Page:A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (7th edition, 1896).djvu/73

 Rh  grew up around their separate centres, enjoying in a great measure the freedom of individual development, and exhibiting, often in exaggerated forms, peculiar tendencies of doctrine or ritual. As a natural consequence, the circulation of some books of the New Testament for a while depended, more or less, on their supposed connexion with specific forms of Christianity; and the range of other books was limited either by their original destination or by the nature of their contents.

This fact, which has been frequently neglected in Church histories, has given some colour to the pictures which have been drawn of the early divisions of Christians. Yet the separation was not the result of fundamental differences in doctrine, but rather of temporary influences. It was not widened by time, but gradually disappeared. It did not cut off mutual intercourse, but vanished as intercourse grew more easy and frequent. The common Creed is not a compromise of principles, but a combination of the essential types of Christian truth which were preserved in different Churches. The New Testament is not an incongruous collection of writings of the Apostolic age, but the sum of the treasures of Apostolic teaching stored up in various places. The same circumstances at first retarded the formation, and then confirmed the claims of the Catholic Church and of the Canon of Scripture.

2. The formal declaration of the Canon was not by any means an immediate and necessary consequence of its practical settlement. As long as the traditional rule of Apostolic doctrine was generally held in the Church, there was no need to confirm it by the written Rule. The dogmatic and constant use of the New Testament was not made necessary by the terms of controversy or the wants