 — 17), he calls Jesus Christ four or five
times, the " first-born of God," the " first-begotten of all crea
tures," " he who was before all creatures." 1 It is thus that
with the epistle to the Romans he shows that Abraham being
yet uncircumcised, was justified by faith, because he be
lieved in God ; 2 and it is thus he cites his description of the
depravity of all men, both Jew and Greek. " They are all
gone out of the way, there is none that doeth good ; no, not
one ; there is none that understandeth ; their throat is an
open sepulcher," etc.3
It is also thus that with the epistle to the Corinthians (1
Cor. v. 7), he says, " that Christ, our passover, has been
slain for us ; 4 and thus he complains of some who say that
there is no resurrection of the dead." It is thus that with
the second epistle to the Thessalonians (ii. 3), he speaks of
Christ, " who shall descend from heaven in glory when the
man of sin (6 -r^s cxTrao-rao-ias avOpunros), who speaketh strange
and blasphemous things against the Most High shall manifest
his audacious iniquity against us Christians." 6
It is thus that with the epistle to the Hebrews, in his
1 Apol. i. 46; ii. 6. Dial, pp. 310, 311, 326. Paris, 1636.
2 Dial, chap. 23. 8 Rom. ;;;. ut 12. 4 rj;^ p, 333 5 rbj,j.

JUSTIN MARTYR. 211
first apology, he says of Christ that he is " the Son. and the
apostle of God " ("AyyeXos «at d7rooT-oAos. This name is given
to him only in Heb. iii. 1) ; and in his Dialogue J that he is
"after the order of Melchizedek, king of Salem, and perpet
ual high priest of God." It is thus that with the Epistle to
Titus (iii. 4,) and the epistle to the Romans (ii. 4), in employ
ing the remarkable expressions of the apostle, he speaks of
" the goodness and loving-kindness of God, and of the depth
of its riches (r/ yap ^p^ord-r^s koX fj tpiXavdpunria tov ®eov.) 2
It is thus that in his Address and Exhortation to the Gentiles,
we find reminiscences of the Acts, and the epistle to the
Corinthians, and to the Colossians. It is thus, in a word, that
we may discover many remarkable coincidences between Jus
tin and Paul, on the epistles to the Philippians and Timothy,
as also to the Galatians and Ephesians, in their mutual quo
tations from the Septuagint. In a word, we may say, that with
the exception of the catholic epistles and that to Philemon,
there is not a book of the first canon, of which the trace can
not be found in this ancient Father.
At the same time, fully to appreciate the entire value of
his testimony, we must bear in mind that of all his works
there remain to us complete and authentic only his two Apol
ogies and his Dialogue, all three addressed, not to Christians,
but to unbelievers. His other numerous writings composed
for members of the church are almost entirely lost. These,
undoubtedly, would have given us a much more abundant
and definite testimony ; for he lived many years in the same
city with the three great leaders of the cotemporary here
sies,8 and combated them.
If then we were in possession of his " Treatise against
Marcion," referred to by Eusebius,4 or even the lost portion
of his book " Of the Monarchy of God," we should cer
tainly have in them much more numerous quotations from
i Dial. Paris, 1636, p. 341. 2 Ibid. p. 266.
s Cerdo, Marcion, and Valentinus.
* Hist. Ecc. chap. 37, (p. 140, Edit, of Valois, 1672.)

212 THE CANON.
the New Testament. Eusebius informs us that the author
in the latter of these works proved his thesis " by passages
taken from the Scriptures ; " but this portion is lost.
Two features universally distinguish his three apologetic
treatises from his works now lost.
They are, first, that these three works, and particularly the
Dialogue, would naturally make many more extracts from
the Old Testament than from the New. So that we have
314 quotations of the one to 120 of the other. That was the
rule, for, in analogous circumstances, we all would have done
the same thing. If you were speaking to Jews, the Old
Testament would be your only authority ; and you would not
cite the New Testament except to show them that it fulfilled
Moses and the Prophets. If you were speaking to pagans,
it is still the Old Testament which you would employ to show
the high antiquity of the revelation and its divine superiority
to all the instructions of their sages concerning the origin,
duties, and destinies of our humanity. That was the method,
as early as a century before Justin ; the method of Philo and
the Jewish Alexandrian school, in their controversies with
the pagan world ; as afterwards, that of Theophilus of An
tioch, of Tatian, of Tertullian, and of Clement of Alexan
dria. A second feature which should characterize the quotations
of Justin in his apologetical writings, is that they should be
made under less precise designations than we employ in quot
ing to those who are familiar with the Scriptures. He would
seldom name the books by tbeir titles known to us. He
would call the gospels Memoirs of ihe Apostles ; he would
quote them from memory ; giving the sense faithfully, with
out confining himself to their language ; he would condense,
combine, transpose certain sentences ; associate two passages
sometimes as one ; and would not always quote the same pas
sage in the same terms twice. But after all these liberties,
he would preserve the characteristics and the phraseology of
the New Testament, without any admixture of foreign ele-

JUSTIN MARTYR. 213
ments, any apocryphal quotation, or any trace of cotempo
rary legends. This is precisely what Justin has done.
It is obvious why we have dwelt so long on the writings
of this Father. His testimony is of so great importance
from its antiquity, the extent and abundance of its quotations
from the gospels, and from the perfect authenticity of the
books which transmit it to us, that we must expect the mod
ern opponents of our canonical Scriptures to obscure it in
every possible way. This they have done, especially in
Germany. Until a recent period no one had called in ques
tion the clear and numerous testimonies which Justin renders
to our synoptical gospels ; but the negative criticism of mod
ern Neology after studying with great care the one hundred
and twenty clear and detailed quotations from them by this
Father, after gathering all the expressions which differ in the
least from the scriptural text, and after seizing all the liber
ties of quotation found in Justin, and exaggerating their dif
ficulties, has gone so far as to affirm that what he had before
him was not our four gospels, but something else ; according
to some, a certain primitive gospel from which our four bor
rowed their quadruple narrative, according to others, the
apocryphal gospel entitled, " Of the Hebrews ; " after others
again, a Harmony or combined Narrative of our Canonical
Gospels ; and finally, according to Mr. Credner a gospel
" according to Peter " which, under divers forms had been
current among the Jewish Christians. Protracted labors
have been undergone by the learned Germans to sustain and
to confute these strange hypotheses,1 and the study of Justin
has thus been very thorough. We shall go no farther in this
controversy.2 The defenders of the Holy Word will always
1 See and compare Semisch, Denlcwiirdiglceiten Justins (Hamburg, 1848);
Credner Beitrdge, i. 92-267 (Halle, 1832) : Schwegler Nachapostolische Zeit-
alter, i. 217-231. — " "Wie er gar nicht die Zeit kann gekannt haben, wo
man dieselbe (die Evangeliensammlung) nicht hatte."
2 Semisch has treated it skillfully, p. 16 to 33. — It may be found exposed
and demolished in Mr. Westcott's learned work, " A General Survey of
the Canon of the N. T." Cambridge, 1855.

214 THE CANON.
encounter serious objections, which, in every age, will call for
replies; there are others entirely temporary and local in
their character, requiring only a temporary and local refuta
tion. These we regard as of this number. They have made
a noise, but have also done too much violence to the facts of
history to be able to stand. How can it be maintained that
Justin employed apocryphal gospels at the very time when
by his side, in the same city of Rome, Valentinus the heretic
used only our four canonical gospels, and a complete canon
(integro instrumento), as Tertullian informs us ? 1 How, at
the time when he himself declared to the emperor that the
Gospels or " Memoirs of the Apostles," memoirs undoubtedly
then definitely recognized, were read every Sunday in all the
churches of the empire ? How, when they were everywhere
so known that Trypho the Jew, as soon as Justin named them
to him, recognized them and said he had read them? How,
in the time while Irenaeus, then in Lyons in the prime of life,
was constantly speaking of " the quadriform Gospel " (re-
Tpdpopcpov evayyeXiov) as of a complete whole in its kind and
everywhere acknowledged with an incomparable firmness?2
How, when we remember that Irenaeus going to Lyons had
been at Rome during Justin's long residence there, returning
ttyere about the year 77, only ten years after the martyrdom
of this Father, to visit bishop Eleutherus ? How can we
suppose too that Justin should in his two apologies have made
use of the gospels which were not yet in existence? How
suppose that he and Irenasus used different gospels ? How
imagine that Justin himself and bis immediate disciples with
all the churches should mean different books, in using the same
titles? How pretend that in so short a time an immense
revolution had taken place in the Christian world without
being perceived ; had taken place everywhere, and yet left
1 De Prescript. Haereticor. cap. 38.
2 Coutr. Hiei-es. Lib. 3, cap. ii. Olshausen says, (Aechtheit d. 4, can.
Evang. p. 272), " We see in all this passage how Irenreus could never have
known a time when he had not had the collection of the Gospels."

OBJECTIONS TO HIS TESTIMONY. 215
no trace of itself? How suppose that all the churches all
over the world were silently brought to agree with one con
sent to change their Bible, so that those sacred books which
were publicly read every Sunday in the year 140 were super
seded by others in 1£7, at the death of Justin, though still
called by the same names ? Surely, nothing more pitifully
betrays the distress of a system than such impossibilities im
agined to prop it up a little while.
Objections to his Testimony.
We will then briefly notice the three principal objections
alleged by the adversaries when they pretend that Justin, in
his one hundred and twenty citations, had before him other
gospels than ours.1 First, they say, Justin although he once
mentions the apostle John,2 as the author of the Apocalypse,
never names Matthew, Mark, or Luke even while quoting
their respective gospels at length. But we reply that such
a mentioning would have been out of place in such a book ;
that none of the apologists who followed him did it ; neither
Tatian, disciple of Justin, nor Athenagoras ; nor even Tertul
lian in his " Liber Apologeticus," who names them so frequent
ly in his other writings ; nor Theophilus of Antioch, in his
books to Autolycus ; nor Clement of Alexandria, in his " Ex
hortation to the Gentiles ; " nor Cyprian, in his writing to
Demetrian ; nor Origen, in his books against Celsus ; nor
Laetantius ; nor Arnobius ; nor even Eusebius, in his " Evan
gelical Preparation." Theophilus and Clement, with Justin,
have named only John ; and that only once. Laetantius 3
even blames Cyprian for having quoted the Scriptures in a
controversy with a pagan.
1 Semisch has skillfully examined these strange theories, Denhimrdigheiten
Justins (Hamb. 1848, p. 16-28). — This whole controversy is carefully ex
amined in Mr. "Westcott's work on the canon (Cambridge, 1855). He has
very judiciously availed himself of the German labors, (pp. 112-216.)
2 In his dialogue with Trypho, p. 308. — Parij, folio, 1636.
sinstit. v. 4.

216 THE CANON.
In the second place, they say again, " See the extreme
freedom with which Justin quotes the gospels ; he refers to
them from memory ; often, if he gives the sense it is by dif
ferent words, abridging or combining." But the answer is
as simple as decisive, and to give it only requires a closer
study of this author. This has been done by Semisch and
Credner, comparing his quotations of the New Testament
with his quotations of Moses and the prophets. Now it is
precisely the same freedom, both in his Apology, and in his
Dialogue with Trypho. — You may read more than sixty
pages in these works, in which you shall see Justin taking
the same liberty with the Old Testament as with the New,
giving passages from memory, paraphrasing them to render
them more clear, transposing them, combining them, and ad
hering more to the sense than the words. And also, when
he quotes them a second time it is with notable changes in
the words, to apply them more pointedly to his subject. If
then he could so quote the Old Testament so well known to
the Jewish people, why should he quote the Apostles and
Evangelists differently ?
A third objection, is that Justin quotes words of Jesus
Christ not found in our Gospels. " Our Lord," he writes in
his dialogue with Trypho,1 " has said, ' On these words which
surprise you, I will judge you.' " 2 And on p. 253, Christ says,
" There shall be schisms and heresies." We reply 1st, that
neither of these sentences is found in the apocryphal gospels;
2d, that Justin nowhere says he had read these in the " Me
moirs of the Apostles ; " 3d, that we must not be surprised if
this Father, writing a very few years after the death of John
and the unpublished recollections of the words of Christ, could
traditionally repeat that sentence of the Lord, as Paul had
himself repeated that which we find in the twentieth chapter
1 Paris Ed. 1686, p. 267. English edition, chaps. 47, and 33.
2 Some read here a paraphrase of this sentence : " Where the carcass is
there the eagles will be gathered together." Others are alleged, they are
doubtful. See Kirchhofer, 1842, (p. 104) Quellensammlung, etc.

OTHER HISTORICAL MONUMENTS. 217
of Acts, and yet nowhere in the gospels " The Lord Jesus
said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."
In a word, it is beyond doubt, that from the year 140 of
the Christian era, Justin, in his Apology, and shortly after
wards, in his Dialogue, cites very abundantly our synoptical
gospels, declaring that they were written by apostles of
Christ, and their companions, and stating to the Roman em
peror that on every Sunday all the Christians in the world
read them publicly with the writings of the Old Testament
in their sacred assemblies, before presenting their prayers to
God, or celebrating the supper and collecting the alms from
the faithful.

Other Historical Monuments of ihe Canon in this first half
of the Second Century.
Justin, moreover, is not the only witness of this epoch.
Although he is the only one of all the Fathers whose entire
and authentic writings have come down to us, still we find in
Eusebius many extracts from other writers of the same period,
who render incidental testimony to the canon, and who, lead
ing us for a moment to the banks of that stream whose source
we are seeking, permit us again to see its majestic flow, and
thus to appreciate at a glance the high place which the col
lection of the sacred Scriptures then already held in the
estimate and habits of the people of God.
Thus, for example,' in his third book, chapter 37, Eusebius
relates that, under the reign of Trajan, at the beginning of
the second century, in the remote days of the ministry and
martyrdom of Ignatius, and while that Quadratus who " had
received miraculous gifts with the daughters of Philip," was
flourishing, " a large number of disciples became famous
among the first successors of the apostles by going forth to
spread throughout the earth the salutary seeds of the king
dom of heaven." " The greater part of them," he adds,
" having, through the divine Word, their souls penetrated with
19

218 THE CANON. .
a vehement love of the (true) philosophy, obeyed the injunc
tion of the Saviour, by distributing their goods to the poor;
then, abandoning their country and going on long journeys,
they accomplished the work of evangelists among those who
had never heard the word of faith ; ambitious as they were
of announcing Christ and of transmitting the Scriptures of
the divine Evangelists."
You see then, these holy men of God, at the beginning
of the second century, successors and imitators of the apos
tles, at the time when the apostle John himself was giving
his testimony for Jesus Christ at Ephesus, in the province
of Asia, and when the charisms of the Spirit yet accompa
nied the preaching of the gospel ; you see them traveling
with the " Scriptures of the divine Evangelists " in their
hands, carrying them even into barbarous countries. You
see them there not only profoundly penetrated themselves
with " the divine word," as Eusebius says, but leaving it after
them in written documents and " transmitting it to these dis
tant peoples." We also learn again by Eusebius (H. E. v. 10),
that Pantaenus, when he had penetrated India towards the
close of the second century, found that the Gospel of Mat
thew had preceded his arrival there nearly a century, " hav
ing been left there, written in Hebrew letters by Bartholo
mew, one of the twelve apostles, and having brought several
persons to a knowledge of Jesus Christ."
By this account of Eusebius we are then once more
brought to the very banks of the Scriptures, and can trace
this pure and beneficent stream up to the apostolical fountain
out of which it springs, to receive some additional tributaries,
to move on complete, in its majestic course, bearing the liv
ing waters to all the people of the world.
It is sufficiently evident that Eusebius is here speaking of
definite and recognized gospels which have not been altered
in their course from the beginning ; in a word, the gospels
which in his day were revered by the whole of Christen
dom.

OTHER HISTORICAL MONUMENTS. 219
But if, in consequence of various accidents, there remain
to us so few monuments of the Fathers of the second century
the providence of God has preserved to us others still more
important and more indisputable. These are left to us by
the most violent enemies of these very Fathers. Their tes
timony shall then speak to us with so much the more author
ity, as it was involuntary and as it in our day serves the gos
pel despite of all the hatred which these men bore toward it.
They little thought, — those infidels of the first two centu
ries — that their very attacks would avail even in the re
motest ages of the future to confound their imitators. They
were, in almost every feature, counterparts of the men of this
nineteenth century whose systems they now overthrow ; and
it is by them that the holy convictions of the primitive church
in regard to the canon are most powerfully attested to us
against all the negations of the modern infidelity.
These adversaries, in the age of Trajan, of Adrian, and of
Antoninus Pius, were of two kinds: the one, infidels, among
the' Jews and pagans, calumniated the church from without ;
the others, heretics among the Ebionites and the Gnostics,
tormented it from within, by their erroneous doctrines, on
account of which they called themselves •' Gnostics," or men
of science ; — " science falsely so called," as Paul terms it
(1 Tim. vi. 20.) Now it must be observed that it was, as
ordinarily happens, in times when the gospel was making the
greatest progress, that the enemy excited this twofold war
of infidelity and heresy. But it was also in these very at
tacks so audacious and so rude that these men left after them
in the literature of their age such precious monuments of the
canon. Their remote attempts sliall then lead us again to
the banks of the river, even while themselves endeavoring
only to trouble the waters with their feet, and to throw into
them their filth ; and these very attempts shall turn, contrary
to their expectation, to the honor of the Scriptures. Not only
shall they serve to point out to us their course of this river
during the whole second century, but they shall show us all

220 THE CANON.
the cotemporary churches standing respectfully on its banks
defending its stream, and drinking there with delight the
sparkling waters of eternal life.

section vm.
TESTIMONY OF THE INFIDEL PAGANS IN THE SECOND
CENTUKT.
Their Writings.
The first enemies of Christianity, in order to find objec
tions, entered upon the study of the Scriptures, boasting of
" thus destroying them with their own weapons ; " and it is
by this very labor that they have furnished us, even in their
most violent writings, a brilliant acknowledgment both of our
collection of sacred books, and of the authority, already
everywhere established, which it then possessed in all the
churches. " All these things which we object to your sys
tem," said " The Jew " of Celsus (the opponent whom Celsus
made to speak in his famous book against Christianity,) x " all
these things we draw from your own Scriptures ; and fortified
with these quotations, we have need of no other witness
against you than yourselves ; for you thus perish by your
own hands."
The writings of these ancient enemies exist no longer ; but
many of the books composed at that time to refute them
having come down to us, furnish us an indisputable testi
mony ; and under this form it may be said that the ancient
defenders have served the modern cause of the Gospel more
effectually by their quotations than by their arguments. It
is thus that almost all the objections of Celsus are reproduced
to us by Origen ; many of those of Amelius, by Eusebius ;
and of those of Porphyry, by Jerome and Chrysostom.
1 His Ab yog aknUrig. This book has perished ; but abundant quotations
from it are found in the " Refutation of Celsus " by Origen.

TESTIMONY OF CELSUS. 221
But as Amelius and Porphyry belong rather to the third
century, we shall speak here only of Celsus who flourished
in the first half of the second century, under the reign of
Adrian, that is from a. d. 117 to a. p. 138.

Testimony of Celsus.
Celsus (or rather Kelsos) was an epicurean philosopher
filled with fervent hatred of Christians. He knew how to
employ with much wit and skill all the arms of logic and
ridicule to decry their Lord, their doctrines, and their Scrip
tures. Origen, in his eight books " Against Celsus," J speaks
of his writings, without informing us of his exact age, or
place of residence. We know only, that he was older than
the famous infidel Lucian of Samosata, who lived under the
Antonines, and who dedicated to him one of his " Dialogues."
Mr. Kirchhofer, (Quellensammlung, etc., p. 331 : Zurich,
1842), on the authority of a passage of Celsus speaking of
Marcion apparently, would place him later than we should in
the second century ; but it is merely conjecture on his part ;
the passage does not name Marcion. (Origen against Celsus,
Lib. ii. chap. 27, vol. i. opp.)
The testimony which Celsus renders to the canon of the
gospels is of great weight from its remote age. Chrysostom,
too, fifteen hundred years ago, already indicated to the men
of his time this homage of an infidel to our sacred books. In
his sixth Homily on the first epistle to the Corinthians, he
says, " Admire how the gospel was early spread into all parts
of the habitable world ; for Celsus, and after him Porphyry,
who have said so much against us, are sufficient witnesses of
the antiquity of our holy Books."
It is thus then that this adversary, in the beginning of the.
second century, like Voltaire and the English Deists in the
l The best edition is that of Spencer (Cambridge, 1658, 4to.) We ordi
narily quote from the complete edition of the Benedictines, four vols, folio,
1733-1759. 19*

222 ' THE CANON.
eighteenth, gave himself to a certain study of the character
and contents of the Scriptures, from sheer hatred to them.
Now the way in which he speaks of our four gospels and the
fact that he quotes no other, show with evidence, says Kirch-
hofer, that he not only knew them by this name, but that he
attributed them to the disciples Of Jesus, and that in his day
they were universally used in the churches. He never makes
an objection to their authenticity ; and it is not to be ques
tioned that if there had been any reason to doubt it, however
feeble, such a man would have seized such a weapon with
both hands. But he does not even think of such a thing; on
the contrary, as we have said, he boasts in quoting them of
"fighting Christians with their own weapons." In a word, all
the fragments preserved by Origen render it in the highest
degree probable that Celsus had read the collection of our
four gospels, and that he had read no other. It is then not
Christians only, but even pagans likewise, who attest to us
the universal dissemination of the sacred collection of the
gospels in the second century.
Celsus, in order to decry the character of Jesus, produces
with great fullness nearly all the features of his life and the
larger portion of his words. The only collection of these
passages in the book of Kirchhofer embraces twenty-three
pages, and you may there discover alternatively and exclu
sively each one of our four gospels as well as many passages
of Paul's epistles. And when he has quoted all the features
of the birth, life, miracles, sermons, sufferings, death, and res
urrection of our Lord, he declares that he had taken them
" from the very writings of Jesus' disciples ; from your own
Scriptures ; (rots iirb ti2v paO-qroiv tou 'Ii^croii ypcupeicriv — £K
twv vperipinv o-vyypappdrwv Kaff d kcu vijueis o-vyyeypd<pa.Te.)
For example, he represents Jesus as being, according to
our Scriptures, the pretended son of a virgin, announced by
angels, adored by Magi, fleeing into Egypt, baptized by John,
having seen a dove descend at his baptism, etc. He re-
1 Orig. against Celsus, ii. 74-49.

TESTIMONY OF CELSUS. 223
proaches him with having said the following things : " It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Behold the
lilies of the field, the birds of the air, they sow not, neither
do they reap. If any one shall say to you, Christ is here, or
Christ is there, believe him not. Many shall say to me in
that day, Lord, Lord, have we not driven out devils in thy
name, and in thy name done wonderful works, etc. But I
will say to them, ' Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity.' "
" 0 Light," he exclaims, " 0 Truth ! Behold him then him
self, your own Scriptures attest it, behold him warning us
with his own voice that others, even though they are bad
men, shall perform the same miracles ! "
But moreover, Celsus, in order to decry our different gos
pels and set them against each other, manifestly represents
Matthew and Luke as opposed to each other in their genealo
gies ; and he elsewhere refers evidently to the gospel of John
when relating how Jesus showed his disciples the wounds of
his hands and feet (Orig. against Celsus, ii. 55), when speak
ing of the blood flowing from his side (ii. 36-59), of the
earthquake and darkness ; when reproaching Christians for
calling Jesus Son, and Word of God, and Christ for saying
to his disciples, " With desire have I desired to eat this pass-
over with you ; " (i. 70,) and again, " If they persecute you
in one city, flee into another." " Why then," exclaims the
Jew of Celsus to Jesus, " Why then flee hither and thither
with thy disciples ? Why, if a good general is never be
trayed by his soldiers, nor even a brigand by his miserable
followers, why could not Jesus secure the same attachment
on the part of his disciples?" (ii. 12.) ''Why again does
Jesus complain in these words, ' My Father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass from me.' ? " (ii. 24.) " Why does he com
plain so much of the thirst which the feeblest men have often
borne ? Why, when they give him gall and vinegar, does
he swallow them with avidity ? Why is he ready with his
threats, exclaiming, ' Woe to you, I say ! ' ? Why then, O

224 THE CANON.
Jesus, why didst thou need in thine infancy to be warned by
an angel, and carried into Egypt to escape death ? " etc.
In fine, Celsus designates, equally all the four gospels,
when he opposes those which (as Mark and Matthew) men
tion but one angel at the tomb, to those (as Luke and John)
who mention two. He reproaches them even with having
employed four, " for some of you Christians, like drunken
men who strike themselves with their own hands, have, from
one primitive Scripture, three times, four times, many times
rewritten *and reconstructed the gospel, in order to be able to
reply to arguments by negations. (Lib. ii. 27.)
But again Celsus has not confined his accusations to our
four gospels ; he has gone even to Paul's epistles to find
them. He speaks, for instance, of the prophecies which, in
the second Thessalonians and the first Timothy, relate to the
great apostasy of modern times. Origen says, " I think that
in these passages he has poorly comprehended the apostolical
word." (1 Tim. iv. 2.)'
Again, he reproaches Christians with injuring one another,
whilst they are heard to say, " The world is crucified to me,
and I to the world." (Gal. vi. 14.) Origen says, (v. 64,)
" Celsus here has been able to produce these words only as a
recollection of the epistles of Paul." Elsewhere (vi. 12,)
Origen says, " But I pass again to another accusation of Cel
sus where, badly understanding our Scriptures, he reproaches
us with saying that what is wisdom among men is folly with
God, whereas Paul simply said (1 Cor. iii. 19), "The wis
dom of this world is foolishness with God." And again, al
luding to 1 Cor. viii. 11, he reproaches Christians with their
conduct in regard to meats sacrificed to idols. Origen says,
(viii. 24,) "Let us hear these words of Celsus. See his
dilemma, 'If these idols are nothing, what is there so terrible
in taking part in our festivals ? And if there really are cer
tain demons, then they are evidently demons of God, to which
you must render faith and homage according to the laws, and
which you should invoke in order to make them propitious.' "

FORCE OF THIS TESTIMONY. 225
Origen adds, " It would be useful then to explain here the
entire passage of Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians
on things sacrificed to idols."

Force of this Testimony.
Let us here pause thoroughly to consider all the force of
this testimony rendered to the Canon of the Sacred Scrip
tures so near the death of the Apostle John. See then how
this Voltaire of the second century crushes, without intend
ing it, the men of the nineteenth century who pretend to
raise their doubts against the existence of a canon in the
second. See him who declares their doubts absurd since he
himself employed against the Christians their own weapons,
their " Scriptures," " the Scriptures composed," he says, " by
the very disciples of Jesus," those which everybody then re
ceived as such and on which was erected the entire edifice
of their faith ; those the authenticity of which was called in
question by no one among friends or foes at that time ; those
which they read " every Sunday " in all the churches in the
world ! Let any one read merely the scriptural quotations
of Celsus, entirely borrowed from the " Refutation " which
Origen made. He will be struck with the irresistible force
of this involuntary testimony, and be tempted to say in his
turn to the enemies of Christianity, oiSevos aAAov /taprupos
¦XpfjZopev. " We have, O Celsus, need of no other witness
against you than yourself." And we have need of no other
witnesses against your imitators of the nineteenth century
than you yourself at the beginning of the second !
These quotations from Celsus, which might be so easily
multiplied,1 will alone suffice to prove abundantly the univer
sal reign of our Sacred Books in the first years of the second
century, and thus, their promulgation much earlier ; for Cel
sus everywhere takes for granted that priority ; our Sacred
Books are there considered to be as old as the Christian
1 See Celsus himself, in the Bened. Collection, p. 71, note 1.

226 THE CANON.
Church. Celsus has not the slightest suspicion that it can be
otherwise ; the idea of putting in question their authority in
the church and their universally recognized authenticity, does
not even enter his mind ; for it could not then enter any mind,
and therefore his hatred must have recourse to altogether'
different accusations. " Behold your Scriptures," he on the
contrary says to them in other terms, " you can not deny
them, they are the very disciples of your Master who wrote
them ; but if I admit with you their apostolical authority, I
am going to show you their errors, contradictions, immorali
ties, plagiarisms from Plato, and impossibilities." We see
then, Celsus utterly discards the whole system of attack by the
modern infidels, against our canon ; he declares to them that
it is destitute of all historical value, and that they must aban
don it. And at the same time, observe closely, it would have
been for Celsus a more murderous weapon than any other
against the then rising and the future Christian system if he
could have thrown the slightest doubt on the question of the
authenticity of their books ; for he could thus have torn up
its very foundation. But this weapon could not then have
been employed, nor did the idea of employing it ever occur
to Porphyry, never to Amelius, never to Julian. And yet,
this thought of bringing in question the authenticity of our
sacred books and the agreement of all the churches of the
world in receiving them, might have presented itself to the
hatred of Celsus, because although the twenty-two homologo
mens were uncontested everywhere and from the beginning,
yet this was not the case with the five later epistles ; for the
question of these books was not then entirely decided, and
the Christian teachers were still studying it in a spirit of
mutual respect, of patience, and of peace. But you will find
no trace of doubt as to the origin of the first canon, its au
thenticity, the universal confidence which it obtained, the con
tinual employment of it in the worship of every Christian
assembly. Surely then, we must say, although we had only
the True Discourse (Aoyos dXr]9rjs) of Celsus, or rather the

THE CHARACTER OF THIS TESTIMONY. 227
fragments preserved by Origen, still we should be obliged to
conclude that at the opening of the second century Christians
had possessed for a long time a sacred volume, attributed to
the apostles by their enemies themselves, and which the whole
church adopted as the rule of faith and practice.
But we pass on to the heretics. Their testimony will be
still more explicit, and so full that it will appear to surpass
even that of the Fathers and of the enemies of the church,
which we have just considered, for we shall there hear wit
nesses more ancient than Justin Martyr or Celsus.

SECTION IX.
TESTIMONY OP THE HERETICS IN THE FIRST HALF OF
THE SECOND CENTURT.
The Character of this Testimony.
The heretics whose unanimous voice testifies at this epoch,
are not few in number as are the cotemporary Fathers whose
works remain to us. They are an army, a cloud of witnesses.
The ancient authors have counted in this remote period as
many as thirty-two heretical sects very diverse in their dog
mas, but very unanimous, as we shall see in attesting to us
the existence of the canon and its authority in all the churches.
And such is the weight of this proof that we have seen in
our times many German defenders of the canon concentrate
the whole force of their argument on this point.1 This tes
timony is involuntary, since we must trace it, as in the case
of Celsus, to the most pernicious enemies of primitive Chris
tianity. We must here again admire the manner in which
Providence has employed such men, after seventeen hundred
years, to reduce to powder the negations of modern criticism.
Behold these ancient enemies, the cause of so much grief to
l See their " Introductions " to the study of the New Testament, begin
ning with that of Hug, (Einleitung, Thesis i. p. 88.)

,-22#',; THE CANON.
¦"the-'early churches";; now uniting their voices with those of the
Faffiers,of'':lhe.fce/jond century to confirm against the ration
alists of -the, nineteenth, the authenticity of our Sacred Books
and/the, diving' authority then attributed to them in all the
Chrisfc[ahV't!nurehes of the earth ! Hug remarks,1 " It is a
thing well worthy of our serious attention, that the deposi
tions of the heretics, so fortuitously preserved, attest not only
the existence of the New Testament in the second century,
but also its anterior origin ; for these depositions relate not
only to their times ; they go very much farther back, and
attest that the authors of our Holy Scriptures were the
apostles Peter, John, and Paul." To exhibit the full force
of this proof we should give it in a much larger number of
quotations than we can introduce here. The numerous writ
ings of all these heretics have perished, with those of the
pagans cotemporary with them ; but we find the most abun
dant citations of them in the refutations of them by Irenasus,
Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, and
several others.
Our faith must not be shocked at witnessing so many here
sies springing up so near the times of the apostles. Heresies
spring and flourish only in times of revival and life ; the en
tire history of the people of God shows us that these revolts
were the more frequent the more pure and living the churches
became. Paul also goes so far as to intimate that they serve
their purpose in God's kingdom. He tells us in 1 Cor. xi.
19, "There must be heresies;" and he takes care to warn
the Corinthian church that God knows too how to make
use of that which is evil for the good of his people, because
the very heresies which torment them purify them. He
says, " Their word will eat as doth a canker ; " (2 Tim. ii. 17,
18,) but they accomplish frequently also in a flock the work
of the leech on a sick body ; they cast out some who ought
not to be in it ; they result, he says, in manifesting those who
are worthy of commendation, and exercise beneficially the
1 Einleitung, Thesis i. p. 88.

THE CHARACTER OF THIS TES
elect. Let us not then be astonished at tlj
heretics in the second century, or even in\j
did the gospel extend itself so rapidly ovS^fntfie"j(rt
the days of Trajan and Adrian (from A. d. 98^bA<«b^lf
but never likewise did such a multitude of monsfj
spring up in the church of God.
Irenaeus, in his great work, has described at length all those
of his time ; and the celebrated Hippolytus, thirty years after
him, has reviewed them in his " Refutation." He enumer
ates thirty-two ; four belonging to the Ophites, who, already
in John's day, mixed their own prophecies with Revelation ;
eleven, to the different sects of gnostics abandoned in various
ways to the vain deceptions of a philosophy which they com
placently styled the gnosis or the science (1 Tim. vi. 20) ;
twelve others, to the Ebionites, Jewish sects which repelled
the doctrines of grace and of the divinity of Jesus Christ ;
others, mixed with ebionism and gnosticisms, and finally five
others, who scarcely erred except on questions of discipline,
and who were orthodox at least on the doctrine of God and
his Christ.
Now all these sects have in the following ways, rendered
striking testimony to the canon of the Scriptures : 1. The most
of them, notwithstanding their wanderingSj and the rashness
of their exegesis, recognize the authority of our Sacred Books.
This, for example, was the case of the powerful sect of the
Valentinians, who alone constituted six sects of gnostics ; it
was the case also of the disciples of. Carpocrates, and of
those of Theodotus, who belonged rather to the ebionitish
sects. Tertullian 1 says, " Valentinus appears to have used
a complete canon (integro instrumento) ; " and Irenseus con
tents himself with saying of this sect, that it had " a prefer
ence for the writings of John." He adds, " They seek to
sustain their errors by apostolical and evangelical quotations,
although they pervert them by a false interpretation and ex
ercise bad faith in their exegesis."
1 De Prescript. Hasreticor. cap. 3; Lib. i. cap. 336.

230 THE CANON.
2. Even those very heretics who repudiate a part of the
canon at the same time attest it in a remarkable manner by
the fact, that their respective sects, drawn into two opposite
currents, mutually contradict each other. The Sacred Books
which one rejected were preferred by the other ; the ebionites,
considering Paul as a renegade from Judaism, condemned his
writings and those of Luke his companion in labor, whilst,
on the contrary, many of the anti-judaizing gnostics, Marcion
especially, and all his followers, condemned Matthew, Mark,
Peter, and John, regarding them as apostles of the circum
cision. It is thus, that, far from being shaken in our confi
dence in the canon, these contradictory testimonies, taken to
gether, are equivalent to depositions confirming it.
3. In fine, we must especially observe that of all the her
etics of the second century, even among the worst, there is
not one who denied the authenticity of the books of the canon,
and of the very books which they would not accept. Never,
between them and the church, did the controversy turn upon
: the apostolicity of the twenty-two homologomens, nor on. the
credit which they had down to that time obtained in the en
tire church. This question was not even stated by them. In
rejecting some of them, they rejected only their doctrine;
and you will never hear them insinuating that these Scrip
tures were not written by the apostles and their compan
ions, whose names they bear. They were satisfied with
maintaining that the instruction was not conformed to the
intentions of Jesus Christ. If Marcion repudiated three of
Paul's thirteen letters, it was, not because they were not
Paul's, but, because Paul was imperfectly inspired when he
wrote them ; and if he rejected Matthew and Peter, it was
not that they had not written the books bearing their names,
but that in writing them they "Judaized," the one in his
Epistle, and the other in his Gospel. But none of the Mar-
, cionites failed to recognize that in rejecting them he opposed
the opinion of the church. Let this twofold avowal be well
observed, and this double testimony to the historical authen-

MARCION. 231
ticity of our holy books. It is of great force, for with such
hatred against the church, with such science and skill to com
bat her, these audacious men, if they could have discovered
the smallest possibility of contesting these two facts, would
certainly not have failed to employ so fatal an arm, by which,
at one blow, if it had been truth, they could have demolished
their adversaries, and have terminated the quarrel for ever.
To give the reader a better view of this proof, we shall
pass rapidly in review the principal heresies of the epoch,
beginning with Marcion, and ascending thence to other sects
still nearer to the days of the apostles.1
Marcion.
The Marcionitic sects were certainly the most audacious in
their efforts against the Scriptures ; and yet we shall see how,
even in their negations, they render a resistless testimony
both to the anterior existence of the first canon, and to the
universal authority it then had in the churches of God.
Marcion was born in the days of John toward the close of
the first century at Sinope on the shores of the Euxine. His
father, bishop of that city, having had the misfortune to dis
cover a serious crime of his son, was obliged to expel him
from the church, and firmly refused to restore him. Inca
pable of bearing this mortification, Marcion secretly left the
city and went to Rome.2 There, as he was a man of talent
and energy, he soon exercised a great personal influence, and
was accepted by the Roman clergy. He dared even aspire,
says Epiphanius, to the first place (irpoeSpta), when he was
rejected by the elders (irpea-fivrepois) of the church, who had
1 We shall not here speak of the Ophites or Cerinthians, nor of the other
heretics of the first centui-y who are less known to us, nor of the Arians and
Manicheans who came afterward ; nor even of Theodotus, the tanner of By
zantium who flourished in the latter half of the second century. We shall
confine ourselves to the first half.
2 Epiph. Haeres. xiii. 1. See also Cave, Diet. Eccl. Hist. Bingham Orig.
Eccl. i. p. 266. Massuet, De Gnost. Reb. sec. 135.

232 THE CANON.
learned the cause of his flight from Sinope. He then threw
himself with desperation into the party of Cerdo. This
was a dangerous Syrian heretic, already unhappily celebrated
in Rome as head of a powerful anti-judaizing sect. Marcion
gave himself entirely up to his gnostic suggestions, and before
long passed beyond his master in the audacity of his doc
trines, the great number of his followers and his attempts
against the Scriptures. He expressed his negations with ex
treme precision, and knew how to impress his system with
the strongly positive features of his own character. The
attractiveness of his powerful person and the seductive au
dacity of his philosophy soon brought him a large number of
disciples in Italy, Egypt, Syria, and Persia ; and his sect
became so powerful and so active that in the fourth century,
if we may believe Epiphanius, it retained still some congre
gations and bishops. Also Irenaeus tells us (Haeres. iii. 3) that
this bold man pretended to demand a recognition from the
bishops of the church, and that having met Polyearp in Rome,
he dared to approach and say to him,- " Recognize me, Poly
earp ! " "I recognize thee," replied the martyr, " as the
first-born of Satan."
We can no more determine than Tertullian,1 the time when
Marcion went to fix his residence at Rome. "In what year,"
says this Father, " of the first Antonines the breath of the
Dog-Star blew this poisonous exhalation from the Black Sea,
I have taken no pains to inquire." But since Justin Martyr,
in his first Apology, (chap. 26,) written in a. d. 139, speaks
of Marcion as " still teaching ; " and since his doctrine was
then already widely spread, many years must have elapsed
since he left the church. His first arrival in the Capital of
the Empire must have long preceded the death of Adrian.
This remark is important ; it brings us near the days of
John. Another fact worthy of notice, was the simultaneous
1 Adv. Marcion, i. 19. Quoto quidem anno Antonini Maj. de Ponte suo
exhalaverit aura canicularis, non curavi investigare ; de quo tamen constat,
Antonianus est hajreticus, sub Pio impius.

MARCION. 233
presence in Rome of Cerdo, Marcion, Tatian, and Valentinus,
with Justin Martyr. It seems to confirm the testimony which
men so contrasted rendered at the same time and in the same
city to the existence, the use, and the authority of the first
canon in the cotemporary church.
Tertullian says,1 " In separating the Law from the Gospel,
Marcion pretended not to be an innovator, but merely ' to re
store the apostolical rule falsified by its adversaries.' "
In general, the heretics of the second century, with many
rationalists of the nineteenth, not discerning the harmony of
the divine revelations and those intimate relations which in
the order of grace bind together the respective doctrines of
the Law and the Gospel, could see between these revelations
only a desperate antagonism. Thus persuaded of their irrec-
oncilableness they accepted certain Scriptures and rejected
others ; and permitting themselves thus to go to contrary ex
tremes, they declared they could neither reconcile Peter or
James with Paul, nor Matthew or John with Luke. Thus,
some, particularly the ebionites, as Irenaeus says, " Holding
Paul to be an Apostate from the Law," rejected him spite
fully ; whilst Marcion and many others, pushing the doctrines
of Paul to the other extreme, on the contrary, held him alone
to be a true apostle, and admitted to their canon only his
epistles reduced to the number of ten, and the Gospel of
Luke. In their aversion to everything Jewish, they even
maintained that the God of the Jews (the Demiurge or Crea
tor of the visible world), was very different from the God
preached by Jesus Christ. Marcion too, like our rationalists,
pretended to establish, not only what he called the antitheses
(or contradictions) of the two Testaments, but also the antith
eses of Peter and Paul, and those of Luke and Mark, or
Luke and John. His canon was divided into two parts which,
Epiphanius says, he called "the Evangelicon" and "the
Apostolicon." As to his Apostolicon, he made it up of ten
only of Paul's epistles. He excluded of the thirteen let-
1 Adv. Marcion, i. 20.

234 THE CANON.
ters which bear Paul's name only three of the pastoral
epistles and that to the Hebrews, for he had retained Phile
mon. Tertullian,1 too, informs us that his arrangement of
the epistles, no one can see why, was not that which the
church was accustomed to use. He boasted also that he had
reestablished the true title of the Epistle to the Ephesians,
calling it, "Epistle to ihe Laodiceans." (Col. iv. 16.) And
the same Father assures us again that he had made altera
tions in these letters, especially in that to the Romans, " to
bring away whatever he chose from the integrity of our instru
ment." 2 At the same time Epiphanius,3 who brings the same
reproach against him, and who specifies seven of these alter
ations, shows us that they were not important and were not
retrenchments. There are indeed only three that have any
authority for them.
As to his Evangelicon, he allowed himself, as we have said,
serious liberties. He received only one gospel, which he
called " the Gospel of Christ," and which the church called
" the Gospel of Marcion," or " the Gospel of the Black Sea "
(Ponticum.) He had himself arranged and modified it, and
it was simply (according to the unanimous testimony of Ire-
naaus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius), "a mutilated Luke."4
The text of this Evangelist was its thread ; but there were
constant alterations and retrenchments, among them those of
the prodigal son, nativity of the Saviour, and the events of
his death on the cross.5 " These heretics, giving themselves
out as truer and wiser than the apostles," says Irenaeus,6 "and
pretending that the apostles had issued only a gospel imbued
1 Adv. Marcion, v. 20. See too, Epiphan. Hasres., xiii. This places in
Marcion Philemon ninth, and Philippians tenth.
2 Adv. Marcion, v. 13.
8 Hajres. xiii. Yet it would seem from the- commentary of Origen on
Rom. xvi. 25, that he had omitted the lust two chapters.
i A reconstruction of Alarcion's gospel may bo found in Halm's " Das
Evang. Marcions in seiner urspriinglichen Gestalt. (Kbnigsberg, 1823.)
5 Epiph. Hffires. xiii. See Kirchhofer, Quellensammlung, p. 336.
* Hseres. Lib. iii., chap, xii-., sec. 12.

MARCION. 235
with Judaism, came to cut the Scriptures in two, rejecting
this and retrenching that, as if nothing was genuine which
they had not subjected to their retrenchment."
And it is well to remark aga'n that Marcion avowed pub
licly that he " had removed certain passages from the original
Scriptures of Christ." Tertullian l says, " Thou hast thyself
avowed it in a certain letter, but by what authority ? Who
art thou ? A prophet ? Then prophesy. An apostle ? Then
preach publicly. An apostolical man ? Then think like the
apostles. A simple Christian ? Then believe what is given
us. But if thou art none of these, I tell thee by good right,
die!" All these reproaches of the Fathers show us with what
jealousy the text of our holy Books was then guarded.
In the mean time, we may say in passing, it must not be
imagined that this mutilating of which Marcion and the Mar-
cionites were guilty, was an attempt often repeated. It was,
on the contrary, a very rare scandal, so much horror did it
excite ; and Marcion has remained so famous in history from
this excess of audacity, that Origen, a century after him, re
viewing 2 the history of the church, could say, " I know none
who have cut and mutilated (/xeraxapajavras) the Gospel,
except the followers of Marcion and Valentinus ; perhaps
too, those of Lucian." And again, even as to Valentinus,
have we not heard Tertullian assure us that that heretic em
ployed " a complete Instrument " ? So that it was only by
gross perversions, and not by material alterations that he did
violence to the Scriptures.
Let us now pause to examine more closely the evidence
of the testimony which, from this first quarter of the second
century. Marcion renders to the canon. And, to that end,
transporting ourselves to Rome in A. D. 128, only twenty-five
years after the death of John, let us seat ourselves on the
threshold of that fatal school of philosophy where the young
1 De Carne Christi, cap. 2.
2 In his treatise against Celsus, cap. ii. 27.

236 THE CANON.
professor of Sinope was announcing his gnosis. Or rather;
let us go then eleven years later, when, in the same city, the
martyr Justin, daring to address his first Apology to the Em
peror, the Senate and the people of Rome (ko.1 BrjpM iravrl
'PwiMuW), said to them, " How many impious persons are
there whom none of you thinks of persecuting, and especially
that Marcion of the Euxine Sea,1 who is even now engaged
in teaching his followers to pronounce blasphemies against
God the Creator, and even to deny him, pretending that
there is another, superior to Him ? " Let us go, we say, to
the door of this school where the persecutors of the Chris
tians abstain from interfering with him, and we shall then ob
tain all the proofs necessary as to the existence of the canon.
" Had the Christian church," we have been asked, " already
in these first years of the second century her collection of the
holy Scriptures ? " Who can make this inquiry after having
visited Marcion and his school ? Who will suppose that the
church had not her collection when this man, violently sepa
rated from her, had his ? He who showed himself in so
many ways outrageous toward the Scriptures, who maintained
such revolting doctrines concerning the God Creator, the Old
Testament, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, while calling
himself a Christian philosopher, he, Marcion, could have had
his canon well defined, composed of one gospel and ten epis
tles, whilst the Christian church who reproached him so se
verely for not accepting the other books, had not her canon !
And we shall hear modern doctors telling us in their " Intro
ductions," that " the canon published by Marcion is the first
of which ecclesiastical literature has left us any monument!"
As if the complaints of the Fathers who were indignant at
his mutilations were not monuments of the complete canon
of the cotemporary church, as much as of the mutilated
canon of this heretic !

i Ap. i. 26. MaKpiuva 6e nva Tlovrmbv, 5c KAI NYN ETI fori Snows-
kuv roi)g irei-Qopevovg.

MARCION. 237
The better to appreciate this testimony, we must carefully
observe the following considerations : —
1. It can be proved by numerous quotations from Tertul
lian and Irenaaus that Marcion was well acquainted with both
the collection of the four gospels and the three Pauline epis
tles excluded from his canon. Kirchhofer has done this in
his " Collection of Sources."
2. Marcion never disputed the authenticity of the nine
books excluded from his collection. On the contrary, not
only did he know their existence, but he knew the authority
which they possessed in the church ; and moreover he did
not deny or question that they should be ascribed to the au
thors whose names they bore. Only he pretended that they
were tinctured with Judaism, and he " labored to depreciate
their authors that he might secure to his mutilated gospel the
credit of which he deprived them." Tertullian says, (Con-
nititur ad destruendum statum eorum Evangeliorum quae pro-
prie et sub Apostolorum* nomine eduntur, vel etiam apostoli-
corum ; z etc.) This is. for us in this respect a very important
testimony. 3. Marcion and the Marcionites e themselves avowed that
they were aiming to mutilate the ancient Scriptures (tot origi-
nalia instrumenta Christi) received before them in the church.
Irenaeus has already said to us, " The Marcionites, pretending
to be" more sincere and wise than the apostles, aimed to mu
tilate the Scriptures, ejecting some portions and reducing
others." Thus they render testimony again to the canon of
the church both by speaking ill of it, and by mutilating it.
We have also heard Tertullian oppose the canon of Marcion
to the canon of the church (auferendo quae voluit de Nostri
Instrumenti integritate.) 4
4. We hear all his adversaries (Tertullian, Irenasus, Ori-
1 The gospels of Matthew and John were so designated by him.
2 He is speaking then of Mark.
8 Iren. Hseres. hi. 12.
* Adv. Marcion, v. 13.

238 THE CANON, i
gen, Epiphanius) reproach him, not with introducing new
texts, but with altering those existing before his day.
5. Among the reproaches made against him, is one, not
grave, yet important, as it shows us the great abundance of
study already bestowed upon the collection of Scriptures for
a long time in all the churches, and what place it had taken
as an organic whole in the customs of the people of God.
We have seen that Marcion,1 while preserving the thirteen
epistles which the entire church attributed to Paul, had seen
fit, contrary to universal usage, to change their order, and
how this change is censured both by Tertullian in his fifth
book against Marcion, and by Epiphanius in his forty-second
chapter against heresies. How remarkable it is that only
twenty-five years after the death of the disciple whom Jesus
loved, this collection had become so familiar to all the
churches of God, that they had already everywhere the
habit of ranking the thirteen epistles of Paul and the four
gospels in an invariable order ; 2 an order, we have else
where remarked, not at all according to the date of their
compositions! How can it be otherwise than that this ar
rangement of the holy Books must have prevailed universally
and always, since Epiphanius in his reproaches traces it back
even to the days of the apostles. '' Marcion," he says,
" places in the second rank the epistle to the Philippians,
while according to the apostle, it is in the sixth (irapb. Be
to diroo~roA<u eK-rrj.) He places Philemon ninth, while accord
ing to the apostle it is in the last ; the Thessalonians in the
seventh, while the apostle places it in the- eighth ; and as to
the epistle to the Romans, he places it in the fourth rank, in

1 We are speaking here only of the first canon. We will hereafter treat
of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
2 In the ancient Latin manuscript of Cambridge (Beza's) the four Gospels
are ranged in this order: Matthew, John, Luke, and M.irk. It seems that
before Jerome's day that was the ancieni order. Mr. Berger de Xivrey
says. It is the only manuscript of a high antiquity which joins the Greek
to the Latin translation.

TATIAN. 239
order that nothing should be left where it belonged, nothing
should be done right." -1
Certainly this unanimity of the churches in universally
ranking our holy Books in the same order, and that not chron
ological, in days so remote, is a very significant fact to show
us the place which the first canon all entire had already taken
in the customs of the universal church.
6. Finally, the indignation of all these Fathers at the at
tempts of Marcion against the Scriptures, and their very defi
nite reproaches of him on this account, attest to us with what
sacred jealousy the text of our Scriptures was then watched
over in the churches of God.
But the testimony of Tatian will supplement that of Mar-

Tatian.
Cave and the other ecclesiastical historians frequently com
plain of the uncertainty which pervades the chronology of
all these heretics of the second century. Thus as to Tatian,
whilst Epiphanius places him in the second jear of Antoninus
Pius, a. d. 149, the end of the long sojourn of this heretic in
Rome, where he was engaged in founding a school of heresy,
is placed by others twenty years later.2 For ourselves who
are now ascending the years of the second century, we pre
fer, without attempting to settle the point, to place Tatian
first after Marcion, because his history throws important light
on that of the professor of Sinope.
Like him he was skillful, learned, but haughty and impet
uous. Like him also he resided for a time in Rome; and,
after having seemed to belong to the church of God, violently
broke from it and set himself in opposition to a part of the
recognized canon ; but not against the same books. It is
also in this respect that Tatian renders to our Scriptures a
testimony which at once completes those of Marcion and of
1 Haeres. xiii. p. 368.
2 Cave Scriptor. Eccles. Historia Litteraria. Vol. i. p. 75, fol. Basil.

240 THE CANON.
Justin Martyr. Born in Assyria of a pagan family, he at
first ardently pursued philosophical studies, until he went to
Rome and met Justin, " that admirable man," as he himself
styles him.1 From that moment he made profession of
Christianity, and so attached himself to Justin that after his
martyrdom he pretended to continue his school. But success
soon inflated him, and Irenaeus says, " destroyed him." He
threw himself into systems of error borrowed from the ori
ental philosophies ; and then returning to Mesopotamia, he
became the head of the Encratites, — ascetics who united the
vain imaginations of Valentinus to the repulsive theories of
Marcion. We have said that, in regard to the canons, Tatian com
pletes at once the testimony of Justin and that of Marcion.
Of Justin, because he cites without hesitation the Scriptures
of Paul and John, whilst the writings of the martyr now re
maining say little of them : — And of Marcion, because he
attributes directly to Paul, the epistle to Titus, while Mar
cion, we know, rejected it.
Besides that, in his " Address to the Greeks," Tatian
makes evident allusions to the gospel of John and to his
Apocalypse. And we learn also from Irenasus,2 as also from
Jerome, that, to defend his heresies, he invoked the authority
of Paul's epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians.
But still farther, we have to cite from this pernicious man
a literary fact still more significant for the authority of the
canon and more especially of the sacred collection of the
four gospels. It is that, among " the great multitude of his
works (infinita volumina)," says Jerome,8 " the authors of the
time frequently mention the important ' Harmony of the
four Gospels,' " 4 which he himself calls, " The Composed of
i In his Address to the Greeks, p. 18, 19.
2 Hasres. i. 28. See, too, Euseb. H. E. iv. 29. Tatian, Orat. ad Gnec.
cap. 42, i. 35, 1819.
8 De Scriptor. cap. 29.
* Epiphanius speaks expressly of Hie four Gospels (Hasres. xlvi. 1).

VALENTINUS AND THE VALENTINIANS. 241
Four (to Atot Tearo-dptav)." Eusebius1 says, "it was a Col
lection, and a certain Combination of the Gospels."
See then already so soon after the death of John, the collec
tion of the four gospels acknowledged, studied, and laboriously
collated by a dangerous heretic who denied, among so many
other truths of our faith, the humanity of our Saviour and
the reality of his death ! Without doubt Tatian had made
some wicked retrenchments from this collection ; but these
alterations do not appear at the first reading ; and neither
Eusebius nor Theodoret (who speaks of them) gives us to
understand that he had introduced into it any fragment of an
apocryphal gospel. His book, even in the days of Eusebius,
was " still used by certain persons who were not aware of the
alterations." Epiphanius tells us expressly that it " was
composed of the four Gospels," and that many called it " The
Gospel according to the Hebrews." In fine, Theodoret,2
nearly a century after Epiphanius, in telling us that Tatian
had rejected from it the genealogy of the Saviour, and the
passages indicating his descent from David according to the
flesh, relates that his book was still current in his time in
certain places. He says, " I myself found more than two
hundred copies of it, in our churches (in Syria), which had
received them with respect and which used them, unconscious
of the evil in them ; but having gathered them all, I took
them away to replace them by the gospels of the four Evan
gelists." This testimony of Tatian has great value ; but we shall go
yet farther back in the century, to reach Valentinus and the
six different sects which bore his name.

