THE DECISIVE ADOPTION OF THE SECOND CANON CONTRARY TO THE NATURAL INCLINATION OF MEN’S MINDS.

600. Fact the Eighth — The hand of God here reveals itself to us by another mark not less evidently providential. We behold it in the long and mysterious work in the conscience of the Church, by means of which the second canon was at last settled. Then you might have heard, after two centuries and a-half of hesitation, all the churches throughout the world which, since the days of the apostles, had received the twenty books of the first canon, at last agree everywhere to adopt with the same unanimity the five small later epistles. And we may, besides, remark, at the same time, in this astonishing agreement, a new feature, well suited to attest the Divine intervention — namely, that this universal and decisive adoption of the second canon was contrary to the natural inclination of men’s minds in all the contemporary churches. For there was then, on the one hand, a most decided opposition between their prejudices and the books they adopted; while, on the other, there were numberless affinities between these very prejudices and the writings they rejected — writings which henceforward were left for ever out of the canon.

601. Duly to appreciate this novel proof, we must look at the phenomenon more closely. Without having been familiar for a very long time with the writers of the primitive Church, we may easily ascertain what influences had the strongest hold on men’s minds during the second and third centuries, and the beginning of the fourth, and, consequently, we are able to point out, among all the writings claiming their religious regard, what those must be, according to all probability, which, before the event, we should believe would be the objects of their choice. Now, what tendencies do you find prevalent at this epoch? An excessive fondness for the marvellous — stories without end of useless miracles — a predominant disposition to seek for allegories, to spiritualise texts and facts, without either measure or taste — most exaggerated notions of the sanctity of saints, and very false notions of their merits — an increasing tendency to exalt the priesthood, bishops especially — an admiration, almost idolatrous, of martyrs — an excessive confidence in the virtue of the sacraments, and particularly of baptism, as if it conferred salvation by the simple act of the priest — a violent reaction against the doctrine of the millennium and the personal reign of Jesus Christ — an antipathy to the Jews, and a constant disposition to apply the glorious promises which relate to Israel only to the Gentiles, by forced. spiritualisations — the representation of departed believers as if they were already in glory — fantastic imaginations regarding the blessed Virgin, her miracles, her present dignity, and her future glory — prayers addressed, not yet undoubtedly to the dead to intercede with God, but to God to save the dead — extreme respect for celibacy — commendation of conventual or solitary life — of expiatory mortifications — of will-worship, (ἐθελοθρησκεία) — and of all those observances of human invention which have, as the apostle says, “a show of wisdom,” (Col. ii. 23,) but which can only lead souls astray.

602. Now, of all these false notions there is not one word in the five epistles which at last were then universally acknowledged as canonical; but there is an abundance of these same notions in almost all the ecclesiastical books which were at the same period rejected for ever from the canon by all the churches of Christendom. Yet was there not reason, humanly speaking, to have expected quite the contrary? Was there not reason to believe that the five epistles, all of them so little favourable to these errors, would be so much the more rejected exactly at this epoch, because these errors had obtained great credit among the already corrupted churches of the East and the West? Was there not reason for imagining that ecclesiastical books would be seen to grow in favour in proportion as the false notions they recommended grew also in favour in the Church? And yet, this is exactly the reverse of all that has actually happened!

603. In the five epistles there is no legend, no puerility, not a word about the virtues of the Virgin Mary, about her miracles, or even her person. We find nothing about salvation obtained by baptism, (which, indeed, is not once named;) nothing about the privileges of the bishops; nothing about the least priority of one to another, unless, perhaps, that which Diotrephus aimed at, for which he is so severely condemned by the apostle John; nothing either to exalt angels. And even, to speak at the same time of the second-first canon, while there had been so much opposition in the East to the doctrine of the millennium taught in the Apocalypse, and in the West, to the doctrine of the Novatians, which was erroneously believed to be favoured by the Epistle to the Hebrews; yet exactly at this epoch there was a readiness among all the churches everywhere to receive this epistle and the Apocalypse, as making a part of the sacred oracles.

604. It was thus, then, that, under the providence of God, the canon was consolidated, in spite of the prejudices and tendencies of the contemporaneous Church; and it was thus, also, that the uninspired books were everywhere set aside, in spite of all their conformity to the false notions which were beginning to spread more and more among almost all the churches of Christendom.

