THIRTY-SIX PROPOSITIONS TRANSFERRED HERE, AND RESERVED FOR THE END OF THE VOLUME,

SECTION FIRST.

HISTORY OF THE APOCRYPHA TO THE TIME OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

484. THE universal Church of the second, third, and fourth centuries, as we shall soon shew, had never ceased to receive the Old Testament, such as the Jews gave them to us, and carefully distinguished the apocryphal from the canonical books, when God raised up among the Latins a great light in the person of Jerome. This illustrious doctor, born in 331, was to be, during eleven centuries — to the time of the Council of Trent — their counsellor and guide in the study of the Scriptures. He had, in fact, recalled them, more than any other person, to the pure sources of the biblical Word, and had translated for them, for the first time, the Old Testament according to the original Hebrew,¹ thus giving them that famous version which they named the Vulgate, and which at a later period they declared to be canonical in all its parts. Jerome indeed has enjoyed such credit in the Church of Rome, that, in her Breviary, she thanks God “for having raised up in His Church this blessed and illustrious doctor for the exposition of the Holy Scriptures,” so that, in our day, every year, on the 30th of September, all the priests of the Papacy, from one end of the world to the other, are bound to repeat this prayer in Latin — “Deus, qui Ecclesiae tuae tn exponendis Sacris Scripturis beatum Hieronymum doctorem maximum providere dignatus es . . . .”²

And it was in the same spirit that, to the time of the Council of Trent, the Church of Rome, even in the sixteenth century, had never ceased to place the Prefaces of Jerome at the head of all her editions of the Bible, and even a very short time before the Council, all these prefaces declared that Christians ought carefully to distinguish the canonical books from the apocryphal. See, for example, that of Birckman, at Antwerp, (1526,) the literal version of the Bible, published at Lyons by the Dominican Sanctes Pagnini, (1528,) and that which Robert Stephens gave in his edition of Vatablus, (1545.)

485. But what do we see from the time of the Council of Trent? Everything has so changed in relation to Jerome in the Church of Rome that, though this father could declare in the fourth century that he rejected the history of Susanna and the Song of — the Three Hebrew Children, and that he regarded the History of Bel and the Dragon as a fable; and though, nevertheless, he has been for eleven centuries in the Church of Rome not only, as the Breviary says, one of the greatest doctors, (doctor maximus,) but one of the saints in Paradise who are to be invoked, yet the anathema was pronounced there, April 15, 1546, against whoever should speak of the eleven apocryphal scriptures as he has spoken of them.

And yet the testimony of this father on those eleven apocryphal books is so abundant, and, at the same time, so very explicit, that, to escape from it, the defenders of the council have felt themselves obliged to have recourse to the most pitiful evasions.

“This father,” says the famous bishop Catherin, “did not mean to give us his own opinion so much as that of the Jews.” Whoever has read Jerome will appreciate this paltry subterfuge.³

“He varies,” says the Jesuit Gretser, “as to the number of the books, and is not logical.” He is very logical.

“When he was induced to put this stumbling-block in the way by his intercourse with the Jews of Palestine,” says the Cardinal du Perron, “he was not in the maturity of his studies.” He was fifty-seven when he went to settle in Palestine; he was seventy-eight when he wrote his decision against the books” of Susanna, the Three Hebrew Children and Bel; he was eighty-seven when he wrote his decision against Baruch.⁴

“He was mistaken,” says the same Du Perron, “regarding the Epistle to the Hebrews.” He made no mistake whatever. On the contrary, we are indebted to him for bringing the Roman Church back from its error. “Nos et Apocalypsin et Epistolam Pauli ad Hebraeos recipimus,” he says in his Epistle to Dardanus.

“Better instructed afterwards in the judgment of the Church, Jerome retracted his own,” says Du Perron again. This is equally false.

“It is manifest that the authority of Jerome is not of great weight in this controversy,” M. Malon, the present Bishop of Bruges, has lately said. “He at first expressed,” the same writer adds,⁵ “an opinion contrary to the belief of the Church; and when he was accused of abandoning the tradition of the apostles, he disavowed the doctrine charged upon him — he repudiated the canon of the Jews.” On this Dr Wordsworth properly remarks, “M. Malon refers to the second apology of Jerome against Rufinus to sustain this unwarrantable assertion; but after most carefully reading this writing of Jerome, I confidently reply, that he retracts nothing!”⁶

Lastly, other modern doctors, such as the celebrated M. Perrone, now head of the College of the Jesuits at Rome, and others besides, after having sought for different evasions, have seen no other refuge but the unfortunate theory of “development,” employed by Dr Manning.

“The canon of the Old Testament,” says M. Perrone, not having been completed by the Church in the fourth century, the apocryphal books were not canonised, (canonict neqguaquam erant.)”⁷

According to this system, a book is from God in the sixteenth century which had never been so to Israel to the time of Jesus Christ, and which had not been so to the Christian Church for fourteen centuries after Him, This would be a new transubstantiation under always the same species of a book in which nothing visible was changed!

486. Of sixteen writings which Jerome rejects as apocryphal, and we reject with him, Rome admits ELEVEN as Divine, (cum unus Deus sit auctor.)

They are, first of all, the seven following books: — Tobit, Judith, First and Second of Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch; then three separate Greek fragments, added to the Hebrew canonical text of Daniel, (The Song of the Hebrew Children, the History of Susanna, The History of Bel;) then, seven chapters in Greek added to the Hebrew text of Esther.

After the catalogue of the sacred books was enlarged by these eleven apocryphal writings, the council added this anathema: “And if any one do not receive as sacred and canonical these books entire with all their parts, according as it has been customary to read them in the universal Church, and as they are found in the ancient edition of the Latin Vulgate; and if he despise, knowingly and intentionally, the above-named tradition — LET HIM BE ANATHEMA!”⁸

487. When the fifty⁹ ecclesiastics assembled at Trent, April 8, 1546, dared to issue such a decree, which for the first time placed the apocryphal books on a level with the Scriptures of God, they not only belied the only true depositories of His Divine Oracles, “they fabricated at their pleasure,” says Bishop Cosin, (in his excellent work on the canon,)¹⁰ “a new article of faith, of which neither the other churches of Christendom nor their own church had ever heard spoken of before; and they created in the universal Church a deeper schism than the wickedness of men had ever produced.”

They proceeded even to the length of excluding all those, who like Jesus Christ and His apostles, like the ancient fathers, like the author of their Vulgate, like the whole existing Church of the East, more ancient than their own, refused to attribute to the apocryphal books the same authority as to the writings of Moses and the Prophets. So that their canon is no longer that of the Hebrew nation, nor of Jesus Christ, nor of the universal primitive Church, nor even that of the ancient Latin Church for 1500 years. “It is the canon of the Jesuits, or the new canon of the Council of Trent.

And it is thus, then, by leaving to the wandering of their own thoughts, men whose pretensions rose to the height of proclaiming themselves the sole interpreters of His Sacred Word, God, by a most righteous judgment, has permitted that they, alone of all the sects of Christendom, have by a solemn decree foisted eleven human uninspired books into His Sacred Oracles! And this nineteen hundred years after the era when every prophet, waiting for the Messiah, had disappeared from the midst of Israel!

488. But more than this. This act will appear more astonishing, if possible, when the profane levity with which it was consummated is taken into account. It was a surprisal, a coup d'état of the Church of Rome, resembling that which has taken place in our own days, when the new dogma respecting the Virgin Mary was fabricated. Perhaps it would be right to say that the dogma of 1546 was framed in the Council of Trent with a greater contempt of the Church and its rights, than that with which Pius IX. is reproached for throwing from the Vatican, on what he calls “the universal Church,” his doctrine of an Immaculate Conception by the Saviour’s grandmother. We shall not here speak of the intrigues which for a long time eluded, and at last prepared and governed the council. History sufficiently asserts them. We wish only to call to mind the nature of the sittings from which this — decree issued.

When the Pope, in 1545, had sent his three legates to Trent, they found on their arrival no one there, excepting the bishop of the place, and, a few days after, three Italian bishops. Two months passed away before they were recruited by twenty other prelates, the greater part also Italians; so that, ashamed to open with so small a company a universal council which Europe believed to be destined to reform the Church “in its chief and in its members,” they persuaded the Pope to adjourn it for eight months. A pension of twenty ducats was allowed to each of those bishops who were poor, to keep them from growing impatient. But in December, they found their number increased to forty-three, and opened this council, called oecumenical, which was about to add so many new doctrines to the dogmas already professed, to change the canon, to set unwritten traditions on a level with the oracles of the living God, and probably close for ever the era of councils.

The Council of Chalcedon, when, in 451, it sanctioned the decrees of Laodicea, and in so doing refuted the Apocrypha, was composed of six hundred and thirty bishops;¹¹ but at Trent, when the last of the councils was opened, there were only, besides the Pope’s three legates and the bishop of the place, four archbishops, twenty-eight bishops, three abbots, and four generals of orders. And further, two of these archbishops, Olaüs the Goth, and Robert of Scotland, were mere nominal bishops, pensioners of the Pope, and sent to make up the number.