Valentinus and the Vdlentinians.
The Valentinians, as appears from all the Fathers who
have described them, were among the most powerful and the
most pernicious of the gnostic sects. Valentinus, born in
i H. E. iv. 29. "- Hasres. Fab. i. 20.
21

242 THE CANON.
Egypt, began his public life in teaching the Platonic philoso
phy ; but from thence, like so many other doctors of that
time, went to establish the seat of his labors in Eome, many
years before Justin Martyr, on the one hand, and Marcion
and Tatian on the other, commenced their labors there. As
Valentinus preceded these, his testimony should be placed
nearer the days of the apostles ; for he was already known
a. d. 120. He called himself the disciple of a friend of
Paul ; and Irenasus 1 states that he went to Rome during the
episcopate of Hyginus, and that he lived there until the time
of Anicet. He was, therefore, in that capital when Polyearp
came there on a mission in behalf of the eastern churches,
and he may have had Marcion among his hearers. His lesr
sons attracted a crowd; a great number of admirers attached
themselves to him, because he excelled in talent, and was a
powerful speaker. " He had even aspired to the episcopate,"
Tertullian 2 says ; and it is thought that in consequence of
his " ambitious hopes being disappointed he separated from
the true church." In the mean time his impieties did not
fully break out until after his retreat to the Isle of Cyprus.
His principal disciples, Ptolemy, Leander, Heracleon, Mark,
and others, founded many distinct sects, held a prominent
place in their age, and were in general better known than
Valentinus himself. It is with the exposition of these strange
Valentinian systems that Irenaeus opens his great book of the
Heresies. Tertullian combats them equally in his book " De
Praescriptione Haereticorum ; " Clement, in bis Stromata; as
also afterward Origen, Hippolytus, and others.
Now it is a fact of the greatest importance in respect to
the first canon, that already in these remote days, Valentinus
and his disciples, notwithstanding their most audacious her
esies and their most violent hatred of the churches of God,
openly recognized the entire collection of the Scriptures then
received. Valentinus made war on them only through the
oriental fantasies of his imagination and by the audacity with
1 Haeres. iii. i, 3. 2 Contra Valent., cap. iv.

VALENTINUS AND THE VALENTIN1ANS. 243
which he ventured to found on his wild interpretations the
most pernicious systems of error. Neither he nor his fol- ,
. lowers directly rejected any of the Scriptures ; he had the /
same canon of the New Testament as the cotemporary church.
Tertullian says, " Valentinus appears to have used a com
plete collection ; but, by his violent interpretations of the
words, he retrenched and added more than even Marcion did
in a more open manner, ax in hand ; the one perverting the
text by his interpretations, the other mutilating it." The
fragments which the Fathers have transmitted to us of these
writings show them using the Scriptures just as the Chris
tians of their epoch did. When he quotes the epistle to the ;
Ephesians, he calls it " the Scripture ; " and, in these very
fragments he clearly appeals to the gospels of Matthew, Luke,
and John, to the epistles to the Romans, and Corinthians,1 !
and also, though less manifestly, to the epistle, to the Hebrews
and John's first epistle. When Irenaeus2 reproaches the
Valentinians with having dared to entitle a certain book of
theirs " Gospel of Truth," he says, " only a short time ago,"
and in complete disagreement with the gospels of the apos
tles, it was on their part only a gnostic commentary recently
published to expose their errors, without their having ceased
notwithstanding, to recognize with the church universal the
four canonical gospels.
We shall not here embarrass ourselves with their absurd
doctrines ; we refer only to their historical testimony ; and
this testimony appears to us so much the more significant as
they abandoned themselves to the most crude fancies con
cerning their Pleroma, their thirty .iEons, their ten Decades,
and their Female (Eon or the Mother Achamoth. We can
see the wild fantasies of this Christianized paganism, seriously
1 De Prescript. Hseret. cap. 38. Tertullian opposes the old instrument to
the new. This term Instrumentum, Quintilian applies to the documents
of a law suit; and in Suetonius, Instrumentum Imperii is an " Inventory or
Table of the Empire."
2 Adv. Hasres. iii. 11, 9. 8 Hayes., Lib. i. cap. 3.

244 THE CANON.
exposed and refuted in the great work of Irenaeus, as also in
other Fathers. We observe here these very men, in defend
ing their errors, quoting almost every book of the canon, thus
attesting without such intention, the authority of our Scrip
tures in all the cotemporary church. If, for example, we
take the fragments quoted by Irenaeus, we see them adduce
the four gospels (while strongly preferring that of John)
and frequently using Paul's epistles, especially those to the
Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians. " By means
of an unfair exegesis (paSiovpyovvre'S ras ejijy^o-eis) " says
this Father,1 " they draw their demonstrations (caroSei^eii)
from the evangelical Scriptures (four gospels) and the apos
tolical epistles."
But still further, and, in spite of our desire to abridge, we
must quote, among other Valentinians, the leaders of two of
their most illustrious sects, Heracleon and Ptolemy, both of
the Western School.

Heracleon and Ptolemy.
These two heretical teachers must be regarded as anterior
to Valentinus, although they have been classed generally
among the Valentinians, from the resemblance of their errors
to his.
Heracleon is described by Clement of Alexandria,2 as the
most eminent teacher (SoKipoyroiTos) of the Valentinian school ;
but what makes him most remarkable to us, is that he was
the earliest commentator of the New Testament in the West
known to us.
From the fact that his heresies were already notorious in
Sicily in the time of Pope Alexander (a. d. 109 to 116),
that is, from six to thirteen years after the death of John, we
may judge of the antiquity of the commentaries of Heracleon.
And this we know, because it was at the express request of
the council of Sicilian bishops, that this bishop composed
i Hares., Lib. i. cap. 3. 2 Stromata, I. iv. 9.

HERACLEON AND PTOLEMY. 245
against Heracleon a book abounding in scriptural quotations.1
The writings of thic heretic must then have been published,
at farthest, no later than ten years after John's death, if not
much earlier.
We can not now know exactly what books of the New
Testament were expounded by Heracleon. But we learn
from Origen that he had explained the whole book of John ; 2
and from Clement of Alexandria, that of Luke.8 There are
also many fragments of his writings in the Fathers ; and
from these we learn that he quoted Matthew ; also many
epistles of Paul with this formula : " The Apostle saith,"
particularly when he quotes from Romans, Corinthians, and
Timothy. The reader must here notice how valuable are these com
mentaries on the New Testament of that epoch, as we shall
presently show. What must have been the estimate of the
Scriptures of the New Testament by the church, when even
heretics felt compelled to write commentaries upon them !
But still farther ; we can see in the very character of this
commentary of Heracleon, how completely the church was
persuaded of the plenary inspiration of our Sacred Books,
extending to their very words. We see this author, espe
cially in regard to the pastoral epistles, deeming significant
the slightest variation in the words of the apostle.4 Surely,
nothing better asserts the cotemporary faith in the authen
ticity and authority of our Scriptures than the spectacle of ;
these miserable men obliged already, in order to obtain any
credit, to quote them and to distort them as the books on
which the faith of all the churches of God was founded.
Would they ever have thought of doing so, unless the books
had long had an authority fully established ?
l Cave, Hist. Litt. p. 47, Basle, 1741.
2 This Father quotes him at great length, and more than forty times in
his own commentary on John. Grabe has collected the fragments of Herac
leon on this gospel, Spicilegium, ii. 85-117. „
8 Strom, iv. 9.
* See him on 2 Tim. ii. 23. Clement of Alexandria; Strom, iv., 1. c.
21*

246 THE CANON.
Ptolemy, whom the Fathers rank among the Italian as
distinguished from the oriental gnostics4 is placed by Ter
tullian * before Heracleon. Irenaeus,2 who attempts to refute
him, says that he gave to the gnostic errors their most seduc
tive forms ; and Epiphanius describes him more completely,
in speaking of a letter addressed to a lady among his disciples,
named Flora. There you hear him quote the gospel of
Matthew in favor of his heresies, and the prologue of John's
gospel, with passages from Romans, Corinthians and Ephe
sians. Passages from the four gospels and the Romans,
Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians may also be found in
the fragments preserved by Irenaeus.3
But we may ascend still higher; to Basilides and his son
Isidore, to Carpocrates and the Ebionites.

Basilides and his son Isidore.
In our upward march through the ranks of heretics in the
second centuryyit is often the most difficult task to discover
their respective \ages. Vet it appears sufficiently evident
that Basilides preceded Cerdo and Heracleon. He was the
leader of a gnostic sect of the Oriental School ; and his son,
equally famous, after him, had many disciples.
Basilides had already become famous, in Egypt about A. d.
112 ;4 and he is said to have died about the end of Adrian's
reign. He claimed for his teacher a companion of Peter
(Glaucion, his interpreter). A disciple of Menander, the lat
ter a disciple of Simon the magician, Basilides was among
the first gnostics like one of the enfans perdus who run
ahead of the standard. He had gone from Syria to Persia,
where he had circulated, as the origin of evil, the very
errors which Manes or Manicheus afterward propagated;
1 Adv. Valent. 4. 2 Hasres. xxxiv.
8 Adv. Hseres. i. 1, and 8 ; vi- 35.
4 See Cave's Lit. Hist, of the Fathers, p. 49, (edition already cited.)
Clement of Alex. Stroniat. i. 7.

BASILIDES AND HIS SON ISIDORE. 247
and subsequently returned to Egypt, to open a school. He
sought to recommend his pernicious doctrines by an eloquence
inflated with all the pomp of language. According to him,
Christ did not clothe himself in our flesh, and suffered only
in appearance. He reckoned 365 heavens whose birth he
described ; placing Abraxas above all, a mystical power, the
letters of whose name in Greek form the number 365, and
which he used for magical purposes.
Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, who
all speak of this pernicious man, have preserved the frag
ments of his works ; and Eusebius * relates that Agrippa
Castor, a very skillful and celebrated writer of this epoch,
had powerfully refuted him.
Now, all these testimonies show us first, that Basilides was
in the East what Heracleon had been among the Occidentals
" the earliest known commentator of the New Testament,"
for he had, Eusebius declares, " composed twenty-four books
of commentaries (i^yrjTiKwv) on the Gospel." Thus we
see, near the days of John, the gospel publicly commented
on in the East as in the West. Besides that, Clement of
Alexandria (Strom. Lib. iii.) informs us that his followers
sustained their doctrines of marriage by the passages in Mat
thew (xix. 11, 12) and 1st Corinthians (viii. 9,) and some
other errors by Rom. vii. 7 ; " I had not known sin but by
the law." Basilides too, Clement says,2 cited in his Exe-
getics a beautiful passage from 1st Peter, iv. 14-16 ; and we
hear Origen 8 reproaching him with wishing to found his doc
trine of metempsychosis by this word of Paul to the Romans :
" I was alive without the law once, (that is, before I was in
this human body)."
Thus we see again both the gospels and the epistles of
Peter and Paul cited at the beginning of the second century
by this enemy of God and the church.
» Hist. Eccl. iv. 7.
2 Lib. iv. opp. p. 504. Paris, 1689.
8 Ep. ad Rom. cap. 5, (opp. tom. iv. p. 549, edit. Bened.)

248 THE CANON.
We might still pursue this review of the earliest heretics
and go back even as far as Cerinthus, or Menander, or Simon
the Magician to hear new testimonies. We would cite Car
pocrates and his son Epiphanius older than Basilides, and
who, in practising magic and professing metempsychosis did
not hesitate to sustain their outrageous morals by quotations
from Luke (xii. 52), from Matthew (v. 25), from first Timo
thy (vi. 20), second Timothy (i. 14), and, from first John (v.
19).1 We might adduce also the still older sect of the Ebio
nites, originating during the life of the apostles, and strongly
judaizing, denying the divinity of Christ, and setting them
selves against Paul and Luke. Yet even they never objected
to the authenticity of Paul's epistles, or the Acts, or the gos
pels of Mark, Luke, or John, although they substituted for
Matthew's gospel a mutilated copy which they called "the
Gospel of the Ebionites." 2 But we hasten to notice those
who are called apostolical Fathers because they had seen the
apostles of the Lord.

SECTION X.
TESTIMONY OF THB APOSTOLICAL FATHERS.
Their limited Number and their Volute.
It was in the time of these Fathers that the church, sev
ered from its living prophets, had to commence her march
toward the kingdom of heaven solely by the light of the
written Word. Their testimony, as we have it, is calculated
to give us great satisfaction, but we must not forget how few
they were.
1 See Ii-enseus, Ha:res. i. 25. Tertullian, De Prajscript., cap. 25. Origen
on Genesis, cap. 1. Kirchhofer's Quellensammlung, p. 419, 420.
2 Eusebius, H. E. iii. 27. The reader wishing to pursue this subject far
ther may consult Bunsen's Hippolytus, Kirchhofer's Quellensammlung, etc.
and the recent work of Mr. Westcott, " On the Canon," pp. 301-325. Cam
bridge, 1855.

THEIR NUMBER AND VALUE. 249
Although the name " apostolical Father," may belong to
men who, like Ignatius and Polyearp, while having person
ally known some of the apostles, yet continued to live to the
middle of the second century, they are, we repeat, very few ;
and their authentic books taken together, form a very small
volume, containing epistles alone, and these very short.
There are but eight, or as some say, twelve. Beginning
with the earliest, they are ; one epistle of Clement, second
bishop of Rome, to the church in Corinth ; one of Polyearp,
bishop of Smyrna, to the church of Philippi ; one of the
same church of Smyrna relating the martyrdom of Polyearp ;
three of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, to Polyearp, the churches
of Ephesus and Rome ; J one on the martyrdom of Ignatius ;
and finally, one to Diognetus, author and date unknown, al
though its authenticity is universally acknowledged.2
We do not add the Shepherd of Hermas, because its date,
now known by the Fragment of Muratori,8 is too recent for
us to give him place among the Apostolical Fathers. We
will add yet other books which, in our days, almost all the
learned agree to place in the rank of forged books ; the sec
ond letter ascribed to Clement, his pretended Homilies, and
the pretended Epistle of Barnabas.4
i If we have remarked that others carry the writings of the apostolical
Fathers to the number of twelve rather than eight, it is that they add to
them four other letters of Ignatius in our day very much suspected.
2 At least, to chap. xi. (Hefele, Patrum Apostol. Opera, Tubing. 1847.
Proleg.) 8 Hermas, the fragment says, was brother to the Roman bishop, Pius I.
4 For rejecting this, we have the following reasons, which ma)' be found
at greater length, in Hefele (Patrum Apost. Proleg., p. xiv. Tubing. 1847.)
1. We have only a part of his letter, in Latin. 2. The real Barnabas must
have died before a. d. 60 or 62; whilst it is obvious, from the xvith chapter
of this letter that it was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. 3. If
this letter had been regarded as authentic by the early Christians, they
would have placed it in the canon, because Barnabas was a prophet (Acts,
xiii. 1.) 4. It presents such an excess of words, and so many of these im
proper, that we can not attribute it to the real Barnabas (the apostles, for
example, are there called imp ndaav dpapriav dvoparepoi). 5. We find
in chapter x. ridiculous sentences and indecent details, which we can

250 THE CANON.
Modern rationalism has made strenuous efforts to weaken
the testimony of these Fathers.
It has in the first place objected the numerical considera
tion, or, the more frequent quotations from the Old Testament
than from the New ; whence it would appear, they say, that
our canon was either unknown to them, or disregarded by
them. But this fact alleged by the rationalists has no exist
ence. If you except Clement of Rome, writing very near
the time of Paul's 'martyrdom, and consequently disposed (as
the apostles had been) to cite the Old Testament more fre
quently than to recall the cotemporary Scriptures, you will
find that the apostolical Fathershave, on the contrary, made
a very frequent use of the New Testament. And even this
feature which is used as an objection, appears so rarely, that
we are more frequently struck with just the contrary. You
may find in Polyearp, for example, nearly fifty quotations of
the New Testament for one of Moses and the prophets ;
whilst, in the epistle to Diognetus, you shall be even shocked
at the apparently affected avoiding of the Old Testament by
the author.1
A second objection of rationalism is the want of precision
in those passages in which the Fathers quote the New Tes-
etill less attribute to this prophet. 6. The real Barnabas, who had fre
quently traversed Asia Minor, and sojourned in Syria, abundantly knew
that all which is said in chapter ix. about the universal circumcision of the
idolatrous priests and of all the Syrians was false. 7. The puerile allego
ries which fill the vth chapter and the six which follow it, are by a very
different man from him whose eloquence led the apostles to call him
nKSQJ 13. 8. It is impossible that the real Barnabas, who was a
Levite, and had been a resident of Jerusalem, had written, concerning the
Jewish rites, the falsehoods which we find in the viith and viiith chapters.
9. In fine, this piece betrays an anti-judaism contrary to the teachings of
the Scriptures on circumcision (chap, ix.), on the Sabbath (chap, xv.), on
the economy of the Old Testament which it pretends ceased, not at the
promulgation of the gospel, but when Moses broke the tables of the law
(chapters iv. and xiv). All this savors of the gnosticism and the foolish
wisdom of the second century.
i Semisch. Justin der Martyrer, Breslau, 1840, tom. i. p. 180. Hefele,
Patr. Apos. Proleg. p. 77.

THEIR NUMBER AND VALUE. 251
tament. It says, they do not quote it either directly or cor
rectly ; and in almost every case of correct quotation it is
without naming the author quoted ; which should lead us to
believe that these Fathers had not the same books as ours
before them. But this second objection is no more valid than
the first ; for the examples which we shall produce serve to
show that, on the contrary, the language of these Fathers
most frequently discloses authors full of our Scriptures, and
readers already perfectly familiar with the holy Word. The
apostolical Fathers pour out and expand the sentences of our
holy Books in their own languages ; they introduce them
freely and from memory without a literal exactness ; they
often blend many passages in one continuous sentence ; they
paraphrase them, the better to adapt them to their own
thought ; and you see them persuaded that their readers
will comprehend them by a hint, and will recognize the
source from which they were derived. Is it not thus that the
men of our day most familiar with the Scriptures speak when
they are addressing others who derive their nourishment
from the same bread ? A glance at their letters written in
circumstances analogous to those of the apostolical Fathers
will reveal the striking resemblance of both in this respect.
In fact, there is a superiority on the part of the Fathers in
this point of view; for we must remember that the only
writings of these men of God remaining to us are pastoral
epistles, composed, not to dogmatize, but to exhort, console,
and relate examples of the martyrs, by which to encourage
their brethren.
Such were, for example, the letters of the great Calvin,
the man of modern times who has most honored the Scrip
tures. Take his two hundred and seventy-two French let
ters, and compare. This beautiful collection, recently edited
by Julius Bonnet, has vividly struck us by its resemblance
to the letters of the apostolical Fathers, in its mode of quot
ing the New Testament. We had the first volume before us,
in writing these lines, and while admiring it we' were struck

252 THE CANON.
with the fact that the reformer himself quoted the New Tes
tament less frequently in his letters than the Fathers did in
theirs. We should not hesitate even to affirm that the very rea
soning of the German rationalists from the works of Poly
earp, Ignatius, and Clement would legitimately show from
Calvin's letters that there was no canon of Scriptures in the
sixteenth century corresponding to ours. In the Latin text
of Hefele, these eight letters occupy eighty-seven octavo
pages ; 1 whilst Calvin's two volumes contain more than a
thousand pages. But suppose that we had nothing of the
great Reformer besides bis French letters, certainly the fu
ture critics would then have a much more solid foundation
for doubts as to the canon of Calvin, by taking any eighty-
seven consecutive pages of these two volumes, than modern
critics have for their doubts concerning the canon of the
Fathers. Could Calvin, they might ask, have used the same
gospels or epistles with us ? And in these gospels or epis
tles, did he find the same text as we have ? In fact, in his
French letters, which are parenetic and pastoral, (as those
of Polyearp, Clement, or Ignatius), he does not cite the New
Testament even as frequently as they. Undoubtedly the
spirit of his correspondence is wholly penetrated with them ;
but he does not quote them textually ; it is as in their case,
almost always from memory ; it is, more or less, by para
phrase ; it is by seizing their prominent feature just so far as
it is adapted to their purposes, without regard to terms ; it is
rarely by naming the author, and, just like the Fathers, by
vaguely indicating its place in the Scriptures. Take for in
stance, his touching letter to Madame de Cany on the death
of Madame de Normandie (tom. i. p. 295), a letter almost as
long as that of Polyearp to the Philippians, and compare the
two. It contains but this single passage from the New Tes-
1 That of Clement, at most 35 pages (leaving out the notes); the three
of Ignatius, 18 ; that of his martyrdom, 5 ; that of Polyearp, 7 ; that of his
martyrdom, 11 ; and that to Diognetus, 11.

THEIR NUMBER AND VALUE. 253
tament, and with a very vague reference ; " Paul, treating of
charity, does not forget that * we must weep with them who
weep.' " Take again his four admirable letters to the " Stu
dents of Lausanne, martyrs at Lyons," and that to " the mar
tyr Dimonet." In the latter (p. 367), he quotes only two
brief passages, without mentioning either the place or author.
In the first to the martyrs of Lyons, who had consulted him
on points of doctrine (vows, celibacy, monastic poverty, the
nature of the glorified body), he expressly cites a passage
from Matthew, two from Paul, and one from the Apocalypse
but in the second (p. 371), he quotes none of them, unless
it be in these vague terms, " Remember this sentence that
He who- dwells in us is stronger than the world." In the
third (p. 382), none; although the whole letter, in its five
pages, is so penetrated with a heavenly unction. In the
fourth, one single short passage ; " I know in whom I have
believed." And again, how does he quote? It is without
mentioning either Paul or his epistle ; and even by para
phrasing. " You may say with this valiant champion of
Jesus Christ, 'I know from whom I hold my faith.' " Rea
son then on Calvin after the fashion of the German ration
alists when they speak of Clement or Ignatius. " What ! "
you may well say, " only one quotation from the entire New
Testament in a long letter written by the greatest reformer
of the sixteenth century to young martyrs in the depth of
their dungeon ! Calvin then had not our Bible ! Nor does
anything show that, in this short phrase, he intended to quote
Second Timothy, or at least, if he intended to, he had not
the same Greek text as we, since we do not find in him an
exact translation of Paul's words." But, enough. We are
all fully aware that this mode of quoting, so far from showing
that the canon was not then in existence, on the contrary,
signalizes a period when everywhere scattered, read in all
the assemblies and familiar to the small as well as the great,
our Scriptures were in the memory of all and recognized
by a mere allusion. Why not reason on the letters of

254 THE CANON.
Clement, of Ignatius, or Polyearp as we all do on those of
Calvin? Epistle to Diognetus.
The name of the apostolical personage who has furnished
us this eloquent letter remains unknown, and all we know of
Diognetus is, that he was a pagan of distinction. Most of
the learned x have for a long time attributed this letter to
Justin Martyr ; but, besides that this Father was too young
to have been what the writer says he was, a hearer of the
apostles, the manifest superiority of the style forbids us to
ascribe it to Justin, while its doctrines, excessively anti-judaic,
are still less his. Others, on the contrary, attribute it to
Clemens Romanus, and others to Apollos.2 It is, without
doubt, older than Justin ; but it is also later than these Fa
thers; and we rather think with Hefele, that the allusions
of the viith chapter to great cotemporary persecutions and
to a rapid increase of the church, assign him his place tow
ard the end of Trajan's reign (a.d. 117), or the beginning
of Adrian's (133).
Now, if we examine this remarkable document, we shall
soon recognize in the author a zealous disciple of Jesus. He
is indeed addressing a man who is a stranger to the New
Testament, but we feel that he himself is wholly penetrated
with its spirit, and that he is living also in the midst of a peo
ple who are nourished like him, with this celestial manna.
Whilst he reminds Diognetus of the superstitious practices
of the Jews, given up to the observance of months and days
and seasons (iraparriprio-iv Kaipmv), you see him borrowing the
language of Paul (Gal. iv. 10.) In the vth chapter, in which
he is describing the life of Christians, you find paraphrases
of the epistles to the Corinthians and Philippians.8 " They
1 Cave, Teutzel, Fabricius, etc.
2 Lumper, De Vita Patrum, tom. i. p. 159. (See Mohler, Patrologie,
165,) and Gallandi, (see Hefele, 79.)
8 2 Cor. vi. 8-10; x. 3, and also Phil. iii. 18-20. 1 Cor. iv. 12. It is es-

EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS. 255
are in the flesh," he says, " without living in the flesh ; they
are upon the earth, but citizens of heaven ; . . . loving all
men, but persecuted of all ; regarded as unknown, and yet
condemned ; put to death, and yet restored to life ; regarded
as beggars, and yet enriching many ; deprived of all and
abounding in all ; covered with opprobrium and glorified in
their very reproaches ; calumniated and justified; cursed and
blessing, . . " etc.
In the xith chapter, where he is speaking of the commun
ion of Christ, and of his benefits bestowed on docile souls who
abide in " the limits traced by faith and indicated by the
Fathers," he adds : " Then the fear of the Law is exalted,
the grace of the Prophets is known, the faith of the Gospels
is confirmed, the instruction of the apostles (7rapa8oo-ts) is
preserved, the grace of the gospel triumphs and bounds with
joy (ovapra)."
In the ixth chapter, where he explains the sending of the
Son of God, " his goodness (j^o-tottjto.) (Rom. ii. 4 ; xi. 22 ;
Titus, iii. 4,) his power and his exceeding love to men (v-n-ep-
fiaXXovo-ri's <j>iXav8pu>irla<s), (Titus, iii. 4), he says, " He him
self took our sins, he himself delivered his own Son to be a
ransom in our stead (Xvrpov vwep -^piav) the just for the un
just, the incorruptible for the corruptible. . . For by what
could our sins be covered but by his justice ? In whom else
but the only Son of God could we be justified ; we unholy
and impious"? 0 sweet exchange, 0 inscrutable dispensation,
O blessing surpassing all expectation, that, on the one hand,
the iniquity of many should be swallowed up in one single
righteous being ; and that, on the other, by the righteousness
of one alone, (SiKcuoo-vvn Se ei/os), he justifies many ungodly
(ttoXXovs d.vop.ov<i SiKauocrn) ! (Rom. v. 12—21.)
And again, in his xiith chapter, having shown that, as in
the paradise of God so in the believer's soul " the tree of
knowledge should never be separated from the tree of life,"
pecially in the Greek that we must see the relations of his letter to the
epistles which we have just indicated.

256 THE CANON.
he says, " there is no security nor permanence for either life
without science, or science without true life ; and therefore
these two trees were planted near each other."
And he adds these remarkable words, in which he appeals
to the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, as a modern
pastor might do in the midst of our churches. " It is in
well considering the force of this union of the two trees, that
the apostle reproving science (tt>v yvu>o-iv) which does
not refer to the life according to the truth of the command
ment, has said, ' Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edify-
elh;'" (h yvwcris (pvcridi, rj Se dydrrq oiKoSopel) , the author
here employing the very terms of Paul unchanged (1 Cor.
viii. 1.)
See then, at the beginning of the second century, the epis
tle to Diognetus which directly quotes the apostle Paul and
his epistle to the Corinthians. The author, therefore, had
the sacred collection before his eyes, or respectfully treasured
in his memory ; and moreover, he wrote in the midst of a
Christian people familiar with our Scriptures ; for he does
not trouble himself to name him whom he calls " the apostle,"
nor the name of his letter. But why should he do it ? Was
it not sufficient to use these four words, in order that every
one, then as now, might recognize the epistle, and place his
fingers on the passage ?
We now ascend to Polyearp, and begin with his martyr
dom.

The Encyclical Epistle of the Church of Smyrna.
We have here certainly one of the most beautiful monu
ments of ecclesiastical antiquity, as it is one of the most au
thentic. We shall also find it almost complete in Eusebius'
history.1 At the request of a church in Phrygia the church
1 Lib. iv. chap. 15. The Acts of this martyr are the oldest extant; but
as to the precise time of the event, learned men disagree. Cave and Lard
ner placed it in A. D. 147 ; Gieseler and Neander in 167.

EPISTLE OF THE CHURCH OF SMYRNA. 257
in Smyrna wrote to all the parishes in Christendom this cir
cular letter (iyKVKXios). It will be found wholly penetrated
with the spirit of the Scriptures. Scaliger, too, in his notes
on Eusebius, assures us that nothing in ecclesiastical history
has so profoundly affected him. He says, " It seems to me,
after this reading, that I am another man." Let us hear the
first chapter.
" In everything which has happened, the Lord has designed
to show us a martyr according to the gospel (Kara to eiay-
yeXcov). Who will not admire the generosity, the patience,
the love to God of these witnesses who looked only to the
grace of Christ and who despised torture." They saw be
fore them the duty to flee from the fire that shall never be
quenched, and the eyes of their hearts were lifted on high,
contemplating the blessings reserved for those who persevere ;
eternal blessings, " which ear hath not heard, nor eye seen, f
neither have entered into the heart of man." >
Here then we find from the very first page, not only the '
bights of apostolical faith, but the very words of Paul ad-/
dressed to the Corinthians (1 Cor. ii. 9.)
And again (chap, iv.) recounting the sad relapse of a
Phrygian named Quintus, who had presented himself for
martyrdom, and then, at sight of the lions brought to devour
him, lost courage, the epistle makes this reflection : " We
could not then, 0 our brethren, praise those who give them
selves up, because that is not what the Gospel teaches," an
evident allusion to Matt. x. 23.
The narrative presents other quotations from the sacred
Word, which for brevity's sake, we omit; but when the ven
erable bishop, appearing before the proconsul in his ninety-
fifth year, is commanded to swear by the fortune of Caesar,
we hear him immediately appeal to our Scriptures (Rom.
xiii. 1 ; Tit. iii. 1). "To you I must reply," he said, "for
we have been taught to render as is proper, honor to the
principalities and powers ordained of God ; honor, at least,
which does not injure us (before God) ."
22*

258 THE CANON.
We should also read his last prayer, in the xivth chapter.
We pass on, however, to his own letter.

, The Epistle of Polyearp.
This admirable document is possessed at the same time of
an antiquity so near the apostles, of an authenticity so per
fectly attested, and of so rich an abundance of quotations
from the Scriptures, that it would suffice to refer to it alone,
to establish with evidence the universal use of the canon in
the first years of the second century.
As to its antiquity, the letter itself (chap, xiii.) shows that
it was written very near the time of the martyrdom of Igna
tius (a. d. 107), that is, four or five years after John's death.
We know that Polyearp was a disciple of the apostles, that,
as Irenaeus says,1 " he had lived in intimate intercourse with
the men who had seen the Lord ; " and that even, as Jerome
says,2 it was the apostle John who placed him over the church
of Smyrna.
And as to its authenticity, we have the most indisputable
guarantees ; Irenaeus, who himself a disciple of Polyearp,
could not be deceived about the letter, and who speaks of it
with the highest eulogiums, both in his third book against the
Heresies (chap, iii.), and in Eusebius' History (iv. 14) ; Eu
sebius, who speaks of it more than once, even in faithfully
quoting from it (chaps, ix., and xiii.) many passages which
are still found in it; and Jerome in his turn,3 who informs us
how highly this epistle was esteemed by the primitive Chris
tians, and of the use still made of it in his time by many
churches in their public readings.
We then touch the apostolical period, and are confirmed
by one of the most incontestable monuments of that period.
Now it would be difficult to find, even in our day, a writ
ing more saturated with the Scriptures. Its Latin translation
does not fill seven pages in the octavo text of Hefele ; and
1 Contra Hasres. iii. 36. 2 Catal. Scrip. Eccl. cap. 17. 8 Ibid.

THE EPISTLE OF POLYCARP. 259
yet you can count in it between forty and fifty citations from
the New Testament. All the epistle from one end to the
other, reveals a piety which is baptized in the holy Word,
and which thinks in apostolical language.
We will give an extract from his first chapter. He opens
in the manner of the apostles : " Polyearp and the elders
with him, to the church of God, which sojourns in Philippi ;
may mercy and peace from the Almighty God, and the Lord
Jesus Christ our Saviour be multiplied unto you. I rejoice
exceedingly with you in our Lord Jesus Christ, that you have
received the example of true charity, and that you have ac
companied, as was proper, those who have been loaded with
chains, worthy of the saints, diadems of the elect of God,
and of the Lord ; and that the strong root of your faith, al
ready renowned for so long a time (Philip, i. 5) abides even
to this day, and bears fruits for Jesus Christ, who has not
refused to confront death for our sins, whom God also has
raised, breaking the bonds of Hades (rots (uSivas rot) aSov,
Acts, ii. 24), and in whom, although you see him not, yet
you believe, and believing, you rejoice with an ineffable and
glorious joy "(1 Pet. i. 8), with a joy, into which a great num
ber among you desire to enter, knowing that you are saved
by grace, and not by works (Eph. ii. 8, 9), but by the will
of God, through Jesus Christ." *—
Behold then the cotemporary of the last years of the
apostles who in so short a chapter, shows that he is filled
with their writings, which overflow on every side. It is like
a man, whose national accent shows itself in all he says. We
have just heard him cite at once, without effort, without even
naming them, three or four Scriptures of the New Testament
and show his readers that there was imprinted upon his
memory, as on theirs, the book of Acts, the epistle of Paul
to the Ephesians, the epistle to the Philippians, the catholic ]
epistle of Peter, which he expands, together with his own/
thoughts, in a continuous strain. And if such is his first
chapter, such are also the other thirteen.

260 THE CANON.
The second begins with the words of Peter ; and though
short, it witnesses still, (especially in the Greek,) that the
author had before his eyes, the gospels of Luke, of Matthew,
the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of Paul, and the first
of Peter. " Wherefore," he says, " having the loins girded
(Sid dva^tDcrdpevoL rds ocrcpvas vpov, 1 Pet. i. 13,) serve God
with fear (Ps. ii. 11), leaving vain babbling (ttjv Kevrjv parcu-
oXoyiav, 1 Tim. i. 6), and the wanderings of the multitude ;
believing in him who raised our Saviour Jesus Christ from
the dead, and gave him glory, (1 Pet. i. 21), and made him
sit at his right hand, him to whom all things celestial and
terrestrial are subject, to whom all that breathes renders wor
ship, who comes as judge of the living and of the dead (Acts,
xvii. 31) ; and wdiose blood God will require of those who do
not believe on him. Now that God who raised him from the
dead, will raise us likewise, if we walk in his commandments,
and if we love that which he loves, neither returning evil for
evil, nor blow for blow (rj Xoihopiav dirt AoiSopi'as, 1 Pet. iii. 9),
nor cursing for cursing ; remembering that which the Saviour
said, when he taught (Matt. vii. 1) ; Judge not that ye be
not judged, forgive and it shall be forgiven you (Luke vi. 37 ;
Matt. vi. 12, 14) ; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy.
With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you
again (Matt. vii. 2) ; and blessed are tho poor, and those who
suffer persecution ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven "
(Matt. v. 3, 11.) Certainly these two chapters should alone
suffice to characterize, as to the canon, Polyearp, and his age ;
but we prefer to cite also the third, because it is very short,
and this holy bishop there makes a still more direct mention
of Paul and his writings on the occasion of the inspired let
ter which they had received of him fifty years before.
. Chapter III. " I write you these words concerning jus
tice, my brethren ; not that I desire to arrogate to myself any
right, but because you have invited me to write ; for neither
can I, nor any one like me attain to the wisdom (rr) crotpia, 2
Pet. iii. 15) of the glorious and blessed Paul, who, when he

THE EPISTLE OF POLYCARP. 261
was among you, taught face to face, and with so great firm
ness to that generation, the word of the truth ; and who also,
when he was absent, wrote you some letters, by which if you
study them, you will be edified in the faith which has been
given to you. . . ,"
The fourth chapter, upon avarice, also begins with cita
tions of texts from the first epistle of Timothy (vi. 10) and
from the epistle to the Ephesians (vi. 11) ; the fifth,' with a
citation from the epistle to the Galatians (vi. 7) and some
very plain allusions (in the Greek), to 1 Tim. iii. 8 ; to 2
Tim. ii. 12 ; to Philip, i. 27 ; to 1 Pet. ii. 11, and to 1 Cor.
vi. 9, 10 ; — the sixth, with allusions to 2 Cor. v. 10, to the
epistle to the Romans xii. 17, to the gospel of Luke vi, 38,
and to Matthew vii. 2 ; — the seventh, with these words from
the first epistle of John iv. 3 : " ' Whoever shall not confess
that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an antichrist,' and
whoever shall not confess the testimony of the cross," he adds,
" is of the devil ; therefore, leaving the vanity of the multi
tude, and the false doctrines, let us return to that which was
given to us in the beginning, (Jude 3,) watching unto prayer
(1 Pet. iv. 7), and supplicating God who sees all, not to lead
us into temptation (Matt. vi. 13), according to that which the
Lord has said (Matt. xxvi. 41, or Mark xiv. 38) ; ' The spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.' "
The last seven chapters present the same features. The
eighth chapter, and the two following, quote textually without
naming the apostle, from the first epistle of Peter (ii. 24, 22,
17 ; iv. 16, 11, 12) ; while the eleventh chapter, on the con
trary, expressly names Paul, by citing this word from the
first of the Corinthians, " Know you not that the Saints shall
judge the world, as Paul teaches ? And the twelfth chapter
begins and goes on with these remarkable words, I hope you
may be well exercised in the holt epistles. And as it
is said in these Scriptures, be ye angry, and sin not ; let not
the sun go down upon your wrath. (Eph. iv. 26.) Pray
for all saints (Eph. vi. 18) ; pray also for kings and powers

262 THE CANON.
and princes (1 Tim. ii. 2,) and pray for those who hate and
persecute you (Matt. v. 44)."
In fact, when we have read these chapters of Polyearp,
in which the New Testament abounds and overflows, we
ask how it is that the skeptical critics of Germany should
have taken so much pains to contest or enfeeble the testi
mony of Justin Martyr, who came fifty-three years later,
and how its pious critics should have taken so much pains to
defend it. Here we see what the New Testament was in
Asia Minor and in the Macedonian Philippi, only four years
after the death of John, in the estimation of an immediate
martyr-disciple of that apostle, and in the very places where
he had resided so long.
But we will also say on this subject one word regarding
his thirteenth and last chapter, and we may profitably recall
the pains which all the flocks then took to edify each other
by exchanging the letters they had respectively received from
the servants of God. " You have written me," Polyearp
says, " and Ignatius has also written me, that, if any one is
going (from Smyrna) to Syria, he would bring your letters
thither, and if an opportunity offers, I shall embrace it either
to take or send them. With this we have sent you your let
ters from Ignatius, as you request. You may derive much
profit from them, for they contain lessons for faith, patience,
and all forms of edification."
Thus then closes the letter of this eminent servant of God ;
and we delight in recalling these last features, because they
show that, if thus early the churches and their bishops were
so careful to collect the letters of Ignatius and Polyearp,
if the Philippians had themselves asked for them as adapted
to edify, it was with still more watchful and religious eager
ness that these very churches must have collected and pre
served for fifty years the inspired epistles of the very apos
tles of the Lord. Thus we learn from other monuments
of history, that the original texts were preserved with spe
cial care in certain churches ; and we have already (Book

IGNATIUS, HIS MARTYRDOM AND LETTERS. 263
II. chap. 3), cited on this point a remarkable saying of
Tertullian. We now pass to Ignatius.

Ignatius, his Martyrdom and his Letters.
Ignatius was a hearer of the apostle John ; and if we
may believe Chrysostom,1 it was Peter himself who placed
him over the church of Antioch. Eusebius,2 it is true, places
bim after Evodius. But the " Apostolical Constitutions "
(vii. 46) would rather indicate that these two men of God
presided together in Antioch, one placed by Peter over the
Jews, the other by Paul over the Gentile converts.
However this may be, it is evident that Ignatius, condemned
to the wild beasts by Trajan, whilst this emperor was prepar
ing in Antioch his first expedition against the Armenians and
Parthians, was sent to Rome under the escort of ten soldiers,
to undergo this humble death there. Arriving at Smyrna,
he had then the consolation of being permitted to visit Poly
earp ; and finally disembarking at Ostia, he was led to Rome,
where two lions devoured him in view of the Roman people,
in the tenth year of Trajan, a. d. 107.
The " Acts " of this martyr, written and published by eye
witnesses, were edited for the first time in 1617, by Abp.
Usher. We find the New Testament prominent even on the
second page. When the emperor, inflated by his victories
over the Scythians and Dacians, saw Ignatius standing before
his tribunal, he hastened to repeat with contempt the Chris
tian words of the martyr : " Thou bearest then in thyself
Him who was crucified ? " " Yes," replied Ignatius, "for it
is written, I will dwell in them and will walk in them. (Nat •
ylypa.irra.1 yap • ivoiKrjo-w iv airots /cat ip.TrepnraTrjO-(o) ; " the very
words in the Greek of 2 Cor. vi. 16, and not of the lxx. in
Leviticus xxvi. 12.
"Yes, for it is "written." . . Hear then the words
1 Hseres., in S. Ignat. Martyr, cap. 4. 2 H. E. iii. 22.

264 THE CANON.
which, already in the year 107, were uttered before the tri
bunal of a Roman emperor, four years after John's death!
Hear the language of the most illustrious bishop of the East,
when he was standing in his city of Antioch before the glo
rious conqueror of the Scythians and Dacians. Not only
does he confess himself a Christian before the whole empire,
at the cost of his life ; but he declares that, for Christians,
everything is determined when they can say, " it is written."
This is their rule ; and by these words, their faith is vindi
cated, their course is marked out, and any form of death is
welcome. At the hearing of these words, Trajan replied,
" We ordain that Ignatius, who affirms that he everywhere
carries in himself Him that was crucified, be chained and led
by soldiers to the great Rome, that he may there be devoured
of beasts for the amusement of the people."
We pass to his letters, all three written some weeks before
bis martyrdom.
There have been published fifteen letters of this Father,
but the unanimous opinion of the learned has long since re
jected eight of them as spurious.1 A dispute still exists con
cerning the Greek text of the other seven, because there was
in existence an edition manifestly more extended, and sus
pected of containing numerous interpolations. From the
middle of the seventeenth century to our time, many of the
most accredited scholars, Vossius, Usher, Le Clerc, Grabe,
Pearson (and recently Hefele), thought that the shortest was
to be preferred. But in 1845, the oriental scholar William
Cureton produced a very ancient Syriac version of the let
ters of Ignatius discovered six years before by Henry Tatian
in an old monastery of Upper Egypt. The manuscript be
longs to the sixth century, but the version was probably of a
much earlier date. Cureton has just published a beautiful
edition of it, in aid of which he used another Syriac manu
script of the letters of Ignatius found in the British Museum.
1 Two, of the eight, were addressed to John ; and one, to the Virgin
Mary.

IGNATIUS, HIS MARTYRDOM AND LETTERS. 265
The whole is accompanied by the Greek text and an English
translation. Now this collection contains only three letters :
the first, to the Ephesians ; the second, to the Romans ; the
third, to Polyearp ; and besides, we discover in it with satis
faction that those extravagant passages concerning the Epis
copate, which thus far have appeared to impartial readers to
be a bungling anachronism, were really interpolations. We
therefore make our quotations only from Cureton's edition,
and shall content ourselves with the remark of Mr. Bunsen,1
that now all critics reject the old text as not authentic, " with
the exception of some Romanists, among whom the learned
Hefele alone deserves to be mentioned."
These three letters of Ignatius, after the reductions re
quired by the Syriac text, occupy not more than ten or eleven
pages octavo in the Latin edition of Hefele.
The Epistle to the Ephesians, although reduced to two
and a half pages at most, still abounds in allusions to Paul's
Epistles. It commences in the style of the apostolical let
ters, and already in the Salutation you very clearly recognize
(especially in the Greek) traces of the Epistle to the Ephe
sians (i. 4, 19 ; iii. 11, 19 ; iv. 3) ; "Ignatius, to her who is
blessed in the greatness and fullness of the Fathers, predes-/
tinated before the world, to be for ever united in a permanent,
and immutable glory, elect in the true passion, by the will
of the Father and of Jesus Christ, our God, — to the church;
worthily blessed which is in Ephesus of Asia be abundance
of joy in Jesus Christ and in grace."
This style, too, frequently reproduces the very words of
Paul (Miprrral ovres, Eph. v. 1, iSpaioi rrj iriarei, Col. i. 23).
" Being imitators of God," he says in commencing, " renewed
by the blood of God, you have accomplished the work of the
brotherhood ; for having learned since my departure from
Syria that I am in chains for our common hope and our com
mon name, you have hastened to visit me, who hope by your
prayers to fight against the beasts of Rome, and to obtain by
1 Hyppolyte, tom. i., Bunsen, 4 vol. 12mo. Lond. 1852.

266 THE CANON.
martyrdom a true discipleship to Him who hath offered him
self for us to God in oblation and in sacrifice (tov vwtp fipwv
eavrbv dveveyKOTO's ©e<j> vpoo-cpopdv /cat Ovo-iav, Eph. vi. 2.)"
His beautiful and holy letter to Polyearp, although simi
larly reduced to less than two pages and a half, recalls as
manifestly the language of the New Testament. " Be en
gaged in incessant prayer," he says to his friend, a frequent
expression of Paul (1 Cor. vii. 5 ; Rom. i. 9 ; 1 Thes. v. 17)
(Trpoo-cw^ais o-^oXa^e dStaXt/irrois) ; " Be wise as the serpent
in everything," he adds, " and harmless as the dove (Matt.
x. 16) ; be sober as an athlete of God ; the prize is immortal
ity and eternal life. Exhort my brethren to love their wives
as the Lord loves the church (Eph. v. 25, 29) ; let all things
be done for the honor of God (1 Cor. x. 31) ; please him
who hath enrolled you for the war and from whom you re
ceive your wages (apeo-Kere u> crrpaTevo-0e, 2 Tim. ii. 4)."
In his letter to the Romans, the least interpolated of the
three, we find the same character. He says, " I write to the
churches, and I show to all that I die willingly for God. I
entreat you not to prevent it by an inopportune benevolence."
" Ah, rather entreat Jesus Christ in my behalf, that by these
instruments (the beasts of the circus) I may be found a vic
tim. I do not give you orders like Peter and Paul ; they
are apostles, and I a condemned man ; they free, and I now
a slave ; but I shall be a freeman of Jesus, if I suffer (aTre-
Xev8epos 'Ifjo-ov, 1 Cor. vii. 22), and in him I shall find my
self free." " I am chained to ten leopards, by which I mean
my troop of soldiers ; and I receive many lessons from their
bad treatment; but I am not by that justified (dXX ov irapa.
tovto SeSiKaioipai, 1 Cor. iv. 2, 4)." " I do not take pleasure
in a corruptible nourishment nor in the pleasures of this life;
I want the bread of God, which is the flesh of Christ, and
his blood. I want his drink, which is the incorruptible love
and life eternal ! "
But we now pass to the oldest and most authentic monu
ment of apostolical antiquity, to. the inestimable letter of

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 267
Clement ; and we deem it here desirable to give fuller quo
tations.

The Epistle of Clemens Romanus io the Corinthians.
This beautiful monument, so worthy of the apostolical age,
shall brilliantly terminate for us the chain of historical evi
dences which link the days of -Ignatius and Irenaeus to those
of Paul and the other inspired writers. We shall there
abundantly discover all that could be reasonably expected of
a pious writer of the age when the New Testament was being
finished ; for the author, full of recollections of the apostles,
of their doctrine and epistles, shall reproduce their expressions
of faith, speak in their language, cite, as they, the old Scrip
tures, abundantly which were read every Sabbath in all the
assemblies, shall also cite the words of Jesus Christ reported
by Matthew, by Mark, and by Luke, but, in quoting them,
shall not give himself any trouble to name the sacred histo
rians. He shall often employ, and in their strictest meaning,
the expressions usual with Paul, shall even recall to the
Corinthians, with a holy simplicity, the letter which they had
receive"3 from him fifteen or sixteen years before, and shall
declare it written by the Holy Spirit. In a word, you shall
find him in all respects, such as became that Clement whom
Paul, writing to Rome about the year 60, ha,d called his " fel
low laborer," " whose name was written in the book of life."
(Phil. iv. 3.)
But when and why was this letter written ? What is its
authenticity, and how come we to possess it ? These ques
tions must be answered now.
The epistle was written by Clement, in the name of the
church at Rome, to that at Corinth, which troublesome per
sons were then trying to excite against their pastors.
Origen (in Joan. i. 29), Eusebius (H. E. iii. 15), Epipha
nius (Haer. xxxvii. 6), Jerome (Catal. xv.), and others agree
in regarding its author indisputably to be the sam^ Clement

268 THE CANON.
of whom Paul speaks in Philippians. And as the Scripture
nowhere else names this apostolical personage, and as Paul,
going to Philippi (Acts xvi.) had none with him except Silas,
Luke, and Timothy, we must believe that he found Clement
in this Roman colony, and that he left him there to continue
his evangelical labors until about the year 60. But was
Clement a Roman, as his name imports ? or was he a Jew,
as Tillemont infers from some expressions in his letter (" our
father Jacob," " our father Abraham," and others ? ) x We
can not decide. That he was bishop of Rome, all affirm.
But whether he was the first after Peter, as Jerome believed,
or the second, as Augustine believed, or the third, as Irenasus a
affirms, is of little consequence to us. Eusebius assures us
that he presided nine years over the church at Rome ; but
where shall we place these nine years ? According to all
appearance, from a. d. 68 to 77 ; for the letter itself (cap. i.)
attesting to its having been written shortly after a violent
persecution, conclusively indicates that it was the persecution
of Nero at the time of Paul's martyrdom (from a.d. 65 to
68). That of Domitian, which followed, in a.d. 96, would
appear much less probable for many reasons suggested by
Grabe, Galland, Wotton, Hefele, and others. In fact, Clem
ent in his fifth chapter mentions the martyrdoms of Paul and
Peter as recent ; moreover, he describes in his sixth chapter
this same persecution as cruel in the multitude it destroyed,
whilst that of Diocletian was distinguished rather by the high
quality of its victims ; and in fine, his xl. and xii. chapters
attest to us that the letter was written in a time when the
Jewish worship was still celebrated, that is, necessarily before
A. d. 70, when Titus burned Jerusalem.
We shall not speak of the career of the martyr, nor of
the strange miracles which the Roman breviary8 attributes
1 Hefele, Proleg. p. 20.
2 Lib. iii. chap. 3, and Eusebius H. E. v. 6.
8 Of Nov. 23. It banishes him to the Crimea, casts him into the Black
Sea with an anchor about his neck, makes the sea retire three miles before

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 269
to Clement. No historian has mentioned them, neither Ire
naeus, Eusebius, nor even Jerome.
The epistle of Clement which our Reformers long sup
posed to have been irrecoverably lost, had been at first greatly
honored for five or six centuries by all the early Fathers.
They unanimously recommended it; the numerous quotations
which they made of it fully guarantee the authenticity of the
edition we now possess ; for we still find them there, word
for word. Polyearp often speaks as having had it in his
hand ; Irenaeus calls it iKavwrdTov ; Clemens Alexandrinus
mentions it six times ; Origen, three times ; and Eusebius
(H. E. iii. 16) calls it "great and admirable." Cyril of Je
rusalem also quotes from it ; Epiphanius, too ; Jerome, fre
quently cites it and says it is " valde utilem " (Catal. Scrip.
cxv.), adding that in his day they were accustomed in certain
places to read it publicly. Photius (Biblioth. cod. 113), too,
in the ninth century. But afterward and through the whole
period of the Middle Ages it had disappeared ; the learned
men at the time of the revival of letters, as those of the Refor
mation, often deplored its loss ; until at length, in 1 628, Cy-
rillus Lucar, the patriarch of Constantinople, having pre
sented to Charles I. of England the famous Alexandrine
Manuscript of the Scriptures, the learned world had the
agreeable surprise of finding again, transcribed in the last
leaves of the manuscript, this ancient treasure so long lost.1
The University of Oxford2 printed it first in 1633; then
Wotton (in 1718) produced at Cambridge a still more per
fect edition ; but that which Mr. Jacobson has since published
with learned notes, at Oxford, in 1838 and 1840, is regarded
as superior to all that preceded it.
When this beautiful book appeared, many critics, such as
his corpse, and throw his body on the bank with his anchor, his stone altar,
and his marble chapel.
1 There is wanting only one leaf, entirely torn off at the end of chap. lvii.
through the ignorant unskillfulness of the binder.
2 At least its librarian Junius. 23*

270 THE CANON.
Pignon, John Le Clerc, and Mosheim, suspected its integrity ;
but in our day all serious doubts have ceased to exist, says
Hefele (Proleg. p. xxxiii.), and all modern scholars without
exception are agreed in acknowledging at once the authen
ticity and the integrity of this ancient document.
To show the full weight of its testimony in favor of the
canon, no reasoning would be as efficacious as that of simply
passing before the reader's eye a brief extract from it. Its
fifty-nine short chapters moreover occupy only thirty-three
and a half pages of the octavo text of Hefele.
The frank and pious simplicity of this writing, worthy of
the primitive days, its serious tone, its elevation and the
apostolical purity of its doctrine,1 distinguish it from all sub
sequent writings. Wotton in his preface (edition of 1718),
says, " It is the style and the method of the New Testament ;
nothing appears there which is not entirely worthy of an
apostolical man." Grotius says,2 " It speaks of dogmas with
out subtilties or disguises ; it employs the terms vocation and
election, called and elect, in a sense wholly Paulinian." And
as to its mode of quoting the Scriptures, it is also that of the
apostles ; that is, it takes almost all its quotations from the
Old Testament. When it quotes the words of Jesus Christ
already recorded in the first gospels, it is without naming the
place ; when it expressly quotes from any of Paul's epistles,8
it is as Peter had expressly done before him,4 and when in
fine, it cites them indirectly, it is often by reproducing en
tire phrases, but without taking the trouble to name the place
where they are found. It often introduces the most charac
teristic expressions of the apostolical writings, expressions
become familiar to the members of the primitive church,
1 Notwithstanding his belief in the pretended natural phenomenon of the
phoenix, and in spite of one or two expressions which might have been bet
ter considered.
2 Epist. ad Bignonium. ,
s His first Epistle to the Corinthians.
4 2 Pet. iii. 15,- 16. As we may see it everywhere in the epistles to the
Romans, to the Corinthians, and to the Hebrews.

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 271
and recognized by the whole world as soon as they are
mentioned. It was then very natural for Clement of Rome, writing so
soon after the death of Paul, so exactly to follow the method
of the apostles ; and his letter would have been open to well-
founded suspicionsj if it had made at that time the same co
pious use of the New Testament as subsequent writers did ;
as, for instance, Polyearp. We must remember that in the
days of his letter, the Church of the New Testament had
yet received only a part of its inspired Scriptures, and that
its canon was not yet to be closed for thirty years. The
gospel of Mark, that of John, and his two last letters and
that of Jude did not yet exist, nor the Apocalypse. And
even this " Epistle of the blessed Paul " of which Clement
speaks in his lxviith chapter, had appeared only fifteen years
before (a.d. 53).
But we can better judge of the character of his letter
and of its quotations after having made a brief survey of
it. Chap. I. The Salutation. " The church of God which
sojourns at Rome, to the church of God which sojourns at
Corinth, to the called, the sanctified according to the will
of God, by our Lord Jesus Christ ; may grace and peace
be multiplied to you by the Almighty God through Jesus
Christ. " In consequence of the sudden calamities which have as
sailed us, stroke after stroke, my brethren, we have not been
able until now to attend to your requests and to this detes
table revolt, so impious, so contrary to all the habits of God's
elect, which some persons have excited in the midst of you.
These men by their folly dishonor your name, hitherto so
beautiful and so worthy of being loved."
Chap. II. How exemplary the Corinthians were before
their schism. " Who can have been among you without
admiring your faith so stable, your hospitality so generous,
your knowledge of the truth so perfect and so firm ? Ev-

272 THE CANON.
erything was done among you without respect of persons.1
Ye honored as is seemly the elders who are among you. . . .
" Ye were all, as is also suitable, animated with an humble
spirit, without vainglory, and more disposed to submit your
selves than to subject others, to give than to take. Satisfied
with the provisions of God, and carefully attentive to his
words, ye preserved them in your hearts, and his sufferings
were before your eyes (Gal. iii. 1.) Day and night ye were
in a conflict of prayer (dyiLv, Col. ii. 1) for the whole brother
hood (dSeXcpoTrjTos, an expression peculiar to Peter. 1 Pet.
ii. 17, v. 9), that all the elect may be saved. . . . Then ev
ery revolt and schism ye held in abomination ; .... ye were
ready for every good work, (eroip,oi els irav epyov dyadov," Tit.
iii. 1.)
Chap. III. Their sad condition since their divisions. —
" But from your prosperity have sprung your envy, jealousy,
contention, bitterness, parties, persecutions, the revolt. . . ." '
Chap. IV. From the same source have always sprung the
greatest evils for the people of God. — " Now it was envy, it
was jealousy that slew Abel, persecuted Joseph, repelled
Moses, removed Aaron, Miriam, Dathan, and Abiram. . ."
Chaps. V. and VI. " But let us leave the ancient ex
amples, and come to modern times, and considering Paul,
Peter, and so many other athletes who have contended near
our times ; let us take the generous examples of our genera
tion. " Is it not jealousy and envy that persecuted to death those
who were our great pillars (Gal. ii. 9) ? Let us always keep
in view these excellent apostles. It is envy, it is jealousy
which made Peter, after having undergone so many trials and
martyrdom, pass into the place of glory which was his due
(irropevd-q eis rbv cxpeiXopevov tottov ttjs Sdfqs.) It was thus,
too, that Paul sustained (he combat and carried away the
prize of patience ; that he was seven times put in irons,
1 He here speaks like Paul or James. Jam. ii. 1-9; Eph. vi. 9; Rom.
ii. 11; Col. iii. 25; Acts x. 34.

