It is almost unnecessary to point out the exact agreement of these sentiments with the seventh and fourteenth articles of the Church of England, and how impossible it must be for a person holding them to think that we can do any thing whatever beyond what Christ has a right to expect from us. It is manifest that he would not have thought that any degrees of Christian holiness are really at our option, whether we shall seek them or not; but that every person who, having any degree of perfection, or any means of advancement placed before him, knowingly neglects it, becomes thereby unworthy of him who has given him liberty(291), and hazards his salvation: in short, that "to whom much is given, of him will much be required."
CHAPTER VIII. ON THE CANON, GENUINENESS, VERSIONS, USE, AND VALUE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.
Unnatural as it may appear, it is notwithstanding true that we find much less clear ideas in regard to the _canon_ of Holy Scripture in the earlier ages than in the later. The word scripture was used, as we shall see, in a latitude with which no church or party in later times has used it.
Irenæus quotes all the books which we of the Church of England esteem canonical, except Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Haggai. But the mere circumstance of his not citing them cannot, of course, imply any doubt as to their inspiration or canonicity. He had no occasion to do so for the purposes of his argument. It is only wonderful that he thought himself obliged to quote so largely upon such a subject.
But besides the writings which we esteem canonical, he quotes others which we reject from the canon. He not only repeats sentiments from them, as when he introduces a sentiment which occurs in the book of Wisdom(292), or the story of Susanna(293), without, however, mentioning the books themselves; he also quotes the story of Bel and the Dragon(294) as truly relating the words of the prophet Daniel, and the book of Baruch(295) as truly recording those of Jeremiah, and uses the latter as inspired. In short, Irenæus quoted from the Septuagint version of the Scriptures; and he consequently read the stories of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon, as part of the book of Daniel, and the book of Baruch as a continuation of that of Jeremiah. There is, in fact, great reason to think that he believed in the inspiration (in some sense) of the whole of the books contained in that version. But if so, that does not _prove_ (as we shall see presently), that they were all esteemed by the Church as canonical.