The first and the second session (December 12 and January 7) were devoted only to preliminaries; on the third (February 4) the Nicene Creed was recited; but on the fourth (April 8) the anathemas began, and it closed, after four different opinions had been proposed, by cursing the Christians who would not receive their new canon of the Scriptures, and who would not set on the same level (pari pietatis affectu et reverentia) the indefinite body of unwritten traditions, (tanquam vel ore tenus a Christo, vel a Spiritu Sancti dictatas.)

Such, then, was the decision adopted in the name of the Universal Church by the majority of these forty-five ecclesiastics, and a very small number of persons who arrived after the opening of the council. “And so,” says Bishop Cosin, “while they could not find either father or council, scholar or writer who in former ages had ever spoken like themselves, they decided to pass a decree so vainly called oecumenical. In fact, of the Greek Church there was not a single member; from England no one, (Richard Pates had not arrived;) from the Helvetic or German Churches, no one; from France itself at most only two prelates; from Spain, five; from Illyria, one. All the rest were Italians;¹² and even many among them pensioners of the Pope, bishops of small places sent to vote with the legates, and very ignorant.¹³ . . . So that, supposing each of them a representative of the people and of the clergy, by whom he might pretend to be sent, we may say with truth, that this convention did not represent the” thousandeth part of Christendom.”

SECTION SECOND

UNANIMITY OF THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH AGAINST THE DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

489. We are going to shew with what unanimity the testimony of the whole Church was raised against the admission of the Apocrypha; but many other reasons relating to these books ought to have deterred the council from placing them on a level with the oracles of God. We do not wish to explain them at large, and shall content ourselves with indicating them here very rapidly: —

(1.) While all the books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew,¹⁴ the apocryphal books are only in Greek.

(2.) In the drama of Susanna we meet with instances of playing upon words which have no value or meaning, excepting in Greek, and which absolutely could not be imagined or employed but in a country where the Greek was the vernacular language. (Vers. 55 and 58.)

(3.) All these books were composed after the spirit of prophecy had entirely ceased in Israel.

(4.) Many learned men (as Moldenhauer) have given very strong reasons for believing that some of the apocryphal books, such as Tobit, the Fourth book of Esdras, and, perhaps, Wisdom, are posterior even to the birth of Jesus Christ.¹⁵

(5.) None of their authors directly pretend to inspiration, excepting that of the book of Wisdom, who, while calling himself Solomon, discloses his imposture by citing many passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah, and representing his contemporaries as already subject to their enemies, (ix. 7, 8; xv. 14; compare 1 Kings iv. 20-25.)

(6.) Very far from pretending to be inspired, many profess not to be so. (See the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus; 1 Mace. iv. 46, and xi. 27; 2 Mace. ii. 23, and xv. 38.)

(7.) No part of the Apocrypha is found quoted by Jesus Christ, or by any apostle¹⁶

(8.) Neither Philo nor Josephus cites them; while, on the contrary, the testimony of Josephus, alleged by Eusebius,¹⁷ and cited by us,¹⁸ is most decisive on the fixation of the inspired books, and on the totally uninspired character of other Jewish writings.

(9.) The apocryphal books contain many fables, opposed both to historic truth and to the Holy Scriptures. See Bel and the Dragon, the History of Tobit, &. (Compare 2 Mace. i. 18 with Ezra iii. 2, 3; and 2 Mace. iii. 5-8 with Jer. iii. 16.)

(10.) The first and second books of Maccabees contradict one another. In the one, Antiochus Epiphanes died at Babylon, (1 Mace. vi. 16;) in the other, he is killed and beheaded by the Persian priests in the temple of Nanea, (2 Mace. i. 14-16, &c.;) then, afterwards, (ix. 28,) he is said to have died “in a strange land, in the mountains.” The second book is evidently very inferior to the first.

(11.) These same books commend in many passages immoral acts. We may see examples more than sufficient in the preface placed at the head of the Apocrypha, in the excellent French Bible of Des Marets.

490. “After having made an exact and complete review of all ‘the Church has professed in all ages and in all countries relating to the canon of the Old Testament,” says Bishop Cosin, “I conclude that the voice of all ages and of all portions of the people of God bear testimony against the decree of the Council of Trent.”¹⁹

Fully to appreciate the force of this historical testimony, we must follow the author from age to age, and from country to country. He passes under review — In Palestine and Syria, Justin Martyr,²⁰ Eusebius,²¹ Jerome,²² and John of Damascus.²³ In the apostolic churches of Asia Minor, Melito,²⁴ Polycrates,²⁵ and Onesimus. In Phrygia, Cappadocia, Lycaonia, and Cyprus, the Council of Laodicea,²⁶ St Basil the Great,²⁷ Amphilochius,²⁸ and Epiphanius.²⁹ In Egypt, Clement of Alexandria,³⁰ Origen,³¹ and the great Athanasius³² In the churches of Africa, Julius Africanus,³³ Tertullian,³⁴ the great Augustin,³⁵ the Couueil of Carthage,³⁶ Junelius,³⁷ and Primasius.³⁸ In each of the five Patriarchates, Cyril of Jerusalem,³⁹ Gregory of Nazianzus,⁴⁰ Chrysostom of Constantinople,⁴¹ Anastasius of Antioch,⁴² Pope Gregory, called the Great,⁴³ Nicephorus of Constantinople,⁴⁴ and the celebrated Balsamon, named Patriarch of Antioch.⁴⁵ In Greece, Dionysius, Antiochus, Adrian, Leontius, Zonaras, Philip, and Callistus. In Italy, Philastrius,⁴⁶ Ruffinus,⁴⁷ Cassiodorus,⁴⁸ Antoninus,⁴⁹ John Picus de Mirandola,⁵⁰ and Cardinal Cajetan.⁵¹ In Spain, Isidore of Seville,⁵² Cardinal Hugo,⁵³ Paul de Burgos,⁵⁴ at first Bishop of Carthagena; Alphonsus Tostatus,⁵⁵ and the celebrated Cardinal Ximenes,⁵⁶ so renowned for his Polyglott Bible and his biblical researches. In France, Hilary of Poictiers,⁵⁷ the theologians of Marseilles,⁵⁸ Victorinus of Poictiers, the bishops of Charlemagne, Agobard of Lyons,⁵⁹ Radulph of Flavigny, Honorius of Autun, Peter of Cluny, Hugo and Richard of St Victor at Paris, John Beleth, Peter de Cell, Hervaeus Natalis of Brittany, James Le Fevre d’Etaples, and Jodochus Clichtoveus⁶⁰ In Germany and in the Low Countries, the Archbishop of Mentz, Raban Maurus, Walafrid Strabo the Benedictine, the monk Herman Contractus, Ado Archbishop of Vienne; Rupert de Tuits, the famous ordinary and interlineary gloss on the Bible, (Praef. de Libr. Canon;) the gloss on the Canon Law by John Semeca, (Dist. 16;) Nicolas de Lyra,⁶¹ Dionysius à Ryckel, the Carthusian; the celebrated Erasmus,⁶² John Driedo of Louvaine,⁶³ and John Ferus,⁶⁴ died at Mentz in 1554, nine years after the opening of the Council of Trent. Lastly, in England, the venerable Bede,⁶⁵ Alcuin, the companion of Charlemagne;⁶⁶ Giselbert, John of Salisbury, Brito, (the commentator on Jerome’s Prologue;) William Occam,⁶⁷ Thomas Anglicus, or Thomas Walden,⁶⁸ sent to the Council of Constance.;

All these witnesses, of whom a great number are saints canonised by the Church of Rome, however carried away they may have been on other points by the errors of their age, are unanimous on this — that is to say, in distinguishing the apocryphal books from the oracles of God, or rejecting them entirely.

491. But in order that some voices from this cloud of witnesses may be more distinctly heard, and to shew more clearly by what new and sudden lapse the Church of Rome, aggravating her schism, has continued to depart from the truth, we will shew the unanimity of the authors who spoke within her pale even at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and at the near approach of the Council of Trent.

(a.) From 1502 to 1517, Francis Ximenes, cardinal, archbishop of Toledo, grand, inquisitor, founder of the university of Alcala, confessor to the queen, and governor of Castile, edited the celebrated Polyglott Bible which bears his name. Now the very preface of this great work warns the readers, “that the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the Maccabees, as well as the additions to Esther and Daniel, are not canonical scriptures.” All those persons who agreed with the great Cardinal Ximenes were thought fit to be anathematised thirty years after by the council. .

(b.) In 1506, about the same time, the Vulgate was published, with the commentary of Lyra, and the ordinary gloss, at Bale. Now, the preface of this Bible takes care to establish a difference between the twenty-two books of our ancient canon and those which are added in the new, as a difference between what is certain and what is doubtful. It goes even so far as to tax, not only with carelessness and ignorance, but with folly, those who believe that all these books are worthy of equal veneration, because they see them printed in the same volume as the Bible.