THE EPISTLE" OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 273
obliged to flee, stoned ; and that having become the herald
of the word in the East and in the West, he acquired the
noble renown of his faith, taught righteousness to the entire
world, reached the extremity (to reppa) of the West, and
finally underwent martyrdom in the time of the governors
(bti tuiv 'Hyovpievaiv).1 It is thus that he left the world, and
passed into the holy place, having been the greatest model
of Christian perseverance.
Chaps. VII. and VIII. The Corinthians then must re
pent. — " It is to encourage you to duty, beloved, that we
write you thus, and to encourage ourselves in it also ; for we,
too, are in the same arena, to fight the same fight. Let our
eyes then be fixed on the blood of Christ, and let us consider
how precious in God's sight is this blood, which, shed for our
salvation, conveys the grace of conversion to the whole world.
Let us look back to all past generations, and convince our
selves that from generation to generation the Lord has given
place to conversion (toVov eoWcv 6 Aecnro-n;;) for those who
wished to be converted to Him. Noah preached repentance
(iKrjpv^ev perdvouiv, 2 Pet. ii. 5) ; and all those who yielded
to his exhortations were saved."
Chaps. IX. X. XI. XII. Let us contemplate the examples
of the ancient Saints. — " Consider Enoch, who was proved
righteous in his obedience, and who, having been found right
eous, was taken up ; and his death was not found (Heb. xi. 5).
Noah, found faithful (Heb. xi. 5), preached by his ministry
the regeneration (TraXivyeveo-tav) to the world. Abraham, who
was called the friend of God (Jam. ii. 23 ; Heb. xh 8), was
found faithful because he had obeyed the words of God. He
believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
(Rom. iv. 3). On account of his piety and his hospitality
Lot was saved from Sodom's destruction. (2 Pet. ii. 6, 7.)
Rahab the harlot, was saved on account of her faith and her
hospitality." (Heb. xi. 31.)
Chap. XIII. We must humble ourselves. — " Let us be
1 Tibellinus and Sabinus, who governed during the last year of Nero.

274 THE CANON.
humble in spirit, my brethren, (Tcnrewo<ppovqo-uipev) ; J let us
lay aside all boasting, all pride, all wrath, and let us do that
which is written ; for the Holy Spirit says : Let not the wise
man glory in his wisdom ; nor the strong man in his strength ;
but he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord (Jer. ix. 23 ;
2 Cor. x. 17 ; 1 Cor. i. 31) ; above all remembering the words
of the Lord Jesus, for he said, (Luke vi. 36-38 ; Matt. vi.
12-15), Be ye merciful, and ye shall receive mercy; forgive,
and ye shall be forgiven ; as ye give, it shall be given to you ;
as ye judge, ye shall be judged ; as ye exercise goodness, it
shall be exercised toward you (xpino-Teveo-de) ; and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Chaps. XIV. and XV. We must submit to God and to
man. — " It is then just and pious, men and brethren, to obey
God rather than follow in pride and insubordination the au
thors of a detestable schism. Let us attach ourselves to
those who with piety walk in peace " (tois per ei<rep3eias
elpqvevovo-iv, an expression of Paul, Rom. xii. 18 ; 2 Cor.
xiii. 11; 1 Thess. v. 13).
Chap. XVI. Let Christ's humility be our model. — "Christ
belongs to those who are humble in spirit, not to those who
raise themselves above the flock. He who is the scepter of
the divine majesty, our Lord Jesus Christ, has not come in
arrogance and pride, however povverful he is ; but in humil
ity. I am a worm, he says, and no man, the reproach of men
and despised of the people. Consider then, men and breth
ren, what a model is proposed to us in Him."
Chaps. XVII. and XVIII. Let us also imitate the humility
of the Abrahams, the Jacobs, the Moseses, the Davids. — " Let us
be imitators of those in sheep-skins and goat-skins, who have
gone about here and there (Heb. xi. 37), preaching the com
ing of Christ ; such as Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel, and with them
those who have received the testimony," (koX tovs p-epaprvpr]-
pevovs, Heb. xi. 2.)
1 It is Paul's favorite term (Acts xx. 19; Eph. iv. 2; Phil. ii. 3; Col. ii.
18, 33; iii. 32.) And of Peter (1 Pet. v. 5.)

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 275
Notice this passive expression, so common with Luke and
with Paul, (Acts vi. 3 ; x. 22 ; xvi. 2 ; 1 Tim. v. 10 ; Heb.
xi. 2, 4, 5, 39). " Thus Abraham received eminently the tes
timony, who was called the friend of God, but who said in
his humility, I am but dust and ashes. Thus Job ; thus Mo
ses, who was called faithful in all the house of God (Num.
xii. 7 ; Heb. iii. 2). Thus David. . . ."
Chap. XIX. In their example let us also seek for peace. —
"Let us then receive instruction from this humility and from
this obedience which so many and such great men set before
our eyes, to whom the Scriptures have rendered such testi
monies ; and let us know also how to contemplate the clem
ency and the long suffering of God towards the whole crea
tion." Chap. XX. Do we not see in the government of the world
how God is pleased with harmony and peace ? — " Let us
consider, in the heavens, in the seasons, the stars, the earth,
the days, the nights, how all creatures are harmoniously sub
missive to his sovereign will ; and let us remember how he is
the friend of peace and of good order, beneficent toward all,
but especially beneficent toward those who have taken refuge
in his compassions by our Lord Jesus Christ."
Chaps. XXI. and XXII. Rank yourselves then in order in
everything before God. — " Consider also how near he is to
us, for nothing within us is concealed from him, he is the
searcher of our thoughts and of our intentions (ipevvrjTr]s ydp
icrriv hrvovwv /cat ivQvpr)o-eu>v as Heb. iv. 12.) "
Chap. XXI IT. Be humble and true, remembering always
the coming of Christ. — " Let us therefore draw nigh to him
with simplicity of spirit ; let us not be wavering or double-
minded, p.ri Supvx&pev" (Siifrv^oi a term peculiar to James
i. 8 ; iv. 8.)
" Far from us be the evil spoken of in this Scripture ; Wo
to the double-minded, or the wavering (StuVu^os) ; them whose
soul is in doubt ; them who say, We have heard these things
also from the time of our father; and thus we have watched,

276 THE CANON.
and nothing of it has happened." Wotton says that Clement
here combines James and Peter, (2 Pet. iii. 3, 4, in his remi
niscences.) " For the Scripture renders us this testimony
thereon (o-vve-irtpapTvpovcrrjs /cat ttjs ypacprjs) that the Lord will
come quickly and will not tarry ! " (Heb. x. 37.)
Chaps. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. God teaches us
also continually the future resurrection in Nature. — Con
sider, beloved, how he continually shows us that there will
be a resurrection of which he has made Jesus Christ to be
the first fruits (cm-apx??, 1 Cor. xv. 20, 23) in raising him
from the dead. Witness the fruits of the earth ; consider
how the plants come from their seeds. The sower went forth
to sow (Luke viii. 5) ; and when he had cast his seeds into
the arid and naked ground, they were decomposed ; and, from
their very dissolution the greatness of the Sovereign Master
revived and multiplied them."
Chaps. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. Let us then
attach ourselves to the promises and approach him in sincer
ity. — " He who forbids us to lie, can he himself lie ? Noth
ing is impossible to God but to lie (Tit. i. 2 ; Hebr. vi. 18.)
Let us then approach him in holiness of soul, lifting up to
him pure and spotless hands." (1 Tim. ii. 8.)
Chap. XXXI. How shall we obtain the divine benediction,
if not, with Abraham, by faith ? — " Let us earnestly seek
his blessing, and see how it is to be obtained. On what ac
count was our father Abraham blessed ? Was it not by faith
that he practiced righteousness and truth ? So Isaac, in his
confidence, knowing what was to take place, consented to be
the victim of sacrifice. So Jacob, in his humility, expatriating
himself on account of his brother, and going to Laban's house,
there became a slave, and the twelve scepters of Israel were
conferred on him."
Chap. XXXII. It is not by works, but by faith that we
are justified. — " Whoever shall contemplate these facts with
sincerity will recognize the magnificence of the gifts bestowed
on him ; for from him proceeded all the priests and Levites

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. ' 2/7
employed at the altar of God; from him, our "Lovi Jesus
Christ according to the flesh (Rom. ix. 5), from him, the kings,
the governors, and the princes through Judah. Now' all
these faithful men received glory and greatness, not by them
selves nor by their works, nor by the practice of righteous
ness (8i/caio7rpaytas) which they might have performed (rjs
Kareipydo-av), but by his will (Rom. iii. 23 ; v.' 2 ; vii. 18 ;
ix. 11, 32 ; Tit. iii. 5, 7 ; Eph. ii. 9). And we ourselves
also, called in Jesus Christ, by his will (Jam. i. 18 ; Gal. i.
4; Eph. i. 5, 9, 11), we are not justified by ourselves, nei
ther by our wisdom, our understanding, our piety, or the
works we have been able to accomplish by the piety of our
heart ; no ; it is by faith (Rom. iv. 16 ; v. 1 : iii. 24 ; i. 16,
17), that God Almighty, from the beginning, has justified all
whom he has justified. To Him be the glory for ever and
ever, Amen."
Chap. XXXIH. But let us also neglect neither charity nor
works. — " What shall we do then, brethren ? Shall we
cease to apply ourselves to good works ? Shall we neglect
charity ? May the Lord forbid that ; but grant that we may
give ourselves with all our might to good works ! He has
created us for that. Let us then give ourselves to works of
righteousness ; that our glory may be sought in him, and that
his will may be our rule."
Chap. XXXIV. Let us live in concord and let us together
cry to God that we may obtain this. — " Let us then, led by
conscience in a holy concord, and animated by the same
spirit, ardently cry to Him as with one mouth, that we may
become partakers of the great and glorious promises (2 Pet.
i. 4) ; x for he says, They are the things which eye hath not
seen, and which ear hath not heard, and which have not come
up into the heart of man, the things prepared of God for
those who wait on him." These words will be found partly
in Isa. lxiv. 3, 4 ; but almost literally in 1 Cor. ii. 9.
Chap. XXXV. How admirable are these blessings ! —
1 The Greek words of Peter however are not identical.
24

278 THE CANON.
" Oh, my beloved, how precious and admirable are the gifts
of God ! Life in immortality, splendor in righteousness, truth
in freedom, faith in confidence and self-consecration, self-con
trol (e'y/cpareta) in holiness ! And if all these benefits are
within our comprehension, then they are not the blessings
which yet await them who wait on him ! "
Chap. XXXVI. But it is by Jesus Christ that we obtain
every blessing. — " Such is the way in which we have found
our salvation, Jesus Christ, the Sovereign high-priest of our
oblations (dpyiepea, Heb. iv. 15 ; viii. 1-3), the protector and
the support of our weakness. By him we fix our eyes on
the heights of heaven ; by him we contemplate as in a mir
ror his pure and sublime visage ; by him the eyes of our
heart have been opened (rjpiov oi 6cj>0aXpol rrjs /capStas, Eph. i.
18) ; by him our benighted and ignorant mind (do-vveros koX
io-KOTmpevq Sidvoia rtpaiv) bursts into his marvellous light (els
to Bavpao-rbv avrov <pu>s, Rom. i. 21 ; 1 Pet. ii. 9) ; by him
the Sovereign Master has determined that we should taste
immortal knowledge. Being the brightness of his glory
(drravyacrpa ttjs peyaXwavvcs avrov, Heb. i. 3, 4), he is SO
much superior to the angels as he has inherited a name more
excellent than theirs (Heb. i. 7) ; for it is written ; making
his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire, while of
his Son he says : Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten
thee, etc. And again, he says to him, Sit thou at my right
hand until I have made thine enemies thy footstool (Heb. i.
5, 13.) And who are his enemies, if not those perverse men
among you who resist the will of God ? "
Chap. XXXVII. Let us be for Jesus Christ as devoted
soldiers. — " Thus, men and brethren, as soldiers of Christ (2
Tim. ii. 3, 4), let us zealously adhere to his irreproachable
orders. Let us consider in fact what are, under their gen
erals, our warriors. What order, what obedience, what sub
mission ! All are not tribunes, nor chiliarchs, nor centu
rions, and each one stands in his rank, but the great can do
nothing without the small, nor the small without the great ;

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 279
all are commingled. Hence their occupations and their
power." Chap. XXXVIII. In like manner let each one of us en
list under the command of Christ. — " Let each submit to his
neighbor (v7rorao-o-eo-0a>, Eph. v. 21 ; 1 Pet. v. 5), according
to the order in which he has been placed by the grace of
Christ ; let the strong not neglect the weak, and the weak
respect the strong."
Chaps. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. We have nothing of
which to boast. Let us submit to the order established by God
in the church, and let us consider what that order is. — " The
apostles have preached the gospel to us by the commandment
of the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ, by the, com
mandment of God. Having then received their command,
full of a firm confidence by the resurrection of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and confirmed in the word of God (irXr]po<popri-
Oevres, Rom. iv. 21 ; Trio-TindevTes, 2 Tim. iii. 14, words wholly
Paulinian), they went forth with full assurance (TrXrjpotpop'tas,
1 Thess. i. 5) of the Holy Spirit, announcing the good news
of the coming of God's kingdom." " Preaching thus from
nation to nation and from city to city, they established (/ca6Y-
aXavov) their first fruits, having discerned them by the Spirit,
to be bishops and deacons (supervisors and servants) of those
who should afterward believe."
Chap. XLIII. Moses had contentions of the same kind. —
"And what is there surprising, if those to whom God in
Christ committed such, a work (iv XpioT<5 tno-TevdevTes trapd
®£ov epyov toiovto) have established those of whom we have
just spoken ? Do we not see that the blessed Moses, faith
ful servant of God in all his house (Heb. iii. 5), consigned
to his sacred Books everything that had been commanded
him ? (Num. xvii.) " He did so because he feared that an
insurrection might break forth among the people of Israel in
regard to the priesthood, and in order that the name of the
only true God (tov dX-nOivov /cat p,6vov ®eov, John xvii. 3),
might be glorified, to whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen."

280 THE CANON.
Chap. XLIV. The apostles ordained elders, and it is then
wickedly that any have rejected those who filled the office. —
" Now our apostles also knew, by our Lord Jesus Christ, that
there would arise contentions on the subject, (or on the dig
nity) of the bishopiic (irri tov ovoparos rrjs emcr/ccra-i};.) Hav
ing then received a perfect foreknowledge of that, they estab
lished those whom we have just mentioned, and gave afterward
this precept, (iirwop-qv,) (an expression that some would trans
late this testamentary order), that, when they should die, other
approved men should in turn receive their office (SiaScfaHrai
¦rrjv Xeirovpyiav)." " In consequence we think that those whom
they, or afterwards other eminent men ordained, with the
consent of the whole church (o-vvevSoKTjcrdo-i]s -rijs t/c/cX/jcrtas
Trdcrqs) and who have served the flock of Christ in humility,
without reproach, peaceably and without mingling therewith
base pursuits (/cat d/Javauo-cos), having long had the testimony
of the people ; we think that such men can not be justly
expelled from their office. It would be no small sin on our
part." " And in the mean time we see some who adminis
tered well, and whom you have expelled from an office which
they had filled honorably and without reproach."
Chap. XLV. It belongs to the wicked to persecute and re
proach the righteous. — " You are contentious, my brethren,
and you expend your ardor on things not pertaining to salva
tion. Bend over the Scriptures,1 the very words of the Holy
Spirit. . . . You never see the righteous there rejected by
the saints. They have suffered persecution, but from the
wicked ; they have been cast into prison, but by the un
godly. . ."
Chap. XL VI. Unite yourselves to the righteous. Your
discords are pernicious. — " Why are there contentions among
you, animosities, schisms, and wars? (James iv. 1.) Have
we not one God and Christ ? (Eph. iv. 4, 6.) Have we
not one Spirit of grace who is shed upon us, and one calling
in Christ? Why should we rend the members of Christ,
i tyKvirrcre. Probable allusion to 1 Pet. i. 12. (napaicinpai.)

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 281
and forget that we are members, one of another ? (Eph. iv.
25.) Let us remember the words of our Lord ; for he said
(Matt. xxvi. 24 ; Luke xvii. 2 ; Mark ix. 42) ; Wo to that
man ! It were better for him never to have been born than
to offend one of my elect. It were better that a millstone
were attached to his neck, and that he were thrown into the
sea than to offend one of these little ones. Your revolt has
perverted many of them ; it has thrown many of them into
discouragement, many into doubt, and all of us into grief;
and yet your sedition still continues ! "
But let us especially hear Clement in his forty-seventh
chapter, where he says expressly to the Corinthians that
their present dissensions are still worse than those which had
agitated them during the life of Paul, fifteen years before !
Chap. XLVII. " Take in your hands the Epistle of
the blessed apostle Paul. What did he first write to
you at the beginning of the gospel, (1 Cor. i. 10, 11, 12; iii.
3, 4) ? It was in fact by the Holy Spirit (err dXr]6eias m/evpaT-
ik&s) that he addressed that letter to you in relation to him
self and Apollos ; because then, too, you were making divis
ions (rrpoo-KXlo-eis). Yet that did not render you as culpable
as you are now ; for they at least drew you towards the apos
tles (Paul and Cephas) to whom all the church bore witness,
and towards a man approved of them (Apollos). But here,
on the contrary, consider who those now are who have led
you astray, and who have compromised the high fame of your
brotherly love, so universally renowned to this day. It is
shameful, my beloved, it is very shameful and very unworthy
of life in Christ, that we hear it said that the ancient Co
rinthian Church,1 so firm to this day, has, for the sake of one
or two persons, put herself in revolt against her elders. And
the story of this sad affair has reached not only us ; it has
gone even to those who are strangers to us ; so that on ac
count of your folly the name of the Lord is blasphemed (Rom.
ii. 24 ; 1 Tim. vi. 1), and your church placed in great peril."
1 Founded A. j>. 49.
24*

282 THE CANON.
Chap. XL VIII. Return to brotherly love. — " Ah t put
an end to such an evil state of things promptly ; throw your
selves at the feet of your Sovereign Lord ; implore his com
passion with tears, that he may reestablish us in the august
and holy relations of our first brotherly love."
" Is there any one faithful among you (Jam. iii. 13) ? any
one powerful to preach the holy science, any wise, discreet
in discourse, any one holy in his works ? Let him show him
self the more humble the greater he seems to be, and let him
seek that which may profit not himself, but all. (I Cor. x.
33)." Chap. XLIX. Seek after charity. — " Let him who has
charity in Christ observe the precepts of Christ. Who could
say what is this bond of the charity of God ? Who can tell,
how suitable it is, and to what inexpressible greatness it may
lift us ? Charity unites us to God ; charity covers a multi
tude of sins (1 Pet. iv. 8 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 7) ; charity suffer-
eth long ; charity beareth all things. Nothing vulgar in
charity (fidvavcrov), nothing haughty. Charity has no schism ;
charity does not revolt ; charity does everything in concord.
All the elect of God are complete in charity ; out of charity
nothing is .accepted by him ; it is in charity that he has taken
us to himself; and it is because of this charity toward us,
that, according to his will, Jesus Christ our Lord has given
his blood for us (Gal. i. 4; John iii. 16; 1 John iv. 9, 10)
his flesh for our flesh, his soul for our souls."
Chap. L. Let us pray that we may obtain charily. — " You
see, beloved, how beautiful charity is ; but who can reach it,
but he whom God sliall make worthy of it? Let us pray
then, imploring his mercy that we may live in love without
human prejudices and without reproach."
Chap. LI. Let the authors of your dissensions confess their
sin. Chap. LII. Such a confession will be well received of
God. Chap. LIII. Remember the charity of Moses toward his

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 283
people. — " O mighty charity ! 0 perfection never surpassed !
The servant speaks to his Lord with self-renunciation ; he
entreats that they may be forgiven or be destroyed !...."
Chaps. LIV. and LV. He among you that has charity will
willingly- undergo anything that peace may be restored. —
" Who then among you is generous ? Who has a large
heart? Who, full of charity? Let such a one say, 'Ah,
if I am the cause of factions, discord, and schisms, I will
banish myself, I will go wherever you wish, I will do what
the majority require ! Only let the flock of Christ live in
peace with its constituted elders ! ' He who will do this, be
loved, shall obtain glory in the Lord ; and every place shall
receive him ; for the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness
thereof, (1 Cor. x. 26, 28 ; Ps. xxiv. 1.) See what they do,
and see what they will do who have the life of God."
Chap. LVI. Let us warn and reprove each other. — " God
will take care of him who does not refuse correction. And
we ourselves, also, my brethren, let us pray for those who
are overtaken in a fault (Gal. vi. 1, ev tivi irapaTTTtapaTL
xnrapxdvT<av), in order that moderation and humility may be
given them, that they may know how to yield, not to us, but
to the will of God.
" Let us accept, beloved, this correction, (iratSetav), at which
no one should be offended. For thus saith the holy Word :
The Lord chasteneth (iratSevei) every one whom he loveth,
and he scourgeth every son whom he acknowledgeth. (Heb.
xii. 6 ; Prov. iii. 12)."
Chap. LVII. Let every author of revolt submit himself to
the elders, lest God destroy him. — " You then who laid the
foundations of this sedition, submit yourselves to the elders
(virordyrfre tois irpecrfivrepois, 1 Pet. v. 5), and be instructed
in repentance, having bowed the knee of your hearts."
Chap. LVIII. God bless all those who have invoked him.
¦ — " Finally, may God everywhere present, the Sovereign
Master of spirits and the Lord of all flesh, who chose the
Lord Jesus Christ, and who hath chosen us through him to

284 THE CANON.
be to him a peculiar people (eis Aaov rrepiova-tov, Tit. ii. 14),
give all who shall have invoked his holy and glorious name,
faith, fear, peace, patience, sweetness, moderation, purity, and
wisdom, by our Great High Priest and Master, Jesus Christ,
through whom to him be rendered glorj' and majesty, power
and honor, now and for ever, Amen."
Chap. LIX. Let the brethren whom we have delegated be
sent back quickly from Corinth in peace and with joy. — " Let
them return and tell us that the concord so desired is rees
tablished, and" that we may rejoice on your account
" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and
with all those who, in every place, are called of God and by
Christ ; through whom, to him belong glory, honor, power,
majesty, and the eternal throne for ever and ever, Amen ! "
We see that this letter, in regard to piety, discipline, and
doctrine, bears all the characters we should expect. As to
discipline, Clement shows us in the church but two classes
of officers (chap, xiii.) ; bishops (or elders) and deacons,
under the only and sovereign priesthood of Jesus Christ (chap.
xxvi.) ; " all bishops or elders being established (Karao-Tadev-
res) with the consent of the entire flock " (chap, xliv.) and
each church being exhorted " to walk in peace (elp-qveveTU))
with the constituted (Kadeo-Tap,evo>v)." As to piety, it is also
that of the apostolic days, which consists in " giving heed to
the words of God, to live by Jesus Christ, and to keep his
sufferings constantly in view." And finally, as to doctrine,
we see ourselves led back to the purest fountains of Chris
tianity. None of those errors which so early drew away the
primitive flocks, no exaltation of the priest or the church
or the sacrament, or of Peter or Mary. Jesus Christ is all,
the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. It is by
grace only and through faith (chap, xxxii.) that all must be
received, conversion and remission (chap, xxxvi.), sanctifica-
tion and perseverance. It is to the eternal election of the
Father that all must be referred, beginning and progress,
assurance and glory. And yet, in the bosom of this primor-

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 285
dial purity, we already perceive, and it was necessary, that
it was no more an inspired hand that held the pen, and that
we no more find as in the New Testament an infallible pre
cision in every word. It is thus in chap. xxv. the author re
ceives as a fact of natural history, the fable of the phoenix ; J
surely a harmless error, but such an error as can be found in
none of the canonical Scriptures. And so in chap. v. in
speaking of Peter, he places the faithful in glory already
before the return of Christ and the resurrection ; which no
inspired book has ever done.2 It is thus too that by the side
of the purest professions of doctrine, you will find perhaps
one or two expressions less balanced, which would seem to
attribute to human works that which the Scriptures do not
ascribe to them ; expressions however, which, weighed more
carefully, may still be explained in harmony with the doc
trines of Scripture.8
"We reluctantly omit, for brevity's sake, his continual quo
tations from the Old Testament. And yet it is his distin
guishing feature ; they abound there to such a degree that
more than a hundred are found in thirty-three or thirty-four
pages of his text. That is, three quotations for a page ; and
even certain chapters, like the epistle to the Hebrews, pre
sent a constant series of them. Clement too, like the apostle
Paul, often quotes passages by paraphrasing them to make
the sense in which he quotes them more clear. But after
all, the question for us is not there ; and we must, for the
moment, omit that apostolical trait in order to consider only
the following inquiry : — " What conclusion must we draw
from this letter as to the canonicity of those portions of the
New Testament which had already appeared at the epoch of
his writing, about A. d. 68 ? " For, we do not forget that at
1 Such as Herodotus mentions, and all antiquity received, (Tacit. Annal.
vi. 23. Suetonius in Tiber. 53.)
2 The author must mean in the completeness of their immortal glory. Tr.
8 In regard to opposing works to vain words, he says in chap. xxx.
ipyovg ainavovpevoi nal pn Tubyoig. And yet, so far as God is obliged to keep
his promises he had said in chap. v. (elg rbv bfyeiXbpevov tokov Trig doling.)

286 THE CANON.
this epoch the canon had already been nineteen years in a
process of formation, to be continued in the same process for
thirty years more, or to a. d. 98, when the Apocalypse ap
peared. The first epistle of Paul in fact had appeared about
A. D. 49 ; Nero, fifteen years later, had burned Rome and
slaughtered the Christians ; he was not killed until June 9th,
A. D. 68, after having decapitated the apostle Paul ; and Ti
tus, two years later, had burned Jerusalem (5th of August,
70). Now we know that Clement's letter had preceded this
great destruction.
It is then proper that we consider more closely the testi
mony which this letter may render to the Holy Scriptures
already published in the year 70.
1. And first we see at this epoch the canon so received
among the flocks of Greece and Italy, that the first pastor
of the great city of Rome, writing in the name of his church
" to the very important and very ancient church of Corinth
(tt) PejiaioTd-rrj /cat dp^ata) " authoritatively reminds it of the
first of the epistles which it had received from Paul fifteen
years before (chap, lxvii.)
2. In the second place, it should be remarked that, if
Clement quotes it to them, it is not as an ordinary letter ;
that is, he himself says, as a letter " truly inspired (iw dXn-
Oeias rrvevpariKoiS iire^eXev) ."
3. This first testimony of Clement, were it the only on'e,
would attest already that at that epoch the church of Corinth
knew the epistles of Paul to be divine. Thus we might
already say (as had been done in 2 Pet. iii. 15) that this
church knew all the epistles (iv -n-do-ais to2s irno-ToXais) that
Paul had written, according to the wisdom given unto him ;
for no reason exists for giving to this first epistle of Paul to
the Corinthians any superiority over the others ; and it is
sufficiently clear that Clement signalizes it to them so ex
plicitly only because it treated of other dissensions which
had already disturbed them fifteen years before. And if he
mentions the first to them rather than the second, it is because

THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENS ROMANUS. 287
the latter contained no reference to them. We must remem
ber that we have already seen Polyearp writing to the Phil
ippians, mentioning to them, in the same manner, of all Paul's
epistles, only that to the Philippians.
4. No one can question that Clement, bishop of Rome,
writing to Rome, in the name of the church of Rome, knew!
the epistle to the Romans just as well as that to the Corin-J
thians. Moreover, without naming it, Clement makes fre^
quent allusions to it (as may be seen in our extract) partieu-i
larly in chapters xxxii. xxxv. xlvii. It is thus that, without \
again naming the epistle to the Corinthians, he quotes it fre
quently, on other occasions" and other subjects. We have
above indicated many of these reminiscences, they are there
very clearly recognized. His beautiful thirty-ninth chapter
on charity may especially be referred to.
5. You notice equally in this letter numerous quotations
of the words of Jesus Christ from Matthew and Luke, with
out, however, the author taking any pains to indicate from
which. That was the usage of the period.
6. You there find also allusions sufficiently marked to many
other letters of Paul, and to Peter's two epistles ; and you
hear him reproducing passages from them which the cotem
porary churches must readily have recognized.
7. But what is most remarkable, are the numerous and ,
clear quotations from the epistle to the Hebrews. He is no
more at the pains of intimating the source from which they
came ; but he almost reproduces (chap, xxxvi.) the first thir
teen verses on the divinity of Jesus Christ ; he quotes, with
the apostle, the examples of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Rahab,
and those " who have announced the coming of Christ, clothed
in goat-skins and sheep-skins (Heb. xi. 37.) In a word, the '
extracts from this epistle recur at least fifteen or sixteen
times in his text ; and his quotations are so precise that none
can dispute whence they are taken. They need not be re
peated here.
8. It is in vain that some have made an objection to Clem-

288 THE CANON.
ent's testimony to the canon that his quotations are para
phrastic and not literal. We say rather that this very liberty
of blending the sentences of the New Testament with his
own discourse attests with what fullness the thoughts of the
sacred books occupied the thoughts of these cotemporary
hearers or readers ; so that a writer was sure, by a brief quo
tation, to call up in religious men all their recollection of the
written word. This mode of quoting is, on the contrary, to
us a proof of the existence of the canon and of the powerful
effects of the public readings of the Scriptures. If I were
employing in my discourse before a modern audience, some
expressions borrowed from those portions of Scripture which
are best known in every age ; if I were speaking, for instance,
of " Him who gives us our daily bread ; " " of the God pow
erful and jealous who visits the iniquities of the fathers upon
the children ; " of the Saviour " delivered for our offences
and bruised for our iniquities," I should abstain from men
tioning the books, chapters, and verses from which I took
them, because it would be a piece of pedantry to name them.
But we have yet more general conclusions to deduce from
the combined testimony of all these Fathers.
Conclusion from the Testimony of the Apostolical Fathers.
We have just heard all these Fathers. They have come
in turn to confirm to us the canon, each in his own way ; and
their testimony, for the establishing of our faith, is found to
be always conformed to the circumstances of their respective
ages. We do not claim that the entire doctrine of the canon
can be established on the word of each one of them ; this
proof in its plenitude must be sought elsewhere. But what
may be incontestably established by them, is, that these
documents attest with clearness of evidence the- existence of
the first canon ; that they recall the greater part of our sa
cred books ; that they proclaim their inspiration ; that they
show us with what submission they were received in all the
churches.

LAST BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 289
Yet it remains for us still to consult another monument
very similar to Clement's, in its form and date. It differs
from it only in being inspired. We mean the testimony ren
dered to the canon then in formation, by the apostles them
selves, in some of their more recent writings.

SECTION XI
TESTIMONY OP THE LAST BOOKS OP THE NEW TESTAMENT
TO THE EXISTENCE OP A CANON ALREADY BEGUN.
As Clement quoted in A. D. 68 the discourses of the Lord
recorded in Matthew and Luke, the Epistle of Paul to the
Corinthians, the words of many others of this apostle's letters
and of Peter's epistle ; so Paul himself, in his first letter to
Timothy (v. 18), appears to quote, but without naming it,
and after the manner of the Fathers, the gospel of Luke,
when he recalls this sentence found in that evangelist alone
(x. 7) ; " The laborer is worthy of his hire."
Thus again, the same apostle seems to us clearly to have
designated the first Scriptures of the New Testament by the
name of " the Scriptures of the prophets " (that is, according
to his style, the inspired Scriptures), when he speaks in Ro
mans xvi. 26, of the books by which " the mystery of Jesua
Christ was then (vw) made known to all nations." In fact,
one tenth of the books of the canon was then in the hands
of the church ; two gospels ; two letters to the Thessalonians ;
two to the Corinthians ; the epistle to the Galatians ; proba
bly also that to Titus ; besides the first to Timothy, and the
first of Peter ; and it must have been in reference to these
Scriptures already spread through all the churches, that Paul,
on the point of making his last visit to Jerusalem, wrote to
the Romans, that through " the gospel and the preaching of
Jesus Christ, the mystery, which had been kept secret since
the world began, was now made manifest by the Scriptures

290 THE CANON.
of the prophets (8ia ypa<pwv irpocpijTi/cioV) according to the
commandment of the everlasting God, and that it was then
made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."
The meaning of the phrase " Scriptures of the prophets,"
has been said to be, the Old Testament. But, besides the
improbability of a meaning so lifeless, Paul here declares
that it was by these Scriptures that the mystery of Jesus
Christ was in his day (vvv) made manifest ; and he has, more
over, often repeated the assertion that the apostles were
prophets, and their writings (consequently) prophetic writ
ings. We think then that the most natural sense, and the
one most conformed to the habits of the apostle, is that which
we have given it.
Besides, no one will contest the meaning of Peter's words
in his epistle, much later than Paul's to the Romans, which
he wrote after " Jesus Christ had showed him that shortly he
must put off his tabernacle." (2 Pet. i. 14.) He there rec
ommends all the epistles of Paul (iii. 15) and declares that
" they that are unlearned and unstable wrest them as they do
the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction."
See then already, toward the year 64, or at latest 68, thirty
or thirty-four years only after the crucifixion of our Lord, all
the epistles of Paul placed by an apostle in the rank of the
other Scriptures (to\s Xourds. Tpacpds.)
This term, " the Scriptures," occurs fifty times in the New
Testament, and fifty times it is there exclusively applied to
the books of one or the other Testament. It is thus that
the canon is already proclaimed by an apostle, and solemnly
recommended to the faithful of the first century ; it is already
mentioned as a book holding the same rank with the Old
Testament. And let it be observed, that the argument here does not
depend upon the inspiration of Peter's epistle ; and even if
we should regard it merely as one of the writings of the first
century, its testimony would show us already the existence
of the canons among the Christians in that early day, and

LAST BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 291
the identification made by them of the inspired Scriptures of
the prophets of the New Testament with the inspired Scrip
tures of the Old Testament.
Nor is this all. This second epistle of Peter is itself
directly and textually cited in another still later epistle, that
of the apostle Jude.
Let his seventeenth verse be attentively read. " But, be
loved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of
the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ."
And what did they say, these apostles of Jesus Christ ?
" They told you," Jude continues, " there should be mockers
(ipiraiKTai) in the last time (co-^a™) who should walk (iro-
pevopevoi) after their own ungodly lusts (Kara, rets iavriov «ri0u-
/u'as raV do-e/3eiu>v)." And where then do we find one of the
apostles of our Lord uttering these words ? Only in the
second epistle of Peter. We there find every one of these
expressions ; it is this Kara rets iiriOvpias avrwv, after their
own lusts ; it is this iropevopievoi, and especially this remark
able term of mockers (e/Mrat/creu), which is found nowhere
else in the New Testament.
Peter had said (iii. 3), " Knowing this first that there shall
come in the last days scoffers (ipiraiKrai), walking (iropevop.e-
voi) after their own lusts."
Now this epistle of Jude is declared to be divine from the
second century, in the East by Clement of Alexandria ; in
the West, by Tertullian, the oldest of the Latin Fathers ; in
the third century, by Origen and the majority of the ancient
Fathers mentioned by Eusebius. And it should be remem
bered that we have found it equally in each of the eleven
catalogues of the New Testament transmitted to us by writers
of the fourth century.
Thus then the epistle of Jude the apostle, already ac
knowledged in the second century, itself quotes the second
epistle of Peter as a Scripture whose words the church re
ligiously observed, and as a Scripture of the apostles of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And we have just seen that in its turn

292 THE CANON.
this second epistle of Peter, before the year 64, quoted all
the epistles of Paul as occupying the same rank with the
other Scriptures (ras Xouras Tpacpds).
We believe that enough has now been said to establish
fully in the light of history, the incomparable authenticity of
the twenty books which form the first canon of the New Tes
tament, and which the churches never for a moment hesitated
to acknowledge. We pass then to the other seven, beginning
with the Second-First Canon.

THE SECOND-FIRST CANON. 293

CHAPTER THIRD.
OF THE SECOND-FIRST CANON.
The majority of the proofs which, in the preceding pages,
have established on so immovable a basis of facts the authen
ticity of the first twenty homologomens, testify equally in
favor of the twenty-first and twenty-second, the epistle to
the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse.
Above all, these two books have in their favor the great
proof which pervaded all the others ; the marvelous unanim
ity of all the churches during the first two centuries, com
mencing with the apostolical period. No one can quote, we
have affirmed, in the literary history of all the centuries, a
single example of a legitimacy so powerfully demonstrated,
a single example which approaches it, even remotely.
Admitted without opposition, from their first appearing,
whether in the East or in the West, they have the right on
this ground to take rank in the first canon. But we have
deemed it more convenient to class them in neither the first
nor the second, and to reserve for them a separate place ; be
cause, although they never ceased to be acknowledged, the
one in the East, and the other in the West, yet they were,
from the third century, contested for some time, the one in
the West, the other in the East.
We must, however, go into detail, beginning with the Apoc
alypse. 25*

294 THE CANON.
SECTION I.
THE APOCALYPSE.
Its first Reception.
Of all the New Testament books the Apocalypse is the
most frequently and powerfully attested in the monuments of
the primitive church. There is not one more commented on
and quoted from the time of its appearing ; and it is not with
out irrefragable historical reasons that Eusebius has ranked it
among the homologomens, at the same time stating his reser
vations, and expressing the strong repugnance which the
Millenarian doctrine excited from his time.'
In fact, if as Olshausen says,1 and as Kirchhofer 2 repeats,
" there is scarcely a Scripture in the New Testament which
has in its favor a larger and more powerful succession of his
torical testimonies," yet the Apocalypse is also the book
against which, afterward, on account of its mysteries and
prophecies, the enemies of the canon and of the theopneusty
have most violently arrayed themselves. It was, in the third
and fourth centuries, its doctrine of a millennium misappre
hended by them that aroused their opposition ; but it is es
pecially on account of its incontestable claims to the most
complete inspiration, that it has been so bitterly opposed in
our day, above all, in Germany. This Scripture entirely
prophetic, that is to say, theopneustic, will never cease to be
opposed by the enemies of the divine inspiration of the New
Testament. At the same time, we must here carefully remark the na
ture of the objections raised by its first detractors in the third
and fourth centuries. When, after having been so long re-
1 Authenticity of N. T. chap. x.
2 " Kaum ein Buch des N. T. hat eine solche namhafte Reiche von Hia-
tokischbn Testimonien fur sich." (Quellens. p. 296.)

FIRST RECEPTION OF THE APOCALYPSE. 295
ceived by all the churches, the Apocalypse began to find
some timid opposition in the third century ; and even later,
in the fourth century, when its adversaries became more de
cided .and numerous, none of them ever imagined an attack
upon it by historical arguments, for it was as impregnable on
that side as the four gospels. They directed their attack
upon its contents ; its style, which, they pretended, was not
I that of John ; and its title, in which one said the author called
himself John, not the apostle, whereas the true John, in his
gospel, (xxi. 24 ; xix. 25, 26, and elsewhere) and in his first
epistle (i. 2), has fully exhibited himself as an apostle. Who
then gives us assurance that the John of the Revelation is
indeed the son of Zebedee, and not rather some other un
known writer of the same name ? Such were in the third
century the sole objections of the adversaries ; and when
Eusebius, in his turn, a. d. 324, announced his, he no more
alleged than his predecessors, Michaelis sa3's, any historical
consideration. He did not say, " This book was not acknowl
edged by the ancients ; it has been contradicted from the
time of its publication ; it was smuggled in at such or such
an epoch ; it was not spoken of during the life of John ; it
was not preserved by the seven churches of Asia. . . ." By
no means ; none of these objections were then possible ; and
none thought of advancing them, however zealous they might
be to get* rid of millenarian doctrines. This consideration
certainly forms, in favor of its authenticity, an historical argu
ment of the greatest weight.
/ Besides, when Eusebius seeks for writers opposed to the
/ Apocalypse in Christian antiquity, he can not find one from
V the days of the apostles, down to the third century. It is
first Caius, a Roman priest, whose testimony is entirely un
certain ; it is bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, who admits
the canonicity and inspiration of the book, but calls in ques
tion its apostolicity ; it is only certain persons in Egypt, who
pretend to attribute it to Cerinthus the heretic, as had done
before him, outside of the church, the heretical sect of the

296 THE CANON.
Alogi, who, from hatred to the name Logos given to Christ,
rejected the gospel of John as well as his Apocalypse.
But, long before these first isolated voices were heard, the
unanimous testimony of the churches, during the whole course
of the preceding century, had continued to pronounce in favor
of this book in all the countries of the East and the West ;
a great number of eminent writers had not ceased to com
mend it to the esteem of the churches by commentaries and
innumerable quotations ; Justin Martyr in Asia ; the church
of Lyons in Gaul ; Irenaeus the martyr, in the same city,
whither he had not removed until after having long resided
in Asia, in the country of Ephesus whence the Apocalypse
emanated ; Theophilus, in Syrian Antioch ; Apollonius, in
Italy where he too underwent martyrdom ; Melito, in Asia
Minor ; Clement of Alexandria, in Egypt ; Tertullian in
Africa. t And yet later, even after the oppositions of Caius and
Dionysius had been heard in Egypt and Rome, what effect
did they produce on their age ? Certainly very little ; for
the great voice of the churches continued at the same time
its testimony by the mouth of their teachers and martyrs.
Hippolytus of Aden, astronomer, theologian, and martyr in
Italy ; the great Origen in Asia ; Cyprian in Africa ; Victo
rinus in Pettaw in Pannonia ; bishop Methodius of Tyre, also
a martyr ; Arnobius of Numidia ; Laetantius in Gaul, that
eloquent African who was teacher of the son of the Emperor
Constantine. And it was not only by the most distinguished
men that the Apocalypse was then recommended ; for the
Novatian and Donatist schismatics also expressed the same
respect as the orthodox teachers.
Afterward too in the East, at the beginning of the fourth
century, at the same time that Eusebius, as also Cyril of Je
rusalem and Gregory Nazianzen seemed reluctant to place
the Apocalypse in the canon of the homologomens, the great
Athanasius did not hesitate ; and in other parts of the East,
you might have heard Basil, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexan-

ITS DATE. 297
dria, among the Greeks ; St. Ephraim among the Syrians ;
as in the West and in Africa, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augus
tine, among the Latins, speak of this Scripture with the same
reverence. But before passing in review these several testimonies, and
speaking of the council of Laodicea, we may settle the date
of its first appearance. Its Date.
The exact age of the Apocalypse is given by Irenaeus, of
all the witnesses the most reliable, since of all who have
spoken of it, none lived nearer the time and place of the
writing of this book and of its author's death.1
Irenasus, the disciple and friend of Polyearp and of Papias,
themselves friends or disciples of John, was born at the be
ginning of the second century, in the environs of Ephesus or
Smyrna, that is in the province of ihe seven churches of Asia
where John, says Polyearp,2 was buried. His birth, there
fore, could not have been far from the time of this apostle's
death; since he, according to Eusebius, lived to the time of
Trajan, and according to Jerome,8 to the sixty-eighth year
after our Saviour's death, that is to A. D. 102, or the fifth
year of Trajan's reign.
These are the words of Irenaeus.4 " It is not long since
the Apocalypse appeared ; but it is almost in our generation,
toward the close of Domitian's reign." . L P.Lj 'o
This declaration so clear is confirmed to us too in the same
century by other independent testimonies.
Clement of Alexandria 6 attests that John returned from
i Grabe, Prolog, in Irenseum.
2 Euseb. H. E. Lib. v. chap. 24; Lib. iii. chap. 23^
8 In his " Illustrious Men; " see Lardner's torn. x. p. 100.
« Iren. (adv. Haeres.), Lib. iii. chap. 30. (Euseb. H. E. Lib. iii. 18). See
(chap. 28) the same Irena?us attributing the Apocalypse to the apostle John ;
and see again, four chapters farther. See, too, Lib. iv. 50.
6 Euseb. H. E. iii. 23.

298 THE CANON.
Patmos to Ephesus " after the death of the tyrant." Tertul
lian speaks of Domitian as " having banished Christians ; " 1
and of John, as " having been first cast into boiling oil, and
then sent to an island." 2 Origen, about A. d. 230, says, in
his commentary on Matthew, that "a Roman emperor, as
tradition reports, banished John to the isle of Patmos . . .
and that John testifies to it without naming the emperor."
Victorinus, bishop of Pettaw and martyr in a. d. 290, often
repeats that it was by Domitian that John was banished to
Patmos. Eusebius in fine (H. E. iii. 18), repeats it too at
the beginning of the fourth century, as also the writing " De
duodecimo apostolis " (attributed to Hippolytus), and the
apocryphal narration of Prochorus in the third century;
as also Jerome in the fourth ; Orosus in the fifth ; Arethus
and Primasius in the sixth ; and Isidore of Seville in the
seventh. All Christian antiquity attests to us that John died full of
days in the province of Asia. Epiphanius alone, if we may
believe his present text, toward the end of the fourth century,
had advanced the absurd idea that John must have prophe
sied at Patmos during the days of Claudius.8 But we have
abundant cause to suspect here an error of the copyist, since
as Lardner says, the same Epiphanius elsewhere attributes
to John more than ninety years when he returned to Patmos.4
Could he have ascribed to him such an age in A. d. 54, when
the Emperor Claudius died, since it would have made him
seventy years old when he was called, and one hundred and
thirty-nine at his death ? The Fathers place the latter a. d.
103. Many authors, in Germany and America,6 in the interest
of certain systems of interpretation of prophecy, have made
1 Apolog. chap. v. 2 De pr, jja;res. cap. 36.
8 Hares. 51, No. 33. 4 Lardner, tom. iv. p. 188.
5 Dr. Tilloch; Moses Stuart: Mr. Burgh; Prof. Lee; Prof. Liicke, and
Guericke. The learned Lardner already had victoriously refuted the argu
ments by which also Sir Isaac Newton had desired, in the interest of his in
terpretations, to establish the Neronian date.

ITS DATE. 299
strenuous efforts to disembarrass themselves of all these tes
timonies of history, and to place the promulgation of the
Apocalypse fifty years earlier, in the time of Nero.
To this end they have claimed : — :
1. That the apostolical epistles were written after the
Apocalypse. 2. That the persecution of Nero against the Christians
after the burning of Rome, must have been heard of in Asia,
which no historian has ever affirmed.
3. That the penalty of banishment to the islands must
have been already employed, as in the times of Domitian ; a
supposition equally gratuitous.
4. That the city of Laodicea, where the seventh church
addressed in the apocalyptic epistles was situated, and which
was overthrown a.d. 61, with Colosse and Hierapolis by an
earthquake, must have been almost immediately rebuilt dur
ing Nero's reign ; whereas it appears from history that it
happened half a century before the rebuilding of those cities.
5. That the passage of Irenseus on the date of the Apoca
lypse, must have been either badly conceived, or badly trans
lated, or erroneous.
6. That all the other writers who relate the same fact must
have copied this Father, although the details of their testi
monies respectively attest their entire independence.
7. That the alleged passage of Origen should express on
his part some doubt as to which of the Roman monarchs it
was who exiled the apostle to Patmos ; although the only
design of Origen in this passage was, to signalize the moder
ation of John, who speaks of the persecution without giving
the name of the persecutor.
8. Finally (and this last effort is of Mr. Guericke), that
the very passage of Irenseus so embarrassing, would indicate
the Emperor Nero, rather than Domitian, as the persecutor
of John, because the word kopenavov, instead of being the
genitive of the proper name of Domitian, would be simply
the feminine genitive of a qualifying adjective of the word

300 THE CANON.
apxrjs which follows it, and would be formed of Domitius, one
of the proper names of Domitius Nero ; so that (instead of
rendering, " towards the end of the reign of Domitian " ) we
must read, " towards the end of the Domitian or Neronian
reign." And that, he says, for two reasons : first, because,
if the word kopenavov had been a proper name, it would
have been preceded by the article (tov) ; and then, because
the adjective formed from Aop.eTia.v6s would rather have been
Aop-eriaviKos. But these pretensions are of no value ; for,
1, the Greeks never dreamed of this extraordinary meaning;
2, the employment of the name Domitius all alone, to desig
nate Nero, was unusual ; 3, so far was the article (tov) from
being necessary here before Ao/xmaj/ov, we find, in the same
chapter of Eusebius where the passage comes, three other
proper names without their article ; J 4, because, even sup
posing A.opeTiavov to be taken adjectively, it is against all
reason to derive it from Domitius rather than Domitianus.
We have the twofold proof of this in the monuments of his
tory, since on one side, we read in Suetonius "Domitia gens"
(and not Domitiana) to designate the family of Domitius
Nero ; and on the other, in Statius,2 " Viam Domitianam
miratus sum " (and not Domitianicam) to designate a Roman
road constructed by Domitianus.8
The Apocalypse then did not appear until A. d. 96, when
Domitian died (Sept. 18), and when John might with so many
others have come out of captivity.
1 Middleton, in his beautiful work on " The Doctrine of the Greek arti
cle applied to the Criticism and Illustration of the New Testament," has
shown that the rule of the double article among the Greeks does not apply
to proper names.
2 Sylvffi Lib. 4, — and the third ode entitled " Via Domitiana."
8 Moreover we may cite Cicero (Pro Fonterio, p. 4) who calls a road
opened by the proconsul C. Domitius " Via Domitia " Cffisar commonly,
it is true, (B. 0, 1. 16 and 22) calls the partisans of Domitius, " Domitiani ; "
This termination is the Latin form attributed to men of a party. It is thus
that Servius called the discourses in which Cicero profusely praises Cassar
" Cffisarianse Orationes."

THE APOCALTPSE IN THE FIRST CENTURY. 301
The Apocalypse in the First Century.
As it is impossible then to assign an earlier date to the
Apocalypse than the last three years of the first century, we
can not look for the first witnesses earlier than the beginning
of the second century. Consequently it could not have been
mentioned either in the epistle of Clement written thirty
years before the Apocalypse, nor even in the Peshito version,
also published before this holy book and during one of the
last thirty-five years of the first century.
The Peshito was composed to meet the wants of the nu
merous Christians of Jerusalem, Judea, Syria, Chaldea, and
Adiabene, speaking the very language used by Christ, and
who formed for a long time the great majority of the primi
tive church ; as in the single city of Jerusalem they were
already, toward the middle of the first century (A. D. 54)
many myriads (Acts xxi. 20) and as according to the testi
monies of history they early abounded in the countries we
have just named. This version which, in addition to the
whole twenty books of the first canon, embraced the epistle
of James and the epistle to the Hebrews, both written neces
sarily before a. d. 64, could not contain the Apocalypse, which
was not composed until long afterwards. But the Syrian
church, which pushed its strong branches to the very extrem
ities of the East, did, however, early acknowledge it, both by
placing it after the antique version, and adopting it as a more
recent version. Of this we have proof ; 1, in the fact that
the Apocalypse was admitted and commented on by the most
eminent of the Syrian teachers, the illustrious St. Ephraim,
born in Nisibis in Mesopotamia, about a. d. 320 ; and 2, by
the fact, that the Nestorian branch carried the Apocalypse
even to China. It is known that the ancient monument dis
covered in A. d. 1629, by the Jesuit missionaries at Sauxuen,
in the province of Xensi, and going back to a. d. 781, pre
sented two inscriptions, the one in Chinese, and the other in
Syriac, in which the New Testament was mentioned as con-
20

302 THE CANON.
taining twenty-seven books, " which attests to us sufficiently,"
says Michaelis, " that the Apocalypse made part of it." x
Mr. Thiersch 2 is persuaded of it, from the researches of
Hug.8

Witnesses of the First Half of the Second Century.
The very rare writings of this epoch, which remain, give
thus early their testimony to the Apocalypse.
Whoever the unknown author of the allegorical book enti
tled " The Shepherd," may have been, which appeared about
the middle of the second century and which was attributed
to a brother of Pius I.,4 his writing contains allusions to the
Apocalypse, so manifest that we might cite it as one witness
of the existence of this book among the churches. He often
speaks of a great tribulation. His great beast, the four colors
of his head, the grasshoppers which come out of his mouth,
the tower which (he says) is the woman, the church which
has crowns of palm and white raiments, the seal or the name
of the son of God . . . etc., — all these features oblige us
to recognize a spirit wholly imbued with the book of John.
But we pass on to Ignatius.
This bishop, companion of the apostles, suffered martyrdom
A. d. 107, that is, at most, ten years after the appearance of
the Apocalypse. Are any traces of the Revelation off John
i Michaelis, vol. vi. chap, xxxiii. p. 495 ; Marsh's edit. See Hug. Introd.
p. 65. (Ed. 1808).
. 2 Versuch zur Herstellung des Hist. Standpuncts, chap. vi. And Mr. Kirch-
hofer, p. 16, in speaking of the contents of the Peshito, says : " Und (nach
Hug's Dafurhalten) die Apocalypse."
8 The opinion of Hug is founded on the passages of Ephraim quoted
hereafter. In the meantime Sozomen (H. E. iii. 16) and Theodoret (H. E.
iv. 29) say that Ephraim did not understand Greek, and Ephraim himself, in
speaking of a visit made by him to Basil, says he had need of an inter
preter (Eph., Opera, iii. 712. Edit, of Vossius, 1603).
* Rom. xvi. 14. Hefele (Patrum Apost. Opera, p. Ixxxi.) thinks he must
adopt the opinion of the author of the Fragment of Muratori, which he at
tributed to the brother of Pius I., from A. D. 142 to 147.

WITNESSES OF FIRST HALF OF SECOND CENTURY. 303
to be found in his three authentic epistles ? You could
scarcely expect it in letters when the books of the New Tes
tament are merely alluded to, and where he expressly names
only the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians ; for he wrote them
surrounded by the rough soldiers who were hastening him to
Rome for his execution: And yet, we already find there
more than one passage in which allusions to our Sacred Book
appear. Thus, for example, in his epistle to the Romans, at
the end, this remarkable expression of the Apocalypse, i. 9
(iv {nropLovfj i. x.), which is found nowhere else in this form
in the New Testament.1
As to Polyearp, if we have only his letter to the Philip- _
pians, too brief to furnish any quotation from the Apocalypse
of John or from his gospel, we possess, as we have seen, the
" Narration of his martyrdom." Written by his own church
of Smyrna immediately after the event, it is to us equivalent
to a testimony by Polyearp himself. Now his burned body
is there represented " as gold and silver burned in a furnace "
(u>s xpveros /cat dpyvpos iv Kapivio Trupwpevoi) ; quoting, to all
appearance, the passage of Peter (1, i. 7), in which he com
pares suffering Christians to gold tried in the fire. But for
the words of Peter (8ia rrvpbs 8oKipat,op.evov), we find substi
tuted the beautiful expressions of the Apocalypse (i. 15, g>s
iv Kap.iv<a ireiroptapevoi), describing " the feet of the Son of
man." The form of the phrase seems capable of explana
tion only by referring it to this expression of John.
Thus too, when, at the approach of the fire which they
were about to apply to the fagots, Polyearp offered his
prayer, he began with these words, taken also from the
Apocalypse in the prayer of the elders : Kvpie 6 ®ebs 6 IW-
TOKpdrwp. (Rev. xi. 17).
We may cite also at this very epoch so poor in monuments,
1 Other allusions are adduced from the epistles of Ignatius to the Tralliana
and Philadelphians, but we prefer to limit ourselves to the uncontested epis
tles, found in the very recent Syrian collection of William Cureton, (Ber
lin, Asher & Co., 1845).