605. And let it be well observed that, towards the commencement of the fourth century, at the epoch when the final effort was made in the Church to complete the canon, an important circumstance aggravated the danger, if she had not been protected, of introducing uninspired books with the five still controverted epistles. Only for a short time past the dangerous custom had begun of reading in some public services certain apocryphal books of the Old Testament; and something of the same kind also was done for some of the ecclesiastical books which formed an appendage to the New Testament, as the Apocrypha had been to the Old.

Jerome states,¹ that it was only from the fourth century that these books began to be read in churches; “not,” he says, “to establish doctrines, but only for edification.” And Augustin tells us,² that they (particularly Judith, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus,) were read to catechumens; but by inferior officers, and from a seat less elevated than that from which the priests and bishops read the canonical Scriptures. And Jerome informs us, about the epistle attributed to Barnabas, “that it was read in some churches with the apocryphal scriptures;”³ and he says the same of the epistle of Clement.⁴

Here, let us say, was the danger. For if it resulted from this abuse, in reference to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, that their very heresies caused them to be received at a later period by the Latin Church as canonical, (particularly for what they contain in favour of prayers for the dead, of justification, not by faith, but by works, and of the perfection attainable in the present life, &c.,) is it not very remarkable, when we compare the analogous errors with the wise moderation which the five epistles are able to maintain on these very points — is it not very wonderful that these errors have not had the same effect as to the Apocrypha of the New Testament, and that they have not been added, rather than the five controverted epistles, when the decisive acceptance of the antilegomena was accomplished,

Why, for example, when a separation was made between the different books, were the five epistles assigned plainly, universally, and decisively to the canon, while all the rest have been either rejected among the spurious (νόθους) books, such as the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas,⁵ or left among the uninspired books, (οὐκ ἐνδιαθήκους) as the epistles of Clement, of Ignatius, and of Polycarp?

606. Why, to begin with the most authentic and the most esteemed of the monuments of Christian antiquity, has ‘not the Epistle of Clement of Rome been inserted in the canon, since its author was bishop of Rome, and a companion of Paul;⁶ and Irenaeus⁷ terms it “a most powerful epistle,” (ἱκανωτάτην ’γραφὴν;) Eusebius, “great and wonderful,” (μεγάλη τε καὶ θανμασία;) and says that, as Jerome asserts, it was read in some churches?⁸

In the midst of its real excellences, it had, nevertheless, in its favour many of those marks of error which the fathers cite with pleasure, and which might seem to make it more welcome to the churches of the fourth centuries than the Scriptures of the second canon; for example, his fable of the phœnix, (chap. xxv.,) to which the fathers are fond of alluding as a proof of the resurrection;⁹ or his assertion, also often cited,¹⁰ “that the ocean is impassable (ἀπέραντος) by men, but that there are other worlds beyond it,” (chap. xx.;) or, again, “that the saints have already entered into the place of glory that is their due.” (chap v.)¹¹

607. Why, also, has not the Epistle of Barnabas been inserted in the canon? For, though manifestly spurious, as the most eminent critics of our day are convinced, (Hug, Ullman, Neander, Mynster Winer, and Hefele,)¹² yet, bearing the name of an apostle and a prophet, it is cited seven times by Clement of Alexandria, (who is indeed the first to mention it;) it is cited twice by Origen, who calls it ; καθολικήν: it is cited by Eusebius, who ranks it sometimes among the spurious (νόθους) books, sometimes among the controverted, (ἀντῖλεγομένους:) it is cited by Jerome, who attests, as we have said, that it-was read with the Apocrypha. But yet — what should have above all recommended it to the human tendencies of the doctors of the third and fourth centuries — it abounds in forced allegories, rhetorical exaggerations, unsuitable types, ignorant accusations against the Jewish rites and the economy of the Old Testament, (chaps. vii, viii.) In all these respects it was certainly far more in accordance with the spirit and taste of the age than the five epistles of the second canon.