(c.) In 1510, the famous John Picus, Count of Mirandola, was living, “that man so distinguished,” said Bellarmin, “for his genius and learning.”⁶⁹ He says, in speaking of the Apocrypha, “Yet I believe that we must firmly adhere to St Jerome’s opinion, by whose authority I have been guided.” “His testimony,” he adds, “is esteemed most sacred by the Church.”⁷⁰

(d.) In 1514, James Le Fevre d’Etaples, doctor of the university of Paris, a man in great repute at that time, says of the apoeryphal books, while holding them in respect, “They are no part of the canon, nor of the first and supreme authority in the Church. (De canone non sunt, et in primâ supremâque Ecclesiae auctoritate.)”

(e.) In 1520, Jodochus Clichtoveus, (Josse Clichtove,) a Sorbonist, and canon of Chartres, in his Commentary on John of Damascus, (lib. iv., cap. 14,) excludes all the apocryphal books from the canon of the Holy Scriptures. “Et non modo ha duo libri,” he says, in speaking of the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, “non numeratt sunt in canone sacrorum librorum, sed etiam Tobias, Judith, et libri Maccabaeorum à numero canontcorum voluminum V. T. sunt exclusi; quaemadmodum testatur Hieronymus.”

(f.) In 1525, Lowis Vives, one of the most learned men of his time, in his commentaries on Augustin’s City of God, rejects, besides the third and fourth books of Esdras, the histories of Bel and of Susanna. Moreover, he also rejects the books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the Maccabees, attributing the first to Philo the Jew;⁷¹ the second to the Son of Sirach, (who lived a hundred years after the last of the prophets;) and, as to the third, “not knowing,” he says,⁷² “whether Jerome has not attributed it to the historian Josephus.”

(g.) In 1526, George of Venice, a friar minor, (cordeler,) in his Harmony of the World, excludes all these books from the canon. (Cant. iii., tom. viil., mod, 12.)

(h.) In 1530, the illustrious Erasmus, at that time of such high repute in the Catholic world, though hated by the monks, in his Exposition of the Apostles” Creed and the Decalogue, (Catech. iv., sub fin.) he speaks of all the apocryphal books as received much later, solely for ecclesiastical use, (in uswm ecclesiasticum.⁷³) He adds, that many attributed the book of Wisdom to Philo. And in his preface to Daniel he is astonished that any one could read in the churches such histories as those of Bel and the Dragon.⁷⁴ “Tt is certainly of importance,” he says elsewhere, “to know what the Church approves, and in what sense it does so, (quid quo animo comprobet Ecclesia.) “For while she attributes an equal authority (parem auctoritatem) to the writings of the Jews, and to the four Gospels, she certainly would not attach the same weight to the books of Judith, Tobit, and Wisdom, as to the Pentateuch of Moses.”⁷⁵

(i) In 1584, the celebrated Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio; Bishop of Gaéta) sent as a legate into Germany by Pope Leo X. to bring back Luther to the Church, was then regarded as a “general oracle,” says his contemporary Strozzi;⁷⁶ “almost all the theologians of the Church of Rome had recourse to him; (ad quem velut commune oraculum seu pro Sacrarum Litterarum involucris. . . . sew pro altioribus theologice mysteriis . . . . confugere solebamus.)”

But Cajetan, on the question of the apocryphal books often expresses the same opinion as ourselves, either in his Commentaries on Thomas Aquinas, or in those he wrote at Rome itself, or very near the Council of Trent, on the Holy Scriptures.⁷⁷

He says, on the first chapter of the Hebrews, “The books that Jerome has handed down to us as canonical, (canonicas tradidit,) we hold to be canonical, and those which he has separated from the canon, (à canone discrevit,) we hold to be out of the canon, (extra canonem habemus.)” But we have already said with what decision Jerome has expressed himself against the Apocrypha. “After Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,” he says on Isaiah xlix. 21, “I have seen no other prophet till John the Baptist!”

Cajetan also says, in his dedicatory epistle to Pope Clement VII.. (at the head of his commentary on the historical books of the Old Testament) — an epistle approved by the Pope — “Most holy father, the whole Latin Church is under the greatest obligations to St Jerome on account of the distinction he has made between the canonical books and the uncanonical. He has delivered us from the OPPROBRIUM which would have rested upon us in the eyes of the Hebrews, (ab Hebreorum opprobio,) of appearing to regard as part of the canon, books and portions of books which the Hebrews enterely want, (quod jingamus nobis antique canons libros aut librorum partes quibus ipst penitus carent.)”

“He says again, on the last chapter of Esther, “'These books are not canonical (non sunt regulares) to confirm the matters of faith, (ad firmandum ea quae sunt fider.”) “But yet,” he adds, in the sense in which Augustin sometimes spoke, “they might be called canonical — that is to say, books serving as a rule (regulares) to be employed for the edification of the farthful.”

It is thus that Jerome had said, (on the books of Solomon, to Chromatius and Heliodorus,) “In the same way as the Church reads the books of the Maccabees, Tobit, and Judith, without receiving them into the number of the canonical writings, so we may treat Ecclesiasticus and the book of Wisdom, reading them for edification, and not to authorise dogmas. (Sic et haec duo volumina legat ad aedificationem plebis, non ad auctoritatem ecclesiasticorum dogmatum confirmandum.)”

Thus, then, it is very evident that, even to the days of Luther and Cajetan, (his opponent on behalf of the Pope,) in 1533 — that is to say, eleven or twelve years before the Council of Trent began, our entire doctrine on the Apocrypha, which is that of the so-called orthodox Catholic Church of the East, was held at Rome as good and orthodox.

Cajetan, “the oracle of the Roman Church,” says Strozzi; Cajetan, “vir swmmi ingenii nec minoris pietatis,” says Bellarmin; Cajetan, “excellentassimè Catholicus,” says Soto; Cajetan, “incomparabilis theologus,” says Sextus of Sienna, — this Cajetan, when he died in 1535, would in all probability, say the historians of the time, have been chosen Pope to succeed Clement VII. But eleven years after Cajetan’s death, the fifty-three ecclesiastics assembled at Trent, issued this decree, “If any one do not receive as holy and canonical these books, with all their parts, such as they are in the Vulgate version — let him be anathema!” Yet we must suppose that these declarations so recent and so explicit of the illustrious cardinal would occasion them some embarrassment. “Therefore,” says Cosin, “Catharin and Canus barked at the dead lion; but neither these two men nor any other person dared write against him on this subject during his life-time, when he was on the spot to answer them. Catharin could bring against him after his death nothing but the uncertain authorities of three popes,” of whom a satisfactory account is given in Proposition 493. But this is not all.

(k.) In 1555, Driedo, a doctor of Louvaine, while Cajetan was dying, was employed to write against Luther, and yet he did not the less acknowledge in his “Four books of Holy Scripture and of Ecclesiastical Dogmas,” dedicated to the King of Portugal, “That the Christian Church, although she reads the apocryphal books with pious regard, because of some holy authors of antiquity who made use of them; though she does not reject them entirely, nor despise them, nevertheless she has not received them as having equal authority. with the canonical books. (Ecclesia tamen Christiana propter auctoritatem veterum quorumdam sanctorum qui leguntur ust fuisse testimoniis ex hujusmodi historiis, eadem qua ii fide legit et non prorsus rejicit nec contemnit, tametsi non part auctoritate recipiat allos libros cum seripturis canonicis.)”⁷⁸

Let this striking testimony against the council, which followed it so closely, be carefully noted. —

(l) In 1540, 1546, John Ferus, of the order of the minor friars, who died in 1554, a learned man and an able preacher, published, a little time after the council was assembled, his work, entitled, “Examination of those who are to be ordained,” and this book, though afterwards inserted in the Index, met with general approbation during the author’s life-time. He never heard of any attack upon it. Now, he had said to his disciples, “These are the apocryphal books — third and fourth of Esdras, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the two books of the Maccabees. All the others are called canonical. (Sunt autem hi libri apocryphi: tertius et quartus Esdrae, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch et Maccabaeorwm labri duo. Omnes alii dicuntur canonici.)” He adds, that “formerly the apocryphal books were not read publicly in the churches, but only at home. (Olim vero in ecclesia, apocryphi publicè non recitabantur; nec quisquam auctoritate eorwm premebatur; sed domi quidem et privatim pro suo cujusque animo fas erat illos legere.)”

492. Thus, then, from this vast “cloud of witnesses” we can draw the following conclusions:- —

(1.) That the reformed religion, as well as the Greek Church, in the rejection of the Apocrypha, has the continued assent through all ages of the universal Church, including even the Latin Church till the time of the Council of Trent. .

(2.) That, since the days of the apostles, this unanimity is founded on the same recognition of the apostolic dogma relating to the canon of the Old Testament. “Proferantur codices Judaeorum,” said all the fathers, with Augustin as well as with Jerome. “Judaei, tanquam capsarii nostri sunt. Studentibus nobis codices portant.” They incessantly repeat, “THE TWENTY-TWO CANONICAL BOOKS OF THE JEWS.”

