THE TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE SECOND CENTURY.

SECTION FIRST.

THE UNITED TESTIMONIES OF IRENÆUS, CLEMENT, AND TERTULLIAN.

170. If we place ourselves at the entrance of the third century, in the year 202, when the terrible persecution of Septimius Severus was raging throughout the whole extent of the empire, and young Origen, who had just seen his father Leonides beheaded, was beginning at Alexandria his long and splendid career, we shall find, on the theatre of the world, three brilliant lights occupying high positions, and for a long period illuminating the Church. These were Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian. While Origen had already devoted himself to those immense biblical researches which, with all his errors, will ever endear his name to the Churches of God, these three great men commanded the attention of all Christians for a long series of years, and their writings were circulated through every part of the Roman Empire. Like three lighthouses, erected at great distances from each other, their beams were seen from afar: Irenæus, beyond the Alps, in the distant metropolis of Gaul, where they spoke Greek, Latin, and Celtic; Clement in Alexandria, that seat of learning where Coptic and Greek were spoken; and, lastly, Tertullian at Carthage, the metropolis of proconsular Africa, where they spoke Latin and the Punic language. For a length of time the voices of these three men were heard. Irenæus, an octagenarian and more, for a quarter of a century, fed the flock of Christ at Lyons, and was destined to end his long career by martyrdom in the year 202.¹ Clement, aged fifty-two, did not die before 217; and the great Tertullian, the most ancient of the Latin fathers, then in his forty-second year, but converted seventeen years before, and presbyter of Carthage for ten years,: exerted in Africa, as throughout the Latin Church, a long and beneficial influence. We know the respect afterwards paid to his memory, in this very Carthage, by the bishop and martyr Cyprian. “What Origen was for the Greeks, that is to say, the first of all,” said the famous Vincentius of Lerins,² (two hundred years after Cyprian,) “Tertullian has been for the Latins, that is to say, incontestably the first among us,” (nostrorum omnium facile princeps.) “Who has been more learned than this man, and who has had greater experience both in Divine and human things?”

171. It would be impossible to imagine for the second half of the second century three men more competent to bear witness to the prevailing belief respecting the Scriptures. Everything recommends them to our confidence on this point: their character, their erudition, their labours, their travels, the esteem in which they were universally held, and all the sacrifices they had made for these holy writings. Besides, if we select them as the representatives of the second half of the second century, their testimony (especially that of Irenæus) goes back, by the circumstances of their life, much higher than the time when they began their ministry. It reaches almost to the times of the apostles. Every one is acquainted with that famous epistle of Irenæus to Florinus,³ in which he tells of having passed his early youth in intimacy with Polycarp, who himself had been, he says, a hearer of St John, and who had repeated to him his pious recollections, “wholly conformable to the Holy Scriptures,” he is careful to add. Moreover, what gives the greatest weight to the testimony of these three men is, that their writings still remaining are very extensive. Those of Irenæus (Grabe’s edition) make a folio volume of about five hundred pages; the best edition of Tertullian (that of Venice, 1746) is also a large folio; and the best of Clement of Alexandria (in Greek, with a Latin translation) makes two folio volumes. Moreover, these three witnesses, particularly Clement and Tertullian, were converted from the pagan doctrine to the profession of the gospel simply through recognising the power of the testimonies rendered to our sacred books, and finding in all the contemporaneous churches a common, constant, and undisputed conviction respecting them. They had before their eyes decisive reasons for abjuring their ancient errors, and for believing in the Divine origin of the Scriptures. All three, trained from their youth to critical investigations, had all the means of ascertaining the certainty of those books which became henceforward the rule of their life. All three had travelled in Asia, Greece, and Italy; they were acquainted with men of every land who represented the knowledge of their times. They were, besides, very near the original sources, being almost contemporaries of the immediate successors of the apostles; so that, when they owned the authority of the Scriptures, which had been already received as Divine in all the churches, they possessed, in order to receive this faith everywhere persecuted, all the means, as well as all the motives, for ascertaining the legitimate supremacy which those books had acquired in all Christian societies.

172. Do we wish, then, to hear the voice of the second century, and te know its opinion, as expressed at the time, of the sacred Scriptures? Let us open one of the important writings of these three great teachers, and say if it be possible to imagine testimony more abundant, either of their personal conviction, or of the universal belief which prevailed in their times, in all the Churches of the East and of the West. We shall experience, it must be confessed, some embarrassment in giving an account of this testimony, from its very abundance. It seems to us that the attempt to demonstrate it by quotations is to ignore and weaken it, and all we can say of it will always be far below the impression that would be made by the simple reading of these works. Let a person occupy himself with them only for a single day, and the impression he will receive will be far deeper than any words of ours can make. He will find himself borne along, so to speak, on the full current of the Scriptures — he will be transported into the midst of a generation which lived in the light of the New Testament — he will hear the men of that generation appealing to our sacred books in order to establish a truth, just as for any object of sight we should make use of the light of the sun. All their pages shew them to us, constantly depending on the oracles of God as the only foundation of their faith and the faith of every one; they are only ministers of this word; they quote it as their rule, because it is the universal standard, and for any one to oppose it is, they say, “to avow himself a heretic — it is to forsake the Church,” — for the whole Church follows its rule as one man. This word is for them the supreme law by which every heresy, past, present, and future, is to be judged, as it will judge hereafter the living and the dead. We do not think it possible to cite an author among the moderns who has appealed in his writings more frequently, and with a more absolute deference, to the infallible authority of this holy word. Not only the bulky volumes of these three men are throughout penetrated with it — not only are they a tapestry in which the passages of Scripture constantly recur like a thread of gold along the warp to strengthen and adorn the texture; but you at once perceive that such language could not be employed except in a generation that had long been submissive to the written word, and accustomed to bow, as one man, to its authority.⁴

But before we give a specimen of their testimony by some quotation, we believe it will be convenient to exhibit six or seven general traits which distinguish it.

SECTION SECOND.

SEVEN CHARACTERISTICS OF THEIR TESTIMONY.

173. In the first place, these fathers do not confine themselves to making citations continually from the twenty books which compose our first canon. They speak very frequently of the assemblage of these books as forming a whole — a book — a New Testament — which the Church of their times had fully received — which it had joined to the sacred oracles of the old covenant, and called indifferently the SCRIPTURE, or the SCRIPTURES, the NEW DEED, the New TESTAMENT, the DOMINICAL SCRIPTURES, (τὰς κυριακᾶς γραφάς, Dominicas Scripturas,) the DIVINE SCRIPTURES, (τὰς θείας γραφάς,) THE GOSPEL, and THE APOSTLE. For these fathers alike regard all the epistles as forming in their turn a single book which they call THE APOSTLE, and the four Gospels as forming a single Tetramorphous Gospel, (or Gospel under four forms,) to which they joined the Acts of the Apostles.

(2.) Another trait of their testimony is, that they habitually associate the Old Testament and the New as one series of sacred books, having the same origin, and equal authority.

(3.) A third is, that they declare their inviolable faith in the Divine and complete inspiration of all these scriptures; they put them on a level with the other prophets; they distinguish them from every other book which is not inspired, and from every pretended tradition which is not conformed to them; they call them “the oracles of God,” “the foundation and pillar of faith,” “the rule of truth,’ “the theopneustic Scriptures,” (τὰς θεοπνεύστους νβαφάς,) “the perfect Scriptures,” “the Scriptures uttered by the Word of God and by His Spirit;” and they declare of the sacred writers, that they were all pneumatophori, (bearers of the Holy Spirit,) and that they all spoke by one and the same Spirit of God.

(4.) Further, they professed this perfect faith in the Divine inspiration of all these books while associating themselves with the whole Church; they represent it as the common faith held by all the Christians in the world; they declare that for any one to set himself against this œcumenical rule of Truth, is in the opinion of all to belong no more to the Christian Church — it is to go out of it, (exeuntes;) because not the least discordancy of sentiment exists on this point in any contemporary church.

(5.) Such, in this respect, is their calm and confident persuasion — such is the peaceable universality of this conviction among the Christians of their time — that you never find them occupied in defending it. And why should they? It was everywhere firmly settled; it was in all the consciences of those who profess the truth; it was not disputed by any party in the Church in the second century, and you cannot hear against any of the twenty books of the canon one of those objections which biblical criticism multi se, plies in our day. They hold them for a universal and undisputed code. When they bring forward a passage to establish any disputed truth, it is just like bringing a light into a dark place to shew an unknown object distinctly. You may differ about the object, but not about the light, which is the same for all. The Scriptures are the light. This common confidence is taken for granted in the second century; they never demonstrate it. If I were speaking of the Rhone in Geneva, should I stay to prove that it passes through that city, and that we find water there? Why, then, should these three teachers demonstrate to the men of their day that the river of the Scripture flowed through the city of God, and that they found there the living waters of grace in abundance? They never did it. In all their folios, they discuss the biblical meaning of this or that expression, but never its Divine authority; they profess themselves interpreters of the New Testament, but never its defenders. What object could they have in defending it? No one in the Church attacked it, and if you wish to meet with despisers of the Word, you must go forth and search for them in the Roman schools of Cerdo, Marcion, or Valentinus.⁵

(6.) A sixth trait is, that, in religion, everything is decided for them, and everything must be decided for the whole Church as soon as it clearly understood what the Scripture has said. “The Scriptures,” they say, “are a perfect revelation of the Christian faith;” “their teaching is fully sufficient,” (seripturarum tractatio plenissima,) “admitting neither retrenchment nor addition.” “I adore,” was their language, “the plenitude of the Scriptures.” “A person,” they add, “teaches nothing, if he cannot say of what he teaches, IT IS WRITTEN.” Let not any one allege tradition; for them there was nothing that could stand against the declarations of the written word.

