from a manuscript furnished to the press by the author, but from copies of the various stage parts.

The very autographs of the apostles, even had they been written on the cheapest papyrus, may have been in existence when the Vatican manuscript was written; nay, the Alexandrian scribe may have copied S. Mark's Gospel from the sacred roll left by the evangelist himself. The Church guarded her treasures even amid the fires kindled by Diocletian. Mr. Norton' has shown, by no improbable calculation, that as many as sixty thousand copies of the Gospels may have been in circulation among Christians at the end of the second century. Many of these, doubtless, survived even the fourth century.

Now, it is in the latter half of the fourth century that we first find catalogues of the sacred books; in other words, the canon of Holy Scripture regulated by the authority of councils. The Council of Laodicea in A.D. 363, and the third of Carthage, A.D. 397, both legislated on this subject. The Council at Carthage, in which S. Augustine sat, put forth a complete list of the sacred books, including the books mentioned as apocryphal in the sixth of our Thirty-nine Articles. The canon containing this list "decreed that, besides the Canonical Scriptures, nothing be read in the Church under the title

1 Genuineness of the Gospels, I., pp. 28-34. 2d ed., 1847.

"Placuit ut præter Scripturas canonicas nihil in ecclesia legatur sub nomine divinarum Scripturarum. Sunt autem Canonicæ Scripturæ hæ: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri, Deuteronomium, Jesus Naue, Judicum, Ruth, Regnorum libri quatuor, Paralipomenon libri duo, Job, Psalterium Davidicum, Salomonis libri quinque, libri duodecim prophetarum, Iesaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, Daniel, Tobias, Judith, Esther, Esdræ libri duo, Machabæorum libri duo. Novi autem Testamenti, evan

geliorum libri quatuor, Actuum Apostolorum liber unus, Epistolæ Pauli Apostoli XIII., ejusdem ad Hebræos una, Petri Apostoli duæ, Johannis tres, Jacobi una, Judæ una, Apocalypsis Johannis liber unus. Hoc etiam fratri et consacerdoti nostro Bonifacio, vel aliis earum partium Episcopis, pro confirmando isto canone innotescat, quia a patribus ista accepimus in ecclesia legenda. Liceat autem legi passiones martyrum cum anniversarii eorum dies celebrantur." - Concil., III. Carth. can. 39 (47). Mansi, II., II77.

of Divine Scriptures. We have received from our fathers," the canon adds, “that those books must be read in the Church. Let it also be allowed that the passions of martyrs be read when their festivals are kept." It is not my purpose now to look forward and trace the successive ratifications of this list of the third Council of Carthage in every part of the Church, east and westthirty-three of these lists may be seen in Westcott's work on the canon, Appendix D-but rather to trace the stream of testimony upward toward its fountain with the apostles. The Council of Laodicea, A.D. 363, where the subject first appears in legislation, rather refers to the list than gives it in its completeness, though a nearly perfect enumeration is found in the first printed copies of the Laodicean canons. It resembles the reserve which still formed part of the Christian temper in setting forth their treasures amid an unbelieving world. But all the manuscripts contain the important introductory words of the fifty-ninth Laodicean canon: "Psalms composed by private men must not be read in the Church, nor uncanonical books, but only the canonical (books) of the New and Old Testaments." I This was ratified in general terms at Chalcedon, A.D. 451, and expressly at the Quinisextine Council3 of Constantinople, A.D. 692. The presence of the epistles of Barnabas and Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas in the Sinaitic and Alexandrian MSS.( and A) witnesses to the practice still lingering at which the words of the canon are aimed: these venerable writings, it is well known, were read at times in Christian congregations, like the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. This is another incidental witness to the antiquity of and A.

The action at Laodicea and Carthage should be viewed as the formal ratification of the current belief of the Church-a belief indicated in many ways, and among

'Verified by Westcott from MSS.

in British Museum. Canon of N. T., PP. 427-435.

2 Canon I.

3

Canon XXI.

them by such language as that of the Council at Gangra in Paphlagonia, A.D. 324, the year before the great Council of Nice: "To speak briefly, we desire that what has been handed down to us by the Divine Scriptures and the apostolic traditions should be done in the Church." It will be of interest now to take a brief survey of the period immediately before, extending a little way into the second century-say from the close of Diocletian's persecution, A.D. 311 back to A.D. 170-during which the process of the separation of the canonical from the ecclesiastical books was going on, and at length sharply accelerated, as we have said, by the attempt of the imperial tyrant to destroy the sacred books. We shall then be prepared to review the evidence for the gradual collection of the sacred writings after their separate circulation, as they came forth one by one, by God's providence, from the divinely inspired author.