304 THE CANON.
Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, near Smyrna, the city of Poly
earp, and who, Irenseus says (v. 23) was one of the hearers
of John and the friend (haipcs) of Polyearp. He mentions
John's doctrine of the millennium in the fourth of his five
books, which have all perished. Eusebius in his H. E. book
iii. chapter 39, cites some fragments. But if, in the absence
of these writings, we appeal to the testimony of antiquity, we
find two eminent authors who, when well studied, leave us
no doubt as to the use which this Father made of the Apoc
alypse. The one is Eusebius, a. r>. 324 ; and the other,
Andreas, bishop of the same city in the sixth century.
Andreas, who himself composed a commentary on the
Apocalypse, which still exists, and who states that he had
consulted the ancient Fathers and made copious extracts from
their writings, expressly declares, although himself an anti-
millenarian, that Papias (as also Irenseus, Methodius, and
Hippolytus) had rendered testimony to the inspiration of this
book. " As to the theopneusty of the Apocalypse," he says,
" we regard it superfluous to employ many words to show
that the blessed Gregory the divine, Cyril, and men still
more ancient, Papias, Irenseus, Methodius, and Hippolytus,
have testified to the claims which this book has to our confi
dence.1 Eusebius, in his aversion to the thousand years' reign, seeks
to insinuate that Irenseus and others must have derived their
doctrine on this subject from Papias, and that the latter de
serves little confidence, because he was, as he says, " of a
narrow spirit (o-ptKpbs tov vow), who had formed his system
on an ignorance of the apostolical writings, and a misappre
hension of their figurative language." 2 At the same time
the testimony of Papias possesses a high value, because his
personal relations to John would certainly have prevented
his attributing to this apostle a book which he had never
written. The language of Eusebius is ambiguous and embarrassed.
i Bibl. Pat. Max. v. 589, 590. 2 Euseb. H. E. Lib. iii. chap. 39.

WITNESSES OF FIRST HALF OF SECOND CENTURY. 305
Sometimes he seems to mean that, according to the expres
sions of Papias, a priest John, rather than the apostle John,
might have written -the Apocalypse, and that Papias might
have derived his millenarian doctrine from him ; sometimes
he seems to say that Papias could not have imagined his ter
restrial reign of a thousand years but through his misappre
hension of the mystical language of the apostolical writings.
But on either of these contradictory, suppositions, Papias,
according to him, must have known and quoted the Apoca
lypse. Michaelis thinks he has proved, on the contrary, from the
writings of Eusebius, that Papias received his millenarian
doctrines " from oral traditions merely." But Eusebius has
not said this ; and to reach this conclusion Michaelis was forced
to translate the words of Eusebius (rrapeKSe^dpevov and 8vq-
y>/o-€is) altogether differently from Valesius (H. de Valois)
and many others before him.1
We thence conclude : 1, that the very positive testimony
of Andreas concerning Papias has much more force than the
hypothetical and contradictory insinuations of Eusebius ; and
2, that Papias, according to Eusebius himself, founded his
millenarian doctrine on the Apocalypse, — of the apostle
John badly understood, or the priest John well understood;
but in any case, on the Apocalypse.2
1 Instead of translating, " Having badly understood the apostolical writ
ings," he reads, "Having informed himself of the apostolical sayings."
2 Eusebius having quoted [concerning the first disciples of Christ] a
fragment of Papias in which the name of John occurred twice, and the
second time with the tiile of priest, concluded that there probably were two
Johns, the one an apostle, the other a priest ; and that perhaps the latter
might have written the Apocalypse. He adds that in Ephesus two sepul
chres of John are shown, and he thence concludes that the one may be that
of the apostle, the other that of the priest. Eusebius would have had little
claim to the respect of science if all his conclusions were of no more value
than this. This very Eusebius (iii. 23) had strongly affirmed, " on the tes
timony of men," he says, "most worthy of confidence (Irenseus and Clem
ent of Alexandria) that the apostle John had lived to Trajan's reign, having
returned to Ephesus from Patmos after the death of the tyrant (Domi
tian).

306 THE CANON.
Witnesses of the Second Half of the same Century
If we pass from a. d. 150 to the years which followed,
numerous and eminent witnesses present themselves in the
various parts of the world ; and these do not content them
selves with mentioning the Apocalypse, they quote and com
ment upon it abundantly.
1. First we have Justin Martyr, that philosopher become
Christian, born in Palestine the very year, it is said, when
the Apocalypse appeared (a. d. 102 or 103) and who, con
verted a.d. 133, fell a martyr in 165. He wrote his Dia
logue to Ephesus, and should know better than any other
what had passed there only thirty years before. Now observe
his words, in his Dialogue against Trypho : " A man among
us named John, an apostle of Jesus Christ, in an Apocalypse
or Revelation which was made (iv aTroKaXinf/ei yevopevn ai™),
has prophesied that all those who believe in our Christ shall
live a thousand years in Jerusalem." 1
2. We have afterward, in a. d. 177, the " Narrative of the
Martyrs of Lyons," made by a Christian of that city who
escaped the carnage, and addressed by the churches of Gaul
to those of proconsular Asia. Eusebius has preserved it to
us (H. E. v. 1) ; it is stamped with the phraseology of the
Apocalypse. We there find, for example, this remarkable
expression (Rev. xiv. 4), to describe a true disciple of Christ :
" I will follow the Lamb, whithersoever he goeth " (aKoXovdav
t<3 'Apj/tw Sttov b\v virdyy). And this other so characteristic,
on Christ (Rev. i. 5 ; iii. 14) : "To the faithful and true wit
ness, the firstborn from the dead " (t<3 irto-ra /cai aXtj9ivw pdp-
Tvpi, /cal TrpoiTOTOKai tu>v veKpiov.) And still this other (Rev.
xxii. 11), in speaking of the rage of their persecutors like
the beast (Oqplov), " that the Scripture might be fulfilled."
And what Scripture ? This undoubtedly which they imme
diately quote, word for word : " He that is unjust, let him be
unjust still, and be that is righteous, let him be righteous still."
l See too, Euseb. H. E. iv. 18.

WITNESSES OF SECOND HALF OF SAME CENTURY. 307
3. We have also the celebrated Irenseus, who came shortly
after these martyrs, to guide the church of Lyons. In his
great work " On the Heresies '' written about a. d. 185, he
comes frequently to the Apocalypse, and quotes it abundantly ;
at least in thirty-one different passages ; calling it " the work
of that John, disciple of the Lord, who leaned on his breast
at the Supper," 1 frequently commenting on it, and appealing
even, when explaining-the number of the beast, " to all the
most exact old copies of this holy book (iv irdo-i Be tois
cnrovSatois ko! dp^atots dvnypacpois) and to the testimony of
those who had personally seen John."
4. We find at Sardis, in Asia Minor, about a. d. 170, Mel
ito, who was still governing that church when the letter from
the Gallic churches concerning the martyrs of Lyons was re
ceived there. He himself had written a treatise on " The
Apocalypse of John." 2
5. We have spoken of the " Fragment " of the Latin
canon of " Muratori" which is admitted to be very ancient.
We there find these remarkable words : " We also acknowl
edge the Apocalypse, etc. (Apocalypsin etiam Johannis . . .
recipimus, quam quidam ex nostris legi in Ecclesia nolunt.
Et Johannes in Apocalypsi, licet septem Ecclesiis scribat,
tamen omnibus dicit. . . .) "
And it is important, to remark in passing, in the last words
of this catalogue, a usage which explains and confirms what
we have said of the later decree of Laodicea. The Apoca
lypse was universally received as divine ; but " many at the
same time, would not, on accbunt of its obscurity, have it
read in public assemblies."
6. We find in Syria, at the same epoch, Theophilus, bishop
of Antioch, who in combating the heresy of Hermogenes,
quoted to him the Apocalypse. It was a.d. 181. (Euseb.
H. E. Lib. iv. chap. 24).
1 De Hser. iv. 37, 50; v. 26, 30.
2 Hepi rijg ' kiioica}.. 'ladvvov. Euseb. H. E. Lib. iv. chap. 26. See also
Jerome (De vir. illustrib. 24.) Melito had, A. n. 172, presented the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius an " Apology for the Christian religion."

308 THE CANON.
7. At Rome a.d. 186, Apollonius, called " The eloquent"
by John, and who is believed to be he whose affecting mar
tyrdom is described by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History
(Lib. v. chap. xxi). It names him as having 'invoked testi
monies taken from the Apocalypse. ('IcoaVvov 'Airo/caX.)
8. At the same time, we find even in Africa two of the
most respectable witnesses of Christian antiquity ; the one
is Clement of Alexandria, about A. d. 191. He frequently
quotes the Apocalypse. The other, at Carthage, is the great
Tertullian, the earliest of the Latin Fathers, as also the most
enlightened. More than seventy quotations from the Apoca
lypse are found in his writings. He declares it to be the
work of the apostle John ; he defends it against Marcion the
heretic (Lib. iv. chap, v.), who rejected it only on dogmatical
grounds ; and on this point he appeals to the important testi
mony .of the churches of Asia, and to the succession of bish
ops going back to John, the author of this book.
All these great authorities cease not to quote the Apoca
lypse of John without mentioning the least opposition, up to
their time, raised against it in the church. Thus, even to the
close of the second century and commencement of the third,
this sacred book was universally considered as an inspired
book of the apostle John, whether in the Greek church or
in the Latin ; in Egypt, in Palestine, in Asia Minor, in Syria,
in Italy, Africa, or even Gaul.1
Witnesses of the First Half of the Third Century.
We must descend even to the middle of the third century
to hear the first serious opposition. It is not until then that
some isolated detractors of the Apocalypse begin to be heard in
the church ; and now they bring no historical reason for their
opposition. Eusebius, notwithstanding his prejudices, has
1 We do not speak of the heretics outside of the church. The impious
sect of the Alogi, enemies of the term Logos applied to Jesus Christ, had re
jected both the gospel of John and his Apocalypse. (Michaelis, vol. vi. p.
468, English edit.)

FIRST HALF OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 309
been able to find at the beginning of the century only one
voice at Rome, that of a priest named Caius, who, in a con
troversy with Prochus, to repel the gross errors on the mil
lennium, set himself against this book, attributing it to Cerin
thus.1 But his attacks (according to Eusebius) are not well
established.2 Hug brings them into doubt.8 This Caius was
animated with a strong hatred of the millenarian doctrine,
of which he had conceived a revolting idea from the wholly
carnal descriptions of it given by Cerinthus, the gnostic, whom
John is said to have combated. But Caius, in the words
quoted by Eusebius (iii. 28), does not say, as pretended, that
Cerinthus attributed his gross notions to the Apocalypse ; he
made them, he says, " originate in certain revelations " (oV
drroKaXvij/eaiv) which he pretended " had been written by a
great apostle," and " in prodigies which he feigned had been
showed to him by angels." 4 Besides, the martyr Hippolytus
had triumphantly refuted in many chapters of his works the
errors of Caius ; and whatever may have been his words in
Rome, words unknown to us, they certainly produced a very
faint impression there, since Rome, as well as the Western
churches, has never ceased to recognize this Scripture as an
inspired book.
It would appear also from some remarks of Dionysius of
Alexandria,5 quoted by Eusebius (vii. 25), that in Egypt, a
quarter of a century after Caius, some anonymous persons,
before the days of Dionysius (the Alogi) might have rejected
the Apocalypse, and might have shown the absurd boldness
of attributing it to Cerinthus ; — absurd, I say, since there is
not a sacred book more opposed to the peculiar opinions of
Cerinthus than the Apocalypse, as Lardner has proved.8
i H. E. Lib. iii. 28; Lib. vii. 25.
2 Michaelis, Edit. Fr. tom. iv. p. 528 to 540.
8 See his Introduction.
* At' diroKakv^eav ag vizb dnoorbXov psyaKov yeypappsvuv, Tepa"koyiag
ijfUv ag 6i' ayye?Mv' aiiru Sedeiypevag tpevdopevog.
6 nveg pkv ovv tltv izpb ijpCnt, says Dionysius.
6 Vol. ii. (4to.) p. 700.

310 THE CANON.
Eusebius again forty years after Caius, toward the middle
of the third century, mentions in Egypt the first man truly
notable, who had raised his voice, not against the canonicity
or the divine inspiration of the Apocalypse (for he acknowl
edged both), but solely against its apostolicity. It was Dio
nysius, bishop of Alexandria from A. D. 247 to 264, the time
of his death ; a man learned and justly respected, but of
whose numerous works we have now nothing but some frag
ments preserved in Eusebius's history.1 In the mean time,
what is remarkable, Dionysius, to justify his prejudices
against the Johannily (if the term may be allowed) of the
Apocalypse, has not been able, as we have just seen, to allege
a single historical argument, and was obliged to content him
self with saying that " some before him had rejected it, at
tributing it to Cerinthus." And certainly, that so learned a
man was not able to advance a historical objection, is a fact ¦
which Michaelis,2 in his impartiality, declares to " have great
weight." See then what are almost the sole reasons which Dionysius
has alleged to establish his position that another John, a dis
ciple equally inspired, wrote the Apocalypse ; for instance,
John Mark (cousin of Barnabas), " or rather, some other
John, living in the province of Asia ; " " for," he says, " they
still show near Ephesus two sepulchers marked alike with
the name of John."
It is, in the first place, that the author of the Apocalypse
calls himself John more than once, whereas the apostle has
never thus named himself in either his gospel or his epistles.
Secondly, in naming himself John, he does not call himself
an apostle. Thirdly, there is no mention of the epistles of
John in the Apocalypse, nor of the Apocalypse in the epis
tles. Fourthly, there are striking resemblances between
the three epistles of John and his gospel, while there is
none between these books and the Apocalypse. Fifthly,
iLib. vii. chaps. 20, 22, 25, 26; Lib. vi. 45, 46; (especially Lib. vii. 25.)
2 Chap, xxxii., 2 vol. ; vi. p. 484.

FIRST HALF OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 311
whilst the Greek of "these books is very correct, that of the
Apocalypse is not.
Of all these objections, none has much weight except that
which is founded on the difference of styles. But every one
knows how much, in this respect, the various productions of
an author frequently differ from each other, according to the
subject he is treating, the epochs of his writing, and other
circumstances. Who has not made this remark in regard to
the sacred authors of the Old and the New Testaments, ac
cording as they are narrating, exhorting, or predicting ? Let
any one, for instance, compare Moses in his narratives with
Moses in his last song (Deut. xxxii.) ; Isaiah in his historical
chapters (xxxvi. to xxxviii.), with Isaiah in his prophetic
poetry ; Paul in his epistle to the Romans with Paul in his
epistle to Philemon.
Thus Dionysius, after having exposed his prejudices against
the Apocalypse, takes pains to add that " as for him, he durst
not reject it, so many brethren being ardently attached to it." 1
And if he takes the pains to show that its author was John,
a son of Zebedee, he by no means denies " its inspiration."
" That John, whoever he may have been, author of the
Apocalypse, had a divine revelation ; that he received from
above a knowledge and a prophecy ; is what I do not deny.2 . .
And I admit with the others that he must have been a holy
man inspired of God " (dytov pkv yap eXvai twos koX OeoTrveva-
tov cvvaivo).)
Thus then, we must not rank Dionysius of Alexandria
among even the adversaries of the Apocalypse, I mean of its
canonicity and its inspiration, but only of its apostolicity ;
and even with a great deal of reserve and doubt. And if^
after Dionysius, the doubters became for a time more numer
ous and bolder, yet they never appealed to history ; so that
1 'Eyd< lie ddtTrioaL piv oia hv roXp^oaipi ri> jiiiiTdov, tvoMCiV airb diA
movdrig ixovruv ddeX<j>Qv.
2 Toiru di (moKuXv^iv eapanevai, ica.1 yvdioiv uA/niihai nal wpotyriTuav,
OVK (iVTSpC).

312 THE CANON.
their objections have no more weight with us than if they
were living in our day.
Now, whilst in this first half of the third century, Eusebius
found these isolated doubts so reservedly uttered, he saw still
coming down from the earliest period, that long chain of wit
nesses ; which we have seen commencing in the days of the
apostles, and which continued to unfold itself with great dis
tinctness particularly in three of the most pious, and what is
here of chief consequence, of the most learned writers of
Christian antiquity, all three martyrs or sons of martyrs ; the
one in Asia, at Rome, and in Arabia ; the other in Palestine ;
and the third in Carthage, who fully and strongly expressed
their veneration for the Apocalypse. The first, Hippolytus,
one of the most learned men of antiquity, no less celebrated
in mathematics and astronomy than in sacred learning, was
an intimate friend of Origen. He taught both in the East
and the West, for after having been, as is supposed, bishop
of Aden 1 in Arabia, he came to the Capital of the Empire,
about a. d. 235, labored there a long time, and even, as is
believed, underwent martyrdom there.2 Now this great man
was not satisfied with frequently quoting the Apocalypse as
one of the inspired books of the apostle John. He wrote a
commentary on it frequently quoted by the ancients,8 and
particularly devoted some chapters to a refutation of the
errors of Caius. The testimony of a man so learned and
pious is Of such importance that Michaelis attributes princi
pally to his influence the universal acceptance of the Apoca
lypse in the Christian church. In his book " on Christ and
1 Portus Romanus. This fact maintained by Cave (Hist. Litt. Sseculum
Novatianum) is utterly rejected by Mr. Bunsen. (See his Hippolytus).
But the arguments of Cave remain, and we do not think he has been re
futed. 2 There was at least in his day one bishop Hippolytus who was martyred
for the kingdom of God. There was found, in 1551, near the walls of Rome,
a curious marble erected to his memory, and bearing the list of his works,
so greatly were they respected, (Cave, ibid).
? Among others, Andreas, bishop of Cesarea, A. D. 520, and Jacob the
Syrian, bishop of Odessa, a. b. 651, (Michaelis, p. 479).

FIRST HALF OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 313
Antichrist " (in seventy brief chapters), a book still extant,
he says, " John saw in the Island of Patmos terrible myste
ries. Tell me then, 0 John, thou apostle and disciple of
Christ, what hast thou seen of Babylon ? "
The second witness, yet more illustrious, is Origen, in the
first half of the third century. There is, in fact, no author
ity so great in antiquity, in regard to sacred criticism. At
the end of the second century he was fifteen years old, and
died a. D. 253. Now, this learned man, says Michaelis, " re
ceived, opposed as he was to the doctrine of the Millenarians,
the Apocalypse as being in the canon of the inspired Scrip
tures." He entertained no doubt of its authenticity as the
work of John the son of Zebedee. In his Commentary on
John, he calls this apostle, on account of the Apocalypse (8tot
tyjs diroKaXvij/eois), " the apostle, evangelist, and prophet."
He makes such frequent mention of this sacred book, in his
writings, that it would be superfluous to accumulate instances
here. " What shall we say of John, who leaned his head on
Jesus' bosom ? " he exclaims in one passage found in Euse
bius j1 " for, not only has he left us a gospel, declaring that
he might write so many that the wrorld could not contain them ;
but he has also written the Apocalypse 2 in which he was
ordered to seal the things which the seven thunders had re
vealed, and not to write them." Also the learned Doctor
Liicke, a modern opponent of the Apocalypse, has had the
candor to say, " It is a weighty fact against us that Origen
often quotes this book as from the apostle John, — he who had
made so many researches on the canon of the New Testa
ment, on its limits and its classifications, and who never con
ceals the objections raised against a book."
The third of our witnesses at this remote epoch, is in
Latin Africa, the cotemporary of Origen, the martyr of Car
thage, the learned and pious Cyprian. When he quotes the
1 H. E. Lib. vi. chap. 25. See, also, other quotations which are remark
able, in Kirchhofer, 1842, p. 309.
2 "Eypaipe Si nal rip> 'A.iroKd7i.wbiv. 27

314 THE CANON.
Apocalypse, it is as a work of John,1 as a book of the Holy
Scripture,2 as a writing inspired of God.8

Witnesses of the Second Half of the Third Century.
We see no new adversary of any importance appearing in
this latter portion of the century, and we find everywhere, on
the contrary, the Apocalypse received into the canon as an
apostolical writing, as well by the doctors of the schismatic
churches, Novatians, and Donatists,4 as by the eminent writ
ers then in the universal church ; I mean, by Victorinus,
bishop of Pettaw, who suffered martyrdom under Diocletian,
and who had even written a commentary on the Apocalypse ; 5
by Methodius, bis cotemporary, bishop of Tyre, and also a
martyr ; 6 by Arnobius of Numidia, the illustrious apologist
for the Christian religion, in his commentary on the GIL
Psalm ; 7 in fine, by the learned Laetantius, his disciple, to
whom the emperor Constantine committed the education of
his son, and who, it is said, died A. d. 325.8
Thus then, from the first appearing of the Apocalypse, has
continued the long chain of testimonies rendered by the most
brilliant lights of the church to its authenticity, its inspira
tion, its apostolicity. These testimonies were equally brill
iant in the East and the West ; they were proclaimed in the
North as far as Pannonia and in Gaul, and southward in Italy,
Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, Arabia, Proconsular Africa.
And if at the same time, some isolated voices, less approba
tory, hesitating, or opposed, were heard, not as to the divine
1 De bono patient. He quotes there Rev. xix. 10.
2 De Eleemos. He there quotes Rev. iii. 17.
8 He quotes also, Rev. xvii. 15.
* Lardner, iii. 121, 565. Edit. 4to.
* Ibid. p. 163.
« Ibid. p. 181, 198.
1 1bid. p. 480. If. at least, his commentaries on the Psalms are not
due to Arnobius 2d. (Cave, Hist. Litt. tom. i. p. 161.)
s Instit. vii. 17. Epitome, chaps. 42, 73, 74.

WITNESSES Of THE FOURTH CENTURY. 315
origin of the book, but the authorship, these voices, none the
less, add new weight to our argument, since they attest the
absolute impossibility of any production by the enemies of a
historical ground of opposition.

Witnesses of the fourth Century.
The voices of this fourth century, apart from the hesita
tions of Eusebius and the silence of Cyril, Gregory, and
Chrysostom, were very strong, and secured the unanimous
readoption of the Apocalypse by all the parts of the univer
sal church.
Among the Latins all the great doctors of the epoch ren
dered it their testimony ; Ambrose, in Milan ; Jerome, in
Rome, and afterwards in the East ; 1 Augustine, in Proconsu
lar Africa, whence his writings immediately on their appear
ing, spread like the light ; Rufinus, in Venice, in the East,
and in Rome.2
Among the Syrians, it had for a witness Ephraim, the
most eminent of all their doctors,8 although it was not found
in their Peshito version, already made before the death of
John. Ephraim used all the books of the New Testament,
as we'll in those works which we still have in Greek, as in
those written in Syriac.4 He says, for instance, " John saw
in his Apocalypse a great and wonderful book secured by
seven seals." And again (ii. 342) : " The day of the* Lord
is a thief." (Rev. iii. 3; xvi. 15.) Now, these Syriac
churches extended throughout the East, to Tartary and even
to China. The famous monument discovered by the Jesuits

1 Apocal. Johan. he said in his letter to Paulinus, has as many sacra
ments as words (Opp. tom. iv. p. 576.)
2 " Johannis epist. tres " " Apocalypsis Johannis," he says. " Hac sunt
qu« Patres inter Canonem concluserunt; ex quibus fidei nostra assertiones
constare voluerunt." Expos, in Symbol. Apostolor. p. 26; apud Cyprianum.
8 See Michaelis. p. 495. Lardner, iv. 313, 4to.
* Oper. Syr. ii. p. 232.

316 THE CANON.
at Sanxuen,1 in the province of Xensi, and dated a.d. 781,
bore in its two inscriptions, Chinese and Syriac, a reference
to the New Testament as containing twenty-seven books ;
which, as Michaelis observes, shows that for those churches
the Apocalypse was a part of the New Testament.
Among the Greeks, the most distinguished writers of this
century equally revered it as a Scripture inspired of God.
Athanasius, among others, who quoted it often, and who, in
his "Festal Epistle," gives us absolutely the same catalogue
with the churches of our day ; Epiphanius; Basil the Great,
who quotes it in his second book against Eunonius,2 and who
is named by Arethas as recognizing its inspiraiion ; Cyril,
the patriarch of Alexandria. Thus we see that Eusebius
has not dared, in his chapter on the canon (H. E. iii. 25), to
omit it from the list of uncontested books. He says, " We
must still rank there (raKreov) if it seems well to you (el
<j>aveir]) the Apocalypse of John, which, as I have said, some
reject, and others place among the uncontested books." Eu
sebius, sometimes favorable, sometimes hesitating, partakes of
the prejudice of his day against the chiliasm attributed to the
Apocalypse; but he recognizes with sufficient frankness that
the historical testimonies of the ancients are favorable to it.
Cyril of Jerusalem appears to have hesitated like Eusebius
on this point ; for, if he has not mentioned the Apocalypse
in the catalogue we find in his fourth catechism, yet he quotes
it very clearly three times (Rev. xii. and xvii.) in his xv.
catechism, chap. ii. 13, 27. 3 And we must say as much, we
think, of Gregory Nazianzen and of Chrysostom ; for both,
while, as it appears, receiving the Apocalypse, have, like
Calvin in modern times, refrained from commenting on it, and
have but rarely quoted it, so that their opinion of it still is
matter of dispute.
1 And discovered again in 1850 by the research of the Protestant bishop
of Shanghai. North China Herald, — The Record, 31 March, 1851.
2 Lardner, iv. 279; v. 13.
8 See M. Stuart on Apoc. i. 361. Elliott, Hor. Apoc. p. 32, 3d edit.

WITNESSES OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 317
In fact, as to Gregory Nazianzen, although in the verses
of his xxxiii. song he has not, as we have said, directly
named the Revelation of John, yet we there perceive, in verse
24th, this apostle quite distinctly designated as the author of
the Apocalypse, when he calls him " the great herald who has
traversed the heavens." K-qpv^ peyas ovpai/oc/>om?s. More
over, in another of his writings which remain, Lardner says,
Gregory twice clearly quotes the Apocalypse ; * and Andreas
of Cesarea, not only indicates him as one of the Fathers who
have acknowledged it, but he himself quotes it frequently.2
And as to Chrysostom, although he almost never quotes
the Apocalypse, yet we find him, in the beginning of his com
mentary on the epistle to the Ephesians, making an evident
allusion to it, when he names John " the blessed evangelist
who was banished to the neighborhood of Ephesus and who
finished his days there." And Professor Liicke a shows with
Wetstein and Schmid, many passages of the Homilies of
Chrysostom on Matthew, in which this Father evidently bor
rows from the Apocalypse ; which seems, he says, to confirm
the assertion of Suidas. " Chrysostom receives both the
three epistles of John and his Apocalypse ; " and shows how
little we should rely on negative arguments taken from the
absence or infrequency of certain quotations in certain au
thors. In this same century, as we have said, two councils which
constructed catalogues of the Holy Scriptures, have been
placed against each other; that of Laodicea in Phrygia, A. D.,
367, excluding the Apocalypse from the canon ; that of Car-!
thage, a.d. 397, admitting it. But we have shown in our
first chapter (sect, xii.), that the authenticity of the decrees
of both on this subject is seriously doubted ; and that even
1 Once he says : 'flc 'ludvvrjg SiSrwuei pe Sid rfjg 'kKOKnlinpeog. A sec
ond time he quotes this verse : Kal 6 uv, Kal b rp>, Kal b ipxopevog, b llav-
TOKpurap. 2 In his commentary on the Apoc, see Lardner v. 5.
8 Liicke, Einleitung, p. 337. 27*

318 THE CANON.
if this authenticity be admitted, the Fathers had no inten
tion to determine authoritatively which are the inspired books
of the two Testaments ; but only to decide, as is expressly
declared in this decree,1 what books might be usefully read in
the public assemblies of the church, and what might not.
Thus, while in the council of Laodicea, the divine, but
mystic book of the Apocalypse was excepted from this num
ber, as our Episcopal brethren now do from the calendar and
the preface of their liturgy, although they recognize its canon
icity ; the council of Carthage, on the contrary, decided to
permit the public reading, not only of inspired and canonical
books, but also of some other books respected for their doc
trine and their antiquity, which were, therefore, denominated
ecclesiastical, and sometimes, but more rarely, regular (that
is, 'a rule of practice, if not of faith), and in regard to which
the practice of one church might differ from that of another.2
Thus, then, the Apocalypse, during the first three centuries
following its appearing in the church, — I mean, during the
second, third, and fourth centuries, — was received as divine ;
and although Dionysius of Alexandria, in the third century,
expressed some doubts about, not its canonicity, but its apos-
1 Quia a Patribus (says the Carthage decree) ista accepimus in Ecclesia
legenda. "On ob Sei (says that of Laodicea) ISiurucovg TJjaXpovg fplebeios
psalmos) AErESOAI 'EN TH 'EKKAHSiA, j) /3i/3Ma ob Kavbviora, (Mil
pbva rd Kavbviora. It is the 59th canon of the council, or 63d in Codex
Can. Eccl. Univ.
2 Cosin Hist, of Canon, a. d. 419 (Lond. 1683); Westcott, Hist, of Canon
of N. T. (Cambridge, 1855); Westcott, after a diligent stud}- of the Greek
manuscripts of the canons, of tbeir Latin versions, and especially of the
Syriac manuscripts preserved in the British Museum, as also the systematic
collections of the canons, made at different times, judges (contrary to Cosin),
that " the external pi-oof is decidedly against the authenticity of the cata
logue forming the 2d part of the 59th canon of Laodicea." He thinks that
" the catalogue is of oriental origin, and that some copyist borrowing the
catalogue of Cyril of Jerusalem, has inserted it in the 59th canon after the
fii-st words of this decree." Prof. Spittler (according to Michaelis, p. 489)
had already tried to show that this part of the canon of Laodicea is an im
posture, and it is marked as suspected in many editions of the councils, for
example, in Harduin (pp. 292, 293).

FIFTH CENTURY. 319
tolicity, although others afterward, especially in the East,
from the days of Eusebius, and the evil days of Arianism,
hesitated to accept and use it for public worship, although
at the end of the fourth century many churches of the Greeks,
as Jerome, says,1 did not receive it with the same freedom as
their predecessors, and as all the Western churches still do, —
yet their objections never had a historical character, and were
always rejected or combated by the great body of the theo
logians. The church could never be named that had abso-/
lutely rejected it, and never was an attack made upon it, which!
was not itself censured ; so that Augustine at the end of the
fourth century, and beginning of the fifth, put the rejection
of the Apocalypse among the heresies (De Hasres. cap. xxx.)
as Tertullian had done in the second and third. (Contra
Marcion, Lib. iv.) Witnesses of the Fifth Century.
The fifth century at length saw an end of the uncertain
ties which had followed, in the fourth, the days of Eusebius
and the controversy of the antimillenarians. In this time,
when Arianism had produced so much evil in the churches,
there were seen minds disposed to disregard the testimonies
of antiquity, to give themselves up to rash conjectures about
texts, with no historical basis, and supported by only dog
matic prejudices. It is to this tendency of his time that
Jerome alludes, when, speaking of the epistle to the He
brews and of the Apocalypse, he said (Ep. 119 ad Dardan.)
"And yet for us, we receive both these books, thus conform
ing ourselves, not to the fashions of the day, but to the au
thority of the ancient authors." Starting, therefore, from the
first half of this century, the churches at length often gave
to the sacred book of the Apocalypse that unanimous recep
tion which the other books had already long enjoyed.
1 Nee Grsecorum quidem ecclesia; Apocalypsin Joannis eadem libertate
euscipiunt, et tamen nos (eam) suscipimus . . . veterum scriptorum auctori-
tatem sequentes. (Epist. ad Dardanum, tom. ii. p. 608. Paris Edit.)

320 THE CANON.
SECTION II.
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
Its Character and History.
The matter, the style, the arrangement, and the move
ment of thought of this book, stamp it with a peculiar charac
ter of majesty. To the depth and loftiness of the doctrines
correspond the noble eloquence of the discourse, the sublime
calmness, authority, and simplicity of the language. We
abstain here in general from drawing our arguments from
internal criticism, and from seeking them anywhere else than
in the testimonies of history ; but the impression produced
in every age by the religious sublimity of its instructions is
itself a fact of history. God, who had often spoken by his
prophets, at length speaks to us by his own Son, the bright
ness of his glory, the express image of his person, and as
superior to the angels as the Creator is to the creature. We
must then contemplate the eternal existence of this Son of
God and his mysterious humanity ; his apostleship, and his
eternal priesthood, his unspeakable sympathy, his all-powerful
intercession and the fullness of his expiation ; then, also, the
divine harmony of the two Testaments, the identical charac
ters of the elect in all ages, the ardent aspirations of the an
cient people of God in regard to Christ, the eternal safety of
those who belong to him, the terrible ruin of those who reject
him ; in fine, the cloud of witnesses who attest to us the effi
cacy, the power, and the realities of faith. Such are the
sublime topics of this epistle ; and the whole ends with a
final adoration rendered to that God of peace who hath
brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep
through the blood of the everlasting covenant, and who alone
is able to do for us that which is well pleasing by Jesus
Christ, to whom be glory, for ever and ever !

HISTORY OF EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 321
Evidently written before the ruin of the temple,1 and, from
all appearance, before the martyrdom of James, which took
place A. D. 62, and to which it seems to make allusion,2 this
epistle, addressed moreover directly to Hebrew converts, and
sent consequently either to Palestine, or more particularly to
the church of Jerusalem, or to the Hebrews scattered in all
the empire, forms rather a treatise than a letter. It must
have circulated first from Jerusalem in all the oriental Is-
raelitish congregations ; and we might reasonably expect, if
this Scripture is authentic, that it would be especially the
Israelitish churches of the East, the Syrian flocks, and par
ticularly the church of Jerusalem, which would furnish us the
most authentic and credible information. It will be readily
granted, on the contrary, that, if this Scripture is forged, it
was among the Hebrews rather than any portion of Chris
tendom where the most violent opposition would be made to
its legitimacy. It would be the most impossible of all things
that an impostor should seek and find his partisans, bis rec
ommendations, and his false testimonies, among the churches
of Judea.
Now this is precisely the historical fact (and a fact worthy
of especial notice) that the epistle to the Hebrews was re
ceived as divine from the days of the apostles, and with no
intermission, both at Jerusalem, among the Syrian Chris
tians, and in all the churches of the East.
It must also be conceded that if, as it affirms, this letter
was written in Italy, very shortly before the Neronian perse
cutions, it would then have been quickly known among the
Christians in Rome. Now it is equally admitted, even
among the adversaries, that it was fully acknowledged and
quoted in Rome by Clement the Bishop of Rome, cotem
porary with Paul, the most ancient and most respected of
the apostolical Fathers.
At the same time the churches of the West, and more
iHeb. ix. 6, 7; x. 1,2,3,11.
3 Heb. xiii. 7 ; t^v enfiaaiv i% avaorpofijg.

322 THE CANON.
especially this very Church of Rome, after having first ren
dered to this epistle so decided testimony, began, toward the
first half of the third century, to express doubts concerning it,
on account of the use made of it by the Montanists and the
Novatians.1 We believe we should accordingly leave a spe
cial place for the Latin Fathers in the review we are about to
make of the testimonies of antiquity ; and we will commence
by exhibiting the unanimity of the eastern churches on this
subject. It will perhaps be best, in this review, to begin at
the fourth century in the East, and go backward to the first,
thence returning to the fourth or fifth in the West.
The Testimony of the East in the Fourth Century.
And first, to what man more worthy of belief could we
appeal, in the fourth century, than to the very patriarch of
the Hebrews, Cyril of Jerusalem, one of the most learned
men of his day, and also one of the most pious ? He was
born a. d. 315. Already famous at the age of thirty-four
years, he composed his " Catechisms," among the earliest
expositions of the Christian faith now extant. He was also
one of the most eminent leaders of the second oecumenical
council, held in Constantinople, a. d. 381.2 Now Cyril,
when he gives us, at Jerusalem, in his fourth Catechism, " the
Catalogue of the divine and inspired Scriptures of the Old
and New Testaments," there reckons, besides the seven cath
olic epistles, the fourteen epistles of Paul : and he declares
that " the collection of all these books is transmitted to us by
the apostles and the ancient bishops, the presidents of the
Church." And again, what other oriental witness was better informed
than the learned Jerome ? When he had gone from Rome
1 Without doubt because they perverted the 6th chapter in their favor.
See Kirchhofer, Hist, of the Canon, pp. 240, 243, 247, 425, (Quellensamm
lung zur Gesch. des N. T. Can. his auf Hieron.) Zurich, 1842.
2 See Socrates, H. E. v. 8,

TESTIMONY OF THE EAST IN FOURTH CENTURY. 323
to Palestine to pursue his labors on the Scriptures, he had
probably taken with him the Latin prejudices against the
epistle to the Hebrews. And yet he attests that he receives
it, as well as the Apocalypse ; and he also declares to west
ern Christians, in the letter to Dardanus already mentioned,
that not only is it now received as of Paul in all the churches
of the East, but that formerly it had been received by all the
ancient Greek writers, and that it was daily read in the
assemblies of the church. " See," said he, " what it is we
should declare among our people (that is, the Latins), al
though the major part attribute it to Barnabas or Clement."
" And it is a matter of little moment to us which of them
wrote it, since it is daily sanctioned by being read in the
churches." " Even if the usage of the Latins does not admit
it among the canonical Scriptures, yet we admit it." " We
must by no means in that follow the custom of these times
(among the Romans) ; but rather the authority of the ancient
authors." x
Thus it is supposed that it was especially the testimony of
Jerome, as well as that of Augustine, which was the means
employed by God to bring back the Roman Church from the
grave error into which she had fallen for so long a period, in
reference to this epistle, and to restore it among her mem
bers to its place in the canon.
It would still be difficult, in this very century among the
Orientals, to present a witness more worthy of our confidence
than Athanasius, by reason of his place in the universal
church, as well as of his science and his discernment in
Christian antiquities. Now, this Father, with all the east
ern churches, received the epistle to the Hebrews. We
have read in his " Catalogue of the Scriptures regarded as
canonical and transmitted and believed as divine," these ex
press words : " Of Paul the apostle, there are fourteen epis
tles" (navAov d7rooToAou €7rioroAai SeKaricraapes) ¦ He enu-
i See also his 125th Epistle to Evagrius: " The Epistle to the Hebrews,
which is received by all the Greeks and some of the Latins."

324 THE CANON.
merates them, and he places in the tenth rank his epistle to
the Hebrews, before his four pastoral letters.
We could also still quote in this century Titus of Bozra,
A. d. 362, the Council of Laodicea, a. d. 367, Epiphanius,
A. d. 368, Basil the Great, a. d. 370, Gregory Nazianzen,
A. d. 370, Gregory of Nyssa and Ephraim the Syrian, a. d.
371, Diodorus of Tarsus, A. u. 378, Amphilochius of Ico-
nium, A. d. 380, Theodore of Mopsuesta, A. d. 394, and
Chrysostom, A. d. 398. We learn from Epiphanius (Hajres.
69) and from Theodoret,1 that in their time, outside of the
church, this epistle, on account of its splendid testimony to
the divinity of Jesus Christ, was rejected by certain antitrin-
itarian heretics. This latter Father says, " We must not be
surprised if these men, tainted with the Arian malady, were
so crazy in regard to the apostolical Scriptures, as to wish to
separate the epistle to the Hebrews from them, and to call
it illegitimate (voOov). For if they dared to lift their tongue
against our God and Saviour, what would they not dare to
do against the most devoted and the most sublime heralds of
his truth ? "
But we return to the third century.
Testimony of the East in the Third Century.
Without pausing at Dionysius of Alexandria2 and the
Council of Antioch, which alike received the epistle to the
Hebrews as of Paul, we could not do better for this epoch
than to consult first Eusebius, who was distinguished already
in the close of the century, but who rather belonged to the
next, and the great Origen, who begins the third century,
and who, still more learned, consecrated his strength and his
life to the study of the Scriptures.
In the twenty-fifth chapter of his third book, Eusebius
does not hesitate to class in the canon of the uncontested
i Interpret. Ep. ad. Hebr. proem. Opp. iii. 541.
2 Euseb. H. E. vi. 41.

EASTERN WITNESSES IN THE THIRD CENTURY. 325
books all the fourteen epistles of Paul, without excepting
that to the Hebrews. " The fourteen epistles of Paul," he
says again, in his third chapter, " are evident and sure (7rpo'-
BrjXoi /cat cracf>as) ; but it would not be just to overlook the
rejection of the epistle to the Hebrews by some, who say
that the Roman Church disputes its Pauline origin."
Origen, almost a century earlier, received it so fully as
divine, that he composed homilies to expound it to the peo
ple. See likewise his words in a passage which Eusebius
has preserved : " The style of the epistle to the Hebrews
has not the character of simplicity so peculiarly belonging to
this apostle, who calls himself a man plain of speech ; but
the letter is more Hellenic in its structure, as every one ad
mits who can distinguish the difference of styles. But, on
the other hand, that the thoughts of this epistle are admira
ble, and not inferior to the Scriptures universally received as
apostolical, is what every one who reads the apostles atten
tively should acknowledge with us." x He adds, " See then
what would be my opinion ; it is that the thoughts are indeed
the apostle's, but the phrase and construction belong to some
author who remembered the apostolical instructions, or to
some man who wrote notes on the instructions of a teacher.
If. then, some church holds this epistle as of Paul, let it be
praised for it (ei8oKip.eiTu> Kal iirl tovtio) ; for it is not with
out reason (ov yap eliaj) that the men of antiquity have trans-
milted it as Paul's. Who was, then, the author of this epistle ?
God knows ; but the rumor has come to us (rj 8e els r]pas
<f>6do-acra lo-ropla) from some persons, that Clement, he who
became bishop of the Romans, was its author ; and from
some others, that it was Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the
Acts." Such, then, was the state of minds in the East, in the third
century, in regard to this holy epistle, if we may judge from
Origen and Eusebius. All esteemed it to be divine, and
almost all believed it to be from Paul. It was the opinion,
i H. E. vi. 25.
28

326 THE CANON.
they tell us, of all the men of antiquity. They had trans
mitted it as a book of Paul ; but some of Origen's contem
poraries were induced, not at all by historical reasons, but
simply because the style is so elegant, to believe that Paul
could not have been its immediate author, and that he may
rather have given the thought to some of his companions in
labor, to Clement, for instance, or to Luke. And Origen
gives this supposition, too, only as a " rumor " that had
reached his ears, from " some persons," and not even as an
opinion which he admitted.

Testimony of the East in the Second Century.
Having reached the second century, we may invoke one
of the most weighty testimonies in the person of Clement of
Alexandria, the most learned and influential man of his day,
teaching with extraordinary success in the most learned city
of the East. Born only forty years after the death of John,
he himself said he was " a neighbor by his age to the apos
tolical times." 2 So that when he, with Origen, supports his
testimony on that " of the ancients," these ancients can be no
other than the cotemporaries of the apostles themselves. He
carried, very imprudently without doubt, into the study of
Christianity the pretensions and the habits of his philosophy ;
but this very disposition, which might injure the purity of his
faith, perhaps so much the more guarantees the independence
of his judgment concerning the epistle to the Hebrews.
Here are his own words as Eusebius reports them : 2
" The epistle to the Hebrews is the work of Paul. He
himself wrote it in Hebrew, and Luke translated it into
Greek.3 Hence its resemblance in style to the Acts. And
if Paul placed at the head of it neither his name nor his title
of Apostle, it was for a sufficient reason. He was address
ing persons greatly prejudiced against him; he therefore
i Strom, i. 1. 2 H. E. Lib. vi. chap. 14.
8 This supposition we shall presently refute.

EASTERN WITNESSES IN THE SECOND CENTURY. 327
prudently withheld his name, that they might not be prevented
from reading it. Besides, and it is what the blessed elder x
said (6 paKaptos Trpe&plvrepos), considering that our Lord, as
apostle or envoy from the Most High, was especially sent
(aTreardXri) to the people of the Hebrews, and that the epis
tle to the Hebrews alone in the New Testament calls him
by that name (Heb. iii. 1), it was proper that Paul should
abstain from giving himself that title of Apostle to the He
brews in his letter, whether from modesty, from reverence to
the Lord, or because he waS simply the Apostle lo the Gen
tiles." This testimony of Clement of Alexandria, with that of
Origen, is not only of great weight with him who considers
the character of these godly men, their learning, their trav
els, their proximity to the time and place in which the epistle
was written ; but it weighs still more when we think of their
prejudices in regard to the style and the Hellenic elegance
of the book. The historical evidence must have been irre
sistible for these two men who saw themselves compelled by
the unanimous tradition of the Eastern churches to recognize
that, after all, Paul was the author of the epistle.
Moreover, as has been said, the testimony of Clement
being that of the church of Alexandria, founded by the very
Mark2 whom Peter (1 Pet. v. 13) calls "my son," and
whom Paul (2 Tim. iv. 11 ; Col. iv. 10) sent for from his
prison in Rome (because, he says, " he is profitable to me for
the ministry "), this Mark who, it is said,3 was present at the
martyrdom of both these apostles ; this evidence, we say, thus
becomes the joint testimony of Mark, Peter, and Paul.
We might also have counted among the Eastern witnesses
during this second century, and like us speaking in the name
1 Clement has been supposed to refer here to the pious Pantaenus, the
Apostle of India, who was still living at Alexandria a. d. 216, where he
had established a school, and where Clement himself was one of his pupils.
2 Euseb. H. E. v. 10. Jerome, De Viris Illustr. xxxv.
8 Irenseus, Adv. Haeres. iii. 1.

328 THE CANON.
of the churches of Alexandria, of Smyrna, and of Ephesus,
— first Pantaenus, the celebrated missionary of the oriental
nations and the master of Clement of Alexandria ; — then
Ignatius and Polyearp, who, without expressly quoting the
epistle, make very clear allusions to it ; — in fine, Irenseus
himself, who, before establishing himself in Gaul, A. D. 178,
belonged by education to Asia. In fact, although this Father
has not clearly quoted the epistle in his book on the Here
sies,1 he has still made mention of it, Eusebius says, and he
quotes certain passages of it in a book of his now lost.2 But
we prefer to come to the very century of the apostles them
selves. Testimony of the East in the First Century.
In this first century, it is not in the East alone, but also
in the West, that we find abundant proof of the admission
already begun of this epistle into the canon of the Scrip
tures; alike in Rome and in Babylon. On the one hand,
we see it translated in the first century into Syriac, in the
Peshito, the most ancient of the versions ; and, on the other,
we may cite in its favor two irrefutable witnesses, both co-
temporaries of Paul, and both martyrs. Thus it was not
without strong reasons that Clement of Alexandria and Ori
gen said that in their day the epistle had in its favor " the
ancients." But who were the ancients for them if not the
cotemporaries or the immediate successors of the apostles ?
Now, these two testimonies which remain to us to quote are,
that of Clement of Rome, who, in his letter to the Corinthi
ans,8 has made such frequent quotations from this epistle, as
1 II. 55 (Heb. i. 3); iii. 6 (Heb. iii. 5); iv. 26 (Heb. x. 1); iv. 30, and
v. 5 (Heb. xi. 5).
2 H. E. Lib. iv. 26. It is in bis book, " Of Divers Essays," (AialJfruv
Siafbpav); iv $ Trig irpbg 'Eplpaiovg kmaroT^g . . . pvnpovevu, (rnrd nva
i£ (avrfjg) irapadepevog.
8 Eusebius, H. E. iii. 38. Clement ad Cor. ch. xxxvi. (Heb. 13 4 5
7, 13-15; viii. 1-3); ch. xvii. (Heb. xi. 37); ch. xliii. (Heb. iii. 5); ch.

TESTIMONY OF THE EAST IN THE FIRST CENTURY. 329
already seen in the extracts we have given from it. He evi
dently had it before him while writing his letter ; he does
not name the author, but he quotes entire passages from him,
and paraphrases many others ; and this fact, so prominent
in his entire letter, was already noticed by Eusebius and
Jerome. The other witness is Simon Peter himself.
The second epistle of Peter, written shortly before his
death, was addressed by him, as apostle of the circumcision,
to the converted Hebrews.1 He there speaks to them (iii.
15) of another letter which Paul had addressed to them,
" Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the
wisdom given unto him has written unto you ; as also in all
his epistles." Paul, then, had written to these converted
Hebrews ; there must then have existed somewhere a letter
addressed by him to the Hebrews, and received as such by
the churches of the circumcision ; for it must be noticed that
Peter is careful to distinguish the epistles of Paul as belong
ing to two classes ; that which he had written to the Hebrews,
and " his other epistles." This letter of Paul to the Hebrews
could therefore be no other than that to which all the oriental
churches had given this title, and which they placed in the
rank of his thirteen other epistles.
Thus the numerous testimonies, unanimous and continuous,
of all the East in favor of the epistle to the Hebrews go
back in the church to the remotest antiquity. They may be
followed uninterruptedly and uncontradicted even to the
middle of the fifth century ; and in that interval more than
forty Greek Fathers may be found who received this epistle
as from Paul. If two or three among them spoke of certain
doubts, it was not in their own name. These doubts, origi
nated by others, among the Latins, and of a late date, were
repelled by all the orientals.
xxi. (Heb. iv. 12); ch. xxvii. (Heb. vi. 18); ch. xxiii. (Heb. x. 37); ch.
ix. (Heb. xi. 5, 8, 31); ch. x. (Heb. xi. 8); ch. xii. (Heb. xi. 31); ch. xviii.
(Heb. iii. 2; xi. 2, 4, 5, 37, 39); ch. lvi. (Heb. xii. 6).
1 2 Pet. i. 1. Compare 1 Pet. i. 1.
28*

330 THE CANON.
Western Testimonies.
It was quite otherwise among the Western churches, but
only after the middle of the third century. At first, in
structed in regard to the epistle to the Hebrews, during the
whole course of the first century, of the second, and the first
years of the third, they were not after that as constant in
their testimony as the Eastern churches; and they even
went so far as to be almost all misled by the influence of
Rome, and that for a very long period.
We have seen that at the close of the first century the
church of Rome furnished us, in the person of Clement,
its bishop, an irrefutable witness of the faith then professed.
He was also the witness for the other Western churches
during the entire course of the second century ; for we have
seen that Irenseus, bishop of Lyons, quoted him in one of his
writings.1 And if afterwards this very author, in his book
" Against the Heresies,'- avoided making any express use
of it, it was, as is supposed, because occupying an eminent
place in the West, he thought he ought not to furnish the
Montanists arguments by quoting a book which they used to
sustain their errors. So too in Africa, Tertullian, who was
a Montanist, had at first very explicitly quoted the epistle
to the Hebrews in the 20th chapter of his book " De Pudi-
citia," composed, according to Cave, about the end of the
second century. He there quoted the epistle to the He
brews, and quite at length, the celebrated passage in which
the author declares that men falling after having received
certain illuminations can never be renewed to repentance.
He there attributes the epistle to Barnabas, " that man," he
says, " whom Paul had associated with himself; that com
panion of the apostles, taught by them and teaching with
them." To these monuments of the respect which the Latin
church still professed for this epistle during the first two
' We have said, it is the fJi/3Atoi/ ti SiaM^eav Siacibpav. Euseb. H. E.
V. 26.

WESTERN TESTIMONIES. 831
centuries and the first half of the third, we may add a new,
important testimony. It is that which has just been fur
nished us by the appearance of the long-lost book of Hippo
lytus the martyr " On the Heresies." J This Father, it is
known, although coming from the East, resided a long time
in Italy in the diocese of Rome. Now, the Oxford presses
have recently (1851) published this book from the original,
which had just been discovered. Just as in 1628, the unex
pected discovery of the epistle of Clemens Romanus changed
the judgments of Sacred Criticism concerning the authority
of the epistle to the Hebrews in the Western churches dur
ing the first century, so now, in our day, the appearing of
the book of Hippolytus, which quotes the epistle to the
Hebrews as having an apostolical authority,2 extends our
ideas of the assent given to this. Scripture among the West
ern churches on to the middle of the third century. Hippo
lytus is supposed to have died about a. d. 240.
It was at Rome, about the beginning of the third century,
that the same priest Caius, who is supposed to have origi
nated the doubts about the Apocalypse, in a writing against
the Montanists, also expressed the first doubts concerning the
epistle to the Hebrews. From this epoch, the credit of this
Scripture appears to have so declined among the Latins that
Tertullian, who, before the attacks of Caius, had boldly quoted
it, afterward referred to it only with a certain reserve, in
condescension to the Latin church. This is a remark of
Hug. The canon of Muratori, whose date is uncertain and
which many attribute to Caius, but which certainly is after
Marcion, does not contain the epistle to the Hebrews. And
after Tertullian, Cyprian, in the same place, did not receive
it ; he names seven churches to which Paul had written, and
does not speak of the epistle to the Hebrews.8 From that
1 Kard TiaaCxv alpeaeav ekeyxog.
2 See Bunsen in his Hippolytus, or Critical Researches into the doctrine
and practice of Rome under Commodus and Alex. Severus ; 4 vols. Lond.
1852, (vol. i. p. 127.)
3 Cyprian. Testim. ad Judaeos, i. 20. De Exhortatione Martyr, cap. ii.

332 THE CANON.
time the Latins everywhere took the same view, to about the
end of the next century.
The cause of this aberration of the Western churches, we
have said, is not unknown. The controversy with the Mon
tanists first suggested it to Caius ; and when the Novatians
renewed, fifty years afterward, the doctrine and the discipli
nary rigors of the Montanists, sustaining themselves by this
book, as Jerome, Augustine, and Epiphanius inform us,
the Latins then, desirous of combating them more advanta
geously,- were induced to reject it. And we have already
heard Philastrius expressly declare that the liturgical use of
the epistle ceased in some churches, because of what it says
of penitence (vi. 4, etc.) and on account of the Novatians ; J
but he places these notions and usages among the heresies of
certain persons. (Hasresis quorumdam de epistola Pauli ad
Hebraeos). At the same time, we must understand, this late and tem
porary opposition of the Latins, so far from weakening our
faith in the canonicity of this book, rather serves to confirm
it ; because it shows us that all its detractors were never able
to produce one historical fact to sustain their objections, not
one contradictory tradition, not one argument of any value.
If a book of Cicero were presented to us which the writers
of his age had unanimously attributed to him, and which all
those of the succeeding century had not ceased to place in
the collection of his works, we should not find it difficult to
ascribe it to him although we found persons, far from Rome
¦ -ad three centuries afterward, without giving good reasons
and without contesting the testimony of antiquity, had simply
raised objections to the book which any one in our times is
just as capable of raising. Testimony to historical facts may
increase in force as it approaches the time of the events ;
but matters of mere argument men of every age may be
equally competent to weigh.
1 De Hosresibus, 40. Bibl. Patrum Max. v. p. 711. De pcenitentia au
tem propter Novatianos.

