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 14 to be submitted to a just and searching criticism. But if it can be shewn that the Epistles were first recognised exactly in those districts in which they would naturally be first known; that from the earliest mention of them they are assumed to be received by Churches, and not recommended only by private authority; that the Canon as we receive it now was fixed in a period of strife and controversy; that it was generally received on all sides; that even those who separated from the Church and cast aside the authority of the New Testament Scriptures did not deny their authenticity: if it can be shewn that the four Gospels include, with the most trifling exceptions, all that has been preserved of the Life and Teaching of Christ, and that they adequately explain what is known of the other forms in which these were represented: if it can be shewn that the first references to the Canonical Books are perfectly accordant with the express decisions of a later period; and that there is no trace of the general reception of any other books: if it can be shewn that the earliest forms of Christian doctrine and phraseology exactly correspond with the different elements preserved in the New Testament; it will surely follow that a belief in the authority of the books of the New Testament so widely spread throughout the Christian body, so deeply rooted in the inmost consciousness of the Christian Church, so perfectly accordant with all the facts which we do know, can only be explained by admitting that they are genuine and Apostolic, a written Rule of Christian Faith and Life.

The whole history of the formation of the Canon of the New Testament may be divided into three periods. Of these the first extends to the time of Hegesippus