(3.) If former ages — which never assimilated the apocryphal books entirely to the twenty-two inspired books of the Old Testament — sometimes, influenced by the Septuagint, granted them a place in the public or private readings of the church, as was also permitted to the Acts of the Martyrs, and as even the Anglican Church still does on certain days, according to her liturgy, — if even it had been customary to bind up these uninspired books with the Sacred Volume, at the same time constantly giving notice that they were not held to be divine, it must be acknowledged. that this practice brought forth evil fruits by giving them an ill-defined importance to which they had no title, and by lowering in popular estimation the idea of Divine inspiration.

(4.) That the Bible societies have deserved well of all the churches in making these uninspired books return to their proper position — for by their energetic resolutions, and by their absolute refusal to lend any aid to ecclesiastical associations, which, by mixing the pure and impure together, persisted in giving to these human productions a species of canonisation, they have been the instruments of Divine Providence for bringing them down from their unlawful elevation, and for reinstating the pure Word of God in the place to which it belongs.

(5.) If it is highly detrimental to the adoration due to God alone, that the Roman Pontiffs canonise men and women that they may be invoked, it is equally detrimental to God, and to the submission due to Him, that the same Pontiffs have presumed to place the books of men in the canon of the sacred oracles.

SECTION THIRD.

THE ALLEGATIONS OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE DECREE.

493. It will, no doubt, be asked, What do the defenders of the decree allege to justify this pernicious novelty?

First of all, they produce, 108 years before the Council of Trent, their Pope Eugenius IV. and his Council of Florence, (1439,) to which they attribute an analogous decree. Secondly, they assert that Eugenius IV. received this canon from Pope Gelasius, who occupied the see nearly a thousand years before him, (492-496.) Thirdly, that Gelasius, in his turn, had received it from Augustin -and the Council of Carthage, held in the presence of that father one hundred years before Gelasius, (897.) And, in the last place, fourthly, that the Council of Carthage had itself received it either from Pope Innocent, or from Pope Damasus, who ascended the pontifical throne only thirty years before the Council was held.

494, “See, then!” exclaims, on this subject, Bishop Cosin, (art. 196;) “see all the authorities to which they can pretend in the long course of ages that have elapsed since the composition of the apocryphal books! And what are these authorities? Besides, that some are uncertain, and others perverted from their meaning, so that none of them was ever taken, during all preceding ages in the absolute acceptation to which the partizans of the Council wish to extend them, I do not hesitate to say that they are unable to justify their anathema by any of these authorities, For though they may meet, after the days of Augustin, with two or three writers, who, like him, have enumerated the Scriptures in distinctly, as he has done, they will never be able to find that in this nomenclature any of them has declared the ecclesiastical books to be equal to the canonical, either as to their nature or their authority, nor that Gelasius or even Eugenius (supposing these pretended decrees which they offer us under their name, are historically true) ever pronounced an ANATHEMA against whosoever should not abandon the ancient canon for the new. And yet, every man subject to the Church of Rome is bound to believe in relation to the apocryphal books, not only that he is permitted to read them in public for the instruction of the Church in life and manners, (which the ancient fathers have often said,) but that he must, under pain of eternal damnation, hold them in all their parts (cum ommibus suis partibus) as possessing an authority equal to that of the oracles of God to establish doctrine, and to be a foundation of faith, (extra hanc fidem nemo potest esse salvus.” (Art. 195.)

495. We take up, in the order of antiquity, these authorities to which the defenders of Rome appeal, and, first of all, we say, as to Pope Innocent, that there are the strongest reasons for putting his pretended epistle to Exuperius⁷⁹ in the class of those false decretals of which Rome herself has recognised the fraud. The following are Cave’s reasons for rejecting it: — “I hold,” he says, “this pretended decree to be false. First, On account of its barbarous style. Secondly, For its absurd accommodations of Holy Writ. Thirdly, For its many errors of doctrine, which yet do not belong to that age. Fourthly, For its very gross errors of chronology. Fifthly, For certain rites it mentions which were not yet prevalent in the Church. Papebroch himself (Catal. Rom. Pont., p. 62) confesses that the errors in chronology of a great number of the epistles attributed to this Pope, oblige him to call them in question.”⁸⁰

496. But we shall be more fully convinced of the fraud if we listen to Cosin, because he lays open its origin.

“Never,” he says, “was anything said about this pretended epistle of Innocent in any ecclesiastical author till 300 years after him. Whence it was taken to be inserted afterwards in the collection of the councils among the decretal epistles of the Popes in the Roman code, which itself had for a long time been used in the Church before this letter was slipt in.”⁸¹

For more than a hundred years nothing was said about any epistle of Innocent in the Roman code;⁸² and it was only 200 years after the arrival of Dionysius Exiguus at Rome, (that is to say, 800 years after Innocent,) that at last an abridgment of the canons (Breviariwm Canonum) was made in 698, and that Cresconius added to the code of Dionysius Exiguus the Decretal Epistles of six Popes, among others, those of Innocent and Gelasius. And, what is still more remarkable, even” then the pretended Third Epistle of Innocent to Eaxuperius contained nothing of what has been seen in it later as to the canon of the Scriptures!

It was, then, 100 years after Cresconius, or 400 years after Innocent, that Isidore the merchant (in the year 800) made a collection of Decretal Epistles, such as no honest man would have been disposed at first to make use-of, till at last Popes Leo IV. (in 850) and Nicholas L, (in 860,) seeing the great advantages they could gain from them, published them as a law.

497. What will prove still further that this decree is a fraud, is, that the Council of Carthage, uncertain about its own resolutions, decided to consult the bishops beyond sea, and among others, Pope Boniface. But he occupied the see only sixteen years after Innocent. Can any one believe that the council would thus have consulted him had there been in existence a decree of Innocent only fourteen years before?

We believe that we need not stop at the decree that has been attributed sometimes to Pope Damasus, because it is fully admitted that the decretals anterior to Pope Sericius must be classed among the False Decretals, but we will say a few words about that attributed to Gelasius⁸³

498, In the Code of the Canon of the Ancient Roman Church, (Mentz, 1525, and Paris, 1609,) we have a single decree of Pope Gelasius, divided into twenty-eight sections; though subsequently, in the Volumes of the Councils, a great number have been added, and, among others, one which had been made at Rome in a council of seventy bishops,⁸⁴ on the distinction between the sacred and authentic books, and the Apocrypha.

But of this pretended decree there is no mention whatever in history before the days of the too famous Isidore the merchant, that is to say, before the time when Pope Gelasius had been for 300 years laid in his tomb. And it was from this forger of decretals that Burckhard, first of all, in 1014, then Yves in 1117, then at last Gratian in 1180, received the decree of Gelasius, and that of his pretended Roman council held in 494. And yet they received it with so many discrepancies, the “Roman Emendators” themselves, in their Notes on the Canon of Gratian, knew not what text to adopt, some of the copies not naming the book of Judith, nor the second book of Maccabees; some mentioning five books of Solomon, and some only two, and some three; others three books of Chronicles, and others only one.

“However, that may be, I hold this pretended decretal to be false,” says the learned Dr Cave,⁸⁵ “for the following reasons: — 1. Because the most ancient manuscripts do not attribute it to any certain author, and Baluze himself confesses that the real author is not known; 2. Because it refers to books which had not seen the light in 494; 3. Because it contains absurdities and contradictions which we know not how to attribute either to Gelasius or to the council; 4. Because it condemns the Apostolic Canons which Dionysius Exiguus, an admirer of Gelasius, and almost his contemporary, translated into Latin, and caused to be received by the Church of Rome; 5. Because it professes to follow St Jerome in everything, and we are well acquainted with the opinions of this father; 6. Because no person ever mentioned it before the year 840; 7. Lastly, because Dionysius Exiguus, who collected (so short a time after the death of Gelasius) these decretals of the Roman Pontiffs, has, nevertheless, made no mention of this.”

To proceed, then, we come to the first testimony which seems to have any historical weight, that of the Council of Carthage, said to have been held in 397, and at which we are assured that Augustin himself was present.

499. As to the Council of Carthage held in the days of Augustin, and which is said to have joined the Apocrypha to the twentytwo sacred books of the Jews, we have already spoken at length in the first part of this work.

We quote the Latin words attributed to the Council: — “CANON XLVII. — Item placuit, ut praeter Scripturas canonicas nihil in Ecclesiâ legatur sub nomine Divinarum Scripturarum. Sunt autem canonicæ Scripturœ, Genesis. . . . . Salomonis libri quingque. . . . Tobias, Judith — Maccabaeorum libri duo . Hoe etiam fratri et sacerdoti⁸⁶ nostro Bonifacio vel aliis earum partium episcopis,⁸⁷ pro confirmando isto canone innotescat quia⁸⁸ à patribus ista accepimus in ecclesiâ legenda. — Liceat etiam legi Passiones Martyrium, cum anniversarii dies eorum celebrantur.”