REVIEW OF THESE TESTIMONIES. 833
However it may have been with this opposition of the
Latins during the latter half of the third century and the
first half of the fourth, our epistle, which had never ceased
to be received by all the Greeks, began again, from the mid
dle of this fourth century, to be acknowledged by the Latins.
In A. d. 354, Hilary of Poitiers regarded it as of Paul ; he
was imitated by Ambrose, bishop of Milan ; by Philastrius,
bishop of Brescia, and many others ; so that at length Jerome
and Augustine, more learned than their cotemporaries, en
lightened them on this question, appealing to historical proofs,
to the testimony of the Orientals, and to the authority of all
Christian antiquity. It was probably their influence that
caused it to be received by the council of Carthage, in A. d.
397, as written by Paul. From the fifth century, all the
churches have unanimously received it, to our day.
Review of these Testimonies.
We conclude, then, from all these facts :
1. That the canonicity of the epistle, immediately after its
publication, was recognized in the West as in the East, at
Rome as at Jerusalem.
2. That the same testimony was rendered to it afterward
without interruption in all the East, both among Syrian and
Greek Christians,
3. That this recognition continued among the Western
churches through the second century and first half of the
third. 4. That if the Latin churches, and more especially that of
Rome, hesitated in regard to it, or even refused to receive it
during the last half of the third century and first half of the
fourth, they at last ranked themselves unanimously on the
side of the primitive testimony of the universal Church, as
of the constant and invariable testimony of the Eastern
churches. 5. That the Church of Rome has varied and grievously

334 THE CANON.
erred on this important point; and that if, for 1500 years,
6he has stood firm in the faith of this truth with the East,
she has maintained on this subject (lo use the expression of
Tertullian, Augustine, and Philastrius, against those who
rejected some of the books of the second-first canon 1 ) a
heresy of two centuries.
6. That while this long aberration, before the epoch of the
definite settlement of the canon, has not any importance in
the question of its providential preservation, because the
churches could 2 not have an entire unanimity on the whole
canon before this epoch, yet the fact has a crushing weight
for the pretensions of a church which calls itself the Judge
of controversies and of the truth.
7. That this same church, then, still errs, if not more
gravely at least more unreasonably, in pretending, despite
such manifest facts, to be for all others the infallible depos
itary of the Scriptures, and in repeating, after Gregory VII.3
that " no chapter of any book of the Bible should be' re
garded as canonical without the permission of the Sovereign
Pontiff." 8. That what Christianity owes to the Roman Church in
this matter, is, twice to have made war on the canon ; twice
to have broken the unity of the Church on this point ; — first
in rejrcting for two centuries an epistle which she herself had
recognized for two centuries before, and which she has again
recognized from the end of the fourth century and begin
ning of the fifth ; then, in persisting alone, ten centuries
afterward, to introduce apocryphal books into the New Tes
tament canon, against the earnest remonstrances of all the
rest of Christendom, which, while having them publicly read,
had always rejected them from the canon during fifteen hun
dred years, both in the feast and in the West.
1 The two first apply it to the rejection of the Apocalypse, the third to
that of the epistle to the Hebrews.
2 The author uses the word devaient. It may mean should, ought to, were
to. — Tit.
8 See the Anuals of Baronius, Year 1076.

PAULINITY OF THIS EPISTLE. 335
9. That the infallibility assumed by Rome as a heritage
of the apostle Peter should always be judged by the single
fact that she has not preserved a Scripture which this same
Peter had expressly recommended to her as making part of
the sacred oracles, and which had been recommended to her
also, shortly afterward, by that Clement whom she had made
the second, third, or fourth of her bishops.1
10. That so far from giving authority to our canon of the
New Testament, the Roman Church on the contrary received
hers from the Greek Church (at least so far as concerns the
epistle to the Hebrews) ; and that we owe her no thanks
that this holy book has not been lost from our Bible.
II. In fine, that the authority of the canon, as to the New
Testament, is not founded either on Rome, which has vari
ously and grievously erred, by her own admission, in regard
to it, nor on any provincial council, nor on any particular
church, nor upon any general council, but solely on the unan
imous consent — unforeseen, unintended, and providential —
of the whole of Christendom on this subject alone. For
notwithstanding the enormous divergencies on every other
subject, we see to-day, over the whole world, all the churches,
good and bad, maintained of God in unity on this solitary
point ; as we see on the other hand, for the Old Testament,
all the ancient people of Israel and all modern Jews equally
abiding in the unity of faith concerning the Old Testament,
because the oracles of God are committed to them for the
Old, as to us for the New. But we can here barely suggest
this point, it not coming yet fully before us

Paulinity of Jiis Epistle.2
The Paulinity of this epistle should be carefully distin
guished from its canonicity, when we are studying the his-
i Jerome says the 2d; Augustine says the 3d; Irenseus says the 4th. See
Hefele, Patr. Apostolic. Opera, p. 21 . Tubing. 1847.
2 On these matters may be consulted the first volume of Moses Stuart;

836 THE CANON.
tory of the canon. The apostolicity of a book, in fact, would
not by itself be a reason for canonicity ; because all the
writings, discourses, or acts of an apostle or a prophet would
be neither necessarily nor constantly inspired. The theo
pneusty or inspiration was a miraculous endowment (j(dpio-pa.),
and the miraculous gifts were intermittent, according as the
Spirit descended upon the men of God. A Scripture was
then infallible and divine when the Spirit of God caused it
to be written ; it was so only then ; and the Spirit of God
caused it to be written when it pleased him, whether the
writer was an apostle, as Paul or Peter, or only a prophet,
as Luke or Mark.
Many Fathers of the first centuries accordingly believed
this epistle to be inspired, without ascribing it to Paul; and
we might mention many modern writers, otherwise worthy
of respect, who have also believed this distinction should
be made as to the epistle to the Hebrews. Their mistake
lay, we think, in the fact, not in the principle. This was the
opinion, for instance, of our two leading reformers, Luther
and Calvin, at a time when the subject had been less studied,
and especially when the letter of Clement had not been
found, which, written in Rome and in the century of the
apostles, renders so manifest a testimony to this holy Scrip
ture.1 Luther ascribed it to Apollos, without sustaining this
gratuitous conjecture on any historical argument. Calvin
himself, without attempting to frame a hypothesis, wrote in
the preface to his Commentary, " I see not how to recognize
Paul as its author." (Ego, ut Paulum agnoscam autorem,
adduci nequeo.) " Yet as to myself I receive it unhesitat
ingly among the apostolical epistles ; and I do not doubt
that it is only by device of Satan that there are found per-
the Theses of Prof. La Harpe (Toulouse, 1832) ; the Introduction of Hug,
that 'of Guericke (1854), and Fr. Spanheim, De Auctore Epis. ad Hcbr.
Exerc. Heidelberg (1659).' He sustains the Paulinitj-.
1 It was only in 16-28 that Cyril Lucas sent from Constantinople to the
king of England the ancient Alexandrian Manuscript of the Scriptures,
in which they had the joy of finding the epistle of Clement.

PAULINITY OF THIS EPISTLE. 337
sons disposed to remove it from the number of the authentic
books." Beza, too, said, in the first note of his Commentary :
" Let the judgments of men remain free here ; only let us
here agree that this epistle was truly dictated by the Holy
Spirit." Many of the Fathers the most firmly attached to the can
onicity of the epistle, such as Dionysius and Clement of Al
exandria, -Euthalius, Theodoret, Theophylact, and Jerome,
have at the same time supposed, on account of its elegance,
that it must have been composed in Hebrew by Paul, but
translated into Greek by Luke or Barnabas. This was only
a conjecture ; it did not affect the canonicity directly. But
we repel it, because, —
1. None of those who talk of this Hebrew original have
ever mentioned the person who had seen it.
2. The superior elegance of this epistle can be accounted
for, and we shall presently do it.
3. It would be a historical error to imagine, in the days
of Paul, the Hebrew better adapted than the Greek to the
religious wants of the entire Jewish people. The Greek
was then universally understood even in Jerusalem ; it had
been spoken in that city for about four hundred years ; J and
the Jews " of the Dispersion," who used it in all the East, ,
often knew nothing of the Hebrew. Thus we see that the
greater part of the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem had sep
arate synagogues for the exercises of worship in the Greek
language. 4. Nothing in the epistle denotes a translation ; every
thing, on the contrary, bears the impress of originality.
5. The paranomasias, that is, the allusions founded on the
resemblance in sense and sound, abound in it, betraying
inevitably an original writing.2 In particular, says Calvin,
1 The city submitted to Alexander the Great about B. c. 332, and the
epistle was written a. d. 64.
2 See in Greek, Heb. ii. 7, 3 (Comp. with Ps. viii); v. 8, 14; vii. 13, 19;
ix. 10; x. 34; xi. 37; xiii. 14.

338 THE CANON.
" that which is said of the nature of the ' testament,' in the
ninth chapter, could have sprung from no other fountain than
the Greek word."
6. The author's commentaries on the passages quoted from
the Old Testament conduct to the same conclusion, for they
attest that the quotations were taken, not from the original
Hebrew, but from the Greek Septuagint version.1
If many Fathers and scholars, in admitting the inspiration
of this Scripture, would find for it some other author than
Paul, we on the contrary can establish his authorship by
strong arguments :
1. Against this testimony of history nothing has been set
but presumptions and conjectures.
t 2. The expressions of this epistle concerning Timothy
can belong, it would seem, only to Paul. He writes (xiii.
23), " Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty ;
with whom, if he comes shortly, I will see you." Now, Paul
had already connected Timothy with himself in seven others
of his letters,2 besides writing him two. He had made him
his companion in the journey to Jerusalem (Acts xx. 4) ; he
often elsewhere as here calls him " bis brother and compan
ion in labor." s He denominates him " My son," (1 Tim. i.
2) ; whilst no other personage of the New Testament, pre
sents to our view, even remotely, this feature of intimacy
with Timothy.
1 3. The author of the epistle speaks of " his bonds " (x.
34) ; and Paul was in bonds when the letter was written.
4. The author says to the Hebrews, " with whom, if he
comes shortly, I will see you ; " and Paul was soon to be
released.

1 See x. 4, 5, compared with Ps. xl. 7; viii. 8; ix. 14, 22, compared
with Jerem. xxxi. 31, 32, and others, quoted in Owen's learned Commen
tary (5th exerc.)
2 1 Thess. i. 1; 2 Cor. i. 1; Rom. xvi. 21; 2 Thess. i. 1; Philip, i. 1;
Col. i. 1.
8 2 Cor. i. 1; Philem. i. 1; Col. i. 1.

PAULINITY OF THIS EPISTLE. 339
: 5. The author salutes them in the name of " the brethren
of Italy " (xiii. 24) ; and Paul was then in Italy.
6. The letter was written necessarily during Nero's reign
and Paul's life ; that is, before a. d. 65 or 68. In fact, —
It represents the temple of Jerusalem as standing, and its
worship as still celebrated ;
The last war of the Romans against the Jews as about to
commence. He says (x. 25), " Ye see the day approach
ing." But that terrible day had not yet come ;
Timothy as still living, and disposed to leave Italy that
he might visit the Hebrews with the author of the letter.
The letter is quoted by Clement, the " fellow laborer of
Paul " (Philip, iv. 3), in the epistle written by that Father
to the Corinthians in behalf of the church of Rome. See
the reasoning of Eusebius himself on this fact: "Clement
in his letter to the Corinthians, introduces many thoughts
from the epistle to the Hebrews, and employs the very ex
pressions of this epistle in the sentences which he copies from
it ; indicating evidently by that that it was not a new book
to him."1
In fine, the letter is quoted even by the apostle Peter, who
is said to have suffered martyrdom the same year with Paul ;
for we have seen that in his second epistle, written to the
same persons with the first (2 Pet. iii. 1), he reminds them
that Paul had written them a letter ; " Even as our^ beloved
brother Paul, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath
written unto you."
7. All the weight of the historical evidence is in favor of
the Paulinity of this letter. It is certain that, addressed
especially to the church of Jerusalem, the mother of all the
others, and for thirty-six years the center of Jewish Chris
tendom, this epistle was read, from the beginning, as from
Paul, in all the assemblies of the East. We have already
seen the testimonies of the East as to its canonicity during
1 H. E. iii. 38. 'SafeoraTa irapiarr^iv on p'h vebv ixdpxei rb oiyypappa.

340 THE CANON.
four centuries. Now, these very Fathers, while speaking
sometimes of the doubts about it which were felt among the
Latins, not only believed Paul to be its author, but said that
they got that belief " from the ancient bishops " who had
preceded them. Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth century,
declares that such is the tradition " from the apostles and
ancient rulers of the churches." Jerome attests with him
that this epistle was received by all the Greek ecclesiastical
writers downward as of Paul (ab omnibus retro ecclesias-
ticis grsaci sermonis scriptoribus quasi Pauli Apostoli sus-
cipi.) Athanasius, the council of Laodicea, Basil, Epipha
nius, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Ephraim the
Syrian, Chrysostom, and many others render the same tes
timony. Eusebius ascribes it to Paul, saying that the Ro
man church contests the fact, and supposing that Clement
of Rome might have been its translator. Theodoret quotes
Eusebius as having said that all the ancients believed that
Paul was its author ; he says that the Arians had begun to
. call it in question on account of the testimony it renders to
the divinity of Jesus Christ ; but he adds that "it was read
in the churches of the apostolical times." 1 Origen,2 believing
it to be Paul's, at the same time quotes, as accounting for its
great elegance, some suppositions, "the noise of which had
come to him," 8 as to the part such and such an apostolical
man had had in translating it ; but even he takes care to suggest
that "it is not lightly (elrf) that the ancients have transmit
ted it as Paul's to the men of his day." And then Clemens
Alexandrinus, in the second century, expressly declares that
it is the work of Paul (PavAov pev elval tp-qo-i), while think
ing that " perhaps, written in Hebrew by the apostle, it may
have been translated by Luke into elegant Greek."
1 Arg. in Epist. ad Hebraos, opp. (tom. iii. p. 341, Halle, 1768-1774.)
2 Origen, who quotes the epistle to the Hebrews more than two hundred
times (Kirchhofer, Quellensammlung, &c, Zurich, 1848, p. 244), very fre
quently repeats that it is Paul's.
s Qtidoaoa laropia.

PAULLNITY OF THIS EPISTLE. 341
8. Very numerous points of resemblance between this
epistle and the other compositions of Paul equally exhibit
him as the author. Many skillful critics have fully set these
forth. They may be found in Spanheim, Braun, Carpso-
vius, Lardner, MacKnight, La Harpe, Stuart, Tholuck ; and
M. Reuss J himself, who does not attribute this epistle to
Paul, has had the candor to express himself thus on these
analogies : " The resemblances which our epistle presents
to the Pauline formula are so numerous and so striking, that
it is not surprising so many have attributed it to Paul. They
consist in a series of terms equally familiar to both authors,
as well as in the very substance of the dogmatic ideas."
We shall indicate only a few of these resemblances : —
Explosions of feeling, expressed in very concise language
peculiar to Paul ;
Elliptical expressions to be filled out from the context ;
Abrupt transitions to subordinate topics, to return as ab
ruptly to the original topic ; 2
Replies addressed to the thoughts of the reader and made
to objections unexpressed ;
A hortatory and moral conclusion of the epistle, from the
eleventh chapter, like the conclusions of other letters of
Paul; Exhortations entirely like those of Paul ;
Judaic interpretations of Scripture found only in Paul ;
Doctrines mentioned by no other inspired writers ; the
mediation and intercession of the Saviour ; 3 the title of
Mediator, given by Paul only to Jesus Christ ; 4 Christ offer
ing his sacrifice in heaven, and exercising his priesthood only
there ;
Frequent resemblances of style and expression between
this epistle and the thirteen others of Paul : for instance, the
1 Hist, of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, ttfm. ii. p. 550.
- See i. 2-4; iii. 7, 11, 14; iv. 2.
8 Heb. iv. 15, 16; vii. 22, 25; Rom. viii. 34; Gal. iii. 19, 20.
* Heb. vii. 22; viii. 6; ix. 15; xii. 24; 1 Tim. ii. 5.
29*

342 THE CANON.
frequent use of the particle rk ; the passage in Heb. xiii. 5,
compared with Rom. xii. 9, where we find two nominatives
absolute, and more than one feminine nominative absolute
followed by a masculine participle, nominative absolute (rj
aydirq dvoiroKpiTOS, arrocrTVyovvTes . . . ) a construction found
nowhere else in the New Testament. Also, the following
passages ;
Heb. ii. 4 compared with Rom. xv. 19 ; 2 Cor. xii. 12,
with 2 Thess. ii. 9 ; — Heb. iii. 1, with Philip, iii. 14 ; — Heb.
v. 12, with 1 Cor. iii. 2 ; — Heb. viii. 1, with Eph. i. 21 ; —
Heb. ix., and x. 1, with Col. ii. 17 ; — Heb. x. 33, with 1 Cor.
iv. 9 ; — Heb. xiii. 9, with Eph. iv. 14 ; — Heb. xiii. 10, 11,
with 1 Cor. ix. 13 ; — Heb. xiii. 20, 21, with Rom. xv. 33 ;
xvi. 20 ; Phil. iv. 9 ; 1 Thess. v. 23 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 11.
But what do the opponents set against all these arguments
from criticism and history ? No historical testimony ; only
presumptions and hypotheses. We must reply to them.
Objections.
It is first objected, that the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul,
was not the apostle to the Jews and should not have written
to them. But does he not style himself "the apostle of aE
to gain some"? (1 Cor. ix. 19, 22.) Did he not commence
his ministry in each city, among the Hebrews ? Was he not
" a Hebrew of the Hebrews " ? (Philip, iii. 5.) Did he not
say, " My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is,
that they might be saved " ? (Rom. x. 1.) Had he not con
tinual sorrow in his heart for his kinsmen according to the
flesh? (Rom. ix. 2.) Had he not recently . gone up to the
capital of the Hebrews, to carry thither alms to his nation ?
(Acts xxiv. 17 ; Rom. xv. 25.) Could he then, we should
say on the contrary, do otherwise than write to them ?
Paul, it is said again, has not mentioned himself in this
epistle, whilst at the head of each of his thirteen epistles
he has placed his name and title of apostle. We reply ;
that, —

OBJECTIONS. 843
I. He had manifest prudential reasons, if not to conceal
his name entirely, at least to avoid making it prominent, al
ready mentioned by us.
2. This book being rather a treatise1 than a letter, the
author had not the same reasons for putting his name to it.
3. The book, whoever was its author, was written by a
man who judged it best not to put his name there. " And
if," as Primasius, an African bishop of the sixth century,
observes, "it was for that reason not Paul's, for the same
reason it was not Clement's, nor Barnabas's, nor Luke's, nor
any one's, since no one has put his name there." 2
4. Those Christian Hebrews to whom the letter was first
addressed certainly knew what hand had written it. Could
we doubt it after reading these words : " Pray for us, that I
may be restored to you. — Know ye that our brother Tim
othy is set at liberty, with whom I will see you. — Salute all
them that have the rule over you. — They of Italy salute
you" ? (Heb. xiii. 18, 19, 23, 24.)
5. It is sufficiently evident that the epistle would not have
been read, from the first century, in Jerusalem and the East
ern assemblies, if the leaders of all these churches had not
known its author.
6. It was proper that it should be circulated among the
Hebrew believers, among the Judaizing Christians, and
among the unconverted Hebrews ; but it would have been
imprudent to place at the head of it a name which would
have made them reject it without examination.
7. We may remark with Mr. Wordsworth,8 that if the
name of Paul was not placed at the beginning, yet his word
and his signature were at the end ; for the apostolical saluta
tion which he was accustomed to employ was, as he himself
1 It has the form and structure of a treatise. It is short for an essay
and long for a letter, 303 verses ; and the author in closing apologizes for
its brevity.
2 Ad Hebrasos Prafatio. Lugduni, 1537, p. 473.
8 On the Canon, p. 234. Lond. 1847.

344 THE CANON.
has called it, his distinctive mark in all these letters. " The
salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token
in every epistle ; The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be
with you." 2 By this he means to say, This formula, " the
grace of Christ be with you," or its equivalent, is the formula
of salutation which I place at the end of all my letters." We
know that they were all dictated to an amanuensis, except
the epistle to the Galatians. He was satisfied with simply
putting this mark or signature to them. It was a token, he
himself said, by which his epistles should be known. Now,
it should be observed that whilst this formula is found in the
thirteen other epistles of Paul, it is not found in any of the
letters of any other apostle written during his life, and is
found only in writings after his death, — in the last verse of the
Apocalypse, in the letter of Clemens Romanus to the Corin
thians, and in the sermons of the Fathers, who were eager
to adopt it from him. But this mark, invariably and exclu
sively attached to all his letters, is also found in Hebrews
(xiii. 24, 25).
In the third place, it is objected that Paul said he had not
learned the gospel of any man (Gal. i. 1, 11, 12 ; ii. 6-15),
and showed himself very jealous of the independence of his
ministry. Could he then have said, of the salvation which
he announced, what we find in Heb. ii. 3 : "So great salva
tion which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and
was confirmed unto us by them that heard him " ? We reply,
that Paul was in the habit of employing the first person
plural when he meant to include only his readers ; so that
nothing can be determined by that passage, on this point.
Thus, for instance, in the preceding verse he had said,
" How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ? "
Paul, in speaking of this danger, was thinking not of him
self, but of his readers. And it is again thus that he says,
in Romans xiii. 12:" Let us cast off the works of darkness."
He had no works of darkness to cast off; and he did not
1 2 Thess. iii. 17; 1 Cor. xvi. 21; Col. iv. 18.

OBJECTIONS. 345
mean to include himself in this us, which he employed there
as a common pronoun. As to Paul, moreover, it would also
be true that the salvation announced by Jesus had been con
firmed to him by them that heard him.
But that which is most insisted on as an objection to the
Paulinity of this epistle is the classical purity of its lan
guage, the too Hellenic perfection of the composition.
To this we reply, that it was wholly natural that the apos
tle, on the solemn occasion of addressing a treatise to the
whole Hebrew people, should bestow more pains on it than on
an epistle to a more limited class of readers. He wished to
show his nation, in an attractive picture, the holy and majes
tic unity of the revelations of God in the two economies,
the innumerable correspondences of the Old Testament with
the New ; the beneficent light, full of glory, which the latter
manifestations of the Son of God had just shed over Moses,
the Psalms, and the Prophets. He would unfold to the He
brews the importance and the sublime meaning of their own
worship when interpreted by the gospel, the divinity of the
Messiah proclaimed in their Scriptures, his holy and humil
iated humanity equally predicted, his apostleship, his royal
priesthood, his expiatory blood and his passage into heaven ;
in a word, the true Temple, the true Priest, the true Taber
nacle, the true Victim, the true Passover, the true Holy of
holies, as also the true faith of the true worshipers, and
their true sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving.
2. There is no writer who has not had, among his writings,
some one in which he desired to surpass himself by the purity
of his language and the elevation of his style. Thus Cy
prian, in his letter to Donatus ; thus Tertullian, in his Apol
ogy ; thus Calvin, in his Essay on Clemency, or in his Letter
to Francis I.; as elsewhere Paul himself, in his letter to
Philemon. 3. Is it not known that the apostle, independently of his
inspiration, was, by both his genius and his education, a
perfect master of style ? Was he not born, and had he not

346 THE CANON.
studied Greek literature, in the Grecian colony of Tarsus, a
city renowned for its culture ? Do we not frequently hear
him quote the Greek poets ? (Acts xvii. 28 ; 1 Cor. xv. 33 ;
Tit. i. 12,) and does he not show in other parts of his writings
what he was able to do ? If he was, as he says, " rude in
speech " (tSicunjs t<3 Aeyco), it was in his accent and not in
his style or thought. And if he did judge it wise to write
the Gentiles unpolished letters, he might judge it equally
wise to address one to all his people in a more elegant and
elaborate composition.
We must, then, conclude from all these testimonies and all
these facts that Eusebius, in the beginning of the fourth cen
tury, very legitimately ranked this epistle in the first canon,
because it had been received for two centuries by all Chris
tendom, East and West, from its first appearing, and because
it never afterward ceased to be received in all the Eastern
churches. At the same time, in placing it with this Father,
in our historical appreciation, in the rank of the homologo
mens and of the first canon, we have believed it should be
assigned, with the Apocalypse, a place apart, on account of
the late opposition which was made to it for a time by the
Latin Church, after a century and a half of acquiescence.
Besides, that church, submissive to this sacred book during
the first and the second century, then disavowing it during
the third and fourth, has ended by placing herself also in
this matter, for fourteen hundred years, with the universal
Church. But we must now pass to the second canon, or antilego
mens, which contain but 222 verses (a thirty-sixth part of
the New Testament) ; and we shall equally establish their
authenticity by history, before considering them under another
point of view.

GENERAL FACTS. 347

CHAPTER FOURTH.
OF THE SECOND CANON,
OR
THE FIVE ANTILEGOMENS.

SECTION I.
GENERAL FACTS.

If the twenty Scriptures of the first canon, as soon as they
appeared, were received as divine by all the churches of
Christendom, and if the two books of which the second-first
is composed were at first universally admitted, it was not so
with the five later brief epistles of James, Peter, John, and
Jude. Accepted, Eusebius says, " by the majority" they
were not by all, because, sent to the Christian people near
the time when their authors were about to die, and moreover
directed generally to the whole Church, they had not the
same advantages for securing a universal reception as the
greater part of the other apostolical writings. They lacked
for that purpose both the personal influence and presence of
the sacred authors, and the immediate testimony of the men
or churches to whom all the non-catholic epistles were writ
ten at first. Consequently, we see that they must have been
more slowly admitted by the remoter churches. Whilst a
majority received these five epistles, from the very beginning,
as making part of the Holy Scripture, there were many
others, for two centuries and a half, who remained in sus
pense concerning the divine authority of one or another of ,

348 ,' , THE CANON.
'them ; and it was jiot until the beginning of the fourth cen
tury, about A. D.-325, that we see these hesitations ceasing in
all-parts ©f -the East and the West. Thus their universal
and absolute adoption into the sacred canon was naturally
delayed ; but this very delay, while attesting at once the lib
erty and the holy jealousy of the primitive churches in re
gard to the canon, should only serve, as we shall presently
show, to render our confidence in the amicable and final re
sult more complete.
Origen, as Eusebius relates (H. E. vi. 25), said, of the
last two epistles of John, that " it is not all Christians that
receive them as authentic " (ov iravres cpacrl yvrjo-tovs elvai
Tavras) ; and of the second of Peter, " they hold it in doubt "
(dpcpiflaXXeTai) .
' Eusebius, too (H. E. iii. 25), at the beginning of the fourth
century, said, " The epistles of James and Jude, and Peter's
second, and the last two of John, are contested" (dvriXeyo-
pevai) ; " while at the same time they are received by the
great majority." He said too, " Although contested, yet
they are recognized by the greater part of ecclesiastical men."
And as to the two epistles of James and Jude, he had
said, " It is well known that these also are publicly read
with the rest of the Scriptures." We have already showed
that all the eleven catalogues which remain from the fourth
century contain also the seven catholic epistles ; that of
Athanasins ; that of the anonymous cotemporary of Athana
sius, inscribed among his works ; that of Epiphanius ; those
of Jerome, Rufinus, Augustine, the councils of Laodicea and
Carthage ; those of Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen,
Amphilochius, and Philaster.
If from the earliest times the seven epistles have been
called catholic, it is because they were addressed to the whole
body of Christians, rather than to any particular church or
person. It is also, perhaps, because this name, reserved first
for the first epistles of John and Peter, as books catholicly
accepted, might afterwards have been extended to the five

GENERAL FACTS. S349
later epistles, when their divine authority^had1' heerr ^gener*
ally admitted. But whatever may have been^tne' meanings
or the occasion of this term, its employment to designsftetne
seven epistles not of Paul is certainly of a high antiquity.
Not only do we meet it in Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Je
rome, in the fourth century, but in Eusebius at the end of
the third, or rather beginning of the fourth, in Dionysius of
Alexandria before Eusebius, in the middle of the third, and
in Origen before Dionysius.
The order in which, from the earliest times, the various
books of the New Testament were respectively arranged, we
have frequently said, was constantly that of our modern
Bibles, except that the group of the seven catholic x epistles
preceded the fourteen epistles of Paul. But then, too, both
sets in each category were, relatively to each other, in the
same order as in our Bible. As to the seven catholic epis
tles, the oldest collections of the Greeks, as well as our mod
ern Bibles, have always placed them thus : first that of James,
then the two of Peter, then the three of John, and then that
of Jude. This is declared to be the genuine order by Je
rome, who informs us also that in his day the Latins, by an
indiscreet zeal for Peter, ranked his epistles before that of
James ; " but by God's help," he says,2 " I have reestab
lished them in the order wisely followed by the Greeks."
This order related to their importance and size. Paul, in
his epistle to the Galatians (ii. 9), speaks of James, Cephas,
and John, who are regarded as pillars ; and it is also in the
same order (James, Peter, and John) that their epistles have
been ranked.
l Already so called in the time of Eusebius, Cyril, and Athanasius (H. E.
vi. 14). Athan. Epist. Festal. Cone, de Laod. 59. Cyril, Catech. iv.
2 Prol. in Fpist. Canon. Non idem ordo apud Grsecos qui integrfe sapi-
unt et fidem rectam sectantur, epistolarum septem quae canonical nuncu-
pantur, qui in Latinis codicibus invenitur. Quod quia Petrus primus est
in numero apostolorum, primal sint etiam ejus epistolse in ordine csetera-
rum. Sed has proprio ordini, Deo nos juvante, reddidimus. Est enim
prima earum una, Jacobi, Petri duse, Johannis tres, et Judae una.
30

350 THE CANON.
It will be proper in this review, in which we propose to
establish their authenticity, to commence with James.

SECTION H.
THE EPISTLE OF JAMES.
Its Importance.
This letter, judging only from its author, is the first of the
catholic epistles, and James commences it with these words :
" James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to
the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting."
It must have been clothed, among the primitive churches,
and especially among the Christians of Jewish origin, with a
special importance, from the eminent place occupied by its
author among all the apostles, among all the bishops, among
all the eye-witnesses of Christ's resurrection, among all the
martyrs. We say, among all the apostles. Not only was James one
of the Lord's brothers, with Joses, Jude, and Simon (Gal. i.
19 ; Mark vi. 3), that is to say, either half-brother or cousin-
german, being, according to some, the son of his mother by
Alpheus, or, according to others, his cousin-german, the son of
that Mary, sister of his mother, who remained so faithfully be
fore the cross and the sepulchre (Matt. xxii. 56 ; xxviii. 1) ;
but, moreover, he was so considerable among all the apostles
(Gal. i. 19) that Peter, when he dissimulated at Antioch,
" feared certain that came from James," (Gal. ii. 12) and
that in leaving the prison in Jerusalem, he hastened to say,
distinguishing him from all the others, " Go, show these
things to James, and to the brethren " (Acts xii. 17). Paul
himself named him the first of the three pillars of the prim
itive church (Gal. ii. 9).
Eminent, we have said, among all the bishops. He pre
sided for twenty-seven years over that church of Jerusalem

EPISTLE OF JAMES. 351
which was the center and hearth-stone, the model and the
mother of all the others ; he there, by his great influence,
secured the decision of the first council; he was then the
object of the attentions of Paul, Peter, and the apostles who,
twenty years after our Lord had ascended, still assembled
with all the elders in his house (Acts xv. 13 ; xxi. 13). For
more than a quarter of a century he there enjoyed, as Jose
phus informs us, the respect of the Jews, who surnamed him
the Just, and who were indignant at his cruel death,1 regard
ing it as one cause of their final destruction.
Eminent, too, among the eye-witnesses of the resurrection
of Jesus, James was honored (1 Cor. xv. 7) by a special ap
parition of the Lord, as Mary his mother had been on the
way to the sepulcher, and Cleopas a his father on the way to
Emmaus. Eminent, too, among all the martyrs, James was the first
among the authors of the New Testament, and the second of
the apostles, to lay down his life for Christ. His colleague
James the Great, the brother of John, had been decapitated
by the order of Herod Agrippa, only ten years after the
ascension of the Lord ; but our James, " the Lord's brother,"
was stoned by order of Ananias the high-priest and the coun
cil of the Jews, sixteen or seventeen years afterward, whilst
they were awaiting the arrival of Albinus, the successor of
Festns, at Jerusalem.8
Jude, also, at the head .of his epistle, has showed his belief
that he could in no way better recommend himself to the
respect of the churches than by simply styling himself
" Jude, servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James," so
great was the celebrity of this holy apostle among all the
people of God, and probably that of his epistle also. And
1 Antiq. Lib. xx. chap. 8. Eusebius, H. E. Lib. ii. chap. i.
2 This name is, however, not the same as Alpheus. And, as we shall yet
show, it remains very doubtful whether James was not the Lord's cousin,
rather than own brother.
8 Albinus had already arrived Oct. A. D. 61, at the feast of Tabernacles
(Josephus, Jewish Wars, Lib. vi. 31).

352 THE CANON.
it is, too, for that reason, as Theodoret thinks,1 that Paul
himself made allusion to James, bishop of the Hebrews, and
to his martyrdom, when writing to the Hebrews : " Remem
ber them which have the rule over you, who have spoken
unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering
the end of their conversation " (xiii. 7).
The epistle of James having, then, for its author so consid
erable a person, — one of the " three pillars," a brother of
Jude, a brother of Jesus Christ, an aged bishop, possessed
of an immense influence among Christians, and even hon
ored by all the Jewish people ; an apostle, in fine, who, it
is said, had been the only one who never left Jerusalem,
and who had for a quarter-century governed 2 this mother
church, which contained already at least fifty or sixty thou
sand Jews, 8 — the epistle of James, addressed by such a
man, to those " twelve Jewish tribes scattered abroad," who
came annually to the feasts at Jerusalem, — this epistle, we
say, must have met a ready reception among all the He
brew Christians of Palestine and the East ; and they in
their turn must have spread it throughout the countries into
which they were dispersed.
Its immediate Admission among all that portion of the Church
to which it was at first addressed.
We see that the eastern church has, from the first, received
this Scripture as authentic, and that the earliest Fathers have
used it. In particular we may abundantly prove that it was
immediately admitted and continually revered as a book of
God by all the Israelitish Christians.
We find the most decisive proof of this fact in the trans
lation of this epistle by the Syrians from the first century, in
1 Comment, on Hebr. xiii. 7.
2 We say " governed," without pretending to decide anything as to the
form of administration which the churches in so large a city had then
adopted. 8 Acts xxi. 20 (irooai pvpiaSeg).

DATE OF THE EPISTLE OF JAMES. 353
'their famous Peshito, a version, we have heretofore said, im
puted to the apostolical age, which was made so early (at
Odessa in Mesopotamia) that the two last letters of John,
the second of Peter, and that of Jude, with the Apocalypse,1
came too late to be inserted in it.
Now, this immediate admission of the epistle of James by
such churches presents us an argument of the greatest weight
in its favor, since we can not imagine better judges of its au
thenticity than those very Christians among whom James
had labored for twenty-seven years, and to whom he had
directly addressed it.
This Scripture, then, was received as inspired in the very
age of its author, in the very places where he had so long
preached, and by the very men who were the best qualified
to appreciate his character, his divine mission, and the au
thenticity of his letter.
Yet Eusebius places it among the books that some contest.
Kirchhofer 2 says, " The doubt probably arose from the uncer
tainty as to which of the Jameses wrote it, for we can never
invoke against it any historical testimony."
lis Date.
We can not doubt that the epistle was written about the
end of James's life ; for when we study it at the point of
view of its date, we recognize numerous signs of an epoch
comparatively late. The abundant dispersion of the Israel-
itish Christians, their organization already become complete
and their degeneracy already far advanced, their forgetful-
ness of the characteristics of justifying faith, the influence of
their wealth, the care the apostle found it necessary to exer
cise in reminding them of the place of works in the order
of grace, the high authority he had then acquired in the
1 Hug, however, we have before said, thinks the Apocalypse was inserted
afterwards, and for a time in the Peshito.
2 Geschichte des N. T. Canons, &c, p. 258. Zurich, 1842.
30*

354 THE CANON.
churches of the Jews, the long experience which his lan
guage indicates, — all these features united conduct us to the
adoption of a date for this epistle already far posterior to the
first formation of the Christian churches.
Cause of the Hesitation of some Churches.
If, on the one hand, the epistle was immediately and uni
versally admitted by these " twelve tribes scattered abroad,"
that is, by all the Jewish-Christians of Palestine, Mesopota
mia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, to whom James had addressed
it, as also by the Gentile churches in more intimate relations
with the Christian synagogues, and by the earliest Fathers, we
can easily understand, on the other hand, why some few were
slow to receive it, and why the testimonies in its favor, during
the first and second centuries, were comparatively limited.
In fact, not only were they further removed from this man
of God who never left the city of Jerusalem until his mar
tyrdom, and who had, it seems, received as his special charge
for twenty-seven years, the constant superintendence of this
rmother church, but especially many of them lost, by the mis
fortunes of the Jews, the facilities they would otherwise have
enjoyed, of taking immediate and satisfactory cognizance of
the claims of this book to their acceptance. Scarcely had
James written it, when already all the Hebrew believers were
plunged into the troubles of war, flight, and persecution. All
the Jewish churches were about to perish ; and we know
how profound from that period was their unpopularity, and
what ever-growing prejudices the Gentile Christians con
ceived toward the Jewish Christians.
The letter was written, from all appearances, about A. d.
61, the epoch of the martyrdom of James and the arrival of
Albinus in Judea.1 The oppression of the Jews under this
1 Others place it in 64; but, according to Josephus, it would be on
the 15th of Tisri, 62, that that governor caused the famous Jesus to be
scourged. (Jew. Wars, vi. 13.)

WITNESSES. 355
wicked man, and soon after under his successor Florus, com
menced almost immediately, for Josephus dates the destruc
tion of the Jews from A. D. 62.1 Albinus then having
learned, he says, that Florus was appointed to replace him,
emptied the prisons of Jerusalem and filled the whole coun
try with trouble. Florus, in the spring of A. d. 64, came as a
hangman rather than a governor, and his iniquities immedi
ately surpassed all belief. The following year was that of all
those threatening prodigies which Tacitus and Josephus de
scribe as the precursors of a frightful ruin. The 15th of the
following May, Floras, seated on his tribunal in Jerusalem,
sent his soldiers to cut the throats of 3613 persons in the High
Market ; and on the 4th of October, Cestius Gallus, encamp
ing with a Roman army before this guilty city, planted there
" the abomination of desolation in the holy place, where it
should not be ; " and that was the sign announced by Jesus
Christ and by Daniel, that all Christians, by thousands,
" should flee to the mountains." 2
It can be seen, then, that in consequence of these extraor
dinary storms, which followed so closely the appearing of the
epistle, and which put an end to the existence of the Jewish
churches, the Gentiles, among whom these churches were so
soon in such discredit, must have been more slow to receive
it, notwithstanding its many claims to their confidence. And
it can be seen also that the direct testimonies of the authors
of this epoch among the Latins, and even among the Greeks,
must have been comparatively less numerous.

At the same time, it must not be imagined that the Gen
tile Christian witnesses have been few or unimportant. We
may introduce some of high valueT
l 'E£ ineivov pakurra rov xaipov . . . 7rpooK07rrbvTav enl rb x£lp°v-
(Antiq. Jud. xx. 8.)
2 Jew. Wars, Lib. ii. 19; Matt. xxiv. 16; Mark xiii. 4; Luke xxi. 21;
Dan. xi. 31; xii. 11.

356 THE CANON.
And first, we find in Rome, in the first century even, this
epistle quoted by frequent allusions of Clement, especially in
his ii., x., xvii., xxiii., xxx., xxxi, xxxiii., xxxviii., xlvi., xlix.
chapters. We find it, too, quoted in the " Shepherd of Her
mas," by seven allusions which Lardner regards as a sufficient
proof of the knowledge of it by the author, whoever he was.1
Also, four times in Irenseus,2 and also in Tertullian.8 The
quotations produced from Clement of Alexandria are not so
certain ; but those of Athanasius in all letters frequently
name the apostle James,4 quoting his very words.
The epistle was regarded as, authentic and divine by all
who ascribed it to James, the son of Alpheus. But those of
the ancients who, believing it not to have been written by
James the apostle, but James the Just, brother of Jesus
Christ, made two different persons of these two Jameses, en
tertained some doubt, not about its authenticity, but its canon
icity, because they supposed that the author, however eminent,
was not an apostle.
The doubts, however, ceased at the beginning of the fourth
century, and the greater part of the churches were unani
mous in inserting it in the canon. We have seen it also
admitted into all the eleven catalogues of the same period.
Origen esteemed it to be divine, as many quotations may
show, for instance, in his commentary on the epistle to the
Romans, his commentary on John,6 his commentary on Ps.
xxx., and his eighth homily on Joshua (which we have only
in a Latin translation).6 And if Eusebius, in his quotations
1 Especially, Mandat. ii., ix., xi., xii. 5, 6, where the author quotes James
iv. 7, 12; Sim. v. 4; viii. 6.
2 Especially, Haares., Lib. iv. cap. 16, § 2.
8 De Orat. c. viii. Adv. Jud. 2.
4 Among others, ad Serap., ep. i. Contra Arian. or. 3.
5 Tom. xix. Opp , tom. iv. p. 306, ug kv rij fepopevn 'laKufiov tmaroT^
dveyvupev. — Neudeeker translates fepopevn by " universally recognized."
Others, " put in circulation." See in Ep. Rom. Liv. iv. Opp. tom. iv. 535.
6 Opp. xii. 412: "Petrus duabus epistolarum personat tubis Jacobum
quoque et Judam."

WITNESSES. 357
of the opinions of Origen concerning the Scriptures, appears
to represent him as being silent about the epistle of James,
we ought not to draw from that any unfavorable conclusion ;
for the same author (H. E. vi. 25), speaking of the opinions
of Origen on the canon, abstained from saying anything on
the epistle of Jude, although Origen has quoted it more than
fifteen times, and with commendation.
Eusebius, as we have seen, placed it in the same rank
with the writings " still contested, although recognized, he
said, by the great number." (H. E. iii. 25.)
Amphilochius even, in speaking of the hesitations of some
in regard to the five later short epistles, excepts the epistle of
James ; " received," he says, " by even those who doubted
the four others."
It is useless to cite the testimonies of the following centu
ries, for the canon from that time was definitely fixed.
Many authors have remarked that the first epistle of Peter,
which was written later than that of James, contains more
than ten passages x of morals and of doctrine, which, by their
striking resemblance to the passages of the latter, bear to it
a silent testimony. "The Holy Spirit could in no better
way," they say, "attest its divinity, than by so promptly and
constantly adopting and incorporating its language in an
epistle so promptly and so constantly admitted by the entire
Christian world."
There has been too much reference to the unhappy sug
gestion of Martin Luther in 1522, concerning this epistle of
James, arising from his mistaken apprehension of its opposing
the doctrine of justification by faith. But, besides the subse
quent retraction of this imprudent remark2 by this eminent
1 For instance, Jam. iv. 2, and 1 Pet. v. 5, quoted by Clement of Rome
(ch. xx.) also Jam. i. 5, and 2 Pet. iii. 3, 4, quoted by the same Father
(ch. xxxiii.)
2 In all his editions of the Bible posterior to 1526. See Gerhard, Theo-
logia, locus de Script. Sacra, § 279. (Frankfort, 1657.) Seckendorf, Com
ment, de Lutheranismo. (Frankfort, 1692.) Carlovius, Biblia illustrata,
(Frankfort, 1676, fol.) Tom. ii. p. 1393.

358 THE CANON.
servant of God, it must not be forgotten that at the epoch
when he made it innumerable frauds were discovered on all
sides, in almost every uninspired monument of Christian an
tiquity : false titles, false Scriptures, false writings of the
Fathers, false legends of the Breviary, false decretals of the
Popes. They were in his day just emerging from this chaos,
and even in the Roman Church men were at length opening
their eyes to many of these lies. Still it was not easy to dis
tinguish in every case the real monuments from the false, to
recognize the true principles of sacred criticism, or to consult
its instruments, of which many were yet undiscovered.1
Critical knowledge was then confined to the assertions of
Eusebius, and it was not yet known how to estimate them.
There could be no assurance, then, that the Church of Rome,
already so strongly tempted to insert the Apocrypha in the
depository of the Old Testament, (committed to the Jews
alone), had not equally laid its hands upon the New, to in
troduce into it also uninspired books ; for it was not then suffi
ciently understood that the Providence of God had engaged
itself never to permit any church, good or bad, to be guilty
of this unfaithfulness.

Its Excellence.
If it were within the scope of our plan to notice the beau
ties and spiritual grandeur of the books, while establishing
their canonicity by historical proofs, we should call attention
to the original character, the depth, and pathos of this holy
letter ; its perfect adaptation to the wants of the primitive
church, as it went among the Israelitish people converted to
the gospel ; the elevation of its thoughts, the loftiness and
noble simplicity of its style. Above all, its incomparable
superiority would be manifested by contrasting it with the
1 For example, the epistle of Clement of Rome, which renders an im
portant testimony to the epistle to the Hebrews and to the epistle of James,
and which was discovered only in 1628.

WHICH JAMES WAS THE AUTHOR. 359
uninspired writings of those early ages. Whilst the latter
present so much that is petty, whimsical, and eccentric, here
there is nothing of the kind ; everything is sober, sage,
grave, lofty. And this negative proof assumes great force ;
it manifests at once the influence of the Holy Spirit with the
same vividness as the distinction between the apocryphal and
the canonical gospels.

Which James was the Author of it ?
If many ancient, and especially many modern writers have
appeared to attach great importance to the solution of this
question, " Was this James the apostle ? " all agree in recog
nizing him as the brother of Jesus Christ ; as having presided
twenty-seven years over the church in Jerusalem ; as having
held the chief place among the apostles, of whom he was one
of the three pillars, and the first of the three ; as having been
that James, in a word, so frequently mentioned by Luke in
the Acts,1 and by Paul in the Epistles.2 But this is not
the question, " Was the author of this epistle one of the
Twelve ? " That is strongly contested. Was he James the
Less, son, some say, of Alpheus and " Mary of Cleopas," the
aunt of Jesus Christ, or as others say, of Alpheus and that
Mary, mother of James and Joses, who remained standing
near the cross ? 8 Or again, was it a third James, unknown
1 See Acts ix. 26-30; xii. 17; xv. 13-20; xxi. 18-25.
2 See Gal. i. 17-19; ii. 2-6, 9; ii. 12; 1 Cor. ix. 5; xv. 7.
8 For instance, according to Kirchhofer (p. 258), who appears to believe
him the son of Alpheus and Mary the mother of Jesus, by a second mar
riage, and to identify her with the Mary of whom we are speaking (the
mother of James and Joses). We read in the gospel of John (xix. 25) that
the blessed mother of Jesus had a sister named " Mary of Cleopas; " and
we learn that these two Marys, on the terrible day of the crucifixion, were
together by the cross with a third Mary, named " Magdalene." Here, then,
is the question, Where are these (three) Marys in the parallel accounts of
the crucifixion in the evangelists ? Where is the blessed mother of the
Saviour? Have the three other evangelists forgotten her? That appears
inadmissible. We are told (Matt, xxvii. 55), that there were " many women
there beholding afar off, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the

360 THE CANON.
to the readers of the New Testament before the twelfth chap
ter of the Acts ? In other words, was he called " brother of
the Lord" (Gal. i. 19), only as a cousin-german, or half-
brother ? Was he really one of the twelve, or could he have
been an apostle only by the grace of the Holy Spirit, by his
high qualities and controlling influence ? Notwithstanding
many, whether to attack or defend the canonicity of the epis
tle, have attached so much importance to this question of the
apostleship of its author, yet we think this view erroneous.
And when the rationalists of our day, to weaken the inspira
tion of the Scriptures, labor to show that neither the James
of whom we are speaking, nor the Jude, his brother, author
of the epistle bearing his name, nor the John of the brief
epistles, nor John of the Apocalypse, nor the author of the
epistle to the Hebrews, nor even the Matthew of the first
gospel, was of the number of the twelve apostles, we think
mother of James (the son of Alpheus, Matt. x. 3), and of Joses, and the mother
of Zebedee's children," Salome. (Mark xv. 40.) Can we believe that the
first three evangelists have neglected to name the Saviour's mother in this
scene of Calvary? Should we not rather believe that this Mary, mother
of James the Less, Joses, and Jude (brother of James, Acts i. 13; Jude i.),
was this same mother of Jesus so often mentioned in the gospels, accompa
nied by brothers of Jesus (James and Joses, Jude and Simon, Mark vi. 3;
Matt. xii. 46; xxvii. 55; Luke viii. 19), and whom we see even on the day
of the ascension (when she was about sixty years old), accompanied by the
brothers of Jesus, in the upper chamber of Jerusalem? (Acts i. 13.) We
think the Bible always honors the condition of a mother in Israel, at least
as much as that of a virgin. It is written (Matt. i. 18), " When Mary was
espoused to Joseph, before they came together (irplv # ovvek&Eiv abrovg)
she was found with child of the Holy Ghost." And Joseph " knew her not
till she had (Sug ov) brought forth her Jirst-born son." (25.)
In every age she has been called " Blessed; " but it must also be ob
served that the Holy Spirit, so far from wishing to exalt the Son of man
by the exaltation of his mother, on the contrary has been pleased to reveal
to us all the humiliations of his birth; and that in giving us his genealogy
he has taken care to name but four of his mothers in all his parentage
during forty-two generations. And these four women, look at them; first
the incestuous Tamar; the impure Rahab; then Ruth the Moabitess;
lastly that unfortunate Bathsheba, who was the wife of Uriah. The Holy
Spirit teaches us to speak of Mary only with honor; but, from the birth of
her first-born, and in the whole course of the New Testament, it never calla
her the Virgin, as human traditions do with such ardor.

WHICH JAMES WAS THE AUTHOR. 361
that their assertions, ill-grounded as facts, have little worth
as arguments.
In fact, inspiration was by no means confined to the apos
tles. Many others than the twelve received miraculous gifts,
among them that of theopneusty. A writing was canonical,
not' because it was apostolical, but because it was inspired.
The gospel of Luke, that of Mark, and the book of Acts had,
as inspired Scriptures, the same authority as the gospels of
Matthew or John ; God has chosen according to his good
pleasure, among the twelve and outside of the twelve, the
men whom he would make the prophets of the New Testa
ment, just as he chose from divers stations the Solomons, the
Amoses, the Joels, or the Nehemiahs to write the first portion
of the sacred oracles. It was sufficient for the divine au
thority of a book that it was inspired ; and it was sufficient
evidence of its inspiration, that it was recognized as ca
nonical, that it was recommended as such to the primitive
churches by. the apostles of the Lord, and that it was re
ceived by them. This was accomplished under the direction
of that Providence of the Lord which has caused the suc
cessive introduction of all our sacred books into the collec-
tion of his New Testament, as it bad done for the Old, and
which has made the entire Christendom of the East and the
West unanimous on this single point for fifteen centuries.
This is the fact confirmed by the history of the canon, and
which we shall hereafter examine.
In the mean time, without wishing to enter too far into this
question of the apostolicity of James, to which we attach
.only a secondary importance, we believe it can be made
probable and almost certain that the author of our epistle is
no other than James the son of Alpheus, as, among the
Fathers, thought Chrysostom, Athanasius, Jerome, Amphi
lochius, Augustine, Theodoret, Theophylact, and the authors
of the Chronicle of Alexandria.1 Therefore,
1. It is without sufficient reason that, to deny the apostle-
1 So have thought in our day Hug, De Wette, Guerike, and Reuss;
31

362 THE CANON.
ship of James, it is alleged that the title of apostle is not
inserted at the head of the epistle ; for John has not placed
it at the commencement of his letters, nor Jude, nor even
Paul in the third of his ; J and yet all the three were apos
tles. 2. After the death of James the Great (whom Herod
Agrippa slew a. d. 44), the Scriptures have always spoken
of only one other James, brother of the Lord, a man emi
nent in the Church. We must, then, believe there remained
only one remarkable person of this name. Where, then,
would James the Less be, if this eminent James were not
he? 3. The Lord had four brothers, among whom are counted
a Jude and a James, besides Joses and Simon (Matt. xiii.
55 ; Mark vi. 3). Now, Jude calls himself " brother of
James " (Jude i.), and James is called " brother of the
Lord." (Gal. i. 19.) It will then naturally be asked if they
are not the same persons.
4. This is not all. Many of the " Lord's brothers " (1 Cor.
ix. 5) were counted among the twelve ; among his brothers,
a James, a Joses, and a Jude ; among the twelve, a James,
son of Alpheus, and a Jude, brother of James,2 both of
whom were either his own brothers, his half-brothers, or his
cousins.8 Must we not thence conclude that the James, au
thor of the epistle and " brother of the Lord " (Gal. i. 19),
as well as the Jude, his brother, author of- another epistle
Winer and Neander are undecided. Origen, Eusebius, Hilary, Ambrose
Epiphanius, and Gregory of Nyssa held, it is said, the other opinion. 0*
such a question the Fathers are savants, but neither witnesses nor judges
Their authority is not above that of the moderns.
1 First and Second Thessalonians, Philippians, Philemon, and Hebrews.
2 Otherwise called Lebbeus or Thaddeus. (Acts i. 13; John xiv. 22;
Luke vi. 16.
8 Many very properly object that it would be contrary to the usage of
the Greeks to apply to cousins the expression " brother " (adenine). They
add that Paul and Luke himself, when they speak of cousins, use either
the terms dveipibg or ovyyevTjg. (Luke i. 36, 58; Col. iv. 10; Rom. ix. 5;
xvi. 7, 11, 21.)

WHICH JAMES WAS THE AUTHOR. 363
were for the same reason both called " brothers of the Lord,"
and both counted among the apostles ?
5. It would be very difficult to believe that the James of
the Acts, of the epistle to the Corinthians, and of the epistle
to the Galatians,. if he had not been an apostle, could have
possessed such high authority among the apostles, whether in
the council of Jerusalem,1 in his house when the elders and
apostles were convened (Acts xxi. 18), in the estimation
of Peter (Acts xii. 17; Gal. ii. 12), or in that of Paul.2
" Tell these things to James and to the brethren," Peter
said ; and it was even from fear of the brethren sent by James
that this apostle afterward dissembled in Antioch. " James,
Cephas, and John, who are pillars," said Paul. "I saw
none of the apostles in Jerusalem, save James, the Lord's
brother." 6. It would be equally difficult, if he were not the apostle,
son of Alpheus, to believe that the book of Acts, in its 12th
chapter, would have introduced him abruptly on the apostol
ical arena as the person thenceforward most prominent and
influential in the church, without having said one word about
his person or his conversion, and without any mention of him
in any other part of the New Testament.
7. It is difficult to persuade ourselves that Luke, at the
very moment of recounting the death of James the Elder,
whilst his readers must be supposed not to have known, after
him, any other James than the Less, should immediately, in
this same 12th chapter, speak of a third James of whom the
Scriptures to that time had never spoken, and without inti
mating that he was not then speaking of the only James
whom his readers might be supposed to know.
8. But it would be equally difficult to believe that Paul
should distinctly and positively call him an apostle (Gal. i.
19) if he had not been one. When, " after three years I
1 Acts xv. 19, Sub iyd Kpiva. What would not the Roman doctors say
if Peter had held such language ?
2 1 Cor. ix. 5; Gal. i. 19; ii. 9, 12.

