teachers, says: "He who hath sent us, our Lord and Prophet, declared to us that the evil one.... announced that he would send from amongst his followers apostles(1) to deceive. Therefore, above all remember to avoid every apostle, or teacher, or prophet, who first does not accurately compare his teaching with that of James called the brother of my Lord, and to whom was confided the ordering of the Church of the Hebrews in Jerusalem," &c., lest this evil one should send a false preacher to them, "as he has sent to us Simon preaching a counterfeit of truth in the name of our Lord and disseminating error."(2) Further on he speaks more plainly still. Simon maintains that he has a truer appreciation of the doctrines and teaching of Jesus because he has received his inspiration by supernatural vision, and not merely by the common experience of the senses,(3) and Peter replies: "If, therefore, our Jesus indeed was seen in a vision, was known by thee, and conversed with thee, it was only as one angry with an adversary.... But can any one through a vision be made wise to teach? And if thou sayest: 'It is possible,' then wherefore did the Teacher remain and discourse for a whole year to us who were awake? And how can we believe thy story that he was seen by thee? And how could he have been seen by thee when thy thoughts are contrary to his teaching? But if seen and taught by him for a single hour thou becamest an apostle:(4) preach his words, interpret his sayings, love his
apostles, oppose not me who consorted with him. For thou hast directly withstood me who am a firm rock, the foundation of the Church. If thou hadst not been an adversary thou wouldst not have calumniated me, thou wouldst not have reviled my teaching in order that, when declaring what I have myself heard from the Lord.
I might not be believed, as though I were condemned.... But if thou callest me condemned, thou speakest against God who revealed Christ to me,'"(1) &c. This last phrase: "If thou callest me condemned" [------] is an evident allusion to Galat. ii. II: "I withstood him to the face, because he was condemned" [------].
We have digressed to a greater extent than we intended, but it is not unimportant to show the general character and tendency of the work we have been examining. The Clementine Homilies,--written perhaps about the end of the second century, which never name nor indicate any Gospel as the source of the author's knowledge of evangelical history, whose quotations of sayings of Jesus, numerous as they are, systematically differ from the parallel passages of our Synoptics, or are altogether foreign to them, which denounce the Apostle Paul as an impostor, enemy of the faith, and disseminator of false doctrine, and therefore repudiate his Epistles, at the same time equally ignoring all the other writings of the New Testament,--can scarcely be considered as giving much support to any theory of the early formation of the New Testament Canon, or as affording evidence even of the existence of its separate books.