GENERAL FACTS.

321. IF the twenty scriptures of the first canon, as soon as they appeared, were received as divine by all the churches of Christendom, and if the two books which compose the second-first were, at first, universally admitted, it was not so with the five small late epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude. Accepted by “a great number,” says Eusebius, they were not universally accepted, because sent to Christian people just at the moment when their authors were about to disappear by death, and, moreover, addressed to the whole body of believers, they had not the same advantages as the greater part of the other apostolic writings for being at once universally received. For this purpose there was wanting either the personal influence and presence of the sacred writers, or the immediate testimony of the men, or of the churches, to whom all the non-catholic epistles were at first addressed. Consequently, we can understand how they were admitted more slowly in certain more distant parts of- the Christian world. While a majority of the churches received these five epistles from the first, as making a part of the Sacred Scriptures, there were always many, during two centuries and a half, who remained in suspense as to the Divine authority of one or other among them; and it was only at the beginning of the fourth century, about the year 325, that these hesitations ceased in all parts of the East and West. It was thus that their universal and absolute adoption into the sacred canon came to be deferred. But this very delay, by attesting at once the liberty and the sacred jealousy of the primitive churches on the subject of the canon, should serve, as we shall soon see, only to render our confidence more entire in the peaceable and final result of this sacred investigation.

322. Origen, at least according to a report of Eusebius, (Hst. Eccl., vi., 25,) said of the two last epistles of John, “that not all Christians received them as authentic, (οὐ πάντες φασὶ γνησίους εἶναι ταύτας;)” and of the Second Epistle of Peter, that “it was called in question, (ἀμφιβάλλεται.)” In like manner, Eusebius, (Hist. Eccl., iii.,'25,) at the beginning of the fourth century, said that the epistles of James and Jude, and tae second of Peter, and the two last of John, were controverted, (ἀντιλεγομέναι,) though, at the same time, acknowledged by a great number, (γνωρίμων δ’ ὅμως τοῖς πολλοῖς.) He says again, “Though controverted, they are yet acknowledged by the greater part of ecclesiastical persons.” And as to the two epistles of James and Jude, he has said, “It is well known that these also are publicly read with the rest of the scriptures, (ὅμως δὲ ἴσμεν καὶ ταύτας μετὰ τῶν λοιπῶν ἐν πλείσταις δεδημοσιωμένας ἐκκλησίαις)”

We have already shewn in our First Book, that all the eleven catalogues of the fourth century which remain to us contain alike the seven catholic epistles, that of Athanasius, and of the anonymous author inserted in his works, (Prop. 67,) of Epiphanius, of Jerome, of Rufinus, of Augustin, of the Council of Laodicea, of the Council of Carthage, of Cyril of Jerusalem, of Gregory of Nazianzus, of Amphilochius, and of Philastrius.

323. If the seven last epistles of the New Testament have from ancient times been called catholic, it is because they were addressed to the general body of Christians, rather than to a particular church or person. It is also, perhaps, because this name, confined at first to the First Epistle of Peter and the first of John, as to books universally received, was afterwards extended to the five later received epistles, when their Divine authority had been generally admitted. But whatever may have been the meaning or the origin of this term, its use to designate the seven epistles which are not Paul’s is of high antiquity. Not only do we find it in Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome, in the fourth century, but in Eusebius at the end of the third, or rather at the entrance of the fourth, in Dionysius of Alexandria before Eusebius, in the middle of the third, and in Origen before Dionysius.

324, We have already stated more than once that the order in which the different books of the New Testament were respectively placed from the most ancient times was constantly that which is observed in our modern Bibles, excepting that the whole of the seven epistles called catholic¹ preceded the collection of Paul’s fourteen epistles. But even then, both in each category were respectively arranged as we see them now. As to the seven catholic epistles, the most ancient collections of the Greeks, as well as our modern Bibles, have always placed them in the following order — first, that of James, then the two of Peter, then the three of John, and, lastly, that of Jude. This order is declared to be the true one by Jerome, who informs us, also, that in his time the Latins, by an indiscreet zeal for Peter, had thought of giving the preference to his epistles over that of James; “but, by the help of God, (Deo nos jwvante,)” he says,² “I have re-established them in the order wisely followed by the Greeks.” This order is founded on their importance and length. Paul, in his Hpistle to the Galatians, (ii. 9,) speaks of “James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars,” and it is in the same order (James, Peter, and John,) that their epistles have been arranged.

It will then be suitable in this review, in which we propose to establish their authenticity, to begin with James.

1) Already from the times of Eusebius, Cyril, and Athanasius. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vi., 14; Athanasius, Epist. Festal; Conc. Laod., 59; Cyril, Catech., iv.

2) Prol. in Epist. Canon. “Non idem ordo apud Graecos qui integre sapiunt et fidem rectam sectantur. Epistolarum septem quae canonicae nuncupantur qui in Latinis codicibus invenitur. Quod quia Petrus primus est in numero apostolorum primae sint etiam ejus epistolae in ordine caeterarum. Sed has proprio ordine, Deo nos juvante, reddidimus. Est enim prima earum una Jacobi, Petri duae, Johannis tres, et Judee una,”