Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/93

 CHIP. II.] scun, vuas. 88 bite the catalogue of books which we receive as inspired, or beesrose they are the  of' faith; the word caso (rwn,) signifying a rub or standard. We call those books aimvvjpAaJ, that is,  Or ,m which are not acknowledged as iviror inspired of Cod. ' Protestants reject the books called apocryphal from the rule of their faith; while Romanists acknowledge many of the books of this description as canonical. The following reasons induce us to reject the apocrypha. 1. The tatum of Protestmtt, as it rezpect the Old Tstamet, is the The learned Du Pin, a Roman Catholic, quotes Jerome on this sub- ject as follows :--" All the hooks of the Old Testament among the Jews just make up the number of twenty-two, five whereof were written by Moses, eight by the prophem, and nine are the Hagiographia. Some persons make them twenty-four in number by separating Ruth and the Lamentations from the prophet Jeremiah, and placing them among the lmiographi. This prologue to the Bible may serve as a preface to all those books that we have translated out of the Hebrew; and we ought to understand that whatsoever book is not to be found in this number is apocryphal. From hence it follows, that the book of Wisdom, com- monly attributed to Solomon, the Ecclesiasticns of Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith, Tobit, and the Pastor do not belong to the canon any more than the two books of Maccabees do; one of which was written in Hebrew and the other in Greek, as the style sufficiently shows."* Neither the ancient prophets, Christ or his almsdes, or ancient Chris- tians, as is worthy of remark, accused the Jews of omitting any canonical books; which they would not fail to have done had they considered the books called apocrypha as properly belonging to the inspired 2. apocrypAal l, oolr were not admitted into ths camm of &riptur �tAejrstfour centuries of the Ckristian Curc. le ancient Christians followed the Jewish canon in the books of the Old Testament. The first catalogues of the canonical books made the ecclesiastical Greek and Latin authors comprehended no more. e quote again our Catholic historian on this point. "The rst cats- 1ogue we find of the books of the Scriptures among the Christians is that of Melito, bishop of Sardis, set down by Eusebius in the fourth book of his history, chap. xxvi. It is entirely conformable to that of the Jews, and contains but twenty-two books, in which nmnber' Esther is not reckoned, and the book of Ruth is distinguished fm tluu of the Judges. Origen, also, in a certain passage, drawn out of the exposition of the first Psalm, and produced by Eusebius in his sixth book, chap. xxv, reckons twenty-two books of the Old Testament; but he places the book of Esther in this number, and joins the book of Ruth with that of Judges. The Council of Laodicea, which was the first synod that determined the number of the canonical books; St. Cy- ril, of Jerusalem, in his fourth catecheticai lecture; St. Hilary, in his preface to the Psalms; the last canon falsely ascribed to the apesties; Amphilochus, cited by Balsamon; Anastasins Sinalta upon the Hexa- moron, lib. vii; St. John Damascene, in his fourth book of Orthodox Faith; the author of the abridgment of Scripture and of the festival letter ttrilm.ted to St. Athanasius; the author of the book of the hie- 1
 * ,Du Pin, vol. i, p.