364 THE CANON.
went up to Jerusalem to see Peter. Other of the apostles
saw I none, save James the Lord's brother."
In vain should we do violence to this verse by translating
it thus : " I saw no other of the apostles, but I saw James ; "
for no example can be produced where ei pfj after erepov ov/c
is confined to mean only but. And moreover, in this passage
the whole design of Paul was to show that for a long time
after his conversion he had not seen an apostle. James, the
Lord's brother, was then an apostle.
9. When the same Paul said to the Corinthians (ix. 5),
" Have we not the power to lead about a sister, a wife, as
well as other apostles, and the brethren of the Lord and Ce
phas ? " it is sufficiently clear that he is far from wishing to
except the Lord's brothers from the number of the apostles.
On the contrary, he places them in the rank with Cephas.
" As well as other apostles " means here " even the brothers
of the Lord and Cephas."
10. Otherwise there must have been in the evangelical
history two Joseses, three Judes, and four Jameses, which is
difficult to believe. Two named^Joses : the one a brother of
the Lord, the other his cousin or his half-brother. Three
Judes : the one, Iscariot, another, brother of Jesus Christ
(Matt. xiii. 55), the third, apostle, and son of an unknown
James ; for we must from thence necessarily understand the
expression 'Iov'Sas 'Ia/cc6/3ov (Luke vi. 16 ; Acts i. 13 ; John
xiv. 22), in the sense of Jude the son of James. And I say,
too, four Jameses : the first, son of Zebedee ; the second, son
of Alpheus, and cousin or half-brother of the Lord ; the
third, his own brother, author of the epistle ; and the fourth,
a James unknown, father of Jude the apostle.
We must then at last conclude that, if it is not necessary
to establish the apostolicity of this epistle in order to prove
its canonicity, we have still the strongest reasons for admit
ting that its author was an apostle, whilst those of a contrary
opinion are at least unable to prove that he was not.

SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 365
SECTION m.
SECOND EPISTLE OP PETEK.
The Study it claims.
This Scripture here calls more than any other for an at
tentive study of its characteristics and its history ; for in spite
of the doctrinal beauty and the wholly apostolical majesty
which distinguish it, it is, of the five contested epistles, that
which the modern opponents of the canon have the most
abundantly attacked, not only on account of its lack of his
torical proofs, but especially of its striking homage to the
epistles of Paul, both as to their authenticity and their inspi
ration. Moreover, it must be conceded that men of science in
every age have taken part for and against it. Against it,
because it is, of the five antilegomens, that which presents
in its favor the most limited number of Patristic testimonies
during the first two Christian centuries ; and for it, because
at the same time it is, of the five antilegomens, that whose
internal characteristics the most invincibly attest its apostol
ical authenticity. Also, when we determine to reject it,
there is, in the strange suppositions we are obliged to admit,
" a moral impossibility," as M. Louis Bonnet has so well
said in his " Commentary on the New Testament " ; 1 " im
possibility," he adds, " which, in every unprejudiced judge,
forces a conviction so vivid, so firm, that we do not hesitate
to affirm that, among the books of the New Testament, at
any time contested, there is not one the authenticity of which
is as certain as the second epistle of Peter."
The most distinguished German critics 2 have lately come
to the same conclusion ; and we have quite recently seen
1 New Testament, in his Introduction, tom. ii., Geneva, 1852, p. 701.
" Besides Guericke, Isagogik (1854); Dietlein, Der 2 Petri, 1851, pp. 1-
74; Thiersch, (1852), Versammlung, etc.
31*

366 THE CANON.
again the learned Guericke, who in his " Beitrage " (p. 175)
had at first expressed its doubts on this authenticity, after
ward nobly and frequently retracting these doubts in his
" Introduction " of 1854.1
The Letter claims to be Peter's.
We must first remark that the author declares himself
to be " Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus
Christ," just as the author of the first epistle calls himself
" Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ." He repeats this asser
tion from one end to the other, directly, indirectly, and in
every form. He professes also to write to the same classes
of persons (2 Pet. iii. 1) to whom the first epistle had been
addressed, that is, " to the elect from among the Jews scat
tered" (ekAcktois irapeiri8ripois Siacnropas), as strangers in the
various provinces of Asia Minor. He says : " This second
epistle, beloved, I now write unto you ; " and he assures
them that he had been an eye-witness of the transfiguration
of the Lord on the holy mountain, " when there came such a
voice to him from the excellent glory ; This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased." Moreover, he says, it is
now the time of his departure ; the moment is come for him
"to put off this tabernacle" (i. 13); and this, "the Lord
has showed " him (14) ; this same Jesus who, shortly after
his own resurrection, had indicated to him what kind of death
his should be. (John xxi. 14, 19.) He then "thinks it meet
in both to stir up their pure minds by way of remembrance."
He foresees that his letter will be universally read, and in
the expectation of his approaching death, he " will endeavor
that they may be able after his decease to have these things
always in remembrance, that they may know them and be
established in the present truth." (2 Pet. i. 15, 12.) At the
same time, he commends to them " all the epistles of Paul,
8 P. 483. "Der ich hiemit wiederholt retractire." See his Gesammt-
geschic-te des N. T. oder Neutestamentliche Isagogik, p. 472.

SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 367
his beloved brother," which were already all written, even
including the epistle to the Hebrews (iii. 15, 16), although
Paul was not yet deceased ; for the two apostles were des
tined to die the same year, and under the same persecution.
Paul, he says, had written to them, " according to the wisdom
given him ; " and whoever should wrest his words, would
do it to his " own destruction." In a word, we here see the
author addressing his brethren with all the elevation of an
apostle who knew himself about to give up his life for his
master, and to appear before him. They must then, he says,
" account that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation ; "
they must by their prayers hasten the coming of the day of
God, when the heavens shall pass away with a great noise,
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ; " they must,
" according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." (iii. 13.)
The majestic Character of the Epistle strongly confirms this
Testimony.
That this Scripture is in fact the work of an inspired apos
tle is powerfully attested by its entire character, the majesty
of its thoughts, the purity of its doctrines, their profound
harmony with the whole body of divine instructions. From
the beginning to the end, the epistle exhibits one of the
Twelve at the close of his conflicts ; it breathes throughout
the apostolical spirit : authority in the language ; sober gran
deur in the images ; sustained, but tender and serious fervor
in the warnings ; calm elevation, vigorous and sometimes
sublime in its denunciations of the future. The day of
Christ approaches, though it be delayed ; let men then flee
the corruption which is in the world through lust ; let holiness
of life be all their care ; let the Church hold herself, by " all
holy conversation and godliness," ready to escape the final
destruction of the world by fire ! What fullness, and yet
what terrible precision, in his description of the final confla-

368 THE CANON.
gration ! The earth and the heavens wrapped in flames, the
elements melted with fervent heat, that new heavens and a
new earth, the abode of righteousness, may spring out of this
universal ruin ! And it is thus powerfully he at last conducts
us to his solemn conclusion : " Seeing then, that all these
things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye
to be in all holy conversation and godliness ! Ye therefore,
beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware . . . and
grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ." " In omnibus epistolse partibus," Calvin says,
" spiritus Christi majestas se exerit." x (In every part of
the epistle, the majesty of the spirit of Christ is manifested.)
It should then be understood that, in order to put in ques
tion the authenticity of this letter, as many have done, not
only must the lie be given to all the historical traditions
which have transmitted it to us as Peter's, but there must
also be found, either in the epistle itself or in historical mon
uments, sufficient reasons for admitting the following bold
suppositions : —
It must first be imagined that a Scripture so grave, so pro
foundly conformed to the analogy of faith, and so entirely
superior in every one of its features to all the uninspired
productions of the same and the following ages, should be
the work, we say not of an ordinary and obscure man, but
of an odious impostor, capable of accumulating falsehood on
falsehood, and of carrying blasphemy even to the point of giv
ing himself out as the author also of the first letter which the
Holy Spirit had already dictated to the apostle Peter, —
even to fabricating the counterfeit of a second letter, and
giving it out as divine to the churches of God. It must
be admitted that the author having composed false prophe
cies, and a new Balaam, a new Ananias lying to the Holy
Ghost, had presented them as received from on high, and all
this whilst exhorting men to holiness of life, and reminding
them with rare unction of the terrible judgments of God
1 Argumentum Epistolse, tom. vii. p. 243, Berlin, 1834.

SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 369
against all the ancient false prophets, of his terrible future
judgments against false teachers ! (2 Pet. ii. 3) — " whose
judgment," he exclaims, " now of a long time lingereth not,
and their damnation slumbereth not ! " Yet further, he went
on even to speak of his approaching end, of which, he says,
Christ himself had warned him; and this thought did not
awaken his conscience. He has seen with his own eyes the
transfiguration of Christ, he looks for his speedy return with
out fear, and he dares to pronounce these dreadful words :
" We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we
made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ!" But still further ; for we should have to acknowledge that
such a man must at the same time have been so superior to
all the impostors who would afterwards dare to give to the
church forged writings, that whilst they always betrayed
themselves by the confusion of their ideas, the poverty of
their matter, and the servility of their borrowings from the
inspired writings, as also by the misfortune of certain details
and by manifest errors, nothing of the kind appears in this
letter ; everything here is grand, true, holy, serious, harmo
nious ; and it is after eighteen hundred years of scrutiny that
we can say, it contains nothing not in accordance with facts
and with the Scriptures.
You even meet there, in the third chapter, on an impor
tant and novel subject, sublime instructions, which, at the
same time, are still entirely conformed to the harmony of
faith. We should, then, have to suppose that the miserable
wretch, capable of such a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,
must have been able to compose an epistle which, by its
unity, its unction, and all its excellences, shows itself superior
to all the uninspired writings of the same age (the opponents
concede it), as much as the Alps rise above our hills in Ge
neva. And when we speak thus, we are comparing it not
only with the apocryphal or forged writings of Barnabas and
of Hermas, and the false epistles of Ignatius, but even with

370 THE CANON.
those of a Polyearp and a Clement. For we have been able
to detect errors of doctrine or fact even in these holy produc
tions ; in the second epistle of Peter, nothing of the kind.
Finally, we must admit even more ; we must recognizo
that this impostor has more completely grasped the design
and the real meaning of the first epistle of Peter than any
of the ancient Fathers ; for when you compare it attentively
with the last, as Michaelis has said, you will find their agree
ment to be such that if Peter had not himself written the one
and the other, you would be obliged to attribute to the im
pious fabricator of the second an understanding of the first
which no one of the ancient Fathers themselves appears to
have attained.
In a word, good sense, history, logic, and conscience revolt
equally against the supposition which would make the second
epistle the work of an impostor.
Why its Acceptance was delayed.
It will certainly be asked, how it came to pass that this
second letter, so holy and so majestic, was at first received by
only a part of the churches, and that the others hesitated,
some a longer time than others, to introduce it into the col
lection of the inspired books of the New Testament ? This
delay, we reply, was attributable to two causes, one internal,
the other external ; the internal relating to its style, as indi
cated by Jerome ; the external is furnished us by history.
We shall now speak of the former.
- Its Style.
Jerome himself, regarding the epistle as canonical, informs
us x that the greater part of those who in the early ages de
nied that Peter was its author did so on account of the want
of resemblance between its style and that of the apostle in
1 Catal. Script. Eccles., cap. i.

THE STYLE OF PETER'S SECOND EPISTLE. 371
the first epistle ; (a plerisque ejus esse negatur, propter styli
cum priore dissonantiam). And even, in the hundred and
twentieth of his letters, this Father, for this reason, ventures
the suggestion that Peter employed different interpreters to
translate the two epistles into Greek ; (ex quo intelligimus,
pro necessitate rerum, diversis eum usum interpretibus).
But this objection, which had also struck Calvin l in the six
teenth century, and which was reproduced by Saumaise in
the seventeenth,3 as many others have done in our day, has
however little value. In the first place, a serious examina
tion of the two epistles destroys it, by showing that it is not
even founded in fact, as may be seen in Guericke's Introduc
tion, (1854). The two letters, carefully compared, disclose
in fact more conformities than differences. And besides, we
may say in general that nothing is more arbitrary or more
uncertain than such arguments founded on styles because
the productions of the same author may, in this respect, ac
cording to circumstances and subjects, greatly differ at one
time from those of another.
It is very true that Peter, in his second chapter, while
predicting to the churches the surreptitious intrusion of false
teachers who should deny the Redeemer, and who, " with
feigned words make merchandise of souls, privily bringing in
damnable heresies, by whom the way of truth shall be evil
spoken of" (ii. 1-3), then rises above his ordinary style, and
gives scope to his indignation in the energetic and figurative
language of the ancient prophets. But this would surely be
no legitimate objection against the authenticity of the book ;
and what makes this readily apparent is, that it applies, after
all, only to the second chapter, and that you might, with the
same reason, pretend that the author of this passage is not
i " I admire the divine majesty of the spirit of Christ in every part of
this epistle," he said. But, while recognizing its apostolicity, he adopted
the idea of Jerome, " that it came from Peter," but that one of his disciples
was employed by him to write it. N. T. Comm. tom. vii. 243. Berlin,
1834. 2 The opinion of Saumaise is mentioned in Wetstein, ii. 698.

372 THE CANON.
the author of the first chapter, nor of the third ; for it can
be maintained that, except in this passage, the style of both
epistles is the same. Its History.
We have said, there is another reason altogether historical,
which explains why only a part of the churches at first
received this second letter. It is, the circumstances of the
apostle and the Jewish Christians of Asia at the time it was
written to them. When Peter wrote it from Rome to the
Jewish Christians of the Dispersion, he was, he himself says,
on the point of laying aside his earthly tabernacle and being
sacrificed for Christ, as Christ himself had predicted to him.
It was A. d. 65, so that this Scripture did not reach those
Christians until Peter, already a martyr, was no longer living
to give by his presence the same authority to this as to the
first epistle ; and when Paul also was no longer here below
to support with his testimony the Scripture of his " beloved
brother " (2 Pet. iii. 15). The two apostles had just given
their lites for Jesus Christ, with the multitude of .Christians
immolated at Rome. It was the 19 th of July, A. r>. 64, that
witnessed the burning of that city by Nero, immediately
after which commenced that frightful persecution which Taci
tus has so vividly described in the fifteenth book of his " An
nals." He says, " At first, all who avowed themselves Chris
tians were seized ; and then (on their deposition), an im
mense multitude was arrested, who were convicted less of
having burned Rome than of hating the human race. They
were enveloped in the skins of beasts, that the dogs might
devour them ; they were attached to crosses ; their bodies
were coated with resin, and then set on fire to illuminate the
night as living torches. Nero had given up his own gardens
for the spectacle." (Ann., Lib. xv.) It was during those
days of desolation that Paul and Peter disappeared from the
militant Church, and the last epistle of the latter, written so

SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 373
short a time before his decease (2 Pet. i. 14), went forth from
Rome to seek the Israelitish flocks in the East. But in what
condition did it find them ? In trouble and flight. Already,
on the 14th of May, A. D. 66, Florus, who for two years had
been reducing this people to utter despair, had begun, by the
massacre of the High Market, that frightful and final war in
which Jerusalem was to fall. The Jewish flocks had all fled
to the mountains. Threatened, pursued, wandering, they
had carried with them their Holy Scriptures, their Peshito
version, which already contained, besides the Gospels and
Acts, the epistle of James (written before a. d. 62), the first
of John, the first of Peter, and all the epistles of Paul, in
cluding even that to the Hebrews, but which could not yet,
of course, contain either the Apocalypse, written thirty years
later, or the epistle of Jude, or the two short epistles of John,
or even the second of Peter. Scarcely had the latter arrived
in the East from Rome, than the news of the bloody death
of these two apostles quickly followed it there ; and we may
conceive that, during those stormy days, the flocks could not
give to mutual communications on this important subject
a sufficient time to secure unanimity of views. From that
period, we should expect three facts : First, the adoption of
this second epistle would be immediate in some churches,
especially among the Jewish Christians of the Dispersion ;
secondly, its successive admission by the other churches
would be gradual; and thirdly, its definitive acceptance
throughout Christendom would be late. All these occurred,
as we are now to show, beginning with the last-stated fact.

The Definitive Agreement of all the Christian Churches was
late.
And first, we have before showed that the acceptance of
this epistle was .as late as the council of Nice, a. d. 325. It
was at this epoch, and without any public deliberation on the
subject, or any decree, that by a free effect of the fraternal
32

374 THE CANON.
intercourse of so many eminent men, this Scripture passed,
by a tacit but universal consent, into the canon of all the
churches, East and West. All these divergences in regard
to the antilegomens ceased throughout the churches after this
council. All the seven or twelve authentic catalogues of the
fourth century that have reached us, equally contain it : that
of Athanasius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Rufinus, Augustine, that
of the forty-four bishops assembled at Carthage, that of
Cyril, that of the council of Laodicea and of the- bishops of
all Asia Minor, that of Gregory Nazianzen, that of Amphi
lochius, that of Philistratus of Brescia. And we might
equally have mentioned in -this same century the celebrated
Ephraim the Syrian who quoted this second epistle of Peter
in his Syriac writings and in his Greek writings,1 as also
Didymus of Alexandria, his cotemporary, who, in his chief
work, " De Trinilate," recovered in 1769, signalizes it as one
of the catholic epistles, and expressly attributes it to Peter.
The Successive Acceptance was gradual.
In the second place, that the acceptance of this epistle by
one church after another was gradual, is what all the monu
ments of antiquity prior to the council of Nice equally show.
You shall hear, for instance, in a. d. 324, that is, only a year
before the council was held, Eusebius, in the third book of
his History (chap, xxv.), relating to us the opinion of the
ancient pastors of the Church (raj/ 7rdAai irpeo-flvTepuiv), and
placing, as they do, this epistle among " the antilegomens,
which, while doubted by many, were at the same time recog
nized by the majority (yvwpipwv 8' ovv opms tois ttoXXoXs) ;
recognized by the greater part of ecclesiastical authors (opias
8i rrapd TrXeicrTOts twv iKKXrjcriao-TiKuiv yiyvoicrKopevas) ."
Again elsewhere, in the third chapter of the same book,
he says, " As to Peter, a Scripture, that which is called his
First, is universally received (dviop.oX6ynrai). Also the an-
1 See Guericke, Gesammtgeschichte des N. T. p. 477. Leipsic, 1854.

GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE OF THIS EPISTLE. 375
cient teachers or pastors (ol TrdXai. wpecrplvTepoi) frequently
wrote it in their writings as an uncontested Scripture (u>s
dvap.<piXeKTia . . . KaTaKexpijvrai) . But as to that book of his
which is given as the Second, on the one side (pev), we have
not received (irapeiXrj^apev), that it should be definitely in
serted in the New Testament (ivSiddeKov ; literally, intesta-
mented) ; and on the other hand at the same time (o/aois Se),
as it has appeared to the greater number (ttoXXois) to be use
ful, it has been the object of the same affection as the then
Scriptures (p&rb. rutv dAA(3j> io-irov8do-0rj ypa<p(ov)."
Valesius (Henry of Valois),1 translated : " Studiose lec-
tita est una cum reliquis Sacrse Scripturas libris." It has
been carefully and habitually read with the other books of
the Holy Scripture.
And as to those doubts of some persons which are men
tioned by Eusebius, Calvin says,2 " They should not divert
us from using this epistle, for Eusebius does not tell us who
they were that doubted ; we therefore owe them no more
deference than is due to unknown persons ; while Eusebius
adds, that it was everywhere received without controversy."
The progressive assent to this epistle before the council of
Nice had been slow, in the opinion of Eusebius. As to him
self, this Father received it, and the majority of the churches
were equally earnest (io-n-ov8do-8ri) to have it read publicly
with the other Scriptures ; but we can not yet conclude from
all these facts, Eusebius says, that it was decidedly " intesta-
mented." This took place in the year succeeding.
The great Athanasius, already so celebrated at this very
epoch, received it without hesitation. We find it frequently
quoted in his writings : in his first Dialogue on the Trinity ;
in his second1 discourse against the Arians ; in his thirty-ninth
epistle ; in his synopsis of the Holy Scriptures. " The sec
ond epistle of Peter the apostle," he says, " was so called by
him who wrote it ; for Peter, to instruct the scattered Jewish
1 Edit. (1659) of Hist. Ecc. of Euseb. Socrates, Sozomen, &c.
2 In his Argumentum Epistolse, written in 1551.

376 THE CANON.
converts, addressed this letter to them : and it is that which
Peter said (o eXeyev 6 Uirpos) : " Whereby are given unto
us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye
might be partakers of the divine nature." (2 Pet. i. .4.)
And if we go back a century before Athanasius, even to
the learned and godly Origen, in the first half of the third
century, we find abundant confirmation of the same fact,
and in a manner yet more significant. This eminent man,
born a. d. 185, and so profoundly versed in the religious lit
erature of the first and second centuries, received this epistle
and quoted it frequently as a portion of our Holy Scriptures,
and as a second letter of the apostle. He names it without
any restriction, and he even quotes many of its most noted
passages, both in his Greek works still extant, and in the
Latin translations of others, as may be seen in his Greek
Commentary on Matthew,1 and twice in his Greek dialogue
" On true Faith," 2 as also in the Latin version of his book
" Concerning Principles " (irtpi. dp^wv),8 that of his Com
mentaries on Romans,4 that of his eighth homily on Joshua,
Leviticus,5 Numbers, and Exodus.
And if we carefully distinguish here between the Greek
and Latin quotations, it is because some have affirmed that
the latter are less worthy of confidence, on account of the
liberties taken by Rufinus the translator. But Rufinus has
done this only in certain writings where he wished to conceal
1 Opp., tom. ii. 55; tom. i. 323; ii. 164, 38; Kirchhofer, p. 281.
'' He there distinctly alludes to this epistle in saying, 'Ami re Trig irparr/g
imoTok?jg. 8 Origen, Dial. Opp. ii. 274; i. 821, where quoting 2 Pet. iii. 15, he says,
" It is written elsewhere by Peter the apostle. He says, ' According to the
wisdom given to our brother Paul.' And again, quoting 2 Pet. ii. 19,
1 For one is in bondage to him of whom he is overcome.' "
4 Opp. tom. iv. 631. Edit. Bened. 1733-1759. De la Rue. And Peter
in his letter says (2 Pet. i. 2), " Grace and peace be multiplied unto you
through the knowledge of God." (Et Petrus in epistola sua dicit, Gratia
vobis et pax multiplicatur in cognitione Dei.)
6 Horn. viii. in Levit. (Opp. ii. p. 200,) where he quotes 2 Pet. i. 4, " We
are made partakers of the divine nature."

GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE OF THIS EPISTLE. 377
some mystic errors of Origen, and in which there is no ques
tion about the second epistle of Peter. Moreover, Origen,
in the passages here indicated, is not satisfied with naming
this letter as of Peter ; he quotes from important sentences
word for word, as may be seen in our notes : " It is written,"
he says, " by Peter the apostle : " " according to the wisdom
given to my brother Paul, (Kara Tvp> o-o<f>iav, (prjcrtv, ttjv 8e8opi-
vr\v rip d8eXcpu> p.ov LTavAoj)." Again, he says, " It is written
(quoting 2 Pet. ii. 19, Horn, xii.) that every one is subject
to him of whom he is overcome." " And Peter says, in his
letter, ' Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the
knowledge of God.' " " And Peter says again, ' You are
made partakers of the divine nature.'" "And the Scrip
ture somewhere says, 'A dumb beast, speaking with the
voice of a man, reproved the madness of the prophet.' "
(Horn, xiii.)
It has been very unreasonably objected that, in quoting
the Greek of Peter's first epistle, Origen simply calls it the
catholic epistle, as if he admitted only one. This difficulty is
reduced to nothing when we see that, in another place, (Com.
on Rom. i. 8,) he uses the same expression to designate the
second epistle of Peter : (Et Petrus in epistola sua dicit,
" Gratia," &c. 2 Pet. i. 2).
This great teacher had then found, in his incessant study
of Christian antiquity, sufficient reasons for receiving fully
this second epistle of Peter, although Origen says elsewhere
(at least if Eusebius, in H. E. vi. 25, is to be relied on), that
this letter, accepted by himself, was contested by others. It
is in an exposition of the gospel of John, now lost, that
Origen, according to Eusebius, says, " Peter has left us one
single epistle which is universally acknowledged (bpoXoyov-
pevnv) ; but we admit a second, for it is contested (eo-ra 8k
Kal 8evrepav, dp*j)if$diXXeTai yap)."
Thus, then, of all the united testimonies of Origen, even
including this last, — which however, does not appear en
tirely to harmonize with the nine or ten other quotations of
32*

378 THE CANON.
this Father, — from all the testimonies united we must again
conclude that, according to Origen, the general acceptance of
the second epistle of Peter was gradual.
And no one should be surprised at our hesitation in ac
cepting this quotation from Eusebius ; for this author has
already betrayed, in this very chapter, a grave want of either
exactitude or impartiality in regard to the epistle of Jude. *
In fact, whilst he pretends to be giving there an account of
the opinions of Origen upon the canon, he has, notwithstand
ing the very numerous and obvious testimonies of Origen to
Jude, given us the canon of this Father without mentioning
the epistle of Jude.
We may again confirm these conclusions drawn from
Origen by another testimony equally important, of the same
century, that of Firmilian. In fact, if, in Africa, Cyprian,
at least in his works now extant, has made no use of the sec
ond epistle of Peter (no more than Tertullian before him),
we see, by a letter written to this holy bishop by the cele
brated Firmilian, that in the same period our epistle was
quoted by this learned man, then bishop of Cesarea in Cap-
padocia, and very influential in Asia. He flourished A. D.
231. A great friend of Origen, who went to visit him even
in his distant diocese, and who received in turn his visit in
Judea, he wrote thus to Cyprian afterward : 1 " The blessed
apostles, Peter and Paul, have, in their epistles, expressed
their horror at the heretics (in epistolis suis execrati sunt),
and warned us to avoid them." We cannot doubt that, by
these expressions, Firmilian had in view our second epistle,
since the first says not one word about heretics, while the
other employs an entire chapter in denouncing against them
the fearful judgments of God. The acceptance of the epis
tle, we repeat, was slow, though real and progressive.
And now, if we pass from the third century to the second,
and even the first, we find again the same fact confirmed in
the few monuments of this epoch. We must not here speak
1 Among the Epis. of Cyprian, the 75th.

GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE OF THIS EPISTLE. 379
of the catalogue of Muratori either one way or the other,
because, as we have seen, the part of the manuscript which
must have spoken of Peter, is wanting in the Fragment.
But we find, in the second century, Irenseus,1 who twice
quoted the eighth verse of the third chapter. Peter, it is
true, is not there named, but the Father there gives his own
words : " A day with the Lord is as a thousand years (h ydp
rjpepa Kvpiov &s ,a ern)." And that which proves it to be a
quotation is, that Justin Martyr, before him, when quoting
these very words, gave them in his day as borrowed from
the Scriptures. " ~S,wrjKapev" he says, " koX to elprjpJvov."
" We know also that it has been said, A day is with the
Lord as a thousand years." 2 Moreover, we may see again
in the same century, by an important fact, how much the
second epistle of Peter was at that time distributed and re
spected, since Clemens Alexandrinus had written an expo
sition of it. This fact we obtain from Eusebius and Photius ;
from Eusebius, who declares to us that Clement, in his Hy
potyposes, now lost, had made " abridged expositions (im-
rerpTipevas Sirryrjaeis) " of all the testamented Scripture ; "
and from Photius,4 too, who mentions also the commentary
of Clement on " the epistles of the divine Paul, and on the
catholic epistles (tov Beiov navAov raV eirurroXwv, Kal rav
Ka6oXiK<ov)." Now, it is well known that Eusebius and Pho
tius both placed the second epistle of Peter among those they
called the " catholic epistles." Guericke 6 says, " And as
to what is pretended, that Cassiodorus represented Clement as
having commented only on the first of Peter, it shows that
they have not examined the words of that author."
Moreover, in this same second century, we might, with
Lardner, quote again Athenagoras, who twice appears to
1 Adv. Hasres. Lib. v. chap. 23 and 28.
2 Dial, cum Tryph. p. 308. Lond. 1772, fol.
" H. E. vi. 24. De Valois translated " compendiosam enarrationem."
* Mvpix>j3i(3Xov, (Biblioth.) Cod. 109. Edit. Bekker, p. 89.
6 Last edit. p. 476. (Gesammtgeschichte des N. T. oder Neuestament-
liche Isagogik. Leipsic, 1854.)

380 THE CANON.
allude to certain words of our epistle ; and Guericke (Introd.
1854), who also quotes a Father prior to Irenseus, Theophi
lus, bishop of Antioch, with whom we find again two passages
quite clear relating to 2 Pet. i. 10, and i. 19. Besides, in
the first century there are numerous unmistakable allusions
among the apostolical Fathers, especially Clemens Romanus,
from which we have already made a long extract. Many,
too, are quoted by Hermas in his " Shepherd," and by Bar
nabas ; but we have thus far abstained from referring to these
two books. Guericke says, " These very manifest quotations
of the apostolical Fathers which we have signalized, may be
contested ; but no impartial person can fail to recognize in
them clear allusions to his second epistle." 1
Yet we must admit that, with decided enemies, these quo
tations have little force, because Peter is not expressly named
in them, and because they have been determined to see in
them only accidental resemblances of thought and language.
Moreover, it should be understood that before the book was
decidedly intestamented (as Eusebius says), even they who
received it abstained from quoting it to others, or quoted it
quite reservedly. We prefer, then, to appeal to a testimony
more significant ; and concluding again that the progress
of the book was gradual among the body of the churches,
although real, we pass to our third point.
From the Appearing of the Boole, the Assent was, in one part
of the Church, immediate.
In the third place, it is equally evident, from monuments
of the first century, that the adoption of the epistles of Peter
by a great part of the primitive churches, and especially by
the Jewish flocks scattered abroad, was immediate. This
important fact might be inferred already from the unanimity
so easily established among the Christian churches as soon as
1 Ibid. p. 472. Doch jedem Unbefangenen unverkennbare Anspielun-
gen. See also Dietlein, Der 2 Brief Petri. Berlin, 1851, p. 1-71.

IMMEDIATELY RECEIVED BT MANY CHURCHES. 381
their principal leaders, assembled from every part of the an
cient world, had met each"other at Nice in their first general
council. How could they then have decided with such entire
unanimity and positiveness if they had not seen, in the mon
uments of the primitive Church, testimonies which have not
survived to our day ? How, above all, could the learned
Origen, so jealous for the Scriptures, so near the apostolical
times, so versed in the knowledge of antiquities, have a cen
tury before placed this letter in his canon, if he had not had
sufficient proofs, and if he had not been able to follow its
track up to the beginnings of Christianity ?
Yet this proof, which is, after all, only strongly presump
tive, might still appear insufficient to the opponents of the
epistle. We have another which is unanswerable ; it is .the
testimony of Jude.
Although it seemed good to the Holy Spirit to give the
Scriptures to the Church at a period sufficiently late to have
them directly in the care of a Christian people already organ
ized, that is, to numerous flocks already completely gathered
by the preaching of the apostles ; and although, moreover,
the greater part of the later epistles may have been written
very near the moment when their authors disappeared by
martyrdom, — yet the same Spirit meanwhile provided that
these sacred writers should have time to be confirmed by
each other through mutual testimonies constantly accumulat
ing. Thus, as Paul rendered testimony to Luke, Luke to
Paul, John to the first three evangelists, Paul to Peter and
James, and Peter himself to " all the epistles of Paul "
(2 Pet. iii. 16) ; so, too, the apostle Jude, " servant of Jesus
Christ, and brother of James," in his catholic epistles, writ
ten after the two letters of Peter (as may be seen by many
signs, and as we shall presently show), quotes words evi
dently from the second epistle of Peter, declaring they were
" spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ "
(vs. 17, 18), and the Church ought to remember them.
Let us then attentively examine both this quotation from

382 THE CANON.
the passage from Peter and the testimony which Jude ren
ders to it.
See first the quotation in Jude, on which we have already
commented. " But beloved, remember ye the words spoken
before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ."
And what words are they ? Jude informs us : " They
told you there should be mockers in the last times, who
should walk after their own ungodly lusts." And where did
they say it ? Evidently, in the second epistle of Peter, and
nowhere else.
In the Greek New Testament, we find them word for
word, in the third chapter, verse third, of the second of Pe
ter, who, from the beginning of his letter, called himself
Sinmn Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. We find them
there, and only there. Thus Jude quoted this letter of Pe
ter as a Scripture already known of the churches of many
year ; for he said " remember."
And he quoted it as apostolical, for he said to them, " Re
member the words spoken before of the apostles of our Lord
Jesus Christ."
Examine attentively the very words which Peter had
written (2 Pet. iii. 3) : " Knowing this first, that there
shall come in the last time scoffers, walking after their own
lusts (on iXevo-ovrai irr icr^drov twv Tjpepwv 'EB1IIAIKTAI
/otto, rds iSias airmv itriOvpias iropevopevoi)." Compare also
now, word for word, the language of Peter with that of Jude :
" The apostles told you that in the last time (iv ecrxdrio
Xpovto) ; " that is as Peter's irr' icrxdrov raf -r)pepmv. " There
shall be scoffers (eo-ovrai ipiralKrai) ; that is as Peter's iXev-
aovrai ipTraiKTau Walking, (iropevopevoi is as Peter's tto-
pevopevoi) ; according to their ungodly lusts (/cara tos eavrwv
imdvplas tw do-epleiwv) ; that is as Peter's Kara, ras tStas
avrai' ernOvpias.
And it should be remarked again that the most important
word of Jude, that of eprraiKTai, is found nowhere else in the
Script'ire but in this single passage of the second epistle of
Peter.

IMMEDIATELY RECEIVED BY MANY CHURCHES. 383
Let us add that, to render again a more ample homage to
the epistle of Peter, Jude, in his brief letter, which contains
only twenty-five verses, appears to quote Peter again in ten
other passages (2 Pet. i. 2; ii. 1, 4, 6, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18) ;
and that, besides, he renders testimony in his fourth verse to
the fulfillment of the prophecy of Peter in the verses at the
beginning of his second chapter ; for the one speaks of future
heresies near at hand, whilst the other, writing much later,
speaks of them as being already before his eyes.
This testimony of Jude in favor of Peter has, it appears
to us, an irresistible force in establishing the high antiquity
of the use of this epistle by the first Christians, as of an
apostolical writing. Jude, in fact, quotes it to them as a
book written in a former time, and which he, invites them
to remember. And we must not forget, moreover, that the
proof here drawn from this remarkable testimony depends
in no degree on its inspiration, since it would still be suffi
cient to our argument, even if Jude, instead of being an
apostle, had been simply a writer of the same age, whose
words we now possess. It is enough that his epistle be rec
ognized as authentic and cotemporary. Now, that it is both,
is what the opponents themselves of the second epistle of
Peter are obliged to admit ; for we shall presently show by
the most ancient of the Latin Fathers (Tertullian), and by
those of the Greek Fathers who have most weight in these
matters (Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and others), that
Jude's epistle, which seems to have been written after the
death of all the apostles except John, was already received
from the second century by the Eastern and the Western
Churches. The second epistle of Peter must, then, have
been received still earlier ; and the numerous resemblances
which these two Scriptures present could not originate a
prejudice against that of Peter, as soon as it is established
that Peter's was the first written, and that Jude has quoted
from it.
It is apparent, therefore, that with a great part of the

384 THE CANON.
churches, especially those of the circumcision, the admission
of the second epistle of Peter was immediate. Afterwards
gradual and progressive with the other churches, it became
at length universal from the first half of the fourth century.
We pass to John's epistles.

SECTION III.
THE TWO SHORTER EPISTLES OF JOHN.
These two epistles contain altogether only twenty-eight
verses ; but although their divine authority is abundantly
asserted by the most respectable testimonies of Christian an
tiquity, they were held by many, for a time, in doubt. Euse
bius (H. E. iii. 25) has classed them, as we have said, in the
number of " contested books, although recognized, at the
same time, by the great majority (tois rroXXdis).'' He would
seem to doubt whether to attribute them to John the evange
list or some other author of the same name. He quotes,
too, (vi. 25) a passage from Origen, now lost, in which this
Father, while himself recognizing these two epistles, spoke
thus of them : " John, besides his gospel, wrote the Apoca
lypse . . . ; and he has left an epistle of a very few lines
(arixuv). And to these let us add still a second and a third
epistle, although all are not agreed to call these legitimate
(oil iravres (pacrl yvncriovs elvat, Tavras)." " Both," he adds,1
" do not contain a hundred stichoi " (or very short lines).
It is easy to render a satisfactory reason for the delay of
many in receiving these two latter epistles into the collection
of the canon. They were addressed to individuals ; they
were singularly brief, and the author there mentions himself
only as" the elder (6 TrpecrftvTepos, the elder par excellence).
We shall return to this subject.
1 w/Vjv ovk eloi orixuv apij/brepai emrbv.

THE TWO SHORTER EPISTLES OF JOHN. 385
On the other hand, these two epistles are, in their style
and their thoughts, so manifestly the products of the same
mind as the first of John, that they can be attributed to no
other author. The first and the last two render mutual tes
timony to each other by the numerous resemblances which
critics have taken pains to notice, and which we may study
with them,1 as well as by other correspondences ; entirely
worthy of notice, between these two short letters and those
of James and Peter.2
Moreover, it might be inquired, why would a false John
have forged them ? What object can any one imagine any
impostor to have had in fabricating these two letters, so
familiar, yet at the same time so full of interest as showing
the intimate relations existing between the apostle and the
churches ? They both advance no other than John's doc
trines ; they recommend no man nor party in the Church ;
they do not even remotely suggest the smallest of the errors
which cotemporary heretics were then sowing with full
hands ; they breathe only the holy unction and tender char
ity of John ; they are simple and modest likewise ; in a word,
they bear all the most natural characteristics of genuineness
and truth.
Also these two epistles, notwithstanding their familiar
character and their extreme brevity, are sustained by the
best testimonials of authenticity.
First in the East, from the second century, that of Clem
ens Alexandrinus, to whom so much credit is given in sacred
criticism. He received them both as Scriptures divinely
inspired, written by the apostle John ; 8 and he has even writ
ten commentaries on them.4 Then, in the West, from the
same century, the testimony of the canon, by many attrib-
1 Guericke, p. 497.
2 See Wordsworth on the Canon. Lond. p. 283 to 286.
» Strom, ii. p. 389, ed. Sylb. Euseb. H. E.' iii. 14. Adumbrat. p. 101,
edit. Venet.
4 Guericke, Gesammtgesch. des N. T. pp. 474, 495.

386 THE CANON.
uted to Caius, a Roman priest, and published first by the
Canon Muratori. Having before quoted from the first epis
tle of John, he now adds : " The epistle of Jude and the two
bearing the name of John are universally received." (Epis
tola sane" Judas, et superscripti Joannis duse, in catholica ha-
bentur.) These epistles have, moreover, in the East and the
)'' West, the suffrage of Irenseus. Although the first contains
but thirteen verses, we find it quoted twice by this Father.
It is well understood what weight his testimony in regard to
John derives from his education in Asia with Polyearp, and
his long residence in the places where John dwelt to the end
of his life. Now, in his first book (chap. xvi. art. 3), he
quotes fully the eleventh verse of the second epistle : " John,
the disciple of the Lord," he says, " extends even to such
men the condemnation, forbidding us to say to them ' God
speed ; for he that biddeth them God speed, is partaker of
their evil deeds.' " And farther on, in his third book (chap.
xviii.) : " And his disciple John, in the letter of which I have
just spoken, has told us to shun them, when he said, ' For
many deceivers,' " etc., quoting fully the seventh and eighth
verses of the second epistle.
We might also name, from the beginning of the third cen
tury, Origen, who recognized both epistles as canonical, in
his 7th homily, already quoted, on Joshua, and comparing
them to the priests who carried the trumpet after the son of
Nun. He says, " Peter sounds two clarions in his epistles ;
James also, and Jude ; then John adds also his blast in his
epistles and his Apocalypse." 1
We might also name, in this same third century, Diony
sius of Alexandria, who, in a passage also quoted by Euse
bius (vii. 25), cites them as authentic and as ascribed to John,
" although John there withholds his name, designating him
self in each only under the title of elder (dXXd dvusvvptos 6
TLpesfivrepos yeypaTrrai)."
i Acfdit nihilominus atque et Joannes tuba canere per epistolas suas et
Apocalypsin.

THE EPISTLE OF JUDE. 387
Then we might add to all these testimonies those of Alex
ander Alexandrinus, Athanasius", Epiphanius, Gregory Nazian
zen, Philastrius, Jerome, Rufinus, Cyril of Jerusalem, and
Augustine ; the council of Laodicea, the council of Carthage,
and soon the entire Christian world.

SECTION V.
THE EPISTLE OF JCDE.
The canonicity of the epistle of Jude is powerfully at
tested ; and we have reason to wonder that so short a scrip
ture, which contains only a little chapter of twenty-five
verses, has been so frequently quoted by the early Fathers.
— The principal of them will be noticed hereafter.
The author of the Epistle.
Antiquity is unanimous in recognizing the apostle Jude,
(Luke vi. 16), Jude the brother, half-brother, or cousin of
Jesus Christ ; and the brother also of that James the Less
(6 punpos), who was son of Alpheus, and whose relationshfp
with the Son of Man has already been discussed by us.
No voice among the ancients has ever attributed this let
ter to any other Jude than the apostle : that is wholly
a modern pretension. Tertullian,1 Origen,2 Athanasius
(Epist. Festal.), Epiphan us (Hasres. xxvi.), Jerome,8
and others, unanimously give the title of apostle to its
author. This Jude, brother of James, who is called Jude of James
by Luke (vi. 16; Acts i. 13), Thaddeus by Mark, Lebbeus
1 De Cultu feminar., Lib. i., cap. iv.
2 Com. in Ep. ad Rom., Lib. iii., tom. iv. p. 510. (Ed. Paris, 1733.)
3 Com. on Tit. i. — Ep. 2 ad. Paulin.

388 THE CANON.
by Matthew, and who is mentioned only once in the Gospels
(John xiv. 22), was married," if we may believe Eusebius,
as were the other " brothers of the Lord," (1. Cor. ix. 5) ;
and his two grandsons, established in Palestine, were obliged
at the end of a. d. 95, to appear before the Emperor Domi
tian, who intended to destroy them on account of their con
nection with Christ. Yet this prince, seeing in them only
ordinary men, sent them home with contempt. They were
afterward greatly honored in the church, both as relatives of
Jesus Christ, as nephews of James and Simeon, and as wit
nesses of the truth ; and they lived until after the death of
their uncle Simeon, who had been made bishop of Jerusalem
in the place of James. Eusebius says (H. E. iii. 11 ; iv. 22),
" the relations and disciples of the Lord took part in this
election, and made it unanimous."
Notwithstanding all the testimonies of 'antiquity on this sub
ject, we have seen in our day the same authors who, in order
to diminish the authority of James' epistle, have labored to
awaken doubts as to its apostolicity, make the same efforts to
deny also that of Jude's epistle. This opinion, which is wholly
modern, appears to us, as we have said in regard to James, to
have no importance as an argument, as to the canonicity of this
book. Were it established even, which modern criticism has
not the means to do, that our Jude was not one of the twelve
apostles (Luke vi. 16), it would not in the least affect the im
portant questions concerning his epistle.
Its date.
The second epistle of Peter, especially its second chapter,
presenting the most striking resemblance to that of Jude
in its ideas, and even its expressions, it is important to deter
mine which borrows from the other. Now, it appears clear
to us that it is Jude. Michaelis agrees with us, and says,1
1 Tom. vi. p. 387. French edit.

THE DATE OF JUDE'S EPISTLE. 389
" It is certain that relatively to this letter, that of Peter is
the original." The following reasons show that fact.
1. Peter had written his second letter just before his death
in A. d. 64 or 65 ; whereas Jude survived the martyrdoms
of Paul and Peter, as well as those of the two Jameses.
Luke, in fact, relates the death of James the Greater (Acts
xii. 2) ; and Josephus the historian, that of James the Less,
(Antiq. xx. 8) ; but neither of them has mentioned the death
of Jude, which antiquity places later.
2. Jude in employing the words of Peter, expands them,
because a writer quoting is naturally more prolix than his
original. See for instance, Jude 9, and 2 Pet. ii. 11 ; Jude
14, 15, and 2 Pet. ii. 9.
3. Jude in speaking of the " Scoffers " who walked in his
time " after their ungodly lusts," is not satisfied with textually
quoting the sentence of Peter, including this remarkable
term iprralKTai found nowhere else in the New Testament ;
but he is also careful to declare that he is quoting " the
words which were spoken before of the apostles of our
Lord Jesus Christ," (17). He, then, is the quoter, and Peter
is quoted from.
4. When Peter wrote this sentence, he used the form of
prediction, employing the future tense. He said, " There
shall be false teachers among you," (2 Pet. ii. 1) ; " many
shall follow them ; " " there shall come scoffers," (iii. 3.) — But
what does Jude, on the contrary ? Speaking long afterwards,
and seeing with his eyes the total accomplishment of this
prophecy of Peter, he quotes it as realized in his time, and
uses in speaking of it, not as did Peter, the future, but the
present tense and the past. He says, " there are certain men
crept in unawares who were before of old ordained to this
condemnation," (4) ; and (verse 17) : " But, beloved, re
member ye the words which were spoken before of the
apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you
there should be mockers in the last time;" and (verse 19) :
" These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having
33*

390 THE CANON.
not* the Spirit." The one foretold the evil, and the other saw
it with his eyes ; the one preceded, the other followed.
5. When Jude is pleased at the beginning of his letter to
entitle himself " Jude the brother of James" it is evidently
to recommend himself by association with not a living, but
a deceased person, with a martyr whose memory was re
vered by all the churches of Christ, and whose name was
dear even to the other Jews, who recorded his martyrdom,
Josephus 1 says, as one cause of their ruin. The churches
for thirty years had admired his fidelity in the ministry at
Jerusalem. It is then sufficiently evident that Jude wrote
his letter after the martyrdom of his brother James.
6. We may remark that, in classing the epistles of the
New Testament, the churches were pleased to range their
authors in the order of the dates of their writings, although
at the same time the respective books of each of these authors
were placed in the order of their importance rather than of
their dates.
Thus Paul, who began so early by writing his letter to the
Thessalonians, is placed first.2 After him comes James who
died A. d. 62 ; then Peter and his two letters, the latter of
which was not written until near his death, toward A. r>. 65 ;
then John, whose letters follow those of Peter ; then Jude,
because he wrote last of all ; then finally the Apocalypse,
because it was given after all the epistles, at the end of the
first century or beginning of the second. By this mark then,
Jude is posterior to Peter.
7. Also Neander thinks that the expressions which this
apostle employs in verses 17 and 18, indicate a very late
epoch, the end of the apostolical age the time when all the
1 Antiq. xx. 8, and Euseb. H. E. xxiii. xxiv.
2 The three manuscripts with uncial letters A. B. C. and the greater
part of the manuscripts with minuscular letters, place the catholic Epistles
in the first rank. " Epistola; catholics magno veterum testium consensu,
eo exhibentur ordine quo Jacobus primus est, alter Petrus, Johannes ter-
tius, quarto Judas." — Tischendorf Proleg. of the Greek N. T. of 1849.

OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS EPISTLE. 391
apostles of Jesus except John, had ceased to live. Jude
says, " Remember ye the words which were spoken before
of the apostles, how that they told you," etc.
Objections against this Epistle.
It has sometimes been objected that the ancient Peshito
version, which yet contains both the epistle of James and
that to the Hebrews, does not contain that of Jude. But the
Peshito version, composed as we have before said in the latter
half of the first century or the very first part of the second,
could contain neither the epistle of Jude, written (Neander
says) at the end of the apostolic age, nor the Apocalypse
of John, otherwise so generally recognized on its first ap
pearance. The Peshito is said to be the only Syriac version
in which the epistle of Jude is not found, but that it is found
in those which were published later, some of which are very
ancient.1 Be that as it may, Ephraim, the illustrious father
of the Syrian church in the fourth century, quotes it as ca
nonical, and ascribes it to Jude. •
It is again objected that the address of the epistle, while
naming the author, does not call him an apostle. But Jude
had no more reason for giving himself that title at the com
mencement of his letter, than Paul in beginning his letters to
the Philippians, Philemon, the Hebrews, or the Thessaloni
ans, where he calls himself simply, " Paul, a servant of Jesus
Christ." He had even less reason ; for, in calling himself
Jude brother of James, he made himself immediately known
to all the churches as that Jude whom the Gospel of Luke
(vi. 16) had already designated to all the churches by this
same name of "Jude (brother) of James," ('lov'Sas 'Ia/«oy8ov).
1 We have not been able to examine them for ourselves. — See the Syr-
iac version edited by Edw. Pocoeke, (Vers, et Notas ad 4 Epist. Syriacas,
Petri 2, Johann. 2 et 3, Judse unam. Leiden, 1670.) — M. Reuss (Gesch. der
Heil. Schr. 429) thinks that the four cathohc epistles published by Pocoeke
belong to the Philoxenian version.

392 THE CANON.
Was it not fully evident that this title was sufficient, espe
cially in a time when all the Jews, as well as the Christians,
still entertained such respect for the memory of that " pillar "
of the church, for his long ministry, for his eminent holiness,
for his illustrious martyrdom ? Jude, servant of Jesus Christ
and brother of James ; what more was needed? A procla
mation to the French people in 1820, signed Jerome Bona
parte, brother of Napoleon, would it have left any doubt as to
the quality of its author, because it did not add his title of
King of Westphalia ? James, bishop of Jerusalem and brother
of Jude, was no less known to all the Christians of the year
100, than Napoleon to all the Europeans of the year 1820.
It is again objected that the epistle makes too many
drafts on Peter's second epistle, for an inspired work. But,
as to the more or less abundant quotations, we might show by
examples taken from either Testament, that it has often been
the way of the Holy Spirit to lead an author to repeat the
ideas that were uttered by one who preceded him, giving it
some new term or application.
At the same time, there is an objection upon which more
stress has been laid than either of these. We will therefore,
while not regarding it ourselves as any more worthy of at
tention, yet give it a more extended examination.
Alleged quotations from apocryphal books.
The objection is, that Jude has twice alluded to events of
which the Bible does not speak, and which he could have
learned only from apocryphal books ; the first time (in verse
9) where he speaks of " Michael the archangel contending
with the devil about the body of Moses," and the second (in
verses 14 and 15) where he quotes a prophecy of " Enoch,
the seventh from Adam." These quotations, it has been
said, make the epistle fallible, and consequently show it to
be uncanonical.
We here mention only these two passages, saying nothing

ALLEGED QUOTATIONS FROM APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 393
of the sixth and seventh verses, where some find an allusion
to the fable of the angels defiling themselves with the dauo-h-
ters of men. This strange pretension can be maintained only
by applying to the angels of the sixth verse the pronoun tov-
tois, (" themselves,") of the seventh verse which so manifestly
relates to Sodom and Gomorrah, the names of which in
Greek (immediately preceding the pronoun) are plural
neuters, (Matt. x. 15).
Whatever may be said of this passage, some insist on the
other two ; deeming with Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus,
that Jude evidently quoted, in the first passage, from a Jew
ish apocryphal book, known by these Fathers under the title
of " The Ascension or Assumption of Moses, ('Ai/a/Sao-is or
'AvaXrifis M(ovo-ecus) ; " and for the second passage from an
other apocryphal book, equally known to these Fathers as
" The book of Enoch." Michaelis says,1 " Could we admit as
canonical a Scripture which contains apocryphal narra
tives ? " " Because in it," said Jerome before him, " he
brings testimony from the book of Enoch, which is apocry
phal, he is rejected by most." (Et quia de libro Enoch, qui
apocryphus est, in ea assumit testimonium, a plerisque rejici-
tur.) Neither Joshua nor Moses, it is said, have ever spoken
of the two facts advanced by Jude ; these facts therefore
must be fabricated, and the epistle must be a merely human
production. But this objection, we reply, absolutely lacks foundation ;
for it is made to rest on six suppositions not less erroneous
than arbitrary.
It is assumed, in the first place, that an inspired man can
not make a statement of a past event without having heard
it from tradition. or read it in a book. That is to say, the
sacred historians of the New Testament are merely compil
ers or memorialists ; and Jude, in order to speak to us of a
contention of Satan and the Archangel, or of the prophecy of
Enoch, must of necessity have copied from some human
1 Tom. vi. 404, 412, French edit.

394 THE CANON.
book. As if all the succession of Scriptures of the Old and
New -Testament did not exhibit the sacred authors relat
ing both past and future events, the knowledge of which
could have been derived from God alone! It is forgotten
that the apostles profess to be miraculous men, led by the
Holy Spirit,- and assisted by Jesus Christ, who was " work
ing with them and confirming the word with signs follow
ing." We will ask, for instance, in what apocryphal book Moses
had read the creation of the heavens and the earth ; in what
book, that of the light, of the continents, of the sun and stars,
of the plants and animals, and of man coming from the dust
of the ground and made in God's image ? In what book
again, the words of God to Satan after our apostasy, or the
genealogy of the elect race, from Adam to Noah, with all
their names for 2000 years ? In what book, the successive
scenes of the deluge during those twelve months in -which
Noah sailed above the abysses ; everything on earth having
perished, both men and beasts ? In what apocryphal book
did the holy author of the Book of Kings find what passed
in the private chamber of the royal palace at Bethel, be
tween a foreign prince and his wife whefi, their child being
sick, she was disguised to go to Shiloh (1 Kings xiv. 1-4) ;
or again, in the chambers of the palace of Jezreel, between a
foreign queen and her husband, when she secretly promised
to secure the vineyard of Naboth for him ? (xxi. 4-7). In
what book did the author of the book of Job learn the scenes
of that day when Satan came to present himself before the
Lord among the sons of God, and to ask permission to smite
that just man in his flesh and his bones ? (i. 6-12 ; ii. 1-7).
And in what other book had Isaiah found the name of King
Cyrus and all his career, two hundred years before this king
was born? (xii v. 28; xlv. 1-7; xlvi. 8-11).
But again, to leave the Old Testament, where these exam
ples abound, and come to the New, how did Matthew, speak
ing of a time, then elapsed fifty years, learn the dream sent

ALLEGED QUOTATIONS FROM APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 395
upon the Magi on the night of their flight and return to the
East? (Matt. ii. 12, 13.) How did he learn of the three temp
tations of the Lord, the action of the Holy Spirit leading him
to the desert, the words of Jesus to Satan, and the approach of
the angels who ministered to Jesus? (Matt. iv. 1-11). How
did he learn of the solitary prayers pronounced by Jesus in
that night in Gethsemane, when, far apart from his sleeping
disciples, he was on his hands and knees in agony prostrate
on the ground ? (xxvi. 36-44). How did he learn that an
angel, on the morning of the resurrection, before the arrival
of the women, had rolled away the stone and was seated on
it ? (xxviii. 2, 3). How did he learn of the secret transac
tion of the priests and soldiers? (11-11).
We should have the same kind of questions to propose
concerning Mark, and even more pressing. We should ask
how, not being an apostle and not having been personally a
witness of the facts which he relates, he could be even more
abundant and precise in the details than any other evangel
ist ? Where did he find all those minute circumstances
which he alone gives, he who wrote so late 1 and as far from
the place as the time ? How happens it that he seems to
have the very events before his eye, with an interest, a fresh
ness of memory, a coloring that an eye-witness could not have
attained, unless he were an extraordinary man ? We refer
the reader to passages of this kind in Mark i. 20, 29, 33,
35, 37, 45; ii. 2; iii. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 17, 20, 21 ; iv. 13,
23, 24, 26, 29, 34, 36, 38; v. 29, 30, 32, 40, 41, 42; vi.
13, 38, 40, 50, 52, 54, 56 ; vii. 2-4, 8, 13, 22, 24, 26-29,
34, 36, 38; viii. 7, 10, 14, 19, 22, 26; ix. 20, 21-25, 33, 35,
37-49 ; x. 46-52 ; xi. 13, 16, 18, 20 ; xii. 34, 41 ; xiii. 3,
37 ; xiv. 40, 44, 51, 52, 58, 59, 68 ; xv. 7, 8, 21, 28, 29, 41,
44 ; xvi. 1, 3, 7, 8-11, 14, 19. In what document, moreover,
did he learn that after the ascension of the Lord he had gone
to sit on the right hand of God? (xvi. 19). Who taught
1 As Lardner has showed, and as many passages, like Mark xvi. 20,
show.