(7.) Lastly, listen to them. “It is to the Scriptures all must always appeal in order to explain the Scriptures, (ἀπ’ αὐτῶν περι αὐτῶυ,) if we wish to arrive at the truth in a convincing manner, (ἀποδεικτικῶς.)”⁶

Let us now hear nearer at hand these three great teachers of the second century, by quoting briefly from them in succession. It would be much easier to multiply these quotations than to select them, for they offer themselves in abundance in all their writings, and we might find even stronger; but we have first of all taken those which would best exemplify the six or seven traits we have just specified. We shall begin with the youngest, and then go back to his seniors — Tertullian, a presbyter of Carthage.

SECTION THIRD.

TERTULLIAN.

174. Although the youngest of these three teachers, Tertullian is the most ancient of the Latin fathers whose writings have come down to us, Born in paganism, only about fifty years after the death of St John, this eminent man, whose father was a centurion in the army of Africa, was educated according to the pagan philosophy, and in the study of jurisprudence. At the age of thirty-five, he was converted, by being an eye-witness of the punishment and Christian constancy of some martyrs. From that time he consecrated his genius and his talents to the gospel of Christ with all the disinterestedness of a determined heart. ‘The unfair manner in which he believed himself treated by the clergy of Rome obliged him, about the year 207, to protest, by several writings, against the corruptions of the Church, and he soon fell into Montanism — a rigid sect, which seems to have erred especially in its excessive views of discipline, and in wishing to put the revelation of their prophets on a level with those of Scripture. Tertullian died about the year 220. His principal works are, his five books against Marcion, written, as he tells us himself, in the fifteenth year of Severus, in 207;⁷ his admirable Apologeticus, about the year 217; his books against the Jews and Heretics; his treatises on Public Shows, on the Soul, on Monogamy, on the Crown of the Soldier, on the Pallium, on the Resurrection of the Flesh, &c.

175. Tertullian made constant use of the Scriptures; he distinctly quotes each of the twenty books of the first canon,⁸ without forgetting even the very short Epistle to Philemon;⁹ and we have already mentioned in reference to the innumerable testimonies that Tertullian bears to the canon, the words of the learned Lardner,¹⁰ “that the quotations made by this father alone from the little volume of the New Testament are more extensive and more abundant than those from the works of Cicero by all the writers of all kinds and in all ages.”

“How happy is that Church!” Tertullian exclaims, in his book De Praescriptionibus Haereticorum.¹¹ “It knows one God, Creator of all things, and Christ Jesus, Son of God the Creator, born of the Virgin Mary, and the resurrection of the flesh; it mixes the law and the prophets with the evangelic and apostolic writings, and from these it drinks in its faith.” (Legem et Prophetas cum Evangelicis et Apostolicis miscet; et inde potat fidem.) In his treatise De Monogamia,¹² speaking of second marriages, and quoting a passage from the New Testament, (1 Cor. vii. 39,) he makes use of a Latin version, “which,” he says, “we may plainly know is not so in the authentic Greek.” (Sciamus plane non sic esse in Graeco authentico.)

The phrase New Testament for the collection of our sacred books was already received in his time; but the two collections had previously been called “the one and the other instrument,” and Tertullian bears witness to the ancient usage, not only of having a collection of our scriptures, but of joining this new collection to the old.

In his fourth book, Adversus Marcionem, (chap. i,) complaining of the heresy of this man, who attempted 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,” (alterum alterius instrument, vel quod magis usur est, Testamenti¹³) or, as it is now more usually expressed, he says, “the one and the other Testament.” And in his book, De Praescriptionibus, he exclaims,¹⁴ “If Marcion has separated the New Testament from the Old, (Novum Testamentum a Vetere,) he is later than that which he has separated, for he could separate only what had been united.”

176. According to Tertullian, a ca ought not to be preached if we cannot say of it, “It is written.” Woe, according to him, to those who add anything to, or retrench anything from, what is written. “To wish to believe without the Scriptures, (of the New Testament,) is to wish to believe against them.”

In his treatise Adversus Hermogenem,¹⁵ in speaking of a certain doctrine, he says, “Nothing is known about it, because the Scripture does not exhibit it.” (Nihil de eo constat quia Scriptura non eahibet.) In the same manner, in his book De Carne Christi,¹⁶ “They prove nothing, because it is not written.” (Non probant quia nec scriptum est, nec, etc.)

In his treatise Adversus Praxean¹⁷ — “You ought to prove what you say,” he says, “as plainly from the Scriptures as we prove that God made His own Word His Son.” “Let us refer,” he says, in his treatise De Anima, “these questions to the Scriptures of God” — (“revocando quaestiones ad Dei literas.”)¹⁸

In refuting an error of Hermogenes,¹⁹ he says, “Let the heretics have to prove their doctrines by the Scriptures alone, and they will not be able to stand.” (De Scripturis solis quaestiones suas sistant et stare non poterunt.)

In the same book, first speaking of all the Scriptures, and then contrasting the New Testament, a gospel, with the entire collection, he exclaims, “I adore the plenitude of Scripture, . . . . but in the Gospel I find more; I find the Word as the minister and mediator of the Maker.” (“In evangelio vero amplius et minstrum et arbitrum Factoris invenio sermonem.”) And as to this subject, (he goes on to say,) let the workshop of Hermogenes shew that “it is written;” but “if it is not written, let him fear the ‘woe’ appointed for those who add to or take from the Scriptures.²⁰ (Si non est scriptum timeat “Vœ illud” adjicientibus aut detrahentibus destinatum.)²¹ And again, in his book De Praescriptionibus, indignant at the temerity of the heretics whom he was refuting, and holding for an axiom that “all faith ought to be founded on the Scriptures,” he exclaims, “Well! let them believe without the Scriptures, since they will believe contrary to the Scriptures!” (Sed credant sine Scripturis, ut credant adversus Scripturas.)

And now, if from proconsular Africa we pass on to Egypt, we shall hear Clement of Alexandria delivering a perfectly similar testimony with equal copiousness.

SECTION FOURTH.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA,

177. This father, though older than Tertullian, died three years before him, about the year 207. He himself, he says in the first book of his Stromata, “approached very near the days of the apostles.” Born in paganism, and versed in all the science of the Greeks, he had for a long time professed their philosophy, when he was converted in Egypt by Pantænus, the pious and celebrated head of the Christian school at Alexandria. And when Pantænus left that city, about the year 189, to preach the gospel for several years in India, Clement took his master’s place in that institution, and greatly increased its reputation by his philosophic knowledge, and the charm of his instructions. Many ancient authors assert that he was born at Athens, and in that city formed his eloquence and acquired his erudition. However that may be, it has from ancient times been the practice to surname him “of Alexandria,” to distinguish him from the celebrated Clement of Rome, whom all the Church had honoured a century before him. In 202, the persecution of Septimius Severus having forced him to leave Egypt, he repaired to Jerusalem, and thence to Antioch; but some years after, towards the end of the reign of Caracalla, returned to Alexandria to resume his office of teacher, in which he continued. to his death. He had an active mind, a prodigious memory, and great zeal for the advancement of the Christian faith. Unfortunately for the Church and 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 always professed. He aimed at making his Platonism serve as an introduction to Christianity; and thus this man, though of unquestionable piety, powerfully contributed to lower the faith and spiritual life in the Eastern Church. Such an undertaking can at no time and in no place be made without affecting the doctrine of original sin, which underlies all the teachings of Jesus Christ, but is a doctrine which has ever been rejected by human wisdom. We do not, therefore, quote Clement as an interpreter of sacred truth, but as a very faithful representative of the belief of his age on the canon of Scripture. In fact, he received the suffrages of all the ecclesiastical authors who came after him. “His writings,” says Eusebius,²² “are full of the most varied and useful erudition,” (πλείστης χρηστομαθείας ἔμπλεοι.) “Full of erudition and eloquence,” says Jerome,²³ “both as regards the Scriptures and all the documents of secular literature,” (tam de Scripturis quam de secularis literaturae instrumento.) “What is there in these writings which is not learned? rather, which is not drawn from the depths of philosophy?” (Quad in illis indoctum? Imo quid non e media philosophia est?)