But we reply, that this decretal, about which the Roman doctors have made so much noise,⁸⁹ is very far from having the name, or even the meaning, which they would assign to it; and for the eight following reasons: —

500. (1.) In the tradition relative to the Council of Carthage, so many uncertainties and contradictions prevail, that its testimony is very much weakened, and it is impossible not to recognise in the account we have received of it more than one pious fraud; for example: — ;

(a.) The authors of the decretal resolved that this forty-seventh canon should be communicated to their brother and colleague Boniface; while, in the forty-eighth, they desire that their brethren, Siricius and Simplicius, should be consulted, the one the bishop of Rome, and the other of Milan. All the editions of the council bear on the inscription that it was held in 397, (Caesario et Attico consulibus.) Now, between the papacy of Siricius and of Boniface there were more than twenty years; the first having ended his only one year after the council was held, and the other not having commenced till 418, after three other popes had occupied the see between these two. The pretended decretal on the Apocrypha, if it was ever passed at the African council, would not have been till twenty-one or twenty-five years after the other canons with which it is associated, and after the council to which it is attributed, — a council, the historians say, composed of forty-four bishops, and presided over by Aurelius, bishop of Carthage.

It follows inevitably that, if this decretal is not a mere fiction, it has been placed there at second-hand, much later, by some ecclesiastical compiler who numbered it at his leisure, and for a certain purpose.

(b.) Cardinal Baronius himself, incapable of justifying their contradictions, tells us, that the forty-nine canons attributed to this council must have been decreed by different councils.⁹⁰

(c.) “Although this council,” says Foye, (Romish Rates, 1851, p. 40,) “has no right to the age that is ascribed to it; we know that the most ancient notice which has reached us of its decrees on ordination (can. 1, 2, 3) is of the seventh century, by Isidore of Seville.”

(d.) The Greek report of the Council of Carthage does not contain the Maccabees in its catalogue of adopted books, “which leads us to think that the Jesuit Labbe completed it in this form as he pleased, when compiling his “History of Councils.”⁹¹

501. (2.) Many suppose that if this decree has been really passed, it will be in the twenty-fourth canon of another council, which is contained in the Code of the Canons of the African Church, and which was held in 419, before the death of Boniface. But this explanation resolves no difficulties, and obliterates no contradictions; for neither in the Greek Code nor in the African Code, given by Cresconius, do we find the same books mentioned as in the Roman edition. There is no mention either of the Maccabees or of Baruch. And, on the other hand, as they followed in Africa, before the labours of Jerome, a Latin translation of the Septuagint, they received the additions made by the Hellenists, and, among others, the apocryphal book-which the Greeks call the first of Esdras, and the Latins the third. Rejected by the latter, it was recommended by the Council of Carthage, (according to the African Code,) to be read in the assemblies of the African Church.

502. (3.) This decree of Carthage, very far from being able to be an authority with the doctors of Rome, has, on their own shewing, manifestly erred on the question of the Apocrypha, since it rejects Baruch, which was adopted by the Council of Trent, and attributes five books to Solomon, (Salomonis libra quinque,) — that is to say, not only Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Canticles, but also Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, composed 700⁹² years after the royal prophet.

503. (4.) More than this: Even granting credit to the council (whichever it might be) which passed this decree, it is evident that its members never had in their thoughts, nor adopted any resolution which could concern the universal Church, not even (as far as relates to the province of Africa) to form an infallible catalogue of the sacred books. On the contrary, distrusting itself, fearful of some error, it determined that the resolutions should be submitted to the church beyond the sea, (“transmarina ecclesia consultetur,”’) and to different bishops of the west, (“vel aliis earum partwum episcopis.”) It did not submit them solely to the Bishop of Rome; and even its twenty-sixth canon contains this remarkable sentence against the already growing pretensions of the Roman see — “That the bishop of the first see be not called prince of priests, or sovereign priest, or anything like it; but simply, bishop of the first see.”

504. (5.) Moreover, it is equally evident, that the council in its decree intended by no means to designate these books as inspired by terming them canonical Scriptures, or Scripturae regulares, — (that is to say, serving as a rule for the Christian life) It simply called by this name those books which might be read with edification in the public services. We shall very soon perceive that this was the only point which the decree had in view. Its very language attests that it was not a decree relating to doctrine, but simply a rule of discipline respecting the books to be read in the assemblies of the churches, (in ecclesiâ legenda.) In the second place, this will appear more evident from the fact, that the council determined that, to the reading of these books might be also joined that of the Acts of the Martyrs on the anniversaries of their death. Lastly, to convince yourself, you have only to consider what was constantly the language of Augustin, after this council, where it is asserted that he was present: He never once appealed in his writings to the decisions of this assembly, as putting an end to all uncertainty on the subject of the canon. He does not even mention it.

505. (6.) The council in its decree calls these books canonical (that is to say, serving as a rule) in the sense in which others call them ecclesiastical, in opposition to books forged, and unworthy of confidence. And what proves it, is the thought expressed by Augustin when, in his work De Doctrinâ Christianâ,⁹³ he distinguishes the terms “Divine Scripture” and “Canonical Scripture,” as we shall presently shew.⁹⁴

506. (7.) “Let us not forget that the Council of Carthage was neither approved nor even named by the General Council of Chalcedon in 451, while that great assembly of 630 bishops formally recognised the Council of Laodicea, held for all Asia Minor thirty years before that of Carthage, and with greater celebrity. We know that Laodicea set forth a catalogue of the Sacred Writings from which the apocryphal books were absolutely excluded. Many doctors of Rome have vainly endeavoured to establish that the Council of Carthage was named in the oecumenical assembly of Chalcedon; but it was never brought forward there, and nothing was done but to confirm in a general manner preceding decisions, that is to say, either the first sessions of the council itself, or what was called The Universal Code of the Councils, which appellation referred to nine preceding councils, of which Carthage never made a part.

507. (8.) Lastly, what shews mofe strongly still in what sense the resolutions passsed by the Council of Carthage were understood, is what took place at the end of the seventh century at the sixth General Council held at Constantinople 681, and in Trullo 692, and composed of 227 bishops. At the same time that it solemnly confirmed, in its second canon, the Council of Laodicea, as well as the canonical epistles of St Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and of Amphilochius, which all exclude the apocryphal books from the Holy Scriptures, it likewise recognises the Council of Carthage. It necessarily follows that nothing was seen in the decree of Carthage relating to books for reading in the church, but a measure of discipline consistent with the decree passed at Laodicea.

508. But there remains Augustin,⁹⁵ the only author of weight, whom, with any appearance of reason, the defenders of Rome can allege in the fifteen first centuries to justify their decree. We shall very soon perceive that if this great doctor sometimes held language which betrayed Jax and ill-defined notions respecting the true basis of the canon — if once or twice he has seemed to give the apocryphal books a name and a place to which they have no right — at the same time, the whole tenor of his writings testifies strongly that he never ceased to place an essential difference between these books and the oracles of God, as between their authors and the true prophets, (proprie prophetas.)⁹⁶ His language — while indicating, in respect of certain books, the uncertainty in which for a time he was left by the Septuagint, of which exclusive use was made in Africa, instead of the original Hebrew,⁹⁷ and in which the greater part of the apocryphal books were found bound up with the Holy Scriptures of God,⁹⁸ — his language, we say, is very far removed from ever authorising that of the Council of Trent.

For (a.) in the seventeenth book of his City of God he declares of the Apocrypha, and particularly of the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, that it is chiefly in the West that they are received as having authority, (“eas tamen in auctoritatem maxime occidentalis receptt Ecclesia.”) He would never speak thus of the true oracles of God.

(b.) He adds, that we cannot venture to employ with the same confidence against opponents the books which, like these two, are not found in the canon of the Jews, (“Sed adversus contradictores non tantâ firmitate proferuntur quae scripta non sunt in canone Judacorum.”)

(c.). He acknowledges that the Jews had no prophets beyond the time of the explusion of Tarquin, that is to say, the five hundred and ninth year before Jesus Christ.⁹⁹

In the twenty-fourth chapter of the same book, he says, “During all the time that elapsed since their return from Babylon, (after Haggai, Malachi, and Zechariah, who prophesied at that time,) the Jews had no prophets till the coming of our Lord, excepting Zecharias, the father of John the Baptist, Elisabeth, Anna, and the aged Simeon.”

It is sufficiently evident that a writer who holds this language would judge that books written at a period when there was no more prophets in Israel could not belong to the canon of the Divine Scriptures, nor possess the authority of inspired books.

(d.) See what he says in his City of God, book xviii, ch. 38. He declares (on Ps. lvi.) that all the scriptures which have prophesied of Jesus Christ are in the hands of the Jews, and that the Jews professed all these same scriptures. (“Quia omnes ipsae litterae quibus Christus prophetatus est apud Judaeos sunt omnes ipsas litteras habent Judaei.”)

(e.) He takes care to say of the book of Maccabees that it is not found in the Holy Scriptures which are called canonical — “That the Jews do not receive it, but that the Church can receive it not uselessly, provided it be read and heard with sobriety.”¹⁰⁰ Who would dare to speak thus of a book truly divine?