396 THE CANON.
him this, and all the rest ? Was it the apostle Peter, as
some have said ? Then, who told Peter ?
And as to Luke, who was likewise not an apostle, could it
have been from Paul, as has been said, that he received the
knowledge of so many facts related by him alone ? from
Paul, who had no more than himself, been a witness of the
Saviour's life, and who had not joined himself to Luke until
the twentieth year of his ministry (Acts xvi. 10) ; that is, at
least, fifty-eight years after the events of the nativity so
minutely related by the latter. In what document then did
Luke (or Paul, if you will) find the two prophecies in poe
try which Elizabeth uttered more than sixty years before
" in the hill country," in her humble dwelling, and which
no other evangelist has related to us ? In what doc
ument, the discourses of the angel to Zachariah, of the
archangel to Mary, of Simeon in the temple, of the celes
tial hosts of Bethlehem ? And this unknown document, —
who took the pains to write it, and keep it secret so long
during the childhood of Jesus for thirty-five years of his
obscure residence at Nazareth, and for the twenty-five ear
lier years of Paul's ministry ? Who guarantees to us the
exactness of the words which Luke puts into the mouth of
these holy personages and these angels ? Who guarantees
it to us, if not the God of the Scriptures, if not Jesus
Christ, " the God of the holy prophets," as John calls him,
(Rev. xxii. 6) ; Jesus Christ, who inspired those of the
New Testament as well as those of the Old, and who had
said to the Jewish people : " Behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes ; and some of them ye
shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in
your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city,"
(Matt, xxiii. 34) ; Jesus Christ, who, in the language of
Mark (xvi. 20) worked with them ? And if it be asked in
what document again Luke learned of either this invincible
angel who came from heaven to Jesus to strengthen him,
and who appeared to him only, or this angel of the Lord,

ALLEGED QUOTATIONS FROM APOCHRYPHAL BOOKS. 397
also invisible, who came to smite Herod Agrippa, in the
year 44, while seated on his throne before the people of
Cesarea ; 1 if it be inquired who saw this angel, or in what
document Luke met the account of him, ... we must
reply : the same document which informed Peter of the
secret agreement of Ananias and Sapphira ; or Agabus of
the future famine of the reign of Claudius (Acts v. 3 ; xi.
38) ; or John of the original state of the eternal Word and
his presence with God before the world existed ; or Paul of
the future coming of the great apostasy and the man of sin ;
or the author of the Apocalypse of the most remote future
of the church and the world ; as also Jude of the dispute of
the archangel and the prophecy of Enoch. Rudolph Stier
has well remarked on the epistle of Jude, that " the two
passages objected to are explained by the apocalyptic con
tents of the epistle."
It is then sufficiently manifest that nothing could be more
antiscriptural and illogical than to oppose the canonicity of
a book for the sole reason that it recounts facts which the
author could learn only from God. It would be at once to
renounce that inspiration which the Bible claims, and to use
a question as a fact. If this book calls itself canonical, it calls
itself inspired ; and to deny its canonicity from the fact alone
that it contains revelations is to say in other terms : this book
is not canonical, because it is not canonical.
This first supposition is then inadmissible ; and from this
point of view the objection drawn from it is seen to be value
less. But it rests upon many other hypotheses no less gra
tuitous, and no less erroneous. Here is the second.
2. It is assumed that an inspired author can not cite a fact
mentioned in some human book without by so doing guaran
teeing the entire book. This position is absurd. The books
of the New Testament relate many facts narrated in the
books of Maccabees, without pretending to render testimony
in their favor. Paul cites verses from Menander, Aratus, and
1 Acts xii. 23. Josephus, Antiq. Jud. xix. 7.
34

398 THE CANON.
Epimenides, (1 Cor. xv. 33 ; Acts xvii. 28 ; Tit. i. 12,) with
out supposing that he was giving those pagan writers any
moral sanction. And the same apostle, in the second epistle
to Timothy, (iii. 8,) without pretending to guarantee thereby
the Chaldaic paraphrases, speaks of the magicians Jannes and
Jambres, whose names, omitted by Moses, but preserved in
the histories or traditions of the country, were found already
in Pliny,1 only forty years after Paul, and are still read in the
Targum of Jonathan in his paragraphs of the first and sev
enth chapters of Exodus.2 Should we therefore admit for
a moment that the book of " The Ascension of Moses " and
the pretended " Book of Enoch " had already mentioned be
fore Jude the two facts of which this apostle speaks, it would
not thence result either that he had borrowed those facts
from them, or especially that in relating them he had pre
tended to give the least moral sanction to these two rhapso
dies.8 Those, even of the Fathers, who believed these books to
be anterior to Jude, were very far from regarding them as
on this account worthy of confidence in all their parts.
Origen said, that the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit,
had known what to take and what to reject in such writ
ings. The objection, then, lacks foundation in this respect. But
that is not all ; for it supposes, again, that the apostle, or the
Jew who gave himself out as Jude, admits the apocryphal
books as canonical. Now that is what the Jews never did, as
we shall show when we come to speak of the apocryphas of
the Old Testament.
i Lib. xxx. chap. 1. He names only Jannes and Jotape. See Winer,
R. W. art. Jambres.
2 And on Numb, xxii, 22, (Calmet, art. Jannes). This scholar places
Jonathan under Herod the Great; but Carpzov and Prideaux think that
the author of this book is much more recent. See Keil, Einleitung ins
A. T. pp. 191, 192.
8 Proleg. of two homilies on Sol. Song. " Quid assumendum ex illis
esset Scripturis, quidve refutandum."

ALLEGED QUOTATIONS FROM APOCHRYPHAL BOOKS. 399
The objection supposes, again, that Jude, the brother of
James, (or, if you choose, some Jew giving himself out to
the churches as Jude,) would propose to the faith of the
Jewish Christians a Greek book, touching the mysteries of
a past cotemporary with Moses, or even Enoch. Surely
he who adopts such an hypothesis must know little of the
estimate in which the Greek writers were held by the Jews
of that period, and particularly what Josephus says on this
point. The entire first and second chapters of his book
against Apion are designed to show that of all writers the
' Greeks are the least worthy in regard to matters of antiq
uity. Now the two apocryphal books which they would
have us regard as the authorities from which Jude drew
what he said of Enoch and Moses were Greek, and were
unknown to the Jews. Not an author whose works now
remain has ever spoken of them.1
But, again, what is yet more strange in the objection is,
that it supposes that Jude (or the Jew who gave himself out
as Jude) should have publicly expressed his confidence in
two such miserable productions as the pretended " Book of
Enoch " and the " Anabasis of Moses," to impose quota
tions from them on the faith of the Christian churches.
As to the " Anabasis of Moses," it was a Greek book
known to the ancient Fathers, but now entirely lost, and
of no value.
But the " Book of Enoch," another writing equally known
to the ancient Fathers,2 (and for a time, also, lost in the
Greek text,) is one of the most miserable relics of apoc
ryphal antiquity. Only small fragments had remained to
us, preserved by George Syncellus (a Byzantian author of
the eighth century 8), when the celebrated traveller Bruce,
at the end of the last century, brought back from Abyssinia
1 Prof. Lawrence believes the Book of Enoch to have been written by a
Jew, but gives no proof of it. See Liicke, Einleit. in die Offenb. p. 11.
2 Clemens Alexandrinus especially (Adumbrat. in Ep. Jud.); Origen,
[Uepi dpxCrv,) Lib. iii. 2; and Didymus, (Enarrat. in Ep. Jud.).
8 In his Chronogr. Scaliger first made it known.

400 THE CANON.
three copies which he had found translated into the Ethio
pian dialect.1
Sylvester de Sacy says : " This work is not worth the
trouble to translate. 2 . . . Such entire confusion of ideas
pervades it, that the editor has considered himself 6bliged to
transpose entire paragraphs and chapters ; s and yet that cor
rects nothing. He was not obliged to make sense where
there is none, and should not have changed their places."
He adds : " There are found there absurd repetitions, a fac-
tidious monotony, shocking anachronisms, a striking inco
herence ; without speaking of a ridiculous system of astron
omy, which implies in the author, even at the period when
the book appeared, the grossest ignorance. In one word,
it is difficult to find any thing more ridiculous and tedious
than this book of Enoch ; — a singular book, full of fables
and fictions. If the brow is sometimes bent in reading it,
the temptation to smile is more frequent ; and one is aston
ished that such a book could have had any credit in antiquity.
This impression, which will be shared by all who may have
the courage to read the entire book, might give rise to the
inquiry whether additions made to the original text since its
reception by the primitive Church have not rendered it still
more absurd than it was at first."
Such, then, is the book from which, some have ventured
to say, the epistle of Jude has drawn its quotations !
But still farther, the whole objection falls to the ground
inasmuch as it wholly rests upon a sixth supposition, still
more vain : upon the pretended anterior existence of these
two books to Jude's epistle ; whereas this priority has for its
support only the opinions of some ancient Fathers, frequently
1 One of the three is in the National Library of Paris.
2 Prof. Lawrence gave a translation of it in England, (Oxford, 1821,
8vo.) and Mr. Sylyester de Sacy gave an account of this hook in two
articles of the Journal des Savants, (Sept. and Oct. 1822, Paris, imp. roy.).
It is in that we find his judgment.
8 For instance, six verses of chap. xc. in the xcii. ; chaps. Ix. and Ixx.
rejected at the end of the volume, on account of the gross anachronisms it
contains ; the xx. is placed between xvi. and xvii.

ALLEGED QUOTATIONS FROM APOCHRYPHAL BOOKS. 401
deceived in regard to false books ; and whereas we have, on
the contrary, the strongest reasons for regarding both these
writings as not only posterior to the epistle of Jude, but fab
ricated for the express purpose of fraudulently corresponding
to the words of Jude.
We know with what a flood of false writings, styling
themselves apostolical or prophetical, the church was inun
dated in the early centuries. Awkward productions, all those
false books were imagined by an infidel zeal among the de
generated Christians of Egypt and Asia to correspond to
certain indications of the sacred writers in their gospels or
epistles, and to represent certain books which were supposed
to have been made or quoted by them.
Thus, for instance, because Paul, in his first epistle to the
Corinthians, (v. 9,) had appeared to mention a prior letter
which he had written to them, they have not failed to com
pose one, designed to pass for the lost epistle, but abundantly
betrayed in its very falsehood.1
Because Paul recommends to the Colossians (iv. 16) to
read the epistle from Laodicea, and which appears to have
been no other than that to the Ephesians, (written at the
same time, and designed rather as a circular letter for the
churches of Asia,) they have not failed to compose one
addressed to the Laodiceans, known in the days of Jerome,
and of which he said, " But all the world rejects it." (Sed
ab omnibus exploditur.2) Because Paul, in his second
letter to Timothy, (iii. 8,) gives the names of Jannes and
of Jambres to the magicians who opposed Moses, they have
not failed to construct a book entitled " Jannes and Jambres,"
— a book mentioned by Origen,8 and placed in the rank of
the apocryphas by pope Gelasius.4
1 Olshausen, Auth. of the N. T., chap. iv.
2 In Catal. Erasmus calls it a letter " quae nihil habet Pauli prater voc-
ulas aliquot ex ceteris ejus epistolis mendicatas."
8 Tract, xxxv. in Matt.
1 Whose decree, however, is itself regarded as spurious by bishops Cosin
(on the Canon, 123, 130) and Pearson (Vind. Ignat. I. cap. iv.).

402 THE CANON.
Because Paul said to the Galatians (v. 6; vi. 15) : "Neither
circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new
creature," they have not failed to propose an " Apocalypse of
Moses," from which George Syncellus says Paul copied this
passage.1 Because Paul said to the Corinthians, " Eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard," etc., (1 Cor. ii. 9,) they have not
failed to make also an " Apocalypse of Elijah," from which
it was pretended by the heretics of Jerome's 2 time that Paul
had borrowed his passage. Origen 8 said, " These words ara
found only in the secret books of Elijah." It was, then, in
this same profane and lying spirit of the Greeks that, about
the same time, some persons had written the following works :
" The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs," of which Ori
gen4 speaks, and of which Grabe (his editor) thinks that
Tertullian' also spoke;5 "The Ascension of Isaiah," which
Professor Lawrence, in 1819, published in Ethiopic with
" The Book of Enoch ; " " The Acts of Peter and Paul, of
Andrew, John, and the other Apostles ; " " The Apocalypse
of Peter ; " " The Apocalypse of Paul ; " " The Apocalypse
of Thomas ; " " The Preaching of Peter ; " " The Apostolical
Constitutions ; " " The Gospel of Peter or of Matthias ; "
" The Homilies of Clement ; " " The Doctrine of the Apos
tles," etc.6
It was, we said, in the same spirit, and it was nearly at the
same time, that both these works were written, " The Ascen
sion of Moses " and the " Book of Enoch," or, at least, its
second chapter, composed merely of the short sentences
quoted by Jude.
But there are other reasons which equally show us in this
1 P. 27. Edit, of Paris, fol. 1652.
2 Calmet's Diet. art. Apocalypse.
8 Homil. ultim. in Matt, xxvii. 9.
4 In Jos. i. Homil. 15.
6 Spicilegium,"i. 133.
8 The arranged catalogue of all these false writings is found in the two
works of John Albert Fabricius, entitled, the one, Codex Pseudopigraphus
Vet. Test., the other, Codex Apocryph. Nov. Test.

TESTIMONIES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 403
book, or, at least, in its second chapter, a pious fraud, imag
ined to correspond with Jude.
First, its extreme incoherence and its evident indications
of very numerous interpolations ; so that all the critics who
have studied it, and even Professor Lawrence, (who, having
edited it, must naturally speak in its favor,) are obliged to
declare it " written at different times and by divers persons."
Again, the place awkwardly given to the passage of Jude
in this book of one hundred and five chapters. This pas
sage, we have said, alone constitutes the matter of the second
chapter, which clearly enough determines its later origin and
its intention.
Thirdly, the prophecy of the seventy shepherds,1 in which
the author alludes to the chiefs of the Jewish nation down to
Herod the Great. The book can not, then, be older than this
dynasty, but it may be more recent. And since it afterwards
manifestly received also numerous interpolations, these must
be still more recent, and the second chapter must be regard
ed as posterior to Jude.
Fourthly, divers passages which, according to Sylvester de
Sacy, betray "a Christian hand," particularly in the nine
teenth and last section (chapter xcii.). Tertullian also tells
us that the cotemporary Jews rejected this book because it
speaks too much in favor of Jesus Christ.2
Finally, by the comparison of a great number of passages
we may assure ourselves that the inventor knew the doctrine
of the Holy Trinity.8Testimonies of the Second Century.
The epistle of Jude is abundantly recommended to us by
the most respectable testimonies of Christian antiquity.
1 In chapters Ixxxviii. lxxxix. xc. (Journal des Savants, p. 549.)
2 See Calmet's Dictionary, art. Enoch.
8 See particularly chap, xlviii. vers. 2, 3, 5. (Journ. des Savants, Sept.
1822, p. 551.)

40^, THE CANON.
Although it contains only twenty-five verses, and was not
written untiPthe end of the first century or beginning of the
second; yet from this very century you see it already fre
quently quoted both in the East and West.
It is not only by manifest allusions to its text that it is
quoted, such as Kirchhofer1 notices, as well as Lardner, in
Hermas (Vis. iv. 3), in Clemens Romanus (1 Cor. xi.), in
Polyearp (ad Phil. ii. and iii.), in the salutation which pre
cedes the narrative of Polycarp's death, in Theophilus of
Antioch, and in Irenaaus.2 It is also quoted especially, in the
most precise manner, by the two Fathers whose testimony
in sacred criticism is sought first of all, — in the East, Clem
ens Alexandrinus, in the West, Tertullian. It is also quoted
by the Canon Muratori.
Clemens Alexandrinus, in mentioning the mere name of
Jude, quotes entirely verses 5, 6, 11, in his "Pedagogue"
(lib. iii. cap. 8), and abridges the intermediate verses (7, 8, 9,
10). He also introduces verses 22 and 23 in the sixth book
of his " Stromata " (§ 3), and the first verse in his "Adumbra-
tiones"8 on the catholic epistles.
Tertullian, in his book " De Cultu Fceminarum " (i. 3),
says, " And there has happened what Enoch has testified to
according to the apostle Jude." (Et accidit quod Enoch
apud Judam apostolum testimonium possidet.) Now this
quotation, made by the earliest of the Latin Fathers, is of
great importance ; for it is well worthy of remark that our
epistle had already, notwithstanding its extreme brevity and
its comparatively late date, reached the distant churches of
Western Africa, so as to be there generally known and pub
licly quoted as a Scripture of the apostle Jude.
The Canon Muratori, as we have already seen, contains
these words : " The epistle of Jude, and two epistles bear
ing the name of John, are universally received." (Epistola
1 Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des N. T. Canons. Zurich, 1842.
2 Hseres. Lib. iv. cap. Ixx. p. 371. Oxon. 1702.
8 Supposed to be a translation of Clement by Cassiodorus.

TESTIMONIES OF THE THIRD CENTURY.
sane Judas et superscripti Johannis duae in catholica |
tur.) The whole value of these testimonies will be compre% j
hended when we remember what we have already said of ':
James, the brother of Jude, and of Simeon, his other brother,
who succeeded him, and did not undergo martyrdom until
A. d. 107. If the epistle of Jude was so well known by the
Fathers of this second century, both in the East and the ex
treme West, it must have circulated already from church to
church during the life of Simeon. How, in fact, could a
letter bearing the name of Jude, brother of James, have
gained such credit, if it had not had the assent of this
apostle and of Simeon, and if it had not been really a
writing of their brother ?
We remember what Hegesippus, a Jewish historian of the
second century,1 has related of the grandsons of Jude. This
holy family, consecrated for three generations to the public
service of the primitive church in the Central East, may
suffice to confirm the testimony of Jude.
Testimonies of the Third Century.
The third century likewise renders a full homage to this
epistle in the writings of the most learned of its doctors.
Origen quotes it very frequently ; he calls it a " divine Scrip
ture," and its author " an apostle ; " he quotes the eighth and
ninth verses in his epistles ; the sixth verse at least once in
his fourth homily on Ezekiel, and three times in his com
mentary on Matthew, and again in his commentary on
John and the epistle to the Romans ; the first verse in bis
commentary on Matthew. In his seventh homily on Joshua
he says, " Peter represents James and Jude in the two
trumpets of his epistles." 2 (Petrus duabus epistolarum sua-
rum personat tubis Jacobum quoque et Judam.)
1 Quoted by Eusebius, H. E. iii. 19, 20.
2 Translated, as we have said, by Rufinus, and remaining now in Latin
only.

406 THE CANON.
In his commentary on Matthew 1 he says, " Jude has writ
ten an epistle, of a few verses it is true (oXiyoo-rvxpv p-ev), but
full of powerful words of celestial grace (ippiopeviov Xoywv)."
And in the third book of his commentary on the epistle
to the Romans, in quoting Jude's sixth verse, he styles the
epistle a " divine Scripture." (Et nisi hac lege tenerentur,
nunquam de eis diceret scriptura divina.)
It is to be lamented that Eusebius, after so many and such
striking testimonies of Origen, should have given us the cat
alogue of this Father in his sixth book (H. E. chap. 25) with
out making any mention of the epistle of Jude. This courtly
bishop, whose history has in other respects so much value for
science, must be read with a certain reserve on some points.
Lax as he sometimes was in regard to doctrine, he was equally
so in his appreciation of the Scriptures.
We find again, in this same third century, the sixth verse
also quoted, in sense, if not in words, by Pamphilus of Bei
rut, in his apology for Origen.2
We also find verses 14, 15, quoted by Cyprian, or rather
by some one of his cotemporaries, in an Essay on Novatian,8
found in his works. Testimonies of the Fourth Century.
The testimonies of the fourth century are remarkably abun
dant, both in the East and the West.
In the East, Athanasius, in his Festal Epistle and his Sy
nopsis Sacrse Scriptura ; Ephraim of Syria, in his Commentary
on the third chapter of Genesis and in his Essay on ImpU-
dicity, in which he quotes one epistle entire ; 4 Cyril of Jeru
salem, in his Catechism ; Chrysostom, in his Discourse on
the False Prophets ; Epiphanius, in his book Against Her-
1 Opp. torn. iii. 463. Edit. Delarue, Paris, 1733. Huet, tom. i. p. 233.
2 Opp. tom. iv. p. 23.
8 Quod lapsis spes venise non sit deneganda. Edit, of St Maur Paris
1725, p. 17. ' '
4 Opp. Grasc. tom. iii. p. 62. See Eichhorn (iv. p. 441).

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 407
esies ; Gregory Nazianzen ; Didymus of Alexandria ; the
false Dionysius the Areopagite ; and the council of Laodicea
(in its sixtieth Canon). In the West, Lucifer of Cagliari,
Philastrius of Brescia, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome (in more
than twelve of his works), and, in fine, the very council of
Carthage, which is said to have been held under the eyes of
Augustine in a. d. 397.
Eusebius places it in the rank of the antilegomens, but
adding twice that the epistle was received by the majority,
and that it was read publicly with the other epistles in the
greater part of the churches.1 It must be noticed that he is
the first of the Fathers who speaks to us of doubts enter
tained concerning this epistle ; and we have just seen on this
point, in regard to Origen, his unjust partiality. - These doubts
of which he speaks had no historical foundation ; and we after
wards learn, by Didymus and Jerome, that they were to be
traced to the pretended apocryphal quotations of Jude con
cerning Moses and Enoch.

SECTION VI.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS.
It must, again, be remembered that if we divide the New
Testament into thirty-six equal portions, all that we are going
to say of the second canon has reference to only one of these
thirty-six parts. And it must not be forgotten that another
fact characterizes that slow and silent labor of examination by
which a secret Providence finally conducted all the churches,
Eastern and Western, to this marvelous unity which they
have exhibited for fifteen hundred years past. It is that
during this long and conscientious labor, if there were more
or less of the churches and respectable teachers who, sus
pending their judgment, still retained doubts on such or such
1 H. E. iii. 25; vi. 13, 14; ii. 33.

408 THE CANON.
of the five shorter epistles, at the same time these very epis
tles had never ceased to be regarded as canonical by a part,
generally the largest part, of the Christian churches.
It must, again, be remarked that, in the primitive churches,
it was never with the books of the second canon as with the
apocryphal books of the Old Testament. The canonicity of
the five shorter epistles was at first, it is true, contested in
several places ; but it was never absolutely rejected ; while it
was altogether otherwise with the apocryphal books.
Instead of being an object of doubt, the latter were every
where resolutely rejected from the inspired collection, al
though they were often respected as " Ecclesiastical Books,"
that is to say, were classed, as by some in our day, among
the writings useful for reading in certain assemblies of the
church. But to say that any one of our short epistles was an
object of doubt was the same as saying that they expected
some day these researches would terminate satisfactorily, and
the doubts would be removed. Now we know that, in fact,
these hesitations ceased, and that the five epistles, contested
for a time, were finally accepted everywhere.
In another part of our argument we hope to show how the
churches, although so greatly divided among themselves on
every other subject, were prevented from being divided on'
that of the Apocrypha ; and how a Divine Providence has
there visibly interposed his omnipotent hand.
But that which, above all, should be noticed here, and
which should strongly confirm our confidence in the final
results of this long, conscientious research is, that it has al
ways been pursued under the guidance of perfect indepen
dence and mutual support. This fact is very extraordinary ;
it stamps an imposing character on the sacred volume ; and
we shall have to examine it more closely elsewhere from a
more elevated point of view. Certainly, when we consider
that the examination made by the early Christians in rela
tion to the second canon was continued for two hundred and
fifty years, and that it was at the same time always conducted

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 409
in perfect freedom, each divine having been able to continue
his investigations and to publish frankly his doubts .in regard
to any book of the second canon, without leading to any re
criminations of each other on this point of such importance ;
when we see these long and free researches at length pro
duce the unanimous agreement which all the Christian
churches have manifested now for fifteen hundred years, —
then we receive a powerful impression of the secret and sov
ereign action which has guided all this sacred affair. But
we must, for the moment, abstain from indulging in this train
of thought, as we have now before us only the powerful his
torical testimony rendered by a harmony so free to the canon
of the Scriptures. ^
How admirable is it that in the very period of such eccle
siastical violence, everywhere fruitlessly exercised to secure
unity on every other point, we can find nowhere an act of
authority in regard to this ; no collective pressure of bishops;
no governmental prescriptions ; no decrees of councils, to im
pose on the faithful such or such book, or to make them
accept in advance of personal conviction the completed vol
ume of the Scriptures.
It was, then, in this way that Christians throughout the
world, being gradually satisfied, added to their canon, one
after the other, those of the brief later epistles about which
some churches had hesitated.
We have already given some reasons for the delay of some
early Christians in receiving into their collection the short
later epistles, and more particularly those of John and Jude ;
but others may be indicated. For example, we must con
sider that, if the epistles of Paul, addressed first to certain
persons or certain churches, were from this fact alone re
ceived from the first moment (the originals being still pre
served in the apostolical churches, until the days of Tertul
lian1), it could not be so with the three short epistles of John
1 De Praescriptione Hsreticor. chap. 36. " O thou who wouldst more seri
ously exercise thy curiosity in the matter of thy salvation"1 (he wrote, a.d.
35

410 THE CANON.
and Jude, which, not having been sent directly to any par
ticular church, had not, in order to secure such reception,
either the authority of a living writer, or the testimony of a
depositary designated by him.
In the second place, it was necessary to wait, during this
long labor, until the churches, according to their very differ
ent circumstances, should also exercise different judgments.
Some, better situated than others for a prompt solution of the
question, would receive the first canon entirely ; others, more
remote, had to suspend their judgment while waiting for new
light ; others again, hindered by certain objections which they
had not then the means to remove, were to entertain these
doubts and have time to examine them. We understand, for
instance, that the Syriac-speaking churches must have re
ceived the epistle of James A. d. 62 ; whereas their respect
ful attachment to their admirable Peshito would dispose
them hesitatingly to accept any thing not found in that.
It is thus that one church arrived at conviction after an
other church, and that all were to be conducted by this la
bor, patient and sure, at last to receive the entire canon.
It is important again to remark, that it was not even de
sirable that the five later epistles (we say, almost posthu
mous) should obtain a very prompt assent.
If the twenty sacred books of the first canon, recommended
by the presence and ministry of the apostles, were immedi
ately received, it was, on the contrary, suitable, as to the five
epistles, that each teacher and each church, before giving
them a place in the canon, should attentively examine their
origin, and inform themselves thoroughly concerning all their
claims, to guard with the greatest care against confounding
the Scriptures of God with so many spurious books, which
207), "go through the apostolical churches, where the very pulpits of the
apostles are yet occupied, and where their authentic letters, still read in
public, make their voices, as it were, to be heard, and their persons to be
seen. Art thou near Achaia, thou hast Corinth. Art thou not far from
Macedonia, thou hast Philippi and Thessalonica. Wouldst thou go into
Asia, thou hast Ephesus; and if Italy is near, thou hast Rome," etc.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 411
were then so abundantly circulated under feigned names. It
was necessary, amidst this confusion, that, in order to judge,
the most entire certainty of their authenticity should be
reached. It was also necessary that such a laborious ex
amination, which, for a part of the churches, required much
time and patience, should be made everywhere, without
eagerness, without precipitation, without human influence,
and in perfect liberty.
Thus, then, these very doubts in regard to the antilego
mens, with which some churches began, so far from disturb
ing our faith, should only confirm it. In fact, they give us
first the assurance that not only the first collection of our
Scriptures, but each book, separately, with which it was to
be increased, has passed, before being admitted, through a
jealous scrutiny, — a scrutiny by the whole church, free and
holily severe, without any kind of constraint to force an ac
ceptance of it. Secondly, these very doubts of some church
es in regard to the second canon, if we compare them with
the immediate unanimity of their reception of the first, also
give us three precious assurances on both canons.
And first, as to.-the twenty sacred books of the first canon,
these very hesitations show us that no reason whatever for
doubting presented itself to any of the primitive churches in
the course of the first three centuries.
And as to the second canon, these very hesitations of some
churches attest to us that those who, at the same time, better
informed did not hesitate, had found sufficient reasons for
receiving the five shorter epistles at their very first pub
lication. Again, these very hesitations attest to us that, when all
the churches, at first doubting, ended by agreeing with those
who, better situated, had never doubted, it was necessary, in
order to lay aside their repugnances, to have before their
eyes the most convincing proofs. Thus they were led by
the patient and sure action of Divine Providence to this
striking agreement which we find now existing for fifteen

412 • THE CANON.
centuries, the admirable result of their researches and their
freedom. It is to this holy distrust on the part of the primitive
churches, to their jealousies and continual researches, that
we are indebted for another precious fact, attested by his
tory ; to wit, that " the church never received any book
into the canon, the illegitimacy of which it had afterward to
acknowledge." I speak of the New Testament, the collec
tion of which was committed to us, not of the Old Testa
ment, of which the Jews were the sole depositaries (Rom.
iii. 2) ; for we agree, that, in regard to the latter, the priests
of Rome at a later day permitted themselves many liberties,
though without important consequences; — a later day, we say,
because it was not until the sixteenth century of Christian
ity ; — and with no important consequences, at least for the
doctrine of the canon, since we know with Athanasius, and
repeat with the whole Eastern church,1 that " the Christian
church of the New Testament receives from the Hebrew
church of the Old Testament the sacred books of that Tes
tament, because it is to the Jews, as Paul says (Rom. iii. 2),
that are committed the oracles of God."
When we say that " the ancient church has never received
into its canon any book the illegitimacy of which was after
ward proved," some persons, perhaps, may refer to the kind
of assent given in some churches during the second, third, and
fourth centuries, both to certain authentic writings not canon
ical, such as the letter of Clemens Romanus to the Corin
thians, and even to the apocryphal books or forged books
(v66a), such as the " Shepherd of Hermas " and the
"Apocalypse of Peter."
But it would be without foundation if one should represent
the partial and occasional employment by certain churches
of these books in the public readings as a recognition of their
canonicity. On the contrary, this fact, examined closely and
1 These words are in the " Great Catechism of the Eastern Orthodox
Church, approved by the Holy Synod." Moscow, 1839.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 413
compared with the general customs of the church at this
epoch, so far from compromising the true canon, serves only
to confirm it, as Thiersch has well shown in his " Essay on
the Determination of a Historical Point of Departure for the
Criticism of the Writings of the New Testament." 1
" At the end of the first century," he gays, " the church,
thenceforth deprived of the presence of the apostles, and
penetrated with a spirit, sometimes extreme, of jealousy for
them, redoubled her attachment to the Scriptures of the first
canon, and assumed the character of eminent conservatism,
which would resist any form of innovation. The use of their
first canon was already consecrated and unassailable. About
A. I). 130, the generation which had personally known the
apostles began to disappear ; a few saints, such as Papias,
set themselves to gather the last traditions of the Lord's dis
ciples, to preserve them from oblivion ; but it was only under
Antoninus Pius, about the middle of the second century, that
the beginnings of ah ecclesiastical science were first seen.
Toward the end of that century, in the days of Clemens Al
exandrinus and Irenasus, a search was made for the very rare
and very brief writings composed since the appearing of the
New Testament. Irenseus invoked against the gnostics of
his day the letter (iKavmrdrnv) of .Clemens Romanus to the
Corinthians, that of Polyearp to the Philippians, and the
Shepherd of Hermas ; for, to fill up this great void of lit
erature and history, the pious Father appears to have pos
sessed no other remains of the earliest Christian antiquity
than these three authors, and, perhaps, the letters of Igna
tius besides. Yet these feeble remains then appeared so
much the more precious as they were so scanty ; so that,
if God had not prevented, it would have come to pass then
that extravagant admirers of antiquity would have attributed
to them more than their intrinsic value. But this was not
1 Versuch zur Wiederherstellung des historischen Standpuncts fiir die
Critik des N. T. (p. 365 and following, the beginning of his sixth chap
ter.) 35*

414 THE CANON.
the case with Irenseus. On the contrary, he shows himself
very prudent in that direction ; and of all the early Fathers
he is the most conformed to the Scriptures, as he is at the
same time the most faithful representative of the true tradi
tion of the primitive churches. Whilst he was combating
the heresies of his day in Gaul, his cotemporary, Clement,
who, in Alexandria of Egypt, attempted to mix an impure
stoical and mystic Platonism with Christianity, was, on the
contrary, the one of all the Fathers who was the farthest
removed from the spirit of the apostles, as also from that
of genuine tradition ; and it was likewise he who most up
held the apocryphas of his day. It is he who first mentions
the ' Epistle of Barnabas,' who also quotes the ' Apocalypse
of Peter,' the ' Preaching of Peter,' and who even, to
refute the heretics quoting the ' Gospel of the Egyptians,'
goes so far as to seek a plausible meaning in the mystical
imaginations of this book !
" And yet again, even with Clement of Alexandria, the
canon remains intact ; and you there find clearly expressed
the difference which the church made between the divine
Scriptures and all the other books. Even when he refers in
a literary point of view to the ' Gospel of the Egyptians,'
he well knows how to distinguish it from the four canon
ical Gospels.
" To the very end of the second century, the anagnosis of
a book gave it a sanction, and constituted it in the eyes of the
church a theopneustic Scripture ; for at that time only the
books recognized as divine and canonical received the honor
of being publicly read. But after that epoch it was no
longer the case. From that time the church became very
much extended, and worship having taken new develop
ments, the notion of the 'Mystery' was then introduced, in
imitation of the Mysteries of the Gentiles; and just as pen
itents and catechumens had been carefully distinguished from
the faithful and the consecrated, so they came to distinguish
also various degrees in the use of the Scriptures and that

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 415
of other books which were read in public. Around the
primitive canon came thus to place themselves in a first
rank the books of the second canon which the churches
dared not yet entirely assimilate to the first ; then, around
them, some other writings which were regarded as edifying
and respectable, but which, although admitted to the anagno
sis (dvayLyvwo-Kopeva.) , and although by that 8e8rjpocrievpeva,
as Eusebius expresses it, that is, ' rendered popular and
brought into general use,' yet were not intestamented (ivSia-
6-rjKa). From that time, then, the public reading being no
longer a test of canonicity, there was formed a new class of
books, called ' ecclesiastical,' which had not been used in for
mer worship, and which came to take rank after the books
called canonical. The ' Shepherd of Hermas ' was read to
the catechumens in many churches, and even some other
works of an inferior rank ; but no one thought by that to
touch the canon of the primitive books, and the notion of
the bounds of the canon remained complete and universal,
as you may be assured by reading Origen, Eusebius, and the
various authors we have named.
"Another kind of public readings, made on a certain day
of the year, was introduced also from the second century in
some churches for the celebration of the anniversaries of the
martyrs (rjpepai yeve&Xiai) ; for the account of their death
was read at that time over their tomb. This gave origin to
the term legends (written to be read). The first example
of this we see in the epistle of the church of Smyrna on the
death of Polyearp. ('EirioToA-q iyKVKXios, cap. xviii.) It was
again, by an analogous usage, that at Corinth, after two or three
centuries, on the anniversary of Clement's writing his letter
to the church in that city, it was read anew. .£nd, moreover,
by reason of its antiquity and of its author's name, this letter
approached nearer than any other writing not in the canon
to the authority ascribed to the second canon ; so that Euse
bius (vi. 12) teaches us that in many churches, and at Ces
area, among others (Kaff1 -r)pds), it was for a long time ad-

416 THE CANON.
mitted to a public reading (SeSrjpocrievpevrjv). But there was
yet a wide difference between this usage and the recognition
of a writing as intestamented. Also Eusebius, in his famous
Chapter XXV. (Lib. iii.), has been careful not to place it,
we do not say in the rank of the first canon, but even in that
of the second, nor even in the rank of the apocryphal or
spurious books (iv rots vodois). If he calls it 'non-contested'
(homologomen), it is evidently in the sense, not of its canon
icity, but of its authenticity. He esteemed it very highly,
calling it ' a majestic and admirable epistle,' but not making
it a canonical book."
It is found, indeed, placed at the end of the fourth volume
(or the New Testament), in the famous Alexandrine manu
script given by Cyril Lucar to Charles I., king of England.
But this fact has no value in reference to the canon ; since
we also find, in this very manuscript, at the end of this epis
tle, the second pretended one of Clement, an epistle of Atha
nasius to Marcellinus, the apocryphal psalms attributed to
Solomon, and fourteen hymns, of which the eleventh is in
honor of the Virgin Mary (rfjs OeoroKov).
" There was still another development of the readings of
the church yet later ; but only in the fourth century. We
allude to the ' Homilies.' Justin Martyr in his first apology
(chap. Ixvii.) states that in the meetings of the church
in his day, ' after the reader (of the Scriptures) had
finished (-rravcrapevov tov dvayivwo-KovTOs), the president (6
¦irpoecrTuis) delivered a discourse of exhortation.' But we do
not learn that in the second or third century any of these
discourses (Xoymv) were circulated by writing. Origen's
homilies are the earliest we now have. It is true, they
gradually came to read in some churches those of some of
the most eminent writers^ Jerome mentions the Syriac
sermons of Ephraim.1 He tells us he had acquired such
renown (ad tantam venit claritudinem), that his discourses,
after the reading of the Scriptures, were publicly recited.
1 De Viris Illustrib. cap. cv.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 417
We know, also, that the same honor was afterward rendered to
those of Gregory, Chrysostom, and Augustine. But these re
citations, as we see, took place only after the reading of the
Scriptures (post lectionem Scripturarum). They could dis
place preaching from the pulpit, but the word of God, never.
" Finally, there might be, here and there, as we may
gather from some very isolated facts, when the limits of
the canon had been very solidly fixed, a bishop who suffered
in his church, after the reading of the Scriptures, that of
some apocryphal or spurious book, if that book appeared to
him orthodox in its faith and pure in its morals. An exam
ple of this kind is quoted from Eusebius (vi. 12), which some
persons would abuse, but which nevertheless serves rather
to confirm the doctrine of the canon. It was a pretended
' Gospel of Peter,' which some members of a church in
Rhosus (in Cilicia) desired to use, not as a canonical Scrip
ture, but as an edifying book. Serapion, then bishop, states
that having come among them ignorant of the book, because
he believed it conformed to the faith, he said to them : If that
alone causes your dispute, let it be read. ' But now,' he writes
to them, ' according to what I have heard, and considering that
it was used in favor of the Docetae, I have read it ; and hav
ing found, with much that is in conformity with the holy doc
trine of the Saviour, instructions which are erroneous, I have
placed them before you, hoping to come to you.' He then
gave them an extract, with a refutation of its falsehoods
(direXeyxusv rd ij/ev8u>s iv avr& elprjpeva). He adds, ' As to
us, brethren, we receive Peter and the other apostles as
Christ himself; but as to the writings falsely given to us in
their name (rd 8' ovopari avriov uVeu8«riypa<pa), we reject
them, we persons of experience (eprreipoi), knowing well
that we have not received such from our predecessors (on
to, roiavra ov TrapeXd/3opev) .' "
It is, then, in this way that the very accidental imprudence
of Serapion serves to show us the ordinary vigilance of the
pastors of the second and third centuries, and that the excep-

418 THE CANON.
tion, in this case, as it often happens, serves only to confirm
the rule, as Thiersch has remarked.
There exist, as we said, among the seven catholic epistles,
affinities and mutual connections ; each one of them being a
witness of the authenticity of some of the others. We will
give some examples.
1. A modern author, Dr. Wordsworth, in his eleventh dis
course on the canon,1 remarks that there is an interesting con
nection between the first epistle of Peter and the second of
John. The epistle of Peter, addressed from Babylon to the
elect Jews scattered in Asia Minor, ends with the salutation,
" Tlje. church that is at Babylon, elected together with you,
saluteth you, and so doth Mark." The epistle of John, on
the other hand, addressed by " The elder unto the elect lady
and her children," ends with this : " The children of thy elect
sister salute thee." .
It has frequently been questioned whether " the elect sis
ter " and " the elect lady " are two persons, as most moderns
have thought, or two churches, as most of the ancients
thought, and as Michaelis believes (who regards Kvpia as an
ellipsis for Kvpia. eKKX-rjcria., an expression which, among the
ancient Greeks, and especially at Athens, designated the
regular assembly of the people, and which, with John,
would designate the church regularly assembled every
Lord's day).
In fact, the first epistle of John, according to the tradition
of the ancients,2 should have been addressed to the Parthians,
among whom (as Philo and Josephus 3 state) there was an
immense multitude of Jews. And thus, in the same manner
as Peter would have written his first epistle to the Christian
Jews scattered throughout Asia, John would have addressed
1 London, 1848, p. 277.
2 Estius, in Ep, 1 Joh. Prafat. p. 201 (Rouen, 1709): Veterum traditio
est ad Parthos scriptam esse Johannis Epistolam. Hunc titulum ei tribuunt
Hyginus Papa . . . et ipse Augustinus. (Quest. Evang. ii. 39.)
8 Philon, Legation to Caius, 36 ; Josephus, Antiq. xxiii. 12.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 419
his first epistle to the Christian Jews scattered in Babylon
and the other Parthian provinces.
Now Clemens Alexandrinus, in a book of which we have
only a Latin translation,1 would also have said " that the
second epistle of John is addressed to the Parthians ; " but the
Latin translator, having taken -rrapdiovs for irapOevavs, trans
lated : Secunda Johannis epistola, quae ad virgines inscripta
. . . ; while there is not a single word about virgins there.
And the same Clement says elsewhere that " this second
letter of John is written to a certain elect Babylonian," and
thinks, with Jerome, that the word elect there designates, not
an elect person, but an elect church.
Thus, then, the apostle of the Circumcision would address
from Babylon his first letter to the Jews of the Asiatic Dis
persion, a province assigned to John, and close it with this
salutation : " Your co-elect sister, she who is at Babylon,
salutes you, as does also Mark, my son ; " and on his part,
John, the apostle of the provinces of Asia,2 would address
his, " To the elect church (the Kvpia iKXeKTrj), and to her
children, whom he loves in the truth," and then close it in his
turn with this salutation : " The children of thy co-elect sis
ter salute thee, thee, their elect sister who art at Babylon ; "
that is, " thee, who dost inhabit in such great numbers this
queen city whence came the Dispersion of Asia."
It must be remembered here that there was a threefold
dispersion of the Jews, as Luke describes it, on the day of
Pentecost (Acts ii. 8) : 1. " Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and
the dwellers in Mesopotamia ; " that was the dispersion sub
jected to the Parthians, with Babylon for the metropolis.
2. Those who inhabit " Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and
Asia (Minor), Phrygia and Pamphylia ; " that was the dis
persion of Asia. 3. " Egypt and the parts of Lybia about
Cyrene ; " that was the dispersion of Africa. Thus these
1 Adumbrat. pp. 10, 11.
2 The reader must remember that Asia was the ancient name of tho
western part of Asia Minor. — Tr.

420 THE CANON.
three dispersions, whom Peter addressed on the day of Pen
tecost, and who formed his spiritual province, must have been,
each of them, the object of his apostolical care ; that of Baby
lon, by the visit which he made them in person ; that of Asia,
by the letter which he wrote them from Babylon ; that of
Africa, by the messenger whom he sent to them, his son
Mark, first bishop of Alexandria.1
These first relations between the catholic epistles, although
established upon a questionable interpretation, have appeared
to us worthy of our attention. But we have others also.
2. Peter, writing his first letter after that of James, ren
ders him an indirect, but significant, testimony, in adopting
and incorporating many of its traits, as we have seen.
3. Jude, whose letter followed not only that of James, but
even the second of Peter, commends himself, from the be
ginning, as the brother of James who was known to the
churches by his ministry, his epistle, and his martyrdom.
(a.d. 62.)
4. The same Jude abundantly adopts, as we have said, the
language of the second epistle of Peter ; as Peter, in his first,
had adopted that of James.
5. Jude goes even so far as to declare that he quotes one
of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ (ver. 17), when he
repeats in express terms a prophecy of the second epistle of
Peter. 6. Peter, in his turn, in his second epistle, strongly com
mends "all the epistles of Paul," "his beloved brother,"
placing them in the rank of "the other Scriptures," and
denouncing eternal perdition on him who " wrests " them.
7. The same Peter, in his second letter, appeals to the
first (iii. 1).
8. John binds and corroborates the fourfold testimony of
his gospel and of his three epistles by recalling, in a most
striking manner, the same thoughts and expressions.
9. As John, in the fourth gospel, attests the authenticity
1 Jerome, Catal. Script. Eccles. viii.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ANTILEGOMENS. 421
of the three others by the very pains he has taken to be
silent about almost every event already related in them, so
we may say, that, in his three epistles, this same apostle has
attested the authenticity of the epistles of Peter and Paul,
by the silence he keeps on the important doctrines already
so abundantly set forth by these two great apostles. In ex
patiating only on the precepts of Christian love, John shows
us silently the entire approbation he gave to their teachings.
This is a reflection of Dr. Wordsworth.1
1 On the Canon (London, 1848), p. 285.

422 THE CANON.

CHAPTER FIFTH.
HISTORY OF THE CANON SINCE THE BE
GINNING OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.

Tlie Unanimity of all the Churches.
Among the astonishing and permanent facts revealing to
us the hand of God the most wonderful is the marvelous, uni
versal, immovable unanimity with which all the churches of
the world for the fourteen or fifteen last centuries continue to
present to us one and the same Greek Testament, — its four
gospels, its twenty-one epistles, its Apocalypse, and its book
of Acts, — without the difference of a word, since none of the
churches has ever founded a school on the otherwise insig
nificant question of the variations.
No doubt there have been seen in every age, and in our
day more than ever, teachers giving themselves the utmost
latitude of belief about our sacred books, calling their au
thority in question, imagining a thousand theories as to their
history, doubting one book, rejecting another, and even going
so far as to deny the divine inspiration of the entire canon.
But these have always been isolated men, and individual
instances of rashness.
Never, since the epoch in which the canon was definitively
closed and adopted in all the churches, more than fourteen
centuries ago, under the free labor of minds and the unseen
control of Providence, has any general council, any synod,
any particular church, Arian or trinitarian, Romanist or re
formed, free or national, been known to profess, in its decrees
or its catechisms, a rejection of one book of the New Testa-

THE UNANIMITY OF ALL THE CHURCHES. 423
ment, or express publicly"its doubts concerning one of them.
And this was true in the age of Alaric as in the time of the
Reformation, or as in our modern times ; in Europe as in the
East or as in the United States ; at Rome as in Germany'
even, where so many audacious systems are constantly pro
duced, and where the incredulity of the schools so often over
leaps all bounds.
Such is, then, under the action of Providence, this admi
rable, I may say this divine, unanimity of Christendom on
the twenty-seven books of its sacred code. It is a perma
nent unanimity, universal, unalterable, and not less firm than
that of the Jews for their canon. It is even a unanimity
still more astonishing ; since that which we wonder at in this
family of Israel which has always kept its sacred oracles free
from every mixture through thirty-four centuries, this very
marvel we have here to admire in all the families of the
nations, which equally preserve the New Testament in the
midst of their most ardent disputes and their profoundest
divisions ; which preserve it in the most uncultivated church
es, notwithstanding their ignorancej in the most idolatrous,
notwithstanding their traditions ; as in the most rationalistic,
notwithstanding their infidel literature and all the wander
ings of their teachers. It is a unanimity, we may say, the
more striking that it is only on this one point.
Look for a single doctrine on which they have all been
united for fourteen centuries, or are now united ; it can not
be found. Look again, on the other hand, for a point more
important and fundamental, and, at the same time, more del
icate and open to contention than this ; it is not to be found.
And yet never has it been possible for the levity of the hu
man mind, the rashness of learning, the violence of party-
spirit, or the malice of Satan, to set men against each other
on this single doctrine, — the doctrine most important of all,
we said, and the most delicate ; the most fundamental, and the
most liable to be disputed !
Search the whole earth, search from age to age, for one

424 THE CANON.
church in which this discord, so easy to create, so probable,
is to be found. It does not exist.
So evident is it that a concealed but almighty hand has
been here interposed, and that the Head of the church watch
es in silence over the new Oracles as he has watched over
the old, preserving them from age to age against the folly of
men, because he has promised to preserve the church for
ever against " the gates of hell."
In this work God is pleased not to appear, but under his
unobserved guidance to leave the 'churches to act in a con
stant feeling of their freedom ; and that not only without any
sensible pressure of his hand, but also without intervention
of human authorities ever interrupting the exercise of that
freedom, as we shall presently show. And it is thus he
has led their common free-will by his Holy Spirit to this
marvelous result, so that from so many human wills we all
should receive, during so many ages, only one and the same
Scripture of the New Testament.
But if we must study and admire this miracle of the divine
wisdom watching over the sacred deposit, should it astonish
us who have seen it for thirty-three centuries at work main
taining the people of Israel unmixed and imperishable among
the nations; us who have seen it through the same long ages
maintaining in the hearts of that same people, notwithstand
ing all their revolts, one immovable purpose in regard to the
Old Testament ? Should it astonish us if this same hand,
ever invisible and powerful, has been able also to make all
the Christian churches of the world, notwithstanding their
dissensions and their unfaithfulness, incorruptible depositaries
of his new oracles ?
Gobat, the missionary, has indeed found in unexplored
retreats of Abyssinia some Ethiopian manuscripts, and Dr.
Grant found some Syriac manuscripts in the high mountains
of Kurdistan, among those interesting Nestorians whom he
discovered there, living so many centuries cut off from all the
other parts of the Christian world. But these can not be

THE UNANIMITY OF ALL THE CHURCHES. 425
opposed to this universal testimony of the churches. Dr.
Grant says, " The Apocalypse and two or three of the short
epistles " (not named by him) " still were unknown by these
isolated Christians, who did not reject them, but who knew
nothing of them, until recently, when they hastened with the
other Syriac churches to adopt the universal canon."
Let this important fact be attentively noticed, as it is so
manifestly ordered by Providence to furnish, after so many
ages, a striking testimony to the canon.
All the churches of Christendom have but one sacred text,
— the Greek New Testament, with its twenty-seven books,
as you find them alike with the bishops in Moscow, the
pastors in Geneva, the Propaganda in Rome, or the pow
erful Bible Society in London ! " To them were committed
the oracles of God."
In whatever age, then, or in whatever place I might have
arrived on this earth, from the remote days when the canon
was entirely formed by the conscientious labors of Chris
tians without the intervention of any human authority, I
should everywhere and ever have received the same Scrip
ture ; in the days of Theodosius as in those of Bonaparte ;
among the Romanists as among the Protestants ; in the East
ern churches as in the Western, during the thousand years
»pf their mutual contests. I might have asked the Nestorians
of Asia fourteen hundred years ago, or the council of Ephe
sus who destroyed their books ; I might have applied, three
centuries later, to the three hundred and fifty Greek bishops
who declared at Nice that the worship of images is " holy,
just, and useful," as to the three hundred Latin bishops who,
seven years afterward, condemned it in Frankfort ; and so
everywhere ; and so now, if I would procure a Greek New
Testament, pure and complete, I ask indifferently for the
edition of the Catholic Scholz or that of the Protestant
Tischendorf. Everywhere the twenty-seven Scriptures
complete ! Everywhere this preserved book of God as
he has given it! Everywhere the churches infallibly but

426 THE CANON.
freely led to unity by an invisible power ; everywhere their
unconscious obedience leading them to preserve the sacred
collection of the books. We now notice
Tlie Exceptional Freedom which always accompanied the
Formation and Maintenance of the Canon.
Nothing was more improbable in anticipation, yet nothing -
is more certain in history, than the entirely peculiar and ex
ceptional freedom of conscience exercised in the first forma
tion, the subsequent completion, and the perfect and constant
preservation of the canon of the New Testament.
Whence but from God came this surprising and complete
absence of all external pressure while this threefold labor
was silently pursued in the church, everywhere leading to
the same result ? How can we explain it without this influ
ence from above, that every exercise of authority, every
synodical decree, every intervention of the civil powers,
was continually suspended in regard to the most impor
tant, and, at the same time, the most delicate of questions?
We have already noticed this extraordinary fact; but it is
so unique in the history of the church, that it deserves our
more serious attention, as showing irresistibly the divine in
tervention in forming and preserving the canon. For how,
without the action of the Holy Spirit, would you explain the
fact that during so many ages, and in all the churches of
Christendom, such freedom was allowed to every conscience
on the very question on which we should have expected the
least ; on the doctrine from which all others spring ; on the
very act of determining the unchangeable code, the judge
of controversies, the doctrine of doctrines ? How could there
have been so much freedom on this single point at a time
when there was so little on all others ; when decrees were
multiplied on points of least importance ; when all the
churches. East and West, jealous, often extravagantly so,
of the purity of doctrine, exacted of one another public

FREEDOM OF ITS FORMATION AND MAINTENANCE. 427
professions, explanations, adhesions, or retractions in regard
to every other point of the creed ; when they were hurling
anathemas at each other for the most trifling errors ; when,
for instance, Victor, bishop of Rome, excommunicated the
whole Eastern church, because they would celebrate Easter
on the fourteenth day of the moon in March, instead of the
Sunday that followed ; at a period when eighty councils were
held in one century against the Pelagians, the Nestorians, the
Eutychians, the Acephalites?
It is a wonderful and manifestly providential. fact, that, on
this point alone, there can be found nowhere in the docu
ments of history any account of public constraint, any col
lective action of councils, any prescription of emperors, —
although from the fourth century they meddled with every
thing else in the church, — in a word, not an act of human
authority which was intended to impose on the churches the
acceptance of a sacred code, or to force any individual con
science to admit into the canon a single one of the twenty-
seven books now constituting the New Testament.
Thus the sacred volume was noiselessly formed, pure, har
monious, and complete ; like the crystal which tranquilly
sinks to the bottom of the vase from the skillfully combined
substances which the chemist has prepared. How is it that
each molecule, obeying silently, no longer simply the law of
gravitation, but other inexplicable forces, takes each its place
in turn with mathematical precision in this brilliant and mys
terious unit ? The philosopher will point you to the laws of
nature, and to the Creator who sustains them from age to
age. Just so the Christian, whom you ask to explain the
continuous deposit, book by book, in the universal church,
until the whole volume is complete, will point you to the free
action of the church, and, at the same time, to the invisible
power of her watchful Redeemer, guiding the process from
age to age.
He will tell you to admire the scrutiny of the second canon
by the primitive Christians during nearly three centuries, —

428 THE CANON.
a scrutiny always continued in perfect independence by each
inquirer, and with the frequent expression of personal doubts ;
and yet the crystal once formed has continued unchanged for
fifteen centuries. This is to us a seal of the divine hand,
and an expression of the divine approbation,
When the entire Christian church, convoked at the call of
the Roman emperors, was assembled at Nice, A. d. 325, and
in Constantinople, a. d. 381, the four gospels were placed on a
golden throne in the middle of the hall, to express the sover
eignty of the holy Word. At that time the first canon of the
homologomens was tacitly recognized by all the Fathers; but
there was much variety of opinion in regard to the second and
the second-first canons. No one complained of the difference
of views ; and this important question was held in suspense.
From that time, as we have shown, almost universally, and
with no decree or controversy in the councils, the churches
came to the same view in regard to them. And although
subsequent councils differed as to the books that might be
read in the churches publicly, their object, as they declare,
was simply to settle a question of discipline, — ¦ to regulate the
services of the sanctuary, but not to determine dogmatically
the number of the books God had inspired. This, we have
said, is proved, not only by the fact that these two catalogues
were not identical, and yet no one complained of it at Car
thage, but also that, long after the two councils, the ministers
continued to exercise on this subject entire freedom, without
being considered as bound by these decrees of the two coun
cils, and without ever appealing to them in attacking or de
fending these books.
And to this it must Jae added, that this unanimity is totally
contrasted with the movement of mind on every other point,
whether of doctrine, discipline, or government. Men began
with different views as to the second canon, but ended with
entire harmony. On all other points they began together,
and have diverged incessantly and indefinitely. By a con
vergence, gentle, calm, silent, and daily growing more cer-

ASTONISHING INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 429
tain, they have come to a unanimity on this single point, —
a unanimity universal, immovable, and humanly inexplica
ble, in which they rest to-day, however differing on other
points. And during all that period while the church for two cen
turies and a half was yet hesitating in regard to the antilego
mens, she never, for an instant, admitted one spurious book
into the canon. God permitted the church thus to test the
genuine books before admitting them, but never to admit
spurious books.
The Astonishing Independence of the Church toward the
Schools, in Regard to the Canon.
For eighteen centuries men of learning have been attack
ing the canon. But we witness only their impotence in all
these efforts, however eloquent, however learned they may
have been, however numerous their adherents, however au
dacious their contradictions, however violent their onsets.
Witness, in the first century, the assault of the Judaizers
and the Ebionites. In vain did they arise in such formidable
numbers against all the epistles of Paul; in vain did they
reject the two books of Luke. It was amid the confusion of
this fierce opposition that we behold the entire church peace
fully, but firmly, determining, and determining once for all,
| the first canon of the New Testament, consisting of twenty
! books, or rather the sacred collection of the twenty-two ho
mologomens. Witness, again, in the second century, the great noise
which the various gnostic sects were then making around
• the church. Yet more formidable and far more audacious
than the Ebionites, they pretended to combat our canon in
; the name of science and philosophy. They established lec
tures in the remotest parts of the empire, and especially in
the capital under the Antonines, under Commodus, under the
two Severuses, who all granted them unrestricted freedom.

