But then there is a circumstance which must prevent the Church of Rome from appealing to him with success in support of the canonicity of any of the books of the Apocrypha; and that is, that he quotes, under the express name of Scripture, a work which the whole Church, from not long after his time, has agreed to regard as merely human, if not altogether spurious--I mean the _Shepherd_ of Hermas(296). It is true that he is not singular in so speaking; for Clement of Alexandria directly ascribes inspiration to Hermas(297). And yet Tertullian, who was contemporary with Clement, affirms(298) that the Italian Churches had in express councils declared his book apocryphal.
I argue thus on the supposition that his single authority is appealed to. If he is adduced, with other writers of his age, to show that the Church acknowledged the apocryphal books as canonical, then one reply is, that even if this were true of the Church of that age, we are not bound by the decision of a single age. Massuet, indeed(299), reasons as though the canonicity of the books the Church of Rome receives were established by the authority of "all churches, or at least the greater part of them, and those of distinguished rank." Now it so happens that we have quite a chain of evidence on the opposite side. Melito(300), contemporary with Irenæus, after diligent inquiry in Palestine, reckons up, as canonical, the same books of the Old Testament which we acknowledge, and no others: for the { ~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{ ~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}(301), which (according to one reading) comes in after the Proverbs, is merely another name for that book; and Ezra, it is well known, included Nehemiah and Esther. Origen(302), in the middle of the third century, and Athanasius(303), Epiphanius(304), Gregory of Nazianzum(305), and Jerome(306), successively in the fourth--and what is more, the council of Laodicea(307), in the third century, whose acts were recognised by the sixth synod of Constantinople and Pope Adrian(308)--all agree in receiving a canon of the Old Testament much more like ours than like that of Rome. It is true that Origen adds the Maccabees, but he states that they are not in the canon. Athanasius, Epiphanius, and the Council of Laodicea reckon Baruch as part of the book of Jeremiah; Athanasius and the Council add the epistle of Jeremiah; Athanasius alone reckons Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. On the other hand, they all, together with Gregory of Nazianzum, Jerome, and Ruffinus, who entirely agree with us, reject all the other books which the Church of Rome has since admitted into the canon. Epiphanius(309) says that Christians and Nazoræi agreed in receiving the Jewish books, so that he could not have been aware that the Jews did not admit Baruch. So that how many soever may agree in _quoting_ the apocryphal books, the weight of authority is clearly against their reception as _canonical_.