(f.) He says likewise of the book of Judith that it is not received by the Jews into the canon of the Scriptures — “(Quae conscripta sunt in libro Judith sane im canonem Scriptwrarum Judaei non recepisse decantur.)”¹⁰¹ And in chap. 38 he gives the reason this people had for not receiving such books — “Non inventuntur in canone quem populus Der recepit.”¹⁰²

(g.) He observes-many times, that though prophets were numerous among the Israelites, only the writings of a few of them have been left to us as canonical.¹⁰³

(h.) He often lays it down as a principle that the Jews have been divinely chosen to receive the deposit of the oracles of God, - and that this people have always known how to recognise the true authors of the Holy Scriptures, and to distinguish them from others, that they have always been unanimous on this subject, never having had a difference of opinion on any book, &c. (“Sed concordes inter se atque in nullo dissentientes sacrarum litterarum veraces ab eis cognoscebantur et tenebantur auctores.”) (Chap. 44 of the same book.)

(i.) He often repeats that the Jews are admirably constituted by God to be, in reference to the very Scriptures that condemn them, our book-porters, our librarians, our archive-keepers — “capsarii nostra,” (on Ps. xl.;) “hibrarw nostri,” (on Ps. lvi.;) “seriniraria nostra.”

(k.) He goes further, and more than once repeats that the Jews have themselves ALL the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, and that “in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, we have all the canonical authorities of the holy books,” (Ps, xl. and lvi.)

And in the sixteenth chapter On the Unity of the Church, “Let them shew,” he says, “their church in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, — that is to say, in all the canonical authorities of the Scriptures. (Demonstrent ecclesiam suam in praescripto LEGES, in PROPHETARUM praedictis, PSALMORUM cantibus; hoc est in omnibus canonicis ibrorum auctoritatibus.)”

509. It will certainly be granted, that such language on the part of that one of all the fathers who, according to the doctors of Rome, speaks most favourably of the Apocrypha, is very far from authorising the decree of the Council of Trent, which makes no difference whatever in authority, importance, or divinity, between these books and the oracles of God intrusted to the Jewish people, and which, on the other hand, pronounces a horrible anathema against “every person who will not receive them all entire, with all their parts, as sacred and canonical.”¹⁰⁴

Let us not be misunderstood. If we dwell at length on these opinions of Augustin, it is only that we may leave no refuge to the defender of that pernicious decree, for, after all, they do not affect our argument on the canon. That father was evidently not well settled on the question; but yet he was infinitely far from speaking as the doctors of the council have done eleven centuries after him. But had he gone much farther in the direction of the errors - which a long time after were reduced to a formula at Trent, and caused the Latins to fall into this unfortunate schism, what, after all, would that signify to us?

Neither the one nor the other belong to Israel; and to Israel alone the oracles of the Old Testament have been intrusted. « And truly,” (a distinguished man lately wrote to us on this subject,)¹⁰⁵ “I can say that I could scarcely wish that these ancient errors on the Apocrypha in the Latin Church had not been committed. This seemed necessary to establish that the Jewish canon is for us everything or nothing.”

510. We think it our duty to quote here that of all the passages of Augustin which can be regarded as the most favourable to the errors of the council, and which the Roman doctors most frequently adduce, It is in Book II., ch, viii. of his Christian Doctrine, (vol. ili., part i, p. 47, edit. Paris, 1836.)

“Art. XII. Let a man who is attached to the study of the Divine Scriptures begin with reading all, and with knowing them as a whole, if not by understanding, yet by reading them. I speak only of those which are called canonical.¹⁰⁶ As for the canonical, let him follow the course I am going to mark out. Let him prefer (praeponat) those which are recognised by the catholic churches to those which some do not receive; and among those which are not received by all, let him prefer which the greater number and the most respectable acknowledge, (plures gravioresque,) to those which have in their favour only a very few churches, and of little authority, (pauciores, minoresque auctoritatis.) i

“Art, XIII. Now the entire canon of the Scriptures,” he adds, “in reference to which we offer these remarks, is composed of the following books: — (His libris continetur,) The five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the four books of Kings, the two of Chronicles. There are others of a different class, such as Job, Tobit, Esther, Judith, two of the Maccabees, and two of Esdras . then the Prophets, among which are the Psalms, three books of Solomon, (Proverbs, Canticles, Ecclesiastes;) for those two books named Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are said to be Solomon's, though they may be by Sirach,¹⁰⁷ and yet they have deserved to receive authority, and to be counted among the prophetic writings. The others are the books of men properly called prophets; these are the twelve prophets, which are only reckoned for one; and, Lastly, the four great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. In these forty-four books, the authority of the Old Testament is included. (His quadraginta quatuor libris Testamentt Veteris terminatur auctoritas.)”

511. We see, therefore, that even in this passage, where he is more favourable to the Apocrypha than in his other writings, . Augustin makes a difference between what he calls divine writings and the books canonical. He distinguishes his whole catalogue into different categories, according to which certain books were received by all the churches, or by some only; and, lastly, he recommends that all these precautions should be taken in relation to the entire canon by every able investigator (solertussumus indagator) of the Divine Scriptures. (Totus autem canon Scripturarum in quo istam considerationem versandam dicimus.)”

512. Let us here recall the judicious reflections on this father by Cardinal Cajetan, who died (as we have said) so short a time before the opening of the council. At the end of his commentary on Esther, after having called to mind that all our apocryphal books are excluded from the canon of Jerome, he adds, “Do not allow yourselves to be troubled by the novelty (ne turberis novitie) if you find somewhere these books numbered with the canonical, for everything which councils or doctors have been able to say upon them must be brought under Jerome’s file, (ad Hieronyms limam reducenda sunt tam verba conciliorum quam doctorum.) According to Jerome, these books are not canonical, that is, not proper to serve as a rule for matters of faith, (hoc est, regulares ad firmandum ea que sunt fidei,) but only to edify the faithful, and authorised for this purpose to be in the canon of the Bible, (utpote in canone Bibliae ad hoc recepti et auctorati.) By ineans of this distinction you will be able to discriminate both the words of Augustin in his work on Christian Doctrine, and what is written in the provincial councils of Florence, Carthage, and Laodicea,” &c.

513. The error of Augustin and his contemporaries in Africa before the light of Jerome’s labours had extended so far, consisted solely in too easily joining to the Old Testament books more or less doubtful, even in their own judgment. While, on the contrary, the error of the Council of Trent consisted in assimilating _ entirely these doubtful books to the sacred oracles — in declaring them infallibly divine — in taking no account of the testimony of the Jews, to whom alone these holy oracles had been intrusted; and, still further, in solemnly anathematising whoever feared to be guilty of the same profanation. So atrocious an act was never perpetrated!

514. Lastly, to all these testimonies of Innocent, Gelasius, Augustin, and the Council of Carthage alleged by the defenders of the Council of Trent, we can reply, by a very simple fact, to which we have already alluded. What proves that during eleven or twelve hundred years, I mean from Augustin to the Council of Trent, there was a general agreement throughout the West with Jerome and with us, is, that in this long space of time, a Bible was never seen which bore on its front either the pretended Epistle of Innocent, or the pretended decretal of Gelasius, or the pretended decretal of Florence, or the Catalogue of Carthage; while in all the Bibles, manuscript or printed, the “Prologus Galeatus” of Jerome was placed on the first page by the constant and unanimous consent of the Latin Church, in order to attest that it maintained with him the distinction between the apocryphal or ecclestastical books, and the canonical.

515. There remains nothing more to examine here, in reply to the defenders of the Apocrypha, excepting a pretended decree of a council said to be universal, held at Florence in 1439, during the twenty-fourth and last schism of the Roman Church. Between the decree attributed to the Council of Carthage, and the too famous decree of Trent, there were 1149 years, and yet, says Cosin, the only council that the Jesuits, in this long interval have attempted to allege, is that of Florence, which the Council of Bale, then assembled, declared to be “only a schismatic synagogue.”

They cite, as issued by this council, a catalogue of the Scriptures perfectly similar to that of the Council of Carthage. But it is easy to demonstrate, and this Cosin¹⁰⁸ has done, that this is only a very late forged decree, of which we owe the first publication to Caranza,¹⁰⁹ who died 137 years after the Council of Florence, at which not a single word was said of the canon.

516. To ascertain the fraud, it will be sufficient to hear the language of men who were either actors: at” the Council of Florence or contemporaries. —

Antoninus, for example, took a part in it. He was afterwards created archbishop of that city, and was canonised at Rome under Adrian VI. Now, Antoninus declares, in his Summary of History,¹¹⁰ that Ecclesiasticus is not authentic so as to serve for proof in matters of faith — that the Hebrews reckon in all only twenty-two authentic books — that they call the books of Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees, apocryphal; but that the Church, notwithstanding, receives the apocryphal books as true, useful, and moral, though, for controversy relative to the faith, they are not to be urged as argument, (“et si in contentione eorum quae sunt fider, non wrgentia ad arguendum.”) And in his Summary of Theology he produces, to support his opinion, Jerome, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas de Lyra, and concludes that the Apocrypha may have the same authority as the opinions of the holy doctors, which are approved by the Church. (“Unde forte habent auctoritatem talem qualem habent dicta S. Doctorum approbata ab Ecclesiâ.”’)