His principal writings which have come down to us are, his Exhortation to the Gentiles, (Δόνγος προτρεπτικός;) his Paedagogue, in three books; his treatise Quis Dives Salvetur, addressed to rich Christians; above all, his Stromata, in eight books, a discursive collection of his thoughts, whether Christian or philosophic. He professes, in some measure, to introduce his readers to what he calls a more profound Gnosis or knowledge; and. this work, as he informs us himself,²⁴ must have appeared in 192, “222 years,” he says, “after the battle of Actium.” It is believed, also, that we have a work of his, (at least an abstract by Cassiodorus,) Adumbrationes,²⁵ or sketches on the catholic epistles. Lastly, we have lost his Hypotyposes, or, at least, only very short fragments have been recovered; it was a concise exposition of the contents of the Old and New Testaments.²⁶

178. But the use of the Scriptures of the New Testament, quotations from their text, appeals to their infallibility as a sovereign judge of controversies, and the only source of all Divine truth, even of the mystic traditions which Clement admitted, and the frequent expression of his confidence in their universal inspiration, — all this is found in abundance in his writings. And not only is it his personal faith in the Scriptures collectively which he expresses in almost every page, not only his faith in each of the books, (for he continually quotes them,) it is the faith of the Church. In Kirchhofer’s useful work²⁷ we may read a copious collection of these quotations. “Clement,” this writer says in speaking of the Stromata — “Clement, almost in every page, cites passages taken from the New Testament, from all the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, each of Paul's Epistles, the First and Second Epistle of John, that of Jude, that to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. There is no part of the first canon of which some passage is not found quoted by him except the short Epistle to Philemon. But this is purely accidental, owing to the brevity of that epistle, which contains only twenty-five verses, and has nothing doctrinal. But it appears, according to Eusebius, that it was quoted in his book of the Hypotyposes, now lost; and, as we have seen, it was mentioned at the same period in Africa by Tertullian;²⁸ and at the same period, also, it was so fully recognised by the Christian world, that at Rome the audacious Marcion him self reckoned it as the ninth of Paul’s episties. “It is only the brevity of this epistle,” wrote Tertullian, “which has allowed it to escape from the falsifying hands of Marcion.” (Sola huic epistolae brevitas sua profuit sit falsarias manus Marcionis evaderet.) And Jerome,²⁹ in eulogising it, tells us, that if it had not been believed to be the apostle Paul’s, “it would not have been received by all the churches throughout the world,” (in toto orbe a cunctis ecclesiis fuisse susceptam.) 7

“In his book of Hypotyposes,”³⁰ says Eusebius, “Clement has given compendious accounts of all the canonical Scriptures, (πάσης τῆς ἐνδιαθέτου ’γραφῆς ἐπιτετμημένας πεποίηται διηγήσεις) without having even excepted the Antilegomena,” (μηδε τὰς ἀντιλετγομενας παρελθών.)

Instead of quoting here the principal passages in which each of our sacred books are mentioned by Clement, we think it will be more useful only to shew by some citations in what terms this father constantly spoke of the Scriptures of the New Testament.

179. In the third book of his Stromata,³¹ Clement expressly distinguishes the four canonical Gospels from the apocryphal Gospel of the Egyptians. Speaking of a strange sentence, which the heretic Cassianus attributed to our Lord, he says, — “In the first place, we do not find this saying in the four Gospels that have been transmitted to us, (ἐν τοῖς παραδεδομένας ἡμῖν τέτταρσιν εὐαγγελίοις, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ κατ’ Αὐγυπτίους,) but in that according to the Egyptians.”

He always places both Testaments in the same rank as the Word of God, Thus, in the second book of the Stromata,³² he says, — “The just shall live by faith — by that faith which is according to the Testament and the commandments, (τῆς κατὰ τὴν διαθήυκην καὶ τὰς ἐντολάς,) since these two as to name and time being given economically, according to age and progress, are one as to their power, (Suvdper pla odcai,) the Old and the New are supplied by one God through the Son,” (ἡ μὲν παλαιὰ, ἡ δὲ καινὴ, δια υἱοῦ παῤ ἑνὸς θεοῦ χορηγοῦντα.) He also calls the collective canon, the Gospel of the Apostle, the Dominical Scriptures, the New Testament.

In the seventh book of the Stromata³³ he compares them to the Virgin. Mary giving birth to the Lord, and yet remaining a virgin. “Such,” he says, “are the Dominical Scriptures, (αἱ κυριακαὶ γραφαὶ) giving birth to the Truth, and remaining virgins while concealing the mysteries of the Truth.”

“We have for the beginning of the teaching,³⁴ he says a little further, “the Lord, leading us from the beginning to the end of knowledge by means of the prophets, and by the gospel, and by the blessed apostles.”

“Both the gospel and the apostle,” he says again,³⁵ “command us to mortify the old man.”

He always appeals to the Scriptures against his opponents as an inspired book, a universal rule, the sole rule of faith, the infallible judge of controversies.

In the seventh book of his Stromata,³⁶ he says, “Those who do not follow God when He leads, fall from their elevation; and He leads according to the divinely-inspired Scriptures,” (ἡγεῖται δὲ κατὰ τὰς θεοπνεύστους γραφάς.)

And further on, “When we have refuted them by shewing that they are evidently in opposition to the Scriptures, (σαφῶς ἐναν τιουμενους τας γραφαῖς,) you always see their leaders do one or other of these two things, (δυοΐν θάτερον,) either despise the consequences of their own doctrines, or prophecy itself, or rather their own hope, (ἡ γὰρ τῆς ἀκολουθίας τῶν σφετερων δογμάτων, ἡ τῆς ΠΡΟΦΗΤΕΙἈΣ αὐτῆς, μᾶλλον δὲ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἐλπίδος καταφρονοῦσιν.)” To the Scriptures, also, Clement always appeals to explain the Scriptures. In the same paragraph he says, “When on the subject of the Scriptures, we give a perfect demonstration taken from the Scriptures themselves, (οὕτως οὖν, καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν περι αὐτων γραφῶν τελείως ἀποδεικνύντες,) we then from our faith persuade demonstratively, (ἐκ πίστεως πειθόμεθα ἀποδεικτικῶς.)”³⁷

“For those who, with the design of doing good to others,” he says again, “devote themselves to write or to preach the word, if it is useful to acquire some other species of instruction, the reading of the Dominical Scriptures is necessary for the demonstration of the things said, (ἤτε ἄλλη παιδεία χρήσιμος ἥτε τῶν γραφῶν τῶν κυριακῶν ἀνάγνωσις εἷς ἀποδείξιν τῶν λεγομένων ἀναγκαία.)”³⁸

“The truth,” he says,³⁹ “is found by confirming each of the things that are demonstrated according to the Scriptures, by adducing other similar scriptures, (ἐν τῷ βεβαιοῦν ἕκαστον τῶν ἀποδεικνυμένων κατὰ τὰς γραφεὶς, ἐξ αὐτῶν πάλιν τῶν ὁμοίων νραφῶν)”

Clement, in his philosophy, or Christian Gnosis, as he calls it, admitted the existence of a certain mystical tradition, which had been given by Christ to four of His apostles, solely on the concealed sense of Scripture, and which had since been transmitted only to certain rabbins of the Church, to be passed from them, from age to age, to a certain number of initiated persons, whom he calls Gnostics, or Men of Gnosis. And yet, in spite of this system of tradition, maintained by him alone, and combated at the same time by Irenæus, as well as Tertullian,⁴⁰ Clement did not cease to declare that the Scriptures are the universal rule of faith, for the gnostic initiated into their most profound sense, equally with the simple believer, (Ὁ γνωστικὸς γαρ, he says, οἰδεν κατὰ τὴν γραφήν.)⁴¹

“Those,” he says again in the seventh book of the Stromata⁴² — “those are believers who have only tasted the Scriptures, (Ὁι μὲν ἀπογευσάμενοι μόνον τῶν γραφῶν πιστοί,) but those are the Gnostics who have advanced much further, and who become the exact gnomons of the truth. They discover the hidden senses, which are not perceived by the vulgar.”

But we pass on to the pious Irenæus, who approaches much nearer even than Clement and Tertullian to the apostolic times.

SECTION FIFTH.

IRENÆUS.

180. Irenæus, born among the Greeks of Asia about the year 120 — that is to say, only seventeen years after the death of St John, and in the same parts where the apostle ended his days — had received in early life the culture of a Greek education, and at the same time the instructions of Christian discipline; for he had the happiness, he tells us, when he was yet a child, (παῖς ὤν ἔτι,) of being in frequent intercourse with the pious bishop of Smyrna, the martyr Polycarp. “This Polycarp,” he says,⁴³ “instructed by the apostles, and familiar with many persons who had seen our Lord — this Polycarp who was placed by the apostles over the province of Asia as bishop of Smyrna — we have seen in our early years teaching all the things which he had learned from the apostles, (ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ ἡμῶν ἡλικια)” And again, in the interesting fragment preserved by Eusebius,⁴⁴ he thus writes at a later period: —

“O Florinus! these impious dogmas (of the Gnostics) are not what those taught you who were disciples of the apostles; for I have seen you, when I was yet a child, in Lower Asia, with Polycarp, when you shone at the imperial court, and sought to be distinguished there. I remember better what passed then than more recent events, for the things heard in childhood take root in the mind. I could tell the place where the blessed Polycarp sat; his appearance and his gait; his mode of life and his looks; and the discourses he made to the people; and his familiar intercourse with John, and with those who had seen the Lord; and how he repeated their discourses, and all which they had told him about the Lord, His miracles and His doctrine. But these things which Polycarp narrated were all in harmony with the Scriptures, (πάντα σύμφωνα ταῖς γραφαις.) By the goodness of God, I heard them very attentively, committing them not to paper, but to my heart; and by the grace of God, I still recall them exactly to my mind.”