2

When the first Christian emperor, in A.D. 324, laid the foundation of his new capital, Constantinople, one of his first cares was to repair the injury of his predecessor Diocletian against the sacred books. Constantine directed Eusebius to prepare "fifty copies of the Divine Scriptures, of which he judged the preparation and the use to be most necessary for the purpose of the Church, written on prepared skins, by the help of skilful artists accurately acquainted with their craft."3 Either or both the Sinaitic and Alexandrian manuscripts may have been of the number of these thus ordered by the emperor. It is nearly certain that the list given by Eusebius is identical with that in these MSS., even to the Apocalypse, whose claims he leaves in his history undecided. Eusebius had with his own eyes, he tells us, seen "the houses of prayer thrown down and razed to their foundations, and the inspired and sacred Scriptures consigned to the fire in the open market-place." 5 His testimony is of peculiar inter

1 Canon XXI.

"Obtained from young antelopes. Eusebii Constantini Vita, IV., 36.

Hist. Eccles., III., 3, 24, 38; IV., 7.

'H. E., VIII., 2.

est and importance as being an eye-witness of the very formation of the canon, as it emerged complete from the fires kindled to consume it. Although he never quotes the Epistle of S. Jude or the second of S. Peter, or the two shorter Epistles of S. John, he shows us how the books of the New Testament were already grouped in distinct collections—“ a quaternion of Gospels," "fourteen Epistles of S. Paul," "seven Catholic Epistles; ' and the term Antilegomena (avrileyóueva), among which he places the Apocalypse (H. E., VI., 13), we are to interpret not as rejected books, but as books comparatively less known.

It is worthy of note that we have express testimony that the Donatists, whose very existence sprang from their zeal in defence of the Scriptures menaced by Diocletian with destruction, had precisely the same sacred books as the Church. "Donatist and Catholic alike," says S. Augustine, "admitted the Canonical Scriptures."

I

And what are these," he asks, "but the Canonical Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets, to which are added the Gospels, the Apostolic Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, the Apocalypse of John?" It has been well said that "the history of the formation of the whole canon involves little less than the history of the building of the Catholic Church." The individual writers to be now quoted do not speak simply as individuals; but whether arguing, explaining, defending, quoting inspired authorities, or offering their own lives in proof of their convictions, they inevitably represent the Christian body in the midst of whom they acted, who adopted their words and cherished their memories. We may note this difference between the two parts into which we have divided the period between the Council of Nice and the apostles that as the champions of the faith in the third

century and latter quarter of the second used more philosophy and secular learning than those next the apostolic age, so do they, when using the authority of the apostles, refer rather to their writings than, like their predecessors, to the apostles themselves, whose words still resounded by a living tradition in the ears of those who had heard them.

Looking at the interval between A.D. 311 and A.D. 170, the evidence is abundant and clear, in every part of the Church, that the New Testament was composed essentially of the same books as now, and that these books were treated with the peculiar reverence afterward enjoined by the law of the Church, as the oracles of God. How this appears before yet a formal declaration of the canon was made may perhaps be shown with best effect by reviewing in this period, first the evidence for the acknowledged books, next for those which were less often quoted as not being so widely known, and then looking at the testimony of heretics and adversaries.

We mean by the " acknowledged books" the Four Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen epistles of S. Paul, and the first epistles of S. John and S. Peter,

There are three celebrated Christian writers, Irenæus, Clement, Tertullian, who may represent for us the belief, respectively, of the Gallican, the Alexandrine, and the African churches. Irenæus (A.D. 130-202), the great bishop of Lyons, was a native of Asia Minor, perhaps of Smyrna. He was a pupil of Polycarp, of whom he has left us a touching account, in the letter to Florinus, preserved in Eusebius. Irenæus accompanied into Gaul Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons, under whom he was presbyter and whom he succeeded as bishop. The famous letter from members of the church at Lyons and at Vienne was taken by Irenæus while still a presbyter to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome. Irenæus's great work Against Heresies was written about A.D. 180. It contained five books. The following is from the third book: "We have learned from none 'Hist. Eccles., V., 20.