Page:A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (7th edition, 1896).djvu/78

 10

But the first Christian writers—and here again the parallel with our own divines still holds—did not always shew individually the caution and judgment of the Church. They quote ecclesiastical books from time to time as if they were canonical: the analogy of the faith was to them a sufficient warrant for their immediate use. As soon however as a practical interest attached to the question of the Canon their judgment was clear and unanimous. When it became necessary to determine what 'superfluous' books might be yielded to the Roman inquisitor without the charge of apostasy, the Apocryphal writings sunk at once into their proper place. There was no change of opinion here; but that definite enunciation of it which was not called forth by any critical feeling within was conceded at last to a necessity from without. The true meaning of the earliest witnesses is brought out by the later comment.

2. This fact suggests a second difficulty by which the subject is affected: the earliest testimonies to the Canon are simply incidental. Now even if the ante-Nicene Fathers had been gifted with an active spirit of criticism—if their works had been left to us entire—if the custom of formal reference had prevailed from the first—it would still be impossible to determine the contents of the New Testament absolutely on merely casual evidence. Antecedently there is no reason to suppose that we shall be able to obtain a perfect view of the judgment of the Church on the Canon from the Scriptural references contained in the current theological literature of any particular period. The experience of our own day teaches us that books of Holy Scripture, if not whole classes of