430 THE CANON.
They drew after them the ardent youth, full of enthusiasm
for their eloquence and their impudence; they held their
schools especially in Alexandria and Rome, then the two
centers of science : Basilides, Isidorus, Carpocrates, in Alex
andria ; Cerdo, Marcion, Valentinus, Theodotus, in Rome.
They afflicted alike the Eastern and the Western churches,
respecting no book of the canon, here rejecting one, and
there another, distorting their meaning, corrupting their
text, and associating spurious writings with them. But what
came out of all this ? Nothing ; for the God of the Bible
was its guardian. He did not destroy the freedom of man ;
he brought no violent opposition to these false prophets. To
the final honor of his Word, he left them an open arena ; he
took nothing from them but tbeir influence. And while the
faithful men of the second and third centuries were strongly
protesting against them, while Irenasus, Clement, Tertullian,
Origen, Hippolytus, were exposing their heresies by learned
writings, they were mutually undermining one another, and
their mutual contradictions were suicidal ; so that, notwith
standing the great noise, they had made, their schools exer
cised, after all, very little direct influence on the churches.
They unhappily led multitudes of young men astray in the
paths of skepticism and death ; but they did not hinder the
movements of the Holy Spirit among the flocks. And if
they agitated the surface, they yet left at the bottom of the
sacred vase the holy Word of God producing its blessed
effects, and the opinion of the church on the canon peace
fully forming itself.
Thus, notwithstanding this great tumult of the second and
third centuries, not only may we see the truth of the first
canon being confirmed, and settling on its present basis, but
we also see at that time the acknowledgment of the five later
epistles quietly forming itself in all the churches, and the
genuine books separating themselves from the spurious.
This acknowledgment and this discrimination were con
summated after the first quarter of the fourth century ; as

ASTONISHING INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 431
we see the silver and gold in the furnace separate them
selves from the confused mass of inferior metals.
But witness, still further, a thousand years later, what was
passing in Europe at the troubled period of the Reformation.
At that time the friends of letters and of truth, legitimately
led to skeptical thoughts by so many new discoveries which
unmasked the traditions venerated for ages, so many false
books, so many lying legends, false decretals, and false texts,
— then, I say, the friends of truth regarded themselves called
on to question even the rights of certain sacred books to re
tain their places in the New Testament. Had they not seen
themselves compelled by divine authority to cast out of the
temple of the Old Testament the apocryphal books ? Was
it not, then, natural for them to believe that they were called
upon equally to pass in review the very books of the New
Testament also ? Certainfy the moment was full of perils ;
sacred criticism might easily be led astray, and the cause of
the canon might be gravely compromised. But what took
place then ? So far from this, it came forth from this new
tumult of minds better established, and, notwithstanding this
very rash labor of criticism, not one solitary church can be
found which either rejected one book of the New Testament,
or added one to it.
But what were all these trials to which the ancient schools
had subjected our Scriptures during the first, second, third,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries compared with those which
were reserved to be emploj-ed by the most learned of mod
ern theologians ? We speak of the most illustrious univer
sities of Protestant Europe, and especially of learned and
laborious Germany, during the last half of the eighteenth
and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. We might well
have said that the old war of the gnostics was rekindled.
The Cerdos, the Marcions, the Basilides, had risen from the
dead ; the revolt of criticism, for a time, seemed universal,
and one might have believed that the larger portion of our
Bible was to perish before the new researches of science. The

432 THE CANON.
young men of the schools were swept away by the mighty
current ; the least incredulous professors shrugged their
shoulders when they witnessed our na'ive confidence in the
whole old text ; and you might hear it constantly repeated
that it was all over with our canon.
But to give a more exact view of this war we need to ex
amine in detail, as presented, for instance, in the " Tables of
Hertwig," published in 1849,1 the literature of the Introduc
tions to the New Testament. We have there the whole suc
cessive list for a century. What, then, have they taught as
to the canon, all these guides, these " introducers " of the
youth of Germany to this sacred study, from the time of the
appeal of David Michaelis to the University of Gbttingen, in
1751, down to our day? All, without exception, have at
tacked the canon, with, however, no other agreement among
themselves. Thus, for more than a century, have some of the most
learned men of the world labored to displace some of the sacred
books by bold denials, fantastic hypotheses, arbitrary systems,
abundance of doubts, contemptuous accusations against par
ticular books, against their authenticity, their harmony, their
infallibility, their wisdom, yes, their veracity ! And what
has been the result of all the labor of these learned men ?
Our New Testament, comes forth from this conflict better
confirmed than ever in all our churches, even in Germany
itself. And at the very time when German universities
were denying the divinity of the Scriptures, God was prov
ing it by their mighty effects in transforming the most de
based of the nations. The period of the most violent attack on
the Scriptures has been the very period of their rapid ex
tension by new translations into new sections of the earth.
The age of rationalism has been most wonderfully the age of
missions. The age of attacking the Bible was the very age
j of Bible societies.
1 Literatur der Einleitungswissenschaft. Tabellen zur Einleitung ins
N. T. Berlin, 1849.

ASTONISHING INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 433
It is, moreover, a point well worthy of our attention that
the universal adoption of the second canon took place at
a time when the contents of its books were directly opposed
to the prejudices and inclinations of the churches, whilst the
books they rejected at the same time accorded with those in
clinations and prejudices.
The beginning of the fourth century was distinguished by
an excessive fondness for the marvelous ; innumerable ac
counts of silly miracles ; a prevailing disposition to look for
allegories, to spiritualize texts and facts to the most foolish
extremes ; by very exaggerated notions of the holiness of the
saints, and very false notions of their merits; a growing
tendency to exalt the priests, and especially the bishops ; an
almost idolatrous admiration of the martyrs ; excessive con
fidence in the virtue of the sacraments, especially baptism ;
and various other errors of doctrine, sentiment, and practice.
Now, of these false notions not one word is to be found in
all the five epistles then universally admitted to be canoni
cal ; but an abundance of these notions is in almost all the
ecclesiastical books at that day universally rejected from the
canon. In the five epistles, not a legend is to be found, noth
ing puerile, not a word on the virtues of Mary, or her mira
cles, or even her person ; not one word on salvation by bap
tism, on the privileges of bishops, or the superiority of one
to another, except the rebuke of Diotrephes for claiming pre
eminence ; no exaltation of the angels. And while the doc
trine of the millennium contained in the Apocalypse was so
strongly opposed in the East, and the Novatian doctrine sup
posed to be favored by the epistle to the Hebrews was op
posed in the West, not a church refused to admit both these
books into the canon.
And all this firm, unanimous, quiet acceptance took place
at a time when the dangerous practice existed of reading the
uninspired books in public worship. Jerome1 informs us
that it was only from the fourth century that these books
1 Praef. in Libr. Salomon. Opp. tom. i. p. 938.
37

434 THE CANON.
were thus read, "not to establish doctrines, but merely to
edify." And Augustine l says, that Judith, Wisdom, and
Ecclesiasticus were read, not by the clergy, but by inferior of
ficers, and from lower seats than those from which the canon
ical' books were read.
And yet, if this dangerous practice did introduce into the
Latin church these apocryphal books on account of their false
teachings, yet it is remarkable that similar errors in the writ
ings of the Fathers never led to the introduction of apocryphal
^ books into the New Testament canon of that church. Why
were the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the epistle
of Barnabas, so promptly, universally, and firmly rejected
from the canon ? Let us own in this the hand of God ; for
surely this mysterious work of forming the canon unani
mously in all parts of the church, executed at such a period,
amid so many errors, prejudices, and so much controversy,
could not come from the mind of man alone. Everywhere
we see the church accepting reverently as divine the books
unfavorable to the inclinations of her members, and every
where rejecting those which were the most flattering to their
pride, and most favorable to the heresies to which they were
inclined. Genuineness of the Text.
But a vital question meets us here : have we the genuine,
original text ? If we have not, the preservation of the
names of the books is of no importance.
For the last two centuries this question has been examined
by men of critical science with herculean industry. Walton
commenced this work in England by the preparation of his
Polyglotl. in 1657, followed by bishop Fell's Greek Testa
ment in 1675, that of Mill in 1707, and of Bentley in 1716.
The task was undertaken to find all the manuscripts of the
Greek Testament concealed in the libraries of Europe, and
1 De Praidest. Sanctor. Lib. i. cap. xiv. Cosin, Hist, of Canon, p. 106
(old Eng. edit.).

GENUINENESS OF THE TEXT. 435
to compare them together. The effort startled the world. It
was feared that it would result in diminishing men's confi
dence in the Scriptures. The Germans followed the Eng
lish, and surpassed them in the vastness of their researches.1
We know that Griesbach alone in 1786 had compared 335
Greek manuscripts of the gospel, and Scholz, five years
later, 674, besides 200 of the Acts, 256 of the epistles of
Paul, 93 of the Apocalypse, and still others of the catholic
epistles. In our " Theopneusty " we have said : " When it is
remembered that the New Testament has been copied in
every Christian country and in every variety of circum
stances, during a succession of fourteen hundred years ; that
it has passed through three centuries of pagan persecution^,
in which men convicted of possessing it were thrown to
wild beasts ; that in the second, third, and fourth centuries,
false books were multiplied in every direction ; in the eighth,
ninth, and tenth, false legends and false histories were made ;
in the tenth and eleventh, so few could read, even among the
princes ; in the twelfth and thirteenth, the use of the Scrip
tures in the vernacular was punished with death, and to pro
mote error the writings of the Fathers and decrees of coun
cils were altered ; when it is remembered that the learned,
not contented with the public and private libraries of the West,
went to search even the convents of Mount Athos, of Asiatic
Turkey, and of Egypt ; . . . then it may be understood how
at the beginninsr of these researches the friends of the sacred
Word were alarmed for the integrity of our Scriptures."
But what, in fact, has been the result ?
It is, that, on the contrary, by this gigantic labor, in which
so many distinguished men have spent their lives, a new
proof, striking and unexpected, has been furnished the world,
of the Providence which watches over the oracles of God,
1 The labors of Bengel, Wetstein, Griesbach, Scholz, Matthai, Tittmann,
Lachmann, and Tischendorf, are well known, as also Ihe recent labors of
the learned Tregeiles (Account of the Printed Texts of the Greek New Tes
tament. London, 1854).

436 THE CANON.
throughout every age. The text has been found purer and
better attested than the most pious men dared to believe.
From this mass of thirteen or fifteen hundred Greek manu
scripts, sought out in all the libraries of Europe and Asia,
carefully compared together, word for word, letter by letter, by
modern criticism, and compared also with all the ancient ver
sions, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, Sahidic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Ara
bic, Sclavonic, Gothic, and Persian, as with all the quotations
from the New Testament by the Fathers in their innumerable
writings, — from this mass, we say, and from this gigantic la
bor, the enemies, astonished and confounded, have seen sacred
criticism return covered with the dust of a thousand libraries,
but unable after all to present the world any thing more than
a trivial and valueless result ; trivial, we say, with them ;
but we will say with the friends of the Bible immense in its
nothingness, and mighty in its very insignificance.
In fact, all the hopes of the enemies of religion from this
quarter are confounded; and as Michaelis remarks : x "They
have ceased now to hope for any thing from those critical re
searches which they so earnestly recommended at first."
And such, henceforth, has been the complete preservation
of our Scriptures, that, to this hour, and everywhere, you
shall see all the Christian sects, however opposed to each
other, give us the same Greek New Testament, without even
having founded one single school on the variations. In fact,
all, Jesuits, ministers, popes, cardinals, pastors, or archi
mandrites ; at Rome as at Geneva, at Moscow as at. Cam
bridge or Berlin, use the same manuscripts, quote the same
editions, and produce the same texts, Griesbach and Scholz,
Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf.
We have presented, in the Theopneusty, tables intended to
give every reader a simple idea of these results of sacred
criticism. The eye must see them, however, to comprehend
them. We have there shown, for example, that, in the epistle to
1 Tom. ii. pp. 266, 467, 469.

THE BOOKS ALLEGED TO BE LOST. 437
the Romans (the largest and most important of the epistles),
all the corrections which Griesbach could make, affecting the
meaning in the slightest degree, in four hundred and thirty-
three verses of this Scripture, after examining one hundred
and forty manuscripts, were five, and they small and insig
nificant ; and now the subsequent researches of Tittmann and
Lachmann have reduced these five to two ; (Scholz, more re
cently, reduced them to one). The first (Rom. vii. 6) em
braces the difference between the letters e and o. Instead
of "that being dead in which we were held," Griesbach
reads, " we being dead," etc. The second, in the eleventh
chapter, retrenches the part which is parallel to the sixth
verse. The third (xvi. 5) substitutes Achaia for Asia.
In a word, in the 7959 verses of the New Testament there
are but ten or twelve in which all the corrections proposed by
Griesbach and so many others, at the end of their immense
researches, have any importance. And eight of these cor
rections pertain to either single words or single letters.
Such, therefore, has been the astonishing preservation of
our sacred text through such a series of ages ; such is the
testimony of the manuscripts ; and it is thus that science,
which has collected them, has brought to our view a magnifi
cent monument of Providence ever actively watching over
the Scriptures.
We have, then, the strongest possible evidence of the gen
uineness of our text.
There remains but one other question in regard to the
New Testament canon. It has been declared, that, if the
books we possess are inspired, the present canon of the New
Testament is incomplete, because we have not in it all the
originally inspired books. This point we now proceed to ex
amine. The Books alleged to be lost.
Have we a complete canon ; or have any inspired books
of the New Testament been lost ?
37*

438 THE' CANON.
It has been affirmed that there was an epistle to the Laodi-
peans written by Paul.
No Father ever saw this pretended epistle, and there was
never a question whether it should be put into the canon. In
Jerome's trial, about a. d. 400, there was one shown, it is
said, which was universally "rejected,"1 and which, an im
postor had imagined, corresponded to the description Paul
gave of a letter to the Laodiceans, in his letter to the Colos-
sians (iv. 16). Calvin remarks: "Now that is too gross a
deception that any one should dare, under so stupid and fool
ish a pretense, exhibit a letter so contrary to the mind of
Paul." 2 But besides, not only does no Father pretend to
have seen the true epistle of Paul, but he himself does not
pretend to have written one ; "And they," Calvin says, " are
doubly deceived who think Paul wrote that to the Laodi
ceans." Paul, in that passage alluded to, contents himself with rec
ommending to the Colossians to have the epistle (ri)v ck
Aao8iKeias), coming from Laodicea, read by them ; that is, as
Calvin says, " an epistle sent from Laodicea to Paul, and
which he had judged it well to have the Colossians read;"
or, according to others, an epistle of Paul which was to pass
from Laodicea to Colosse. And what epistle ? Undoubted
ly that which he had written to the Ephesians at the same
time, and which, as it is not directed " to the elders and dea
cons " of that city, was rather, as many think, a circular let
ter. But another is spoken of. MaiTy have imagined, accord
ing to certain equivocal words of Paul to the Corinthians
(1 Cor. v. 9), that this apostle, before his two canonical epistles,
had written them another, which was " unfortunately lost,"
or which, at least, not having been designed to be a part of
the sacred oracles, was never inserted in the canon. That
letter, we reply, was not lost, for it never had an existence.
1 In Catal. " ab omnibus exploditur."
2 Com. on Col. tom. iv. p. 107. Paris, 1855.

THE BOOKS ALLEGED TO BE LOST. 439
-It is true that here again a more modern impostor, taking
occasion from these words of Paul, has attempted to fabri
cate one of which we shall say nothing, because it has never
obtained the least credit, and the anachronisms it contains
betray its spurious character. Moreover, no Father has
professed ever to have seen this pretended epistle of Paul
which is asserted to have been " lost."
The fact is, Paul's very simple language has been entirely
misapprehended. " I wrote unto you in an epistle not to
company with fornicators." He does not say, as some trans
lators have inaccurately rendered it : " I have written to you
in a Utter" but in the letter (eypax/za iplv iv tq imcrToXn), that
is to say, in this letter ; for that is the meaning of the definite
article with the Greeks, when it is substituted for the demon
strative pronoun ; l and it is thus that all the translators have
understood this very expression in the four other passages
of the New Testament where it occurs : —
Rom. xvi. 22 : " I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle." It
is : " who wrote the epistle."
Col. iv. 16: " And when this is read among you." It is :
" And when the letter."
1 Thess. v. 27 : ''I charge you by the Lord that this
epistle be read unto all the holy brethren." It is : " That
the epistle be read."
2 Thess. iii. 14: " And if any man obey not our word by
this epistle, note that man." It is : " by the epistle."
" I then have written to you," or I wrote (eypcuj/a) " in this
letter," says the apostle, " not to company with fornicators."
We perceive that the apostle is not opposing that which he
is writing to-day to that which he had written in a previous
letter ; one tense of a verb to another ; ypdcpw to eypa^a ; but
it is the aorist eypcuj/a in both successive members of the
phrase, which are in no wise adversative to each other ; the
second being only a development of the first, and the aorist
of this verb being freely employed elsewhere in the present
1 See the beautiful work of bishop Middleton on the article.

440 THE CANON.
time.1 Paul then reminds the Corinthians that on the occa
sion of the scandal of which he has here spoken to them for the
first time, he has just been exhorting them in this very epis
tle (eight verses before) to have no fellowship with men
who, professing to be Christians, were living in immoral
practices. " We everywhere hear of you practicing an im
purity that is not even named among the heathen ! And yet
you are puffed up ! And you have not rather been in
mourning, that he who has committed such a crime might be
cut off from among you ! But I . . . in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ, you and my spirit being assembled to
gether with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, have ad
judged such a man to be delivered to Satan. Take then the
wicked man from the midst of you. . . ."
Then, four verses afterward, and without leaving the sub
ject, he adds : " I write to you in this letter that you do not
company with fornicators. . . . Now, I write to you that you
company not with any one calling himself a brother," etc.
Such is the natural sense of the passage without any ques
tion about a former letter, or a " lost epistle."
Do we mean to say by this, that Paul, having the care of
all the churches daily upon him, wrote, either to the brethren
pr the churches, only fourteen letters during a ministry of
thirty years ? Certainly not ; but Calvin 2 says : " The Lord
by his providence has consecrated to a perpetual remem
brance those which he knew to be necessary to his church.
And it is not by an accident that they are so few ; but by an
admirable design of God, the body of the Scripture has been
composed such as we see it."
We see that even the really inspired words of apostles and
prophets, those, even, of the Lord conversing with Moses on
the mount or in the desert, and of the Son of God speaking to
his dearest servants in the most momentous hours of his minis-
1 lypaipa is often applied by the apostle to that which he has just been
writing. See 1 Cor. ix. 13 ; Philem. 19, 21 ; 2 Cor. ii. 3 ; Gal. vi. 11 ; 1 John
ii. 14.
2 Comm. on Eph. iii. 3.

THE BOOKS ALLEGED TO BE LOST. 441
try (Lukexxiv. 27 ; Matt. xvii. 3), have not been preserved
to us. But is it a loss for the church ? We believe not,
since God has not chosen to give them to her. We must be-
» lieve that the number to be preserved would be limited, for
otherwise " the world itself could not contain the books that
should be written " (John xxi. 25), and the gospels were
necessarily very brief. All the acorns which fall do not sur
vive to produce oaks ; but enough remain to fulfill the pur
poses of God. His holy Word is also a seed ; he has scatter
ed it by measure, and given us what we need.
Yet again, it must not be imagined, either, that all the
words or writings of an Isaiah or a Daniel, of a Peter or a
Paul, during a ministry of thirty years, or sixty years, or
even, as Daniel's, of ninety years, were from morning to night
under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. We believe this
point was fully established in our Theopneusty. These
prophets and apostles were inspired at certain definite times
for specific purposes determined by God ; but, at other times
and for other objects, they were not so. In the dispute of Paul
with Barnabas, God has not guaranteed to us all the apostle's
words, nor all his parchments left with Carpus (2 Tim. iv.
13). That which is guaranteed is, the Holy Scripture, " all
Scripture given by inspiration of God" (7rSo-a ypacp-r) 6e6-
Trvevo-ros). But beyond this, theopneusty spoken or written
was, with these men of God, like their other charisms or
" gifts," without doubt, an intermittent grace. They were
generally, as the humble believer of to-day is, illuminated
and preserved from on high ; but they no more spoke as
" led by the Holy Spirit," and their language, always worthy
of the most respectful attention, at the same time was not
infallible. There is nothing of the books lost which God wished to
give by his prophets ; nothing of the canon of the Scriptures.
Heaven and earth shall pass, but not a jot of the holy Word
can pass away. (Matt. v. 18.)'

BOOK SECOND.
CANONICITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

We considered the question of the New Testament first,
because much of the evidence in favor of the Old Testament
canon is derived from it.
CHAPTER FIRST.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE JEWS.
There is in the history of Israel a fact not less wonderful
than that of the preservation of their race for more than
three thousand years in the midst of other nations like one
family, unmixed and imperishable. That fact is the perfect
and constant conservation of their canon for thirty-three and
a half centuries.
We behold among this incomparable people from the days
of Moses to the present time, notwithstanding all their wan
derings and terrible sufferings, a constant unanimity in recog
nizing, without variation, the sacred collection of the Scrip
tures while it was being formed, and the whole volume since it
was completed thirty-three hundred years ago. This canon,
which our Bibles divide into thirty-nine books, but the Jews
into twenty-two, in order to correspond with their twenty-two
letters, as the Fathers did after them,1 this volume, we say,
i Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, John Damascenus, Jerome, Gregory
Nazianzen, Epiphanius, etc. " Quomodo viginti duo elementa sunt per
qua? scribimus Hebralce omne quod loquimur, ita viginti duo volumina
supputantur." Jerome, Prolog. Galeatus (tom. i. p. 318. Bened. Paris,
1693).

THE TESTIMONY OF THE JEWS. 443
finished four hundred years before Jesus Christ was born, has
never ceased from that time to be read in all their synagogues
throughout the earth as the " book of God." The nation of
Israel, before their final dispersion, was already scattered into
every known country. James, speaking of the Gentiles, says :
" Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him."
(Acts xv. 21.) Josephus says : " There is not a Grecian city
and scarcely a barbarian city in which the rest of the Sab
bath is not observed through the influence of the Jews." a
Now, that all the Israelites received the same canon of
the Scriptures with the most perfect unanimity is a fact
abundantly testified by the Jews of the apostles' time : Philo
in Egypt, Josephus in Egypt and at Rome. And it is, more
over, another fact universally admitted, that, very long before
the apostolical period, the Old Testament, both in Hebrew
and in Greek, existed with its twenty-two books as we now
possess them.
The testimony of Josephus is worthy of notice here, for
this historian was only thirty years old at the death of Paul.
He says to Apion : " Nothing can be better attested than the
writings authorized among us. In fact, they could not be
subject to any discord (pyre tivos iv tols ypatpopevois ivovcrrjs
SiMpwvlas) ; for only that which the prophets wrote ages ago
is approved among us, taught as they were by the very in
spiration of God." " We then avoid having among us, as the
Greeks have, a great number of books which are discordant
and opposed to each other ; we have only twenty-two, which
contain all that has passed among us, and which may reason
ably be believed. Five are of Moses." " The prophets after
Moses wrote thirteen other books 2 describing what occurred
after the death of Artaxerxes, . . . ; while the four other

1 Against Apion, Lib. ii. chap. ix.
2 Namely, 1, Joshua; 2, Judges (including Ruth); 3, Samuel; 4, Kings;
5, Chronicles; 6, Ezra (including Nehemiah); 7, Esther; 8, Job; 9, Isaiah;
10, Jeremiah and Lamentations; 11, Ezekiel; 12, Daniel; 13, the twelve
minor prophets.

444 THE CANON.
books 1 contain hymns for the praise of God and precepts to
regulate our conduct." " They also wrote what has taken
place, from Artaxerxes to our day ; but because there was
not the exact succession of prophets as before, these have
not been received with the same faith as the former."
" Now, it appears from the facts how far we have believed
in our own Scriptures ; for, although already so many ages
have passed, no one has ever dared either to remove, or add,
or transpose any thing. And it is for all the Jews as a thought
born with them from the first generation, to call them ' the
teaching of God,' to abide in them, and, if necessary, to die
with joy to maintain them."
We see clearly, therefore, by this testimony, that, to the
days of Josephus, the entire Bible was composed of the
same twenty-two books as for the modern Jews, or of our
thirty-nine books ; that, of whatever sect a Jew might be,
however far he might go astray, he never betrayed the
least dissent as to the sacred canon ; that the books of the
Bible, as well the most familiar as the most historical, Ruth,
Esther, or Nehemiah, as well as the songs of David or the
visions of Isaiah, were in their eyes equally written by the
exact succession of the prophets, and under divine inspiration,
and were equally called the decrees and doctrines of God ;
that, in fine, this common conviction was always so inherent
in their existence as a Jewish people, that it could be said to
be " born with them (crvptpyrov) from their first generation,"
and they were always ready to die for it.
And what Josephus said eighteen centuries ago, we may
say now of the Jews, ever since the destruction of Jerusalem.
1 Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Solomon's Song.

THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST. 445

CHAPTER SECOND.
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST.
We here invoke the testimony of the " Amen, the faithful
and true Witness." What did the Immanuel, " the God of
the holy prophets " (Rev. xxii. 6), think of the Old Testa
ment, and how did he treat it ?
Never did he put its integrity or legitimacy in doubt ;
never did he manifest the least hesitation in regard to the di
vine authenticity of any of the twenty-two books of which it
is composed ; he has quoted from all or almost all of them
with his own lips. Who then can discern the spirit of the
prophets, if not he whose eternal Spirit quickened them all ?
(1 Pet. i. 11.) Who shall better tell us if such or such a
book is from God or from man ? " Chief shepherd of the
sheep by the blood of the everlasting covenant," he has come
to dwell among men ; but who shall discern more correctly
than he the voice of his own messengers from that of stran
gers and robbers ? (John x. 5, 8.)
Now, we have heard him preaching these Scriptures him
self; we have seen him take from the hand of the Jews in
their synagogues the sacred scroll or volume as they extend
ed it to him, opening it, and exclaiming before them all, " In
the volume of the Book it is written of me!" We have
heard him exclaim at their festival : " Search the Scrip
tures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life." (John v. 39.)
We have, indeed, seen him go from one end to the other,
explaining it: "beginning at Moses and all the prophets,
expounding in all the Scriptures the things concerning him
self." (Luke xxiv. 27, 44.) Did he ever reproach the Jews
38

446 THE CANON.
for having altered the Scriptures ? Never. He reproached
them for constantly resisting the Scriptures, never for alter
ing them. They were left to commit every crime but that.
They rejected God, committed abominations with their in
famous gods, and made their children pass through the fire ;
but never were they guilty of the crime so easily committed,
of changing the Scriptures and introducing into them false
books. All the course of Christ as Son of man attests thus that no
human teacher ever thought more respectfully of the. sacred
volume than he. Whichever of its twenty-two books he
quotes, it is always for him God who speaks. This book is
the rule of his life ; it is to this entire book that he conforms
his holy humanity, and would have us conform ours, to be
saved. The least word of this book possesses in his view an
authority more permanent than the heavens and the earth.
When he seeks to convince the Sadducees and Pharisees, now
he proves the resurrection to them by one single word from
Exodus ; r now the true doctrine of marriage, by a single
word from Genesis ; 2 now his own divinity, by a single word
from the Psalm ex., or another from the eighty-second; and
again, before uttering it, he interrupts himself to exclaim:
" And the Scriptures can not be broken ! " s When he begins
his ministry he already knows the Scriptures without having
studied them.4 When he contends with Satan, he three
times strikes him with " the sword of the Spirit, which is the
Word of God." He says to Satan three times : " It is writ
ten." Finishing his ministry on the cross, he again repeats
the twenty-second Psalm ; and when he resumes it after the
resurrection, for some days, he still is engaged in explaining
the Scriptures,6 " beginning at Moses and all the prophets and
the Psalms." In a word, he quotes, as from God, Genesis,6

i Ex. iii. 6; Matt. xxii. 32. 2 Matt. xix. 4; Gen. i. 27.
8 Matt. xxii. 43; John x. 27, 35. * John vii. 15.
6 Luke xxiv. 27. 6 Matt. xix. 4.

THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST. 447
Exodus,1 Leviticus,2 Numbers,8 Deuteronomy,4 Samuel,6
Kings,6 Jonah,' Daniel,8 Isaiah,9 Hosea,10 Jeremiah,11
Psalms viii., xxii., xxxv., xxxi., xii., lxix., lxxxii., xci.,
ex., cxviii.,12 and he quoted them, saying : Have you not read
these words of David, speaking by the Holy Spirit ? Have
you not read what God spake by the mouth of David ?
We see, then, how our Lord regarded the canon of the Old
Testament. This was his science on this point, his sacred
criticism : to receive all the Holy Scriptures of the Jews ; to
call them all in their detail, as in a body, the Law ; 18 and to
declare, " It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one
tittle of the law to fail." 14
1 Matt. xxii. 32, 37. 2 Matt. v. 22, 43. ; 8 Matt. v. 33.
* Mark xii. 29 ; Luke x. 7, 27 ; John viii. 5, 7.
6 Matt. xii. 3 ; Mark ii. 25 ; Luke vi. 24.
6 Matt. xii. 42; Luke xi. 31. » Matt. xii. 40.
8 Matt. xxiv. 15; Mark xiii. 14. 9 Matt. xiii. 14; xv. 7, 8; xxi. 5.
" Matt. ix. 13. u Matt. xxi. 13; Luke xix. 46.
I2 Matt. xxi. 16; John xix. 24; xv. 25; Luke xxiii. 46; John xiii. 18;
John xv. 25; x. 34; Matt. iv. 6; Matt. xxii. 44; xxi. 42.
18 John x. 34; xii. 34; Rom. ii. 14.
M Luke xvi. 17; Matt. v. 18.

448 THE CANON.

CHAPTER THIRD.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
These men of God, charged with the announcement to the
world of his eternal truth by the aid of the Holy Spirit, to
bind and to loose, to discern spirits, and to become themselves
apostles and prophets (Eph. ii. 20), " the twelve foundations
of the universal church," these holy men have not ceased to
regard the twenty-two books of the Old Testament as consti
tuting a single whole, a complete unit, holy and perfect,
which they call" the Scripture," " Word of God," the " oracles
of God " (Acts vii. 38 ; Rom. iii. 2), and of which they say :
" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God " ( 2 Tim. iii.
16 ; 1 Pet. i. 11 ; Acts iii. 21 ; Luke i. 70) ; all the proph
ets who wrote it had in them the Spirit of Christ ; all the
Old Testament is a written prophecy (irpofprp-eia ypa<prjs) ;
" God himself has spoken by the mouth of his prophets since
the world began."

CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FOREGOING FACTS. 449

CHAPTER FOURTH.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FORE
GOING FACTS.
Whoever ranks himself as a disciple of Christ must re
ceive his testimony on the canon, as on every other subject.
But we go farther than this. Not only must we, as Chris
tians, receive the Old Testament just as it was when our
Lord approved of it, but we should also see with admiration
the hand of God in the preservation of the ancient canon.
Whence came this marvelous concert of an entire race,
otherwise so constantly in rebellion against God, this unani
mous agreement of this people for three thousand years, in
receiving and maintaining, with undeviating firmness, one
only and the same canon of Scriptures ? Certainly it comes
from God alone. But, at the same time, under this action
from above, there must also have been a common thought,
an established principle among this people in regard to the
canon, a principle furnishing security to all, small and great,
learned and unlearned, to the great Sanhedrim solemnly re
porting to its king the oracle of Micah,1 and the humble
synagogue, to the poor Jews of the dispersion in Macedo
nia, daily searching with care the Scriptures of their canon
(to Ka6' rjpepav dvaKpCvovres to,s ypacpds), to see if Paul's doc
trine was conformed to their teaching ; 2 to the pious Jewish
mother, married to a Greek of Asia Minor, who early trained
her little son 3 in the knowledge of the true God, teaching
him daily from the Holy Book.
Now, what was this common source of assurance to all the
1 Matt. ii. 6. a Acts xvii. 11. 8 fab Pptyovg. 2 Tim. iii. 15.
38 *

450 THE CANON.
people of every grade of intelligence ? It was not science,
but faith in a doctrine, faith in God, faith in the Word itself.
No one can doubt that the faith of the Jewish race in their
religion was as rational as the faith men now have in modern
science. But it was not founded in a knowledge of the his
tory of the canon, such as we have concerning our New Tes-
j tament canon. The canon of the Old Testament had no
j history. The Hebrews, in the time of Christ, possessing no
literary monuments besides the Scriptures itself, could net
demonstrate the authenticity of their sacred books by docu
ments outside of the book itself, as we can that of the New
Testament. Their holy books came from too remote an an
tiquity to present a cotemporary literature, or even a litera
ture of ages subsequent, of any real weight. The writings
of the old Greeks quoted by Josephus were too recent to
have any importance as testimony ; while those of the Egyp
tians, Assyrians, and Persians had no religious relations with
the sacred literature of the Hebrews. They had, then, as a
test of the Old Testament, only the Old Testament itself.
Now, who could say, in the days of Josephus and of the
apostles, any more than we can, by what human means
Moses provided for the preservation of his books after they
were placed in the holy ark (Deut. xxxi. 26) ? By the
priests? Josephus seems to think it was;1 but who can
affirm it? What prophet wrote the closing scenes of the
Pentateuch, describing the death of Moses, his burial, the
long mourning that followed it, and making this declaration :
i " And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto
Moses?"2 Joshua, do you say ? That might be; but who
knows? Who wrote Job ? In a word, no one knows which
of the prophets put the last hand to the twenty-two books
of the Old Testament to give them to the church for all
future time. There are many conjectures; but who
knows ?
And if you do not know the authors of all these Scrip-
1 Against Apion, Lib. i. chap. 2. 2 Deut. xxxiv. 10.

CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FOREGOING FACTS. 451
tures, it is entirely sufficient to be able to say, with Jesus
Christ, that they were prophets.
All the elements of science for the canon of the Old Testa
ment, then, are wanting. Yet the faith of the Jewish church
was more' solidly founded than on the basis of science. It
was founded on the declarations of God, his character and
his acts. They knew that he had given them these Scrip
tures, and had preserved them, because he is faithful. And
if you had lived in the days of Jesus Christ, a faithful Israel
ite, you would have believed with all the Jews, and with
Christ, in the canon of the Scriptures. And if you had
doubted the canon, Jesus would have said to you as to the
Sadducees : " Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not
the Scriptures of God ? " (Mark xii. 24.)
Our .faith in the Old Testament, as we have seen, is
founded on the testimony of him who is above Moses and
all the prophets, and on the testimony of his inspired apos
tles, in addition to all that sustained the faith of the ancient
Jews in these sacred oracles. Paul, an apostle of Jesus
Christ, explains to us the mystery of the preservation of
that canon. He tells that God gave it in trust to the Jews
(iiriaTevQ-oo-av ra Aoyta tov ©cot)). And the whole of their
miraculous history is but a suitable accompaniment of so
sacred a charge, and was an indispensable means of securing
to the world the preservation of these sacred documents.
We have now one other great division of our subject to„
consider, — the answer to the inquiry, Have we admitted all
the inspired books to the canon of the Old Testament? In
other words, Are the apocryphal books a part of the Old
Testament ?

452 THE CANON.

CHAPTER FIFTH.
THE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS.

History of the Apocrypha before the Council of Trent.
The universal church of the second, third, and fourth cen
turies had never ceased to receive the Old Testament as the
Jews had it, always distinguishing very scrupulously the
apocryphal from the canonical books, when God raised up
in the Latin church a great luminary in the person of Je
rome. This illustrious teacher, born a. r>. 331, was to be for
eleven centuries, down to the council of Trent, their teacher
and guide in the study of the Scriptures. He had, in fact,
more than any one else, led them to the pure sources of the
I biblical Word, and had first translated for them the Old Tes
tament from the original Hebrew ; : giving them thus that
famous version called the Vulgate, afterwards pronounced by
jthem canonical in every part. Jerome enjoyed such credit
in the church of Rome, that, in its Breviary, it thanks God
"for having raised up in his church this blessed and very illus
trious teacher to explain the Scriptures," and to this day they
repeat in every one of their churches throughout the world,
every 30th of September, that they thank God for the bless
ed Jerome raised up to expound the Scriptures.2
And it was also in the same spirit, that, even to the time
of the council of Trent, the church of Rome, yet in the six
teenth century, had not ceased to give Jerome's prefaces to
1 All their previous versions had been translations of the Greek Septua
gint. 2 Breviar. Rom. Sept. xxx. p. 822, ed. Paris, 1840.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE APOCRYPHA. 453
every edition of the Bible it published ; and that even, a
very short time after the council, these prefaces all declared
that all Christians ought carefully to distinguish between the
canonical and the apocryphal books. We may mention,
for instance, that of Birckman at Antwerp in 1526, and
others. But what do we behold in the council of Trent ? Every
thing is so changed, as to Jerome, in the church of Rome,
that if this Father could declare in the fourth century that
he rejected the Story of Susanna, and the Song of the
Three Hebrew Children, and that he regarded the History of
Bel and the Dragon as a fable ; 2 and if, nevertheless, as the
Breviary says, he was, for eleven centuries, not only " one of
the greatest teachers" (doctor maximus), but even one of the
saints in paradise to whom prayer should be addressed, — yet
the anathema was pronounced, on the 15th of April, 1546, in
that council, against every one who should speak of the elev
en apocryphal books as he had spoken.
) And how do they get over this embarrassing fact ? See
|how. The famous bishop Catharinus says, " This Father
was not giving his own view, so much as that of the Jews."
Whoever reads Jerome can see the weakness of this defense.2
The Jesuit Gretser says, " He varies his statements about the
number of the books, and is not consistent." He is very con
sistent. And thus we may quote at length their evasions.
/ Of the sixteen scriptures which Jerome rejected as apoc
ryphal, and which we also reject, Rome admits eleven as
divine. They are first these seven : Tobias, Judith, 1 and 2 Mac
cabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch ; then three
Greek fragments, added to the canonical Hebrew text of
Daniel, Song of the Three Hebrew Young Men, History of
1 Prsefat in Danielem.
5 Herbst, the Catholic writer (Einleit. ins A. T.), abandons the attempt
to reconcile the views of Jerome with the Roman unity of faitb, and limits
himself to representing them as the opinions of an individual.

454 THE CANON.
Susanna, History of Bel; then, finally, seven Greek chapters
added to Esther.
After the catalogue of the holy books increased by these
eleven apocryphal books, the council adds this curse : •" And
if any one shall not receive as sacred and canonical these
entire books with all their parts, as they are found in the an
cient Latin Vulgate, let him be anathema."
When the forty-five bishops and five cardinals, all, or
nearly all, Italians, and pensioned by the pope, assembled
at Trent, on the 8th of April, 1546, dared to enact such a
decree, which, for the first time, put the apocryphal books in
the rank of the Scriptures of God, they not only gave the lie
to the only true depositaries of his divine oracles, " they
imagined at their pleasure," says bishop Cosin, in his beauti
ful work on the canon,1 " a new article of faith, of which the
other portions of Christendom, and even their own church,
had never even heard ; and they caused in the universal
church a schism more profound than the malice of men had
ever produced."
They went so far as to cut off from heaven all who, with
Jesus Christ and his apostles, with the ancient Fathers, with
even the author of. their own version of the Bible, the Vul
gate, with all the present Oriental church, older than theirs,
refused to attribute to the apocryphal books equal authority
with the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets. So that their
canon is no longer that of the church of Israel, nor that of
Jesus Christ, nor that of the universal primitive church, nor
that of the Oriental church, nor that even of the ancient
Latin church for fifteen hundred years. It is the canon of
the Jesuits, or the new canon of the council of Trent.
And it was thus that God, by a terrible judgment abandon
ing to their own counsels men whose pretensions had become
1 Scholastical History of the Canon. 4to. London, 1672 and 1683. Seehis
articles 165 to 175, 177 to 179. Most of the following testimonies are taken
from this work. See also History of the Council of Trent, by Fra Paolo
Sarpi, Lib. Ii. art. 37, 47, 48, 56. Lond. edit. 1736, p. 220-241; or p. 143
of edit, of 1676.

REASONS AGAINST THE DECREE OF TRENT. 455
so extravagant as to call themselves the sole interpreters of
his eternal Word, permitted that they alone, of all the Chris
tian sects, should by a solemn decree intrude' eleven human
books into the sacred oracles. And that nineteen hundred
years after the epoch when every prophet of the Old Testa
ment church had disappeared from the midst of Israel !
But still farther: This act appears, if possible, yet more
strange, when we consider the profane levity with which
the decree was consummated. It was a surprise, a coup
d'etat in the church of Rome ; much resembling that which
in our days determined the new doctrine about Mary. Per
haps it should be said that the dogma of 1546 was decided
in the council of Trent with even a greater contempt of the
church and its rights than is charged against Pius IX., throw
ing from the Vatican, on what he calls " the universal church,"
his doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. We do not here
speak of the intrigues which for a long time misled the coun
cil, and which finally moulded and mastered it. We speak
only of the nature of those sessions from which the decree
emanated.1 Reasons against the Decree of Trent.
Not only had the council no sufficient reasons for this de
cision, but the most powerful consideratious existed to deter
them from it. We can but name them, without enlarging.
1. Whereas all the books of the Old Testament are writ-
\ ten in Hebrew,2 the apocryphal books are in Greek.
1 The author here gives a fair and impressive view of the character of
the council, which is to be found abundantly stated elsewhere. We there
fore omit it here. — Tr.
2 Or, at least, in Aramean. Jerome says he translated Tobias and Ju
dith from the Chaldee, and had seen 1 Mace, in Hebrew. The preface of
Ecclesiasticus also gives this book as translated from the Hebrew. (See
Einleitung of the Cathol. profes. Welte Freid, 1844.) Yet Hengstenburg
(Beitriige. i. 292) believes that the Greek text is the original. Jahn (Introd.
ii. 902, 922) expresses the same opinion as to Tobias and Judith.

456 THE CANON.
2. In the drama of Susanna there are plays upon words
which depend entirely for their point on their being Greek
(verses 55, 58).
3. These books were all written after the spirit of proph
ecy had ceased in Israel.
4. Many scholars, as Moldenhauer, have given very strong
reasons for maintaining that Tobias, and the 4th of Esdras, if
not Wisdom, are posterior to the Christian era.1
5. None of their authors pretend directly to be inspired,
except that of the book of Wisdom, which, in ascribing itself
to Solomon, betrays its fraud by quoting from Isaiah and
Jeremiah, and by representing its cotemporaries as already
subdued by their enemies (ix. 7, 8 ; xv. 14; compare 1 Kings
iv. 20-25).
6. So far from pretending to be inspired, many of them
declare they are not. See the prologue of Ecclesiasticus ;
1 Maccabees iv. 46 ; ix. 27 ; 2 Mace. ii. 23 ; xv. 38.
7. No portion of the apocrypha is quoted by Christ or his
apostles. 8. Neither Philo nor Josephus quotes them ; while, on the
contrary, the testimony of Josephus, quoted by Eusebius and
by us, is very decided in fixing the books that are inspired,
and asserting the merely human character of the other Jewish
books. 9. The apocrypha contains many fables, contrary to his
torical truth, and to the Holy Scriptures. See Bel and the
Dragon, the histories of Tobias, etc. ; . . . compare 2 Mace.
i. 18, with Esdras iii. 2, 3, and 2 Mace. ii. 5, 8, with Jerem.
iii. 16.
10. The First and Second Maccabees contradict each other.
Antiochus Epipbanes dies in Babylon (1 Mace. vi. 16) ; he is
decapitated in Persia in the temple of Nanna (2 Mace. i. 14,
16) ; then he dies in a strange land in the mountains (ix. 28).
The second book is evidently very inferior to the other.
111. These same books frequently recommend immoral
1 Home, Introd. ii. 326.

UNANIMOUS TESTIMONY AGAINST THE DECREE. 457
practices. This can be seen abundantly in Des Marets's
preface to the French Bible.

Unanimous Testimony of the Churches against the Decree
of the Council.
Bishop Cosin * remarks : " After having made a thorough
examination of all the views of the church in every age and
country in regard to the canon of the Old Testament, I con
clude that the voice of every age and of every portion of the
people of God has been raised against the decree of the Tri-
dentine council."
[The author passes in review, in Palestine and Syria,
Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Jerome, and John Dasmascenus,
thence through Asia Minor, Egypt, Africa, Greece, Italy,
Spain, France, Germany, Holland, and England, declaring
that all these witnesses, of whom a large number are among
the saints canonized by Rome, however far they have fol
lowed in other points the errors of their times, are unanimous
in distinguishing the apocrypha from the oracles of God, or
in wholly repudiating them.]
Even Francis Ximenes, cardinal, archbishop of Toledo,
grand inquisitor, the famous John Pic, Erasmus, and even
Cajetau, all of the very century of the council of Trent,
high in the estimation of the Roman church, held our views
of the apocrypha.
/- It is, then, well established that when the church of Rome,
Jon the 13th jof April, 1546, in its universal council of fifty
'persons, under the infiuence of Catharinus and his faction,
eagerly framed a new additional canon of the Holy Scriptures,
uniting with it the body of traditions, as no less infallible
than " the oracles of th^e living God," she committed this
double fault in opposition to the testimony of the universal
church in every age, and did it, by her own avowal, in order
l Hist. Schol. of the Canon. See also Gerhard, De Scripture SacrS, $
75-98 ; and Keerl, Die apocrypha des A. T. (Leips. 1852), $ 18.
39

458 THE CANON.
to establish the dogmas which the famous bull of Pius IV.
was going to add to the ancient confession of faith, in regard
to the supremacy of the church of Rome, transubstantiation,
withholding the cup, invocation of the saints, relics, images,
and indulgences. The council says : " Let all, then, fully
understand in what order and by what method this synod
will proceed after having thus laid the foundation of the
confession of faith, as also what testimonies and what de
fences it is going particularly to employ in proving the doc
trines and reforming the practices of the church."
How remarkable, then, is the contrast ! It would have been
our anticipation, had we known that both the Jewish and
the Christian churches were to apostatize or greatly decline
from the spirit of piety, that each would have corrupted its
own branch of the Scriptures. But just the reverse of this
has taken place ! And let us see under what circumstances.
The Israelites sunk down into great ignorance and indif
ference to their religious interests during their subjection to
foreign powers, and especially their exile and the utter
breaking up of their social and ecclesiastical state. And yet
this people who had so rebelled against God, who could cru
cify the Lord of glory, and who, for eighteen hundred years,
could reject his New Testament, have never been willing to
introduce a single apocryphal book into the Old Testament,
although it may treat of their national history and flatter
their national pride. >
But in the sixteenth century, a large and powerful section
of the Christian church has taken the book intrusted to the
Jewish church by the hand of God, sanctioned by the testi
mony of the Son of God, and the holy apostles, and dared
to introduce into it eleven books written by uninspired men !
We must here closely contemplate this double fact and
double contrast. Whilst the church of the pope has dared
thus to treat the Old Testament, yet never has this sect,
powerful as it is, nor any other Christian sect, been able to
add a single apocryphal book to the New Testament. God has

UNANIMOUS TESTIMONY AGAINST THE DECREE. 459
never permitted them to do it. " Thus far shalt thou come,
but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
God himself is the guardian of his holy Word.
Contemplate, then, disciple of Jesus Christ, these two de
positaries of thy sacred books, and see with what power this
twofold testimony of their contrasts and their resemblances is
here presented, — equally rebellious, equally indocile as to
the trust not committed to them, but equally docile and faith
ful in regard to the trust committed to each respectively,
faithful, the one for twenty-three hundred years, since the
completion of the Old Testament, the other for fourteen hun
dred years, since the entire canon of the New Testament has
been definitely received in all the churches of Christendom.
Let the case, then, be fully understood ; neither ignorance,
error, nor profane temerity in any one branch of the Christian
church in regard to the Old Testament can in any way affect
the inviolability of a canon which never was committed to
them. If I had deposited my last will and testament under
the most legal forms with a notary duly selected, could my
heirs after me put in question the integrity or validity of the
act, because, after long years, one of them had chosen to in
sert notable additions to the authentic copy in the notary's
hands, and because he claimed that he was bound to regard
neither the primitive text, its consistency, its depositary, nor
the laws ? Would this action affect the other heirs ? What
do they care for it? This insane and wicked fantasy would
in no degree change the paternal testament.
In like manner the attempt made at Trent in 1546, so far
from diminishing the marvelous fact of the inviolability of
the Old Testament, has served only to show it more promi
nently. For, we have said, the very unfaithfulness of Chris
tians and that of the Jews, in regard to the trust not com
mitted to them, only sets forth the more strikingly their
fidelity in regard to the other books, and reveals to us the
hand of God the more clearly.

460 THE CANON.

CHAPTER SIXTH.
CONCLUSION.
We have, then, shown that the canon of the Old and New
Testaments as we now have them constitutes the Word of
God, the revelation from heaven, the supreme rule of faith
and practice.
It has also appeared manifest that the very preservation
of them can be explained, not by natural causes, but alone by
the secret and continual intervention of the divine power.
This preservation we have shown to be truly a miracle ;
divine power working against the natural tendencies of the
human heart ; a fact as miraculous as the preservation of the
Jewish race itself for so many centuries, having no country,
no national or even ecclesiastical bonds of union. We regard,
then, the inviolability of the canon, like inspiration, to be a
doctrine of our faith.
What striking facts, what powerful proofs have now passed
before our eyes, all strongly demonstrating this silent and
sovereign employment of the churches by God for the sure
maintaining of his two Testaments !
And surely, if the gates of hell cannot prevail against the
church, they cannot prevail against that Word on which the
church is founded. What, in fact, should we be, and what
would the church be, if God had not guaranteed his sacred
volume against all alteration.
Moreover, all the more modern history of the canon agrees
exactly with the first ways of God in regard to his written
Word ; it is a harmonious and uninterrupted continuation of
the miracle of thirty-three centuries in the preservation of

CONCLUSION. 461
the Old Testament. Has he who intrusted the ancient oracles
to one people for a hundred generations, for eighteen centu
ries committed the new oracles, much more important, and
given for the whole human race, to the care of no one ? By
no means. And we may say that the miracle of the church
es, guardians of the new canon, is so completely a continua
tion of the miracle of the Jewish guardianship of the Old-
Testament, that the prodigy even presents a growing pro
gression of harmony and beauty. In seeing it accomplished
by the constant fidelity of the Jews, a fidelity which began
before the Trojan war, and which has not ceased to this day,
we might well conclude that, if it pleased God to give long
afterward another series of sacred oracles to the Gentiles,
he would choose from the midst of them other depositaries
evidently charged with preserving this treasure even to
the great day of Jesus Christ. And how much should our
faith be strengthened by the fact that this second prodigy is
accomplished with even more magnificence than the first !
Press the Bible, then, to your hearts, Christians of every
rank and every age, your whole Bible. You have it from
God. Receive all it contains with the same affection, the same
submission ; the twenty-seven books which the Christian
church gives you, as the twenty-two which you get from the
Jews.1 You hold the former from the Christian churches,
you hold the latter from the Jews ; but you get them from
God, by their inspiration, and by their preservation. Say
this often to yourself; there is a blessing in it. They can not
be read with profit unless they are read with reverence ; they
can not be read with reverence, if they are not read with a
full conviction of their authenticity and their inspiration. It
is by this Word, thus heard as descended from above, that
you will obtain from God repentance, peace, adoption, joy,
holiness, life eternal.
But to that end, Christian brethren, you must know your
i Divided, we repeat, by us into thirty nine books.
29 *

462 THE CANON.
privilege ; you must not only make a bold profession of it,
but also avail yourselves of it with God and before all men ;
you must, supported on the doctrine of the canon, employ
your sacred books with the same confidence that Christ and
his apostles exercised toward the Old Testament ; you must
say with Christ, " It is written."
The same canon is clearly demonstrated to you ; the seals
of the living God are attached to it. Never forget it.
It is, unquestionably, within the heart that God attests
the Scriptures for his elect with the incomparable seals of
his Spirit ; but you have seen, likewise, very clearly that God
even seals them externally with his own seal, by means of
the marvelous testimony of all the generations of the Jew
ish people and of all the generations of Christians in the
earth. Remember, therefore, Christian brethren, the miracle of the
Scriptures, and of their divine preservation ; hold your eyes
open to these signs of God, and ever keep yourselves from
that guilty want of understanding and that fatal inattention
with which Jesus reproached his disciples when they had
forgotten the miracle of the bread : " Do ye not yet under
stand, neither remember? Have ye the heart yet hardened?
Having eyes, see ye not ? "
And why did they forget this miracle of the loaves ? Alas !
for the same reason that makes us too often forget the mira
cle of the Scriptures, and which should, on the contrary,
render it more striking. Because the sign, really so full of
grandeur, was, like that of the Scriptures now for thirty-four
centuries, noiseless, without display, and calm, by natural
means, the people being seated on the grass, and the apos
tles carrying the baskets from group to group. But surely
it was not accidental that those five barley-loaves and those
twb fishes nourished five thousand men ! And surely, too,
it is not an accident that the sacred volume has been kept for
thirty-four centuries, and that all the depositaries have uni
versally and constantly been rendering the same testimony

CONCLUSION. 463
in order to enlighten, with the same light, all the elect of
God ! Certainly the same cause accounts for both !
Christians, forget not the miracle of the bread ! Never
forget that of the Scriptures !
Ministers of our churches, pastors of our learned congre
gations, and you humble evangelists, you, too, missionaries in
Africa and Asia, go boldly to the most learned as to the most
humble of your hearers; go with this book of God, fearing
not that they will ask you for the history of its canon, and
without being troubled that the Old Testament has none.
You know as much of it as Daniel, the prophet, as
much as Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles. You know even
more, since you possess the experience of many centuries,
during which God has not ceased to keep his oracles entirely
pure by the hands of the Jews. Go, then, boldly, as the
prophet went to the synagogues of Babylon, or the apostle
to those of Lycaonia ; for you have the same evidence to sdiow
to establish the inviolableness of the sacred volume ; and
all that they could say, you can still say. " Behold the oracles
of God committed to his people, — oracles so preserved as
that one fragment of a letter has never perished ; the
Jews never swerved from their fidelity ; they never betrayed
this sacred trust ; not a book has ever perished, from the
sacred volume ; their testimony never varies, notwithstand
ing their misfortunes and their crimes ; never have they
been reproached for altering the Scriptures."
"Now to him that is of power to establish you according
to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since
the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the
Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment
of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the
obedience of faith : to God only wise, be glory through
Jesus Christ for ever. Amen." THE END.

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