Page:Bible (Douay Rheims OT1, 1609).djvu/16

 TION OF THE HOLIE BIBLE.

With a brife note of the Canonical and Apochryphal Bookes.

''By the vniforme consent of al learned Diuines, the holie Bible, or written word of God, conteyneth expressed or implied, al thinges that man is to beleue, to obserue, & to auoid, for obtayning of aeternal saluation. That is, al matters of faith & maners, by which we may know and serue God, and so be spiritually ioyned with him, in this life, & in eternitie. For both the old & new Testament propose and testifie vnto vs, one and the same God, the same Christ, the same Church, and other Mysteries of our beleefe, not differing in substance, but in maner of vttering; the old more obscurely in figures and prophecies foretelling those thinges, which the New declareth (in great part) as donne and performed. Wherupon saith S. Augustin'': In the Old Testament the New lieth hidden: & in the New the Old lieth open. And touching their names, wherein appareth difference, the one (saith the same Doctor) is called the old Testament, either because it propofeth promises of temporal thinges (Wherwith our old corruptnes is allured). Or in respect of the New, by which it is fulfilled, and in some part abolished. The other is called the New, because by it man is renewed, and hath promise of eternal life: ''Which shal neuer waxe old nor decay. Likewise S. Gregorie the great testifieth this conformitie, and correspondence betwen the Old and New Testament, affirming that the same is signified by the Prophet Esechiels vision of a wheele, which had foure faces, or apparence of foure whiles, the shape whereof was'', as it were, a wheele in the middes of a wheele. What is this saith he, nisi quod in Testamenti veteris litera Testamentum nouum latuit per Allegoriam? but that in the letter of the old Testament, the New lay hidden by an Allegorie?

And as the same is the summe and subject of both Testaments: so both are diuided (for the more principal partes therof) into foure sortes of Bookes: Legal, Historical, Sapiential, & Prophetical. The Legal bookes of the old Testament are the fiue Bookes of Moises; Genesis, Exodus, Leuiticus, Numeri