We do not hesitate to give these minute details, because they shew at a glance how the abundant testimony to the Scriptures which comes before us reaches almost to the first origin of Christianity. Irenæus even tells us that he lived at a time when men might be met with who were enriched with chartsms, (or miraculous powers received from the apostles by the laying on of hands.)⁴⁵ “We have ourselves,” he says, “heard in the church many brethren who had prophetic charisms, (προφητικά χαρίσματα ἐχόντων,) and who spoke divers languages by the Holy Spirit.”⁴⁶

We see in his works⁴⁷ that at the same time he had studied the literature and philosophy of his age. Tertullian also calls him “a zealous investigator of all kinds of knowledge.”⁴⁸ He learned thoroughly the Celtic language, to render himself useful in preaching the gospel, and spoke it habitually. Thus, at the beginning of his book,⁴⁹ he apologises for not having the habit of writing, nor the elegances of language, (λὲγων τέχνην,) “because,” said he, “living among the Gauls, I am obliged to converse most frequently in a barbarous tongue,” (περὶ βάρβαρον διάλεκτον.)

Irenæus was an eminent man, admired by all the Church for his missionary zeal, not less than for his wisdom and his charity. He preached, first of all, the gospel to pagans, and it is said that, by the advice of Polycarp, he set out from Smyrna with Pothinus to preach the word among the Gauls, and soon after took under his charge, at the peril of his life, the church recently formed at Lyons in the midst of idolaters. In 178, when Pothinus, who was his senior by several years, (having been born fifteen years before St John’s death,) had suffered martyrdom with so many other believers at Lyons, Irenæus succeeded him in his episcopal office, and, at a later period, like him, was imprisoned; he was beheaded, it is said, under Septimius Severus, according to some, in 197, after the bloody victory which this emperor had gained at the gates of Lyons; according to others, in 202, when his general persecution raged against the Christians. Irenæus, in 177, during the imprisonment of Pothinus, had been sent on a deputation by the Gallic churches to the bishops of Asia and the bishop of Rome, Eleutherus. He had afterwards to reprimand the successor of the latter for his intolerance. “When a man can do good to his neighbour, and refuses to do it,” he wrote to him, “we must hold him to be a stranger to the love of the Lord.”⁵⁰

“His whole ministry,” says Theodoret, “was a blessing to the churches of Gaul, as well as to the general cause of truth. He was the illuminator (φωστήρ) of the western Galatians, (the Gauls.) He composed commentaries, and many other works; but all, or nearly all, have perished excepting his great work Against Heresies, written specially on account of the Valentinian Gnostics, who, in his time, having found their way from Rome to Gaul, had perverted the faith of a great number of persons, particularly among females. Only short fragments of the original Greek have been recovered; but the entire work has been preserved to us in a Latin version, which is fourteen hundred years old.⁵¹

181. If we take up the folio of Irenæus, and open it at hazard, passing over the first pages, which are devoted to an exposition of Valentinian Gnosticism and its impious fancies, (its thirty Æons, the mother Achamoth, or the thirtieth Æon, and her progeny,) — passing these over, we may assert that it would be difficult to find a page in which one or other of our scriptures is not clearly quoted. We know not any modern author who has made more frequent use of them; and the reader, at the sight of such a book, svill soon be constrained to acknowledge that the Christian people of the second century, as regards their knowledge and study of the Scriptures, were far superior to the Christian people of the nine-teenth.

From the first page, we may learn what the whole book will be in this respect. The very first line of the preface has a quotation from the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, (i 4.) “Considering,” he says, “that certain persons, sent out from among us to attack the truth, have introduced, as the apostle says, (caf@s 0 amroaToNos dyowv,) lying words and endless genealogies, which minster questions rather than godly edifying, which is in faith, leading astray the minds of the simple, falsifying the oracles of the Lord, (qd: oupyobvres Ta Aéyta Kupiov,) and overthrowing many («al mohdovs avatpérovow,) (2 Tim. ii. 18,) after having, under a vain pretext of science, (gnosis,) wandered far from Him who created and arranged the universe, as if they had to shew them anything better or greater than He. I have thought it necessary, dearly beloved, after having read the commentaries of Valentine's disciples, (as they call themselves,) to make thee acquainted with these monstrous mysteries, that thou mayest make them manifest to those who are around thee, and exhort them to keep themselves from this abyss of folly and blasphemy against Christ.”

And if from these first lines you pass to the later ones, you will have some perception of the abundance, I may say profusion, with which this bishop of the second century cites our sacred books. Open, at the end of the volume, the beautiful thirty-sixth chapter, in which he explains the scenes of the last day. This chapter contains only fifty-four lines, and yet he has found room for quoting at length, besides two passages of the Old Testament, (Exod. xxxv. 40, and Isa, lxvi. 32,) twelve passages of the New Testament, in the following order: — Rev. xii. 5,6; 1 Cor. vii. 31; Luke xx. 35; Matt. xxii. 2, and following; 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26; and again, 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28; Matt. xxv. 29; Rom. viii, 21; 1 Cor. ii, 9; 1 Pet. i. 12. To give some idea, I shall quote the last thirty lines:⁵² —

“Then, as the ministers of the Word teach us, those who have been made worthy⁵³ to dwell in heaven will be transported thither; some to taste the delights of paradise, others to share in the glory of the celestial city. In both abodes they will see God; but they will see Him in proportion to what they have been; for in that blessed dwelling-place, heaven, there will be that distance placed by God himself between those who have borne fruit, some a hundred, some sixty, and others thirtyfold, (Matt. xiii. 8, and Mark iv. 8:) and this is the reason why our Saviour said, that on His Father’s house there are many mansions, (John xiv. 2.) All these joys will, in fact, come to them from God, who will assign to each his proper abode. For this reason, His Word⁵⁴ has said that the Father distributes to each one as He is worthy, or will be worthy. This is the triclinium, the table at which the guests will sit down who have a part in the marriage supper, (Matt. xxii. 2, and following verses;) for the ministers of the Word, the disciples of the apostles, tell us that this is the law of co-ordination, (adordinationem,) according to which all who are saved will be arranged. Thus they advance by degrees, rising by the Spirit to the Son, and by the Son to the Father; the Son at last giving up His work to the Father, ACCORDING TO WHAT 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 righteous man upon earth will know no more⁵⁵ what it is to die. ‘But, ADDS THE APOSTLE, ‘when he saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted which did put all things under Hum. 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 has carefully predicted a first resurrection of the just, (Rev. xx. 5,) and the inheritance of a kingdom on earth, (Rev. v.10.) For this reason also, the apostles have prophesied it in the harmony of their revelations, (concordantes;) and this is what OUR LORD HIMSELF TEACHES when He promises to His disciples ‘the new wine of the cup which he will drink with them in the kingdom of his Father, (Matt. xxv. 29.) Also, the APOSTLE declares that the time will come when the ‘creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God, (Rom. viii. 21.) In and by all these revelations, one same God and Father is shewn to us who formed man, (que plasmavit hominem,) who promised to the fathers the inheritance of the earth, who dispenses it to them in the resurrection of the just, and who thus, fulfilling the promises which He has made to them respecting the kingdom of His Son, accomplishes at last ‘those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, (1 Cor. ii. 9.) Thus, then, there is one only Son who has perfectly accomplished the will of the Father, and one human race in whom are consummated the mysteries of God, — mysteries which angels ‘desired to look into,’ (1 Pet. i. 12,) although it is impossible for them to fathom the wisdom of God by which this creature is consummated, who is His workmanship, (plasma ejus,) to be rendered conformable to His Son, and of the same body with Him, (concorporatum filio;) so that His firstborn, the Word, descends into the creature formed by His hands, that it may be received by Him; and, in its turn, the creature receives the Word, mounts up to Him, rises above angels, and is made in the image and resemblance of God.’⁵⁶

Such, then, was Irenæus, and such was the canon in the age of Irenæus. All our scriptures abound in his book — the four Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Apocalypse.

182. And, first, as to the four Gospels. Irenæus quotes them continually; and this fact shews us how deeply, in days so near the apostles, their use, and the use of the four exclusively, had struck root in the mind of the Church. It is not only that Irenæus has written a long chapter, entitled,⁵⁷ “Proofs that there can be neither more nor fewer than Four Evangelists,”’ — it is not only that, looking at them always as a whole necessarily united, he has called them, on this account, “The Gospel with Four Faces;” he tries to find out mystic reasons for this quadruple form, which, though we may attach little value to them, attest only the more strongly the persuasion of Irenæus, and that of his age. As Olshausen⁵⁸ has remarked, — “If Irenæus thus spoke of the four Gospels to the men of his age, it must have been because the existing Church never knew a time in which it did not possess them.” Irenæus compares the quadriform Gospel (τετράμοροφον) to the four regions of the earth, to the four universal spirits, to the cherubim with four faces, &e. “The Church,” he says, “is disseminated over the whole earth, but the column and support of the Church (στύλος καὶ στήρνγμα) is the gospel and the Spirit of life. it was, then, befitting that it should have four columns spreading abroad incorruptibility, and vivifying humanity. And hence it is manifest that the Word, the Creator of all things, who is seated on the cherubim, and sustains all things, when He proposed to make Himself known to men, wished to give us the gospel under a quadruple form, which nevertheless is: maintained in unity by one and the same Spirit, (ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν τετράμορφου τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, ἑνί δὲ πνεύματι συνεχόμενον.)⁵⁹ “But,” he adds, “we have shewn, by very many and very powerful reasons, (per tot et tanta ostendimus,) on the one hand, why there are not a greater number than four; and, on the other, why there are not fewer, because these are the only true and firm ones, (quoniàm sola ila vera et furma.)”

“Things being so,”⁶⁰ he adds, “very vain and very ignorant, but much more audacious, (μάταιοι πάντες καὶ ἀμαθεῖς, προσέτι δὲ καὶ τολμηροί,) are all those who wish to alter this figure (ἰδέαν) of the gospel, and to give it more than four faces, or to give it fewer, And so great, in reference to the Gospels, is this firmness of which we speak, (tanta est autem circa Evangelia hœc firmitas,) that heretics themselves⁶¹ bear testimony to it; and you. see each one of them, when he comes forth, (egrediens unus quisque eorwm,) endeavour to support himself by these same Gospels, to confirm his own doctrine, (ex ipsis conetur confirmare doctrinam.)”

183. And of what we have said of the belief of Irenæus and his age as to the four Gospels, is not less true as to the book of Acts. He quotes it also (we have reckoned by the index in Grabe, and we are certain that Grabe has often omitted passages) more than sixty-four times; and even sets himself to shew in his third book by a number of quotations, the harmony of this book of Luke with Paul’s epistles.

His belief is not at all less firm as to the other books of the canon. He adduces them in equal abundance. We have counted, for example, in Grabe’s index, that Irenæus has cited the First Epistle to the Corinthians one hundred and seven times, the Epistle to the Romans eighty-eight times, the Epistle to the Ephesians thirty-four times, the Epistle to the Galatians twenty-nine times, that to the Colossians twenty times, the Second to the Corinthians eighteen times, that to the Philippians eleven times, and the First of Peter the same number; the Second to the Thessalonians ten times, the First to Timothy five times, the Second four times, the short Epistle to Titus three times, the First Epistle of John three times, and the First to the Thessalonians twice. In a word, he cites ALL the books of the canon. There is only the Epistle to Philemon which he has not occasion to mention. And is this strange? This very short epistle, treating only of a point of domestic morals, having nothing doctrinal, had no chance of finding a place in a controversial work; and we have elsewhere said that, at the same time, Tertullian mentioned it in Africa, and that even the audacious Marcion acknowledged it as an epistle of Paul.⁶²

184, The testimony borne by Irenæus to the canon of the second century is, then, irrefragable; but to render it complete, it is desirable to shew by some quotations selected from the abundance in his work, how firm was the faith of this same age in the Divine inspiration of all these books, in their sufficiency and their authority. The passages that prove it in the course of his book are so numerous that we are at a loss which to select. Everywhere in its pages the Scriptures are the foundation of his faith; by them it is to be re-established, and error is to be overturned; they are the only universal and Divine rule; and as Erasmus⁶³ has said, “Irenæus combats the squadrons of heretics by the weapons of the Scriptures alone.”

“In employing,” he says in his fifth book, “these proofs which are taken from the Scriptures, (utens his ostensionibus quae ex Scripturis,) you easily overturn, as we have shewn you, all those heretical sentiments which have been later imagined.”⁶⁴

The collection of our scriptures was already called by the name of the New Testament; and throughout, Irenæus placed them in the same rank of authority as those of Moses and the prophets.

“The precepts of a perfect life,’ he says in his fourth book, “being the same in either Testament, (in utroque Testamento cum sint eadem,) reveal to us the same God.”⁶⁵

In his first book, Irenæus explains the doctrines of Valentine and his followers; in the second, he points out their evil; in the third, he confutes them by the Scriptures. Hear what he says at the beginning of the latter. ‘We had not known,” he says, “the plan of our salvation excepting by those who brought us the Gospel. They from the first proclaimed it with the living voice; but then they have left us the tradition in the Scriptures by the will of God to be the foundation and pillar of faith after them.”⁶⁶

Elsewhere he says,⁶⁷ “In opposing the sound doctrine to the contradictions of heretics, following one teacher — the one and true God, and having His words for the rule of truth — we all say always the same things on the same points.” And again — “If we cannot find solutions for everything that we read in the Scriptures, we must leave these questions with God, who also has created us; knowing on good grounds that the Scriptures are perfect, since they have been spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit, (rectissime scientes quia Scripturae quidem perfectae sunt, quippe a Verbo Dei et Spiritu ejus dictae.)”⁶⁸

In the whole course of his five books, you meet with such expressions as the following:⁶⁹ — “We prove it by the Scriptures” — “According to what we learn from the Scriptures, (sicut ex Scriptwris discimus)” — “We have proved from the Scriptures, (ex Scripturis demonstravimus)” — “We have proved by the Dominical Scriptures” — “we must unfold (ἀναπτύσσειν) all that is contained in the Scriptures; if they had known the Scriptures, they would know” — “Let us return to the proof which is drawn from the Scriptures, (quae est de Scripturis)” — “Having for ourselves these proofs which are taken from the Scriptures, (nobis conaboranti his ostensionibus quee ex Scripturis sunt)” — “The faith we maintain is firm, real, not imaginary, and alone true” — “This faith receiving from the Scriptures a manifest demonstration, (manifestam habens ostensionem ex his Scrupturrs.)”⁷⁰

“John,” he says elsewhere,⁷¹ “wishing to establish a rule of truth in the Church, (volens regulam veritatis constituere im Ecclesia), has thus spoken: —

“When we have refuted them by the Scriptures,⁷² he says of the heretics, (cum enim ea Scripturis arguuntur,) ‘they turn round, and attack the Scriptures themselves, as if they erred, or expressed themselves improperly, or wanted authority, (neque sint ex autoritate,) or had different meanings, or were not sufficient to lead to the truth those who were not acquainted with tradition, because the truth, they said, was not given in writing, but by the living voice.’”

185. Yet before we pass on, we must say a few words on the passages where this father appeals to apostolic tradition, and from which the Roman doctors believe that authority may be drawn for what is called among them in the present day, TRADITION. It is easy to see that in Irenæus it means quite a different thing. He never understands by the term, as is done at Rome, an oral transmission, apocryphal, and continued we know not by whom, of dogmas not contained in Scripture, or even of dogmas opposed to its teaching. On the contrary, this term is employed most frequently by him as by the other fathers, to designate the Scriptures. “The apostles, (he has just told us, Prop. 182,) after having preached the gospel with their living voice, have left us, by the will of God, the tradition of it in the Scriptures. (Evangelium. . . . . postea per voluntatem Dei in Seripturis nobis tradiderunt.)” The Scriptures, we see, are for Irenæus, tradition, the true tradition; “given by the will of God,” he adds, “to be after them the foundation and pillar of Fatth.”

“This interpretation of which we speak,”⁷³ he says, “is in accordance with the tradition of the apostles; for Peter, and John, and Matthew, and Paul have thus spoken. In fact, the same Spirit of God who spoke in the prophets has also announced in the apostles the fulness of the time, and the approach of the kingdom of heaven.”

“The fathers,” the learned Mr Goode remarks, in his Divine Rule,⁷⁴ when speaking of Irenæus, and especially of those who followed him, “constantly employ the terms Tradition and Apostolic Tradition, (ἡ ἀποστολικῆ παράδοσις,) to designate the Scriptures; and it is by a strange abuse that Messrs Newman and Keble cite them to support the totally different meaning given to this expression by the doctors of Rome.” Mr Goode even shews that the passages from Athanasius, alleged by these authors in favour of tradition in the Roman sense, speak precisely the contrary, and recommend only the Written Word. We may see, by numerous quotations from Irenæus, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyrill of Alexandria, Socrates the historian, Cyprian, and even Jerome, that by Evangelical Tradition the fathers understood the Gospels as distinct from the Acts and the Epistles; and by Apostolic Tradition, the Acts and Epistles of the apostles.

It is very true that Irenæus, like the rest of the fathers, sometimes uses this expression to designate a still recent remembrance which was preserved of the apostles and their teaching, in the places where they had been heard; but even then, he employs it in a sense quite different from that of the Roman doctors. The heretics, when confounded by his quotations from the Scriptures, alleged the tradition of the apostles to justify their errors, and pretended to appeal to the wise teaching of these men of God. Irenaeus, to refute them, was eager to request that they should really consult that tradition of the apostles which was still accessible, that is to say, the remembrance of them which remained during his times in the churches founded by them. Nothing could be more rational. If in our day, for example, any one maintained, in our presence, some historical falsehood relative to the passage of the Alps effected by Bonaparte fifty-eight years ago, before the battle of Marengo; and if the authors of the falsehood, refusing the testimony of books, appealed to the oral traditions collected on the spot, we should be able, like Irenæus, to accept the challenge, to turn with confidence this source of information against them, and to challenge them to find in their favour any trustworthy testimony. But if, instead of Napoleon, the points in question regarded Hannibal, and, instead of the passage of the Alps by the French, that of the Carthaginians, two thousand and seventy-five years ago, we should look back upon it as an absurdity to appeal to local tradition, and should be perfectly sure that, at this distance of time, nothing could be expected from it. So it was with Irenæus.

He never thought of a tradition infallible for ages, or transmitted from generation to generation without its being known how. But when the Valentinians, unable to impugn his arguments from Scripture, presumed to oppose to them the oral teaching of the apostles, his reply was, “We know it better than you, and we can easily recover it in the churches they founded.” It was then only the second age of Christianity; the living remembrance was preserved of the succession of bishops who had followed-them; in many places were still to be found (as Irenæus has told us) “men invested with charisms which they had received from an apostle,⁷⁵ or even some ancient believers who had conversed with the immediate disciples of Jesus Christ.” It was, then, perfectly legitimate for the father to appeal to such reminiscences. “Dearly beloved,” he exclaims at the beginning of his third book,⁷⁶ complaining of the Gnostics and their bad faith, “see the men with whom we have to combat. They glide under all our proofs like serpents, and so it comes to pass that they will not submit to the Scriptures at first, nor even to tradition afterwards, (eventt itaque neque Scripturis jam, neque traditiont consentire eos.) Thus, in all the Church, the men who wish to see the truth can recognise the tradition of the apostles rendered manifest to the whole world. We have only to enumerate the bishops instituted by them in the different churches and their successors down to ourselves: they have never taught anything nor known anything similar to the absurdities in which these teachers indulge, (qui nihil tale docue runt neque cognoverunt, quale ab his deliratur.)” And in the two chapters that follow,⁷⁷ Irenæus aims again to confound his Marcionite and Valentinian opponents by the very kind of testimony they dared to call in, in the first, which he entitles, “Of the Succession of Bishops since the Apostles,” and in the second, entitled, “The Testimony of Those who saw the Apostles, concerning the Preaching of the Truth.”

We see, then, what Irenæus meant by the term Tradition was a recent and tangible tradition, (veterem traditionem apostolorum;) not a late, apocryphal, untraceable tradition, such as the bishops of Rome appeal to after 1700 years. Irenæus meant a human and fallible, though well-informed, tradition; not that socalled Divine and infallible, though very misinformed, tradition which the Council of Trent has presumed to put on a level⁷⁸ with the Scriptures, and even above them.⁷⁹

Further; These reminiscences of the apostles, which might still be recovered in the local traditions, Irenæus, whatever respect he had for them, never failed to subject to the control of the Sacred Scriptures. He never admitted any tradition, however near it might be, if it taught what was not taught by the written Word. And in that famous epistle to Florinus⁸⁰ which we have quoted, you see, after calling to mind the recitals of Polycarp respecting John, and those of John respecting Jesus Christ, he takes care to add that these traditions reported by that holy bishop respecting John and Jesus Christ were all conformable to the Scriptures, (ἀπήγγελλε πάντα σύμφωνα ταῖς γραφαῖς.) So sensitive on this point was his holy jealousy for the supremacy of the written Word.;

“Having for our rule,” he says in his second book,⁸¹ “the very truth and the testimony concerning God fully revealed, (et im aperto positum de Deo testimonium,) we ought not, by allowing ourselves to go hither and thither in search of other solutions of the questions, to reject the firm and true knowledge of God. What if we cannot find an answer to all the difficulties presented in the Scriptures? . . . . We ought to leave them to God, who also created us, (Prop. 184,) knowing assuredly that the Scriptures are perfect, because they have been uttered by the Word of God and His Spirit.”;

“It is thus by making use of those proofs which are taken from the Scriptures, (his ostensionibus quae sunt ex Scrupturis,) you will easily overturn all those false notions which have been since devised, (facile evertis ... . omnes eas, quae postea affictae sunt, haereticorwm sententeas.)”⁸²

“And if any one should ask⁸³ us what did God do before He created the world? we say that the answer is God’s concern. For the Scriptures teach us that this world, created perfect, had its beginning in time; but what God did before this, no Scripture informs us, (nulla Scriptura manifestat.) It is, then, a question which concerns God alone, and must be left to His sovereignty (subjacet ergo haec responsio Deo.)”

To sum up all in one word, Irenæus declares of the Valentinians, “that in relying on traditions not contained in the Scriptures, they are making a rope of sand.” “When they go on in this manner,”⁸⁴ he says, “and advance what neither the prophets proclaimed, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, (παρέδοκαν,) pretending to know more than others, by making allegations that are not taken from what is written, (ἐξ ἀνράφων ἀναγινώσκοντες) they only busy themselves with twisting ropes of sand, (ἐξ ἅμμου σχοινία πλέκειν ἐπιτηδεύοντες.)”

SECTION SIXTH.

OTHER CONTEMPORARY FATHERS.

186. Such was Irenæus; such were Clement and Tertullian; such was the second half of the second century in the Hast and West, and such was its canon. But if we have thought it proper to cite so copiously these three illustrious fathers, on account of the immense weight of their testimony, it is not because we cannot adduce others of the same period, and of whom some short writings remain to us, or fragments preserved by Eusebius. We wish to speak of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, converted in 150, and author of an Apology, which is still extant; — of Athenagoras, a philosopher of Athens, converted to Christianity, and flourishing in 177; — of Dionysius, bishop of Corinth about 170, and martyr in 178; — and, lastly, of Asterius Urbanus, bishop or teacher of the churches of Galatia, to whom he preached with power in the city of Ancyra about the year 188.

187. DIONYSIUS or CORINTH, Eusebius tells us, (Hist. Eccl, iv., 28,) complains that, having written some letters, “there had been forgers, ministers of the devil, who had falsified them; bunt can I be surprised,” he adds, “since even some persons have attempted to tamper with the Dominical Scriptures, (ἐι καὶ τῶν κυριακῶν ῥαδιουργῆσαί τινες ἐπιβέβληνται γραφῶν.)” It is thus he names the New Testament.

ASTERIUS URBANUS wrote, Eusebius tells us,⁸⁵ three books against the Montanists. “I hesitated for some time to publish them,” said Urbanus; “not that I had any doubts on the duty of bearing witness to the truth, but for fear of appearing to go in any degree beyond what is written, and to determine anything beyond the word of the New Testament of the gospel, from which nothing can be taken away, and to which nothing can be added, whoever is resolved to regulate his life according to that same gospel, (ᾧ μήτε προσθεῖναι μήτ’ ἀφελεῖν δυνατὸν, τῳ κατὰ τὸ εὐινγγέλιον αὐτὸ πολιτεύεσθαι προῃρημένῳ.)” Thus this doctor in Galatia spoke nearly a hundred years after St Paul. Not only he wished that the life should be governed according to the word of the New Testament, but he would admit no other tradition of Jesus Christ and the apostles.

ATHENAGORAS, though the nature of his writings calls less for citations from the Scriptures, presents us with many passages borrowed either from the Gospels or the Epistles. For example: “Tt is evident,” he says, in a treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead,⁸⁶ “according to the apostle, that this corruptible must put on incorruption, (ὅτι δεῖ κατὰ τὸν ἀπόστολον,) in order that, the dead being restored to life by the resurrection, each one may receive justly according to what he has done in his body, whether good or evil,”⁸⁷

THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH is still more precise. Converted, it is — said, in mature life, by the power of the gospel in the year 150, he composed, Jerome tells us,⁸⁸ Commentaries on the Four Gospels, books against Marcion and Hermogenes, and catechetical works, entirely lost. But we can here adduce numerous passages from his Apologetic Treatise, in three books, to his ancient friend Autolycus, still a pagan and a violent opponent of Christianity. He often cites the Gospels and Epistles, but indicates them in general terms, as he needs must in addressing pagans. Let us give a few examples.

Observe how, among other things, he enforces on Autolycus⁸⁹ the inspiration of the scriptures of the Old and New Testament: — “But as to the righteousness of which the law has spoken, we find analogous things both in the prophets and the evangelists, (ἀκολουθα εὑρίσκεται καὶ τῶν προφητῶν καὶ τῶν εὐαγγελιστῶν ἔχειν,) because all inspired men (pneumatophori) have spoken by one and the same Spirit of God, (διὰ τὸ τοὺς πάντας πνευματοφόρους ἐνὶ πνεύματι Θεοῦ λελαληκέναι).

Notice, again, how he cites the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew: — “But the EVANGELIC VOICE recommends chastity with still greater force, when it says, Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, &c., and whoever shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery, &c.; and so again for charity, the EVANGELIC HISTORY says, Love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you, &c.; and again, for humility, the Gospel says, Let not thy left hand know, &c.

Observe, again, how he cites the Epistle to the Romans (xiii. 7, 8): — “THE DIVINE WISDOM⁹⁰ commands us to render to every one their due, honour to whom honour, fear to whom fear, tribute to whom tribute, and to owe nothing to others unless to love all.” And the first Epistle to Timothy (ii. 2): — “Besides this, our DIVINE WORD, (ᾗμῶν θεῖος λόγος,) as to the duty of subjection to magistrates, commands even to pray for them that all may lead a peaceable and tranquil life.” And in his second book, speaking of the inspired Scriptures collectively, and of the Gospel of John, “Mark,” said he, “what the Holy Scriptures and all the pneumatophori (καὶ πάντες οἱ πνευματοφόρα) teach us, of whose number John has said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” &c.⁹¹

Such, then, was the second century in its latter half, and such the firmness of its faith in the first canon.

What, then, do we infer from all these testimonies, so unanimous and so powerful, which come at once from Antioch, from Galatia, from Macedonia, from Carthage, and from Gaul?

SECTION SEVENTH.

THE RESULT OF ALL THESE TESTIMONIES,

188. We must first of all clearly understand that these quotations do not only express to us the unanimous personal persuasion of all these great teachers, so different in position, character, and nationality; not only the faith of the contemporary Church, not only the very great firmness, as Irenæus said, of this faith as to the four evangelists, (tanta circa evangelia haec firmitas,) its very great firmness respecting the book of Acts and the thirteen Epistles of Paul, as well as the two Epistles of Peter and John; but above all, that which these testimonies confirm to us with irresistible. power is, the historic legitimacy of this faith, — the necessarily apostolic origin of all these twenty books, — their perfect and indisputable authenticity. And this proof itself is so powerful, that it may, we think, suffice alone, though we had not all the others, neither those that precede, nor those that follow.