517. We may cite again in the same period the celebrated Tostatus, bishop of Alcala, the most learned man of his age, (stupor mundi, as he was called,) who died only fifteen years after the Council of Florence. In his Commentaries he frequently excludes the six apocryphal books from the number of the canonical books proper to prove the faith, and declares that the Church, though it retains them, does not absolutely enjoin that they should be read or accepted, and does not condemn persons who do not receive them as disobedient or infidels. (“Licet ab Ecclesiâ teneantur, mn canone tamen non ponuntur quia non adhibet illis ecclesia hanc fidem; nec jubet illos regulariter legi aut recipi, et non reciprentes non judicat inobedientes aut infideles.”)¹¹¹

518. Lastly, the same Pope Eugenius to whom this false decree of Florence has been attributed said of Dionysius the Carthusian, another of his contemporaries, equally decided against the apoc-” ryphal books, “Laetetwr mater Ecclesia quae talem habet filiwm.” Now, this son of the Church, who was to give so much joy to his mother, Dionysius the Carthusian, said. of the apocryphal books, “That they are no part of the canon; and that, if the Church causes them to be read, it is not to confirm doctrines, but to form manners. (Non ad confirmationem dogmatum; sed ad morum informationem.’)¹¹² “The book of Maccabees,” he also said, “is not in the canon, although it is received by the Church as a true book. (Tamen ab Ecclesia tanquam verus receptus est.)”¹¹³

519. It is, then, well established that when the Church of Rome, on the 13th of April 1546, in its general council of fifty persons, under the influence of Catharin and his faction, hastened to draw up a new additional canon of the Holy Scriptures, and so join to it the body of traditions, as not less infallible than the oracles of the living God, it committed this twofold evil, in spite of the testimony rendered by the universal Church in all ages, and made this canon, by its own avowal, for the purpose of establishing the dogmas which the famous bull of Pius IV.¹¹⁴ was going to add to the ancient profession of faith, touching the sovereignty of the Church of Rome, and touching purgatory, the seven sacraments, transubstantiation, the withholding the cup, the invocation of saints, relics, images, and indulgences. “Let all persons, therefore, understand,” said the council, “in what order, and in what way this synod is about to proceed, after laying the foundation of the confession of faith; and also what testimonies, and what defences, it will use for confirming doctrines and correcting manners in the Church.”¹¹⁵

THE END,

1) All prior versions had been made according to the Greek of the Septuagint.

2) Brev. Rom., Sep. xxx., p. 882; ed. Paris, 1840,

3) Dr Herbst the Catholic (Einleit. ins A. T.) refuses to refer the assertions of Jerome to the Roman unity, and confines himself to look at them as the opinions of an individual.

4) Comment on Jeremiah. See Cave, Scriptur. Eccl. Hist. Lit., fol., tom i., p. 280. Basil, 1741.

5) Lecture de la Sainte Bible, Louvaine, 1846. Vol. ii, p. 57.

6) On the Canon of the Scriptures, and on the Apocrypha, by C. Wordsworth, D.D., London, 1848. Append., p. 24.

7) The Church of Rome rejects only the five following — The Prayer of Manasseh the Third of Esdras, the Third and Fourth of Maccabees.;

8) “Si quis avtem libros ipsos integros, cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in Ecclesiê catholicâ legi consueverunt, et in veteri Vulgatâ Latinâ editione habentur pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit; et traditiones praedictas acieus et prudens contempserit — ANATHEMA SIT!”

9) Forty-five bishops and five cardinals, all, or almost all Italians, and pensioners of the Pope. See the following Proposition.

10) Scholastical History of the Canon; Loudon, 1672 and 1683; in 4to. See the articles 165 to 175, 177 to 179. We take from this work the greater number of the testimonies which follow. See also the History of the Council of Trent, by Paul Sarpi. Book ii., arts. 37, 46, 48, 54. Edit., London, 1736; pp. 220, 241.

11) Jean le Sueur. 4^e partie; p. 374.

12) Sleidan, Comment., lib. xvii — “In his duo Galli; quinque Hispani; Ilyricus unus; reliqui omnes Itali.”

13) Some did not even know Latin. “Eorum aliqui nec benè Latine legere noverunt.” — Alph. de Castro, De Haer. Punit., lib. iii.

14) Or at least in Aramean. Jerome is said to have translated Tobit and Judith from the Chaldee, and to have seen the first book of Maccabees in Hebrew. The Preface of Ecclesiasticus represents that book as translated from the Hebrew. (See the Einleitung of the Catholic professor, Welte; Freid., 1844.) Yet Hengsten- — berg (Beitriige, i., 292) believes that the Greek text is the original of the first Maccabees. Jahn (Introd., ii, 902, 922) expresses the same opinion about Tobit and Judith.

15) Horne’s Introduction. Vol. ii., pp. 326-329. 1818.

16) See Propp. 465, 466. See also Keerl., Die Apocryphenfrage; Leipz., 1855.

17) Hist. Eccl., iii., 9, 10.

18) Contra Apion., 1, 8. See Propp. 435, 457.

19) Gosin, Hist. Schol. of the Canon, See also Gerhard, De Scriptura Sacra, §§ 75-98; and Keerl, Die Apocryphen des A. T., § 18; Leipz., 1852.

20) Who neither approves nor cites any of the apocryphal books.

21) Hist. Eccl., iv., 25; vi., 12.

22) In 392, Cosin cites thirteen striking testimonies of this father against the Apocrypha. See his Prologues, which have served so long as a rule to the Latin Church: — “Sicut Judith et Tobiae et Maccabaorum libros legit quidem Ecclesia, sed eas inter canonicas Scripturas non recipit; sic et haec duo volumina (Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus) legat ad aedificationem plebis, non ad auctoritatem ecclesiasticorum dogmatum confirmandam.” — In Proverbia, tom. iii, p: 39; Paris, 1602.

23) He reckons only twenty-two books in the Old Testament, like all the Jews. — De Fide Orthod., lib. iv., cap. 18.

24) Bishop of Sardis in the middle of the second century. In 160, he made exact researches respecting the canonical books of the Old Testament; and travelled for this purpose, Eusebius tells us, (H. E., iv., 26.) He enumerates twenty-two books, and excludes the Apocrypha.

25) Bishop of Ephesus in 160. His testimony to Melito, (Eusebius, H. E., v., 24.)

26) Held in 364 for many provinces of Asia; highly esteemed by all the churches in those remote ages, having had its canons received into the “Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Univ.,” where the year of its being held is fixed to be 364, It entirely rejects the Apocrypha.

27) In 375. He reckons only twenty-two books in the Old Testament. — Philocal., cap. iii.;

28) Bishop of Iconium in 378. He gives his catalogue, and excludes the Apocrypha from it, (Ep. ad Seleucum.) Among the canonical epistles collected by Balsamon.

29) Bishop of Salamis in 374. Reckons the books of the Old Testament as we do. — De Mens. et Ponder.; Haer., viii.

30) Origen’s teacher speaks as he does.

31) In 220. Declares distinctly that the books not included in the twenty-two do not belong to the canon. — Apud Euseb.; Ruffin., vi., 25.

32) He has given us, in 340, a catalogue of canonical books, which he distinguishes from ecclesiastical books. He reckons only twenty-two in the Old Testament. — Epist. Festalis., opp., tom. i., p. 94, ed. Bened. Opera, apud Balsam., p. 920.

33) In 222, writing to Origen, he rejects the History of Susanna. — Opera Origenis, tom. ii.

34) In 204. He excludes the Apocrypha from the canon. — Contra Marcion, carm. iv., 7.

35) See Prop. 499, and the following.

36) Ibid.

37) In 543. He recognises a great difference between the canonical books and the ecclesiastical De Partibus Divinae Legis, lib. i., cap. 7.

38) In 553. So long after the Council of Carthage held the same views of the canon as Jerome and the Jews. — In Apocalyps., cap. iv., v.

39) 360. He gave his auditors a catalogue of the Scriptures. It is very explicit.  — Catech., iv., vi., and ix.

40) In 376. Is very explicit and decisive. — In Libro, carm, xxxiii., tom. ii, p, 839. See our Prop.

41) In 390. Declares there are no canonical books besides those written in Hebrew.  — Hom. iv. in Genes.;

42) Patriarch of Antioch in 560, expressly affirms that God gave twenty-two books for His Old Testament. — Hexameron, lib. vii.

43) Pope in 590. Professes to follow the canon of the ancient Church, as Jerome represented it. — Moral. Expos. in Job, lib. xix., cap. xvii., for xiii. |

44) Patriarch of Constantinople in 820. Distinguishes the canonical books from the controverted and the apocryphal. — Canon Script. ex veteri Codice.