608. Why, again, have not the epistles of Ignatius, the hearer of St John, the successor of Peter at Antioch, the θεοφόρος, been in scribed in the canon, at least the three of which the ancient Syriac version was discovered by Dr Cureton in 1845? for they are cited in the second century even by Polycarp¹³ and by Irenaeus.¹⁴ Ignatius underwent his glorious death only three or four years after the disciple whom Jesus loved; and many traits in his letter, particularly his longing for martyrdom, and his extravagant opinions on the episcopate, (if at least they existed in the copies of that age,) would render them much more acceptable to men of the fourth century than the five controverted epistles.

609. Why, lastly, should not the book of Hermas, who is supposed to be the friend mentioned by St Paul in Rom. xvi. 14, be admitted? — the book which the early fathers, Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, cite so often, calling it the scripture,¹⁵ and of which Origen goes so far as to say that he holds it to be very useful, and inspired.¹⁶ Its doctrine of an election founded on the prevision of our works, — his notions respecting the native powers of man, on the Fall, and on repentance, which he seems only to apply to chastity in marriage,¹⁷ and to those who have fallen once after baptism, — all these Pelagian tendencies must have gained him favour in the third and fourth century, especially in the East, where, Jerome¹⁸ tells us, he was in great repute, while almost unknown among the Latins.

610. Let us here hail the hand of God, which shews itself through the cloud. Certainly this mysterious operation of the decisive completion of the canon in all the churches of Christendom could not have been effected by the mind of man alone, since, as we have seen, it proceeded in a direction contrary to his feelings, contrary to his errors and the tendencies of the age; and since we have seen everywhere the choice of the Church pronounced without noise, constraint, or dispute, in a uniform manner, as under the control of an invisible Power, between the canonical books and those which were not such. Everywhere it received with firmness as divine, books unfavourable to human inclinations, and everywhere rejected as uninspired those which flattered them most, — those which contained the germ of heresies, towards which the Church itself was soon strongly attracted from day to day. Whence, then, came this choice, everywhere without constraint, without conceit, and yet without exception? Whence this secret impulse, contrary to the natural impulses of mankind c Whence this counteracting principle? The testimonies of past ‘times appeared to them, no doubt, powerful and decisive; but there must necessarily have been also a divine agency to bring about a result so general and so decisive, — to attach for ever to the canon the five scriptures which man had so long hesitated to receive, and to reject for ever uninspired books: which had too incautiously been admitted in different places to the public anagnosis. How will you explain all this, without admitting the operation of the Almighty Spirit? How otherwise will you explain the repression, as to this one fact, of that spirit of error which had already insinuated itself into almost all the churches, and which was about soon to commit such ravages among the decaying churches both in the East and the West? Let this eighth fact, then, lead us to acknowledge that the canon came from God, and that it is indeed He who guards it.

1) Praef. in Libr. Solomon. Opp., tom. i., pp. 938, 939.

2) De Praedest. Sanctor., lib. i., cap. xiv. Cosin, History of the Canon, p. 106.

3) Catal. Script. Eccles., c. vi. “Inter scripturas apocryphas legitur.”

4) Ibid., c. xv.

5) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii., 23.

6) Philippians iv. 3.

7) Haeres., iii, 3; ed. Harvey, ii., 10; “Potentissimas literas.” (Latin version.) “Einen sehr grundlichen Brief,” Stroth.

8) Hist. Eccl., iii, 16.

9) Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. xviii., cap. 8; Tertullian, De Resurr., cap. xiii.

10) Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, v.,12; Origen on Ezekiel, ch. 18; De Principiis, ii., cap. 6, § 6; Jerome, in Epist. ad Ephes., ii., 2.

11) Whereas no part of Scripture places God’s elect in glory before the return of Jesus Christ and the great day of the resurrection.

12) See Das Sendschreiben des Ap. Barnabas, 1840, pp. 147 to 195; and Patrum. Apost. Opera, Hefele, Proleg., p. 11. Tubingen, 1847.

13) Chaps. vii. and viii.:

14) Adv. Heres., v., 26; Eusebius. Hist. Eccl., iii., 36.

15) Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., iv., 34.

16) In Ep. ad Rom. xvi. 14. Yet elsewhere he says, (Homil. xxv., in Lucam ix, 58,) “Si tamen alicui placet hujusmodi Scripturam recipere.”

17) Lib. ii, caps. 1-4.

18) Catalog., cap. x. The manuscript discovered by Tischendorf in one of the convents of Cairo contains, at the end of the New Testament, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas.