THE SECOND-FIRST CANON.

268. THE greater part of the proofs which, in the foregoing pages, have established on so powerful an assemblage of facts the authenticity of the twenty-first homologoumena, argue equally in favour of the twenty-first and the twenty-second, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse.

Above all, these two books have in their favour that great proof which surpasses all others, — the wonderful unanimity of all the churches during the two first centuries, setting out from the days of the apostles. We cannot cite from the literary history of all ages, as we have said, a single example of a legitimacy so powerfully demonstrated, or even one which makes a distant approach to it.

Having been admitted without opposition, from their first appearance, both in the East and West, they have a right, on this ground, to take their place in the first canon. But we have thought it more convenient not to class them with either the first or the second, and to reserve them a place apart; because, though they never ceased to be received, the one in the East, and the other in the West, yet, since the beginning of the third century, they were disputed for rather a long time, the one in the West, the other in the East.

But we must treat them with more exactness, and begin with the Apocalypse.