Let us carry ourselves back in thought to the age so near the apostles in which these teachers lived, and ask how it could have been possible, if the unanimity of all the churches on the subject of the twenty books had not commenced during the lifetime of the apostles, that, in only fifty years from the death of John, a conviction so perfectly unanimous, so calm, and so self-assured, could, in so short a time, pervade the whole Christian world. How otherwise can this vast phenomenon be explained? Who can tell by what other process this persuasion could be formed from one end of the empire’ to the other, — formed among the Latins as well as the Greeks, among the Celts as well as the Syrians, — formed in such a manner that not only these books were everywhere received as divinely inspired, but everywhere without the least shadow of debate; everywhere attributing them to the same authors, although their names were not inscribed; everywhere classing them in the canon in the same order; everywhere four Gospels, neither more nor fewer, says Irenæus, (per tot — et tanta demonstravimus sola illa vera et firma;) everywhere first Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, then John, and everywhere attributing the first and fourth to apostles, the second and third to inspired men (pneumatophori) who were not apostles, while no sign seemed to point out the authors in any of the three synoptic evangelists; everywhere, lastly, the book of Acts attributed to Luke; then, again, everywhere the thirteen epistles of Paul always placed in the same order, which was by no means the order of time; everywhere at their head the epistle to the Romans; then those to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians; then to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon; then the two epistles of Peter and John; for, as we have said, these twenty books have never changed their respective places;⁹² that one of these two epistles which was written from Babylon having made its way among the churches of Africa or Gaul, to take its place there, as the letters written from the prisons of Rome made theirs among the Greek churches of Egypt, or the Syrian churches of Adiabene?

189. How, then, can we account for this unanimity, at once so peaceable and so firm, on the subject of the twenty books, unless by admitting the only reasonable explanation that can be given; I mean, unless by recognising in this universal agreement a consent begun during the life of the apostles, and under their influence, and borne peaceably over the whole habitable globe in proportion as the Church was extended? Moreover, this fact results very naturally, as we have already said, from that other, that almost all the apostles governed, during more than thirty years, the innumerable churches founded by them; some for a much longer time, and John himself for seventy years. Setting aside this explanation, which gives a reason for everything, how can it be explained that, in the short space of half a century, any one of the twenty books of the canon came to be received without any opposition throughout the world by all the teachers, all the bishops, and all the churches; everywhere taking its fixed place in their canon; everywhere in silence; everywhere, at least, without leaving in any part of the Church the slightest trace of any challenge? And this among such believers as were the Christians of the second century, among influential, learned teachers, connected with both the East and West, vigilant, zealous, and ready to suffer martyrdom, among men so jealously careful of the slightest apostolic reminiscences that you see them at the very time holding councils, and on the very point of excommunicating one another⁹³ in the East and West. And for what? — for an unimportant difference as to the time of keeping Easter, some having learned from their predecessors in the Hast to celebrate it, like the ancient Jews, on the fourteenth day of the month of March; others having been taught in the West to defer it to the following Sunday. To check Victor’s fiery temper, was not the pious wisdom of Irenzus required, and the severe letters of many other bishops, who, even in the West, enjoined upon him (ἀντιπαρακελεύονται) to alter his language?⁹⁴

Have we ever seen anywhere in so short a time an agreement suddenly formed, so perfect as that in the Church, from one end of the earth to the other, on a subject of such great importance as the apostolic authenticity of twenty sacred books? Would it be an easy matter, in our day, to deceive all Europe on the subject of works which it has agreed to attribute to men deceased only in the year 1800 — Lavater, Saussure, Mallet-Dupan, Kant, Necker, Blair, or Klopstock? Could we receive without protest these new works, unknown to their contemporaries, unknown to every one, to this day? Would it even be possible to receive easily and without discussion, in literature, apocryphal works of Voltaire or of Rousseau, who died eighty years ago? And yet the world is very slightly interested in settling about such men the legitimacy of any works that may be attributed to them, while in the time of Irenæus and Tertullian, for the sacred books, the issue involved all the churches, all the Christians on the face of the globe. The question for all regarded the Word of Life, and in its profession or defence they were ready to lay down their lives.

190, And let no one think of adducing as a parallel to this incomparable unanimity of the second century on the canon, that presented by Roman Catholicism in the present day on all the dogmas which separate it from evangelical Christianity.

Do we not know the commotion each of these heresies made in all quarters before it could be imposed on the world? Do we not know that councils and popes shook empires by long wars before reception was given first to the worship of images, and invocation of the dead, and then to the celibacy of the clergy, the depression of the bishops, the withholding the cup, and transubstantiation? And even in our day do we not know that only after ages of violent controversy Rome has been able to promulgate her new doctrine about Mary?⁹⁵ It was totally different with the unanimity of the churches on the first canon in the second century. You could not then see throughout the Christian world, on this subject, the slightest trace of a difference of opinion either in the East or West; and you know that 150 years later, when Eusebius called the twenty-two books of the first canon and the second-first homologoumena, or uncontroverted, he meant to say, that these scriptures had never been disputed anywhere; while in speaking of the five short ate epistles he calls them antilegomena, or controverted, to intimate that though acknowledged by the majority they yet had been with others the subject of discussion. But as to the twenty-two homologoumena, looking at the past in history to the farthest limits of the horizon, it was impossible for him to discover a vestige of the least opposition.

We have here a right to ask how this universal agreement can be accounted for, if it is not acknowledged that these books had been received by all the churches before the apostles had ended their career. We ask what an immensity of influence in some, and of imbecility in others, must have been required for any one of the four Gospels, or the book of Acts, or any one of the fifteen apostolic epistles, to have taken its place, after the death of the apostles, without discussion, in the canon of all the churches. In truth, this twofold miracle of cleverness on the one side, and ignorance on the other, surpasses very far in improbability all the legends of the Middle Ages, and would demand in our opponents a larger amount of faith than the gospel requires of believers, to make them admit that our holy books have been given by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.

191. To assert that since John’s death, Christians all over the world have received as apostolic, books which the apostles never put forth, — that they received them, without demur or examination, from one end of the empire to the other, and admitted them everywhere to be publicly read, — that even the apostolic churches of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Galatia, received them as if these books had been addressed to them eighty years before, while, in fact, nothing was known of them till the middle of the second century; to assert that all these churches agreed entirely to give these new books in the collected form of a canon, a rank everywhere the same and invariable; to assert that they were all deceived at the same time, all in the same manner, in Egypt, in Gaul, in Greece, in Africa; that all practised the most silent submission about the same books, and the same names of authors — verily, this surpasses all the limits of possibility.

Certainly, we grant, it is not thus that deception is practised, nor is it thus that persons err when they are deceived. So many people seduced from the path of truth do not advance with this perfect unanimity towards the same mass of errors, especially when they have to do with numerous and definite facts — such, for example, as the reception of twenty-two writings attributed to five different authors, The chances of error are diverse in a multitude who have lost their way; and we may well say of this unanimity what the great Tertullian⁹⁶ said in the same age, when, speaking on another subject, he exclaimed, “Is it probable that so great a number of churches, and such large ones, should meet in one and the same faith, while all were walking in error, (ecquid versimile est ut tot et tanta in unam fidem erraverint?) Among so many persons, and so many different chances, the issue could not be the same; and when you find in this great number one single identical thought, this must proceed, not from error, but from tradition, (Nullus inter multos eventus wnus est. Quod apud multos unum invenitur, non est erratum, sed traditum.)”

192. We conclude, then, after hearing all these voices of the second century in its second half, that, not to fall into absurdity, we must recognise, with all simplicity, the fact, (otherwise manifest on so many other grounds,) the only fact which furnishes a satisfactory reason — namely, that all the homologoumena were already collected before St John’s death, and that the Christians of the second century only held them so firmly because their predecessors had received them from the apostles.

And thus we conclude that the testimony of the latter half of the second century is sufficient of itself to establish the historic certainty of the first canon; that is to say, the incontestable apostolic authenticity of all the sacred books of which it is composed.

These books are, as we have said,⁹⁷ eight-ninths of the New Testament; but since almost the whole body of these historic proofs apply (as we shall immediately see) to two other books, which, Eusebius says, were always uncontroverted for the two first centuries of the Church, it results that our proofs attest, by the voice of history alone, the authenticity of thirty-five thirty-sixths of the New Testament.

Yet we shall furnish fresh proofs; for our records mount higher, and give us witnesses of the first half of the second century, or even of the last years of the first. These latter join hands with the apostolic fathers, who saw with their own eyes the messengers of the Lord; and these fathers, in their turn, join hands with the apostles, who speak to us sometimes themselves of some of an writings of the New Testament.

However, before hearing the writers of the first half of the second century, it will be desirable to examine more closely that very remarkable record which we owe to the researches of Muratori, for it seems to take its proper place between the first and second half of the second century.

1) This martyrdom is, however, not perfectly certain.

2) Edit. of Baluze. 1663. P. 328.

3) Hist. Hccles., i, 5, cap. 19, 20. Iren., Adv. Hæres., iii, 3.