45) In 1192, died in 1203. In his commentaries on the Council of Carthage. He appeals to the Council of Laodicea, and to the epistles of Athanasius, and of Gregory of Nazianzus.

46) In 380, (De Hueres., cap. de Apocryph.) He rejects Ecclesiasticus.

47) Tn 398. Speaks like Jerome. — In Symb. Apost., sect. XXXV., XXXvi.

48) Consul of Rome, in 550, (De Divinis Lectionibus, cap. xi). Begins with Jcrome’s catalogue, and then joins to it the books of Augustin’s enumeration.

49) See Prop. 515.

50) See Prop. 491, (a, b, c, d, e, i.)

51) Ibid.

52) In 636. He distinguishes, after the Law, Prophets, aiid Hagiographa, a fourth class of books, which do not belong to the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament.  — Lib. vi., Originum, cap. i.

53) In 1244. Maintains the distinction of canonical and ecclesiastical books. — Prol. in Jos.

54) In 1430. — Addit. i., ad cap. i.; Ester., cap. xili.

55) See Prop. 491, (a, b, c, d, e, i.)

56) Ibid.

57) In 350. Agreed with Athanasius on the Apocrypha as well as on Arianism. — Prol. Explanat. in Psalmor.

58) In 426. They rejected the book of Wisdom. — Hilary of Arles in his Epistle to Augustin.

59) In 855. Asserts that the Old Testament has only twenty-two books of divine authority. — De Privil. et Jure Sacerdot.

60) See Prop. 491, (a, b, c, d, e, i.)

61) In 1320. Is very explicit (Praefat. in Tobiam) in excluding the Apocrypha from the canon.

62) See Prop. 491, (h, k, l.)

63) Ibid.

64) Ibid.

65) In 730. He agrees with Jerome and Tertullian. — In Apocal. iv., lib, iv.; Comment. in Lib. Reg.

66) In 800. Rejected as apocryphal and doubtful the book of Ecclesiasticus. — Adv, Elipantum, lib. i., col. 941.

67) In 1330. Positively rejects the Apocrypha from the number of the canonical books. — Dialog., part iii., tract. i., lib. i1., cap. 16.

68) In 1420. Acknowledges only the twenty-two canonical books. — Doctrinal. Fid., tom. i., lib. ii., art. 2, cap. 22.

69) De Script. — “Vir ingenio et doctrinaé maximus.”

70) “Pirmiter tamen haerendum credo sententiae Hieronymi cujus quctonieas me movit.” “Et demum ejus testimonium ab Ecclesiâ pro sanctissimo habetur. — De Ordine Credenti, 1., v.

71) Lib. xvii., cap. 20.

72) Lib. xviii, cap. 36.

73) Opp., v., 977, (ed. Troben., 1540.)

74) Epist. ad Divinar. Litterar. Studiosos, Praefexa, tom. iv., oper. Hieron.

75) “Certè non vult idem esse pondus Judith, Tobiae, et Sapientiae libris quod Mosis Pentateucho,”

76) In the dedicatory espistle at the head of his works,

77) The public library at Geneva possesses ‘the Commentaries of Cajetan, In Omnes Authenticos Veteris Festam. Historiales Libros, printed at Rome in 1533. The Pope’s Penitentiary superintended the edition. Cajetan enumerates the books on which he has commented, — “Omissis reliquis ab Hieronymo inter apoerypha supputatis.”

78) Lib. i, d. 4, ad diffic. 3.

79) Councils by Binius, tom. i., sect. vii. This is the 3rd Epistle; but the twenty-three first are held by the Magdeburg Centuriators, Osiander, Tillemont, and many others, to be forgeries.

80) See Dupin, Hist. Eccl., iii., 67. Fabricius, Bibl. Mediae et Infimae Latinit vol. iv., lib. x., p. 56. 1734-175c

81) Codex Canonum and Decretorum Romane Ecclesiz, Edit. Mentz, 1525.

82) Ferrand at the same time made an abridgment, (Breviatio Canonum,) where he ne the collection of the Holy Scriptures, only the decrees of Laodicea and

83) This decree is found in some manuscripts with some illegal alterations attributed to Pope Hormisdas. — Alzog. Hist, Eccl., § 130,

84) In Binius, tom. iii,: — “Concil. Romanum quo a 70 Episcopis, libri sacri et authentici ab Apocryphis sunt discreti, sub Gelasio., an. Dom., 494.”

85) Hist, Litter., tom. i., p. 463. See also Bishop Pearson, (Vindiciæ Ignatian, i, cap. 4, p. 45-47.)

86) Others, as Binius, say, “Consacerdoti nostro.”

87) The oldest manuscript (Binius and Labbe say) reads — “De confirmando isto canone transmarina ecclesid, consultetur.”

88) In the sense of “Innotescat quod,” (“qua pro quod,” according to the African usage.)

89) Baronius, Annales, 397 and 419. Binius, in notes ad Cone. Carthagin. III, Card, du Perron, his reply, chap. 48, in 1622,

90) See Westcott’s explanation of this confession, in his work on the canon,; pp. 508-510.

91) In the Code of the Canons of the African Church by Cresconius, an African bishop of the seventh century, the book of Maccabees is not named when he reports this Canon. See Justel., “Code des Canons de l'Eglise d'Afrique.

92) Augustin, in his “City of God,” xvii., 20, acknowledges that the language of his time was erroneous. ‘‘ Propter eloquii non nullam similitudinem ut Salomonis dicantur vbitnuit consuetudo. Non autem esse ipsius non dubitant doctures.”

93) Lib, ii, vol. iii, part i, p. 4. Edit. Paris, 1836: — “Erit igitur divinarum Seripturarum solertissimus indagator, qui primo totas legerit . . . . et si nondum intellectu jam tamen lectione duntaxat eas quae appellantur canonicae.”

94) See Prop. 510.

95) See the tesimonies of this father on this subject. Kirchhofer, Geschichte der Canons; Wordsworth on the Canon, appendix, 1848, pp. 84, 81; Cosin, No. 87, &c.

96) De Doctrinâ Christiand, lib. ii, art. xii.

97) See the dissertation of Jerome and of Augustin in the 78th and 93rd epistle of the latter, and also the City of God,” xviii. 43,

98) Theodotian, who, it appears, first collected these books, and had them ap pended to the Scriptures in one volume.

99) “Supputatio temporum, restituto Templo, non in Scripturis sanctis quae canonicae appellantur, sed IN ALIIS invenitur, in quibus sunt et Maccab. libri.”  — Cww. Det,, xviii., 36.

100) “Sed recepta est ab Ecclesia non enubiliter, si sobrie legatur vel audiatur.” — Contra Epist. Gaudent., lib. ii., 23.

101) City of God, xviii. 29.

102) “Cujus rei fateor, causa me latet — nisi quod ego existimo etiam ipsos quibus ea quae in auctoritate religionis, esse deberent, Sanctus ubique Spiritus revelebat, alia sicut homines historica diligentia, alia sicut prophetas inspiratione divind scribere potuisse illa ad ubertatem cognitionis haec ad religionis auctoritatem pertinebant, in qué auctoritate custoditur CANON.”

103) “Qui cum multi fuerent paucorum et apud Judaeos et apud nos canonica Scripta retinentur.” — City of God, xviii., 26.

104) The bull of Pius IV., given at the end of the council, as a summary of it: faith, expressly says, “Extra hance fidem nemo potest esse salvus.”

105) It gratifies the author to mention that, before sending these sheets to press, he had the happiness to receive the corrections and opinions of three most valued friends, the Pastor Burnier, and the Professor Merle and Binder.

106) Observe that he distinguishes between the divine Scriptures and the canonical Scriptures.

107) Augustin (Retract., ii. 4) declares that the author of Ecclesiasticus is uncertain,

108) Among the Acts of the Council there is an instruction to the Armenians, — dated the 10th of the calends of December, that is to say, five months after the Armenians had quitted Florence. But even in this instruction, says Cosin, according to all the great collections of the Councils, (Cratb, Surius, Nicolinus, and Binius,) there is not a word about the canon. Not more than 100 years after Caranza published an Abridgment of the Councils, and in that the instruction appeared with three new articles, where a catalogue similar to that of Carthage was inserted. (See Keerl, De Apocryphis, p. 150.)

109) Dominican, confessor to Queen Mary, and Archbishop of Toledo.

110) Summa Hist., part i., tit. ili., cap. iv. and cap. vi. sect. xii.

111) Praef, in Matt. ix. 1.

112) Prol. in Tobiam.

113) Cap. i.

114) Super forma Sacramenti Professionis fidei. (Sub finem Concil. Trid.)

115) “Omnes itaque intelligent quo ordine et via ipsa synodus POST FACTUM fidei confessiones FUNDAMENTUM sit progressura, et quibus potissimum testimoniis et praesidiis in confirmandis dogmatibus et instaurandis in Ecclesiâ moribus, sit usura,”