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 a perfect Canon of Scripture deliberately formed; it died out as mediæval ignorance deepened, and because there was no longer knowledge or criticism enough left in the world to keep such a discussion alive.

And so things went on till the Renascence, when criticism came to life again. But the Church had now long since adopted the Vulgate, and her authority was concerned in maintaining what she had adopted. Luther and Calvin, on the other hand, recurred to the old true notion of a difference in rank and genuineness among the Bible books. For they both of them insisted on the criterion of internal evidence for Scripture: 'the witness of the Spirit.' How freely Luther used this criterion, we may see by reading in the old editions of his Bible his prefaces, which in succeeding editions have long ceased to appear. Whether he used it aright we will not now inquire, but he used it freely. Taunted, however, by Rome with their divisions, their want of a fixed authority like the Church, Protestants were driven to make the Bible this fixed authority; and so the Bible came to be regarded as a thing all of a piece, endued with talismanic virtues. It came to be regarded as something different from anything it had originally ever been, or primitive times had ever imagined it to be. And Protestants did practically in this way use the Bible more irrationally than Rome practically ever used it; for Rome had her hypothesis of the Church Catholic endued with talismanic virtues, and did not want a talismanic Bible too. All this perversion has made a discriminating use of the Bible-documents very difficult in our country; yet without it a sound criticism of the Bible is