4) The most striking passages of the fathers on each of the books of the canon may be found in great number in the valuable collection of Kirchhofer in his work, entitled, Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Canons bis auf Hieronymus. Zurich, 1842, See especially pp. 17-29.

5) These three leaders of three heretical sects, bearing respectively their names, taught in Rome during the second half of the second century.

6) These different expressions will be met with later, and we shall point out the place.

7) These dates are taken from a very able dissertation on Tertullian, from which an extract will be found at the head of his Apologeticus. (Giry’s translation. Amster., 1712.) The imaginary dates of Pamelius and Baronius are there refuted.

8) We speak here only of the first canon; about which we would say with Kirchhofer, (p. 263, Quellensammlung, Zurich, 1842,) that he cites equally all the canonical books of the New Testament, excepting (as this author says) only three allusions, more or less disputable, are found to the Epistle of James.

9) Adv. Marcion., lib. v., cap. 42.

10) Prop. 122.

11) Cap. xxxvi. . Opera, ed. Leopold, Lips., 1841. Pars. iii., p. 25.

12) Cap. xi, p. 532 of the edition of Bale, 1515, ed. Leopold, Lips., 1841. Pars. ii., p. 128.

13) He employs this term, the New Testament, many times elsewhere, to designate the canon. Thus Ad. Praxean, cap. xv., p. 508, ed. Rigalt. Paris, 1634. Pars. iv., p. 266, ed. Leopold, Lips., 1841.

14) Cap. xxx., p. 212, ed. Paris, 1629. Pars. iii., p. 21, ed. Leopold, Lips., 1841.

15) Cap. i., p. 38, ed. Paris, 1664.

16) Cap. vi., p. 312, Pars. iv., p. 6, ed. Leopold, Lips., 1841.

17) Cap. xi., p. 505, Pars. iv., p. 259, ed. Leopold, Lips., 1841.

18) Cap. ii, p. 265, Pars. iv., p. 171, ed. Leopold.

19) Adv. Hermog., cap. xxii, p. 241.

20) An allusion to Rev. xxii. 18, 19.

21) Cap. xxii. and cap. viii., Pars. iv., p. 19, ed. Leopold,

22) He speaks in particular of the Stromata, H. E., vi. 13.

23) Script. Eccl, cap. 48, and Ep. ad Magnum, cap. 2.

24) Stromata, i., pp. 339, 340.

25) For this reason the title is in Latin.

26) The best edition of his works is by Potter, Oxford, 1715. 2 vols. folio. [A cheap and useful edition by Klotz, Lips., 1831. 4 vols. 8vo. — TR.]

27) Quellensammlung, &c., p. 22.

28) Adv. Mare., v.42: See also Epiph., Hæres., xlii. 9.

29) Comment. in Ep. ad Philem., prom, (Opp., tom. iv., p. 442.)

30) Hist. Hccl., vi. 14.

31) Strom., iii, cap. 18, § 93, p. 465, ed. Paris, 1629. Vol, il., p. 266, ed. Klotz, Lips., 1831.

32) II., cap. 6, § 29. Vol. ii, p. 141, ed. Klotz,

33) Vol. vii., 16, § 94. Vol. iii., p. 280, ed. Klotz; p. 756, ed. Paris, 1629; p. 890, ed. Potter.

34) Vol. vii., 16, § 95.

35) P. 706, ed. Paris.

36) Vol. vii, 16,§ 101. Vol. iii, p. 286, ed. Klotz; p. 894, ed. Potter.

37) Strom. vii., 16, $ 96. Vol. iii., p. 282, ed. Klotz.

38) Strom., vi., 2, p. 786.

39) Strom., vii., 16, § 96, p. 891. Vol. iii., p. 282, ed. Klotz.

40) Irenæus, Adv. Hæres, i., 242, p.101; iii, 14 and 15, pp. 235, 237. Tertullian, De Prescript., cap. 8, 25. He calls it madness to suppose that the apostles had not revealed the same things to all, but taught certain things in secret to a few, (quaedam secrete et paucis demandasse.)

41) Strom., vii, 11

42) Vol. vii., 16, § 95. Vol. iii, 281, ed. Klotz, Lips., 1832; p. 891, ed. Potter, Oxford, 1715; p. 757, ed. Heinsius, Paris, 1623.

43) Hæres, iii, 3.

44) Hist. Eccl., v., 19, 20.

45) Acts viii. 17, iv. 19.

46) Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., v.,7. See also Irenæus, Hæres, v., 6.

47) See his citations of poets and ancient philosophers, particularly in the nine-tenth chapter of his second book.

48) Or all doctrines. “Omnium doctrinarum curiossissimus explorator,’” — Contra Valentianos, cap. v.

49) Page 8. Grabe, Oxon, 1702.

50) Fragments of his epistle to Victor, in the works of Irenæus, p. 466 of Grabe’s edition, 1702. Vol. ii, p. 457, Harvey’s ed., Cambridge, 1857, (xxviii. of the Syriac Fragments.)

51) We generally cite Grabe’s edition, Oxford, 1702. Others prefer the Benedictine, which appeared ten years later. [The latest and best is that issued from the Cambridge University press, and edited by the Rev. W. Wigan Harvey, 1857, 2 vols. 8vo. It contains the fragments of the Syriac and Armenian versions, and additions to the Greek text from Hippolytus; with a preliminary dissertation on the Gnostic system, and an account of the life and writings of Irenæus, by the editor. — TR.]

52) We translate them from the obscure and ancient Latin version, for here the Greek original only offers a few disjointed fragments.

53) Or counted worthy, (κατᾶξιωθέντες.) The same expression is found in Luke xx. 35, xxi. 36.

54) “Verbum ejus.”

55) “Obliviscetur.”

56) Lib. v.,¢. xxxvi. Tom. ii., pp. 428, 429, ed. Harvey, 1857.

57) Lib. iii, c. xi, § 7. Tom. ii, p. 38. In the Benedictine edition this is the ninth chapter.

58) Æchtheit, d. 4 Ev., § 272,

59) Chapter ix. of Book iii. in the Benedictine edition, but chap. xi. in Grabe’s, pp. 214, 221. Tom. ii, p. 47, ed. Harvey.

60) P, 223, ed. Grabe. Tom. ii., p. 50, ed. Harvey.

61) The Ebionites, Marcion, Marcus, and Valentine.

62) See above, Prop. 178.

63) Præf, in Irenæum.

64) Cap. xiv., p. 422, ed. Grabe, 1702. Tom. ii., p. 263, ed. Harvey.

65) Chapter xii. in the Benedictine edition, and xxvi. in Grabe’s, [chap. xxiii., ed. Harvey. Tom. ii, p. 178.]

66) Tom. ii., p. 2, ed. Harvey.

67) Lib. iv., c. 69; Grabe, p. 368. Tom. ii, p. 276, ed. Harvey.

68) Lib. ii, cap. 47, p. 173; Grabe, c. 41; ed. Harvey, tom. i., p. 349.

69) III., 5; ii, 28; iii, 11; iii, 21; ii, 30; iii 19; i, 10; ii, 13; ii, 16; iii, 12. Paris, 1710.

70) III., 25, p. 256, Grabe. Tom. ii., p. 115, ed. Harvey.

71) III., 11, p. 213. Tom, ii, p. 41, ed. Harvey.

72) III., 2, pp. 199, 200. Tom. ii, p. 7, ed. Harvey.

73) III., 25, p. 256, Grabe. Tom, ii., p. 115, ed. Harvey.

74) Divine Rule of Faith and Practice. London, 1853. Vol. i, p. 68; also, vol, iii., pp. 23, 26.

75) See above, Prop. 180.

76) III., ii., p. 200, Grabe. Tom, ii, p. 8, ed. Harvey.

77) III. and iv., pp. 200, 205, ed. Oxon., 1706. Tom. ii., pp. 8, 15, ed. Harvey.

78) “Pari pietatis et reverentix affectu.” — Session 4, first decree.

79) Ibid., second decree, 28th April 1546.

80) See Prop. 180.

81) Cap. xlvii., p. 173, ed. Oxon., 1702. Tom. i. p. 349, ed. Harvey.

82) V., 14, p. 422. Tom. ii., p. 363, ed. Harvey.

83) II., 47. Tom. i., p. 352, ed. Harvey.

84) I., 1,§ 15, p. 35. Tom. i, p. 66, ed. Harvey.

85) Hist. Eccl., v., 16, p. 228. Ed, Reading, vol. i.

86) Pp. 61, 62.

87) These are the words of Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 54, and 2 Cor. v. 10.

88) In a letter to Algasius, (tom. iv., p. 197; Bale, 1537.) See his Prooemium in Matthaeum.

89) Lib. iii, p. 126,

90) Ad Autolycum, lib. iii, p. 126. “Divina Sapientia,” (at least in the Latin version.)

91) Lib. ii, p. 100,

92) Some have placed the Acts at the end of the epistles, and some others have placed the catholic epistles before St Paul’s thirteen; but the latter have always in other respects, like the four evangelists, preserved their respective order.

93) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., v., 23. See what he says of Irenæus, of Polycrates, of Palmas, of Victor, of Bachyllus.

94) See Socrates, Hist. Eccl., v., 22. This controversy did not terminate till thirty-five years later, at the Council of Nice,

95) See the learned work recently published on this subject by M. L. Durand at Brussels, 1859.

96) De Praescript. Haereticor., cap. xxviii.

97) Prop, 26.