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by those that are just coming over to us, and wish to be in'structed in the doctrine of godliness; the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobias, and what is called the Teaching of the Apostles, (διδαχὴ καλουμένη τῶν ἀποστόλων), and the Shepherd. adds, that whilst the books he had before mentioned were in the Canon, and these latter were read, there was no place for apocryphal books, which were the invention of heretics.

He

The way in which this work is mentioned; the other books with which it is classed; the use to which it was applied, viz. for the reading of converts, in order to their instruction in the doctrine of godliness; the fact that there is no hint whatever of its being a body of Church rules, to which all deferred,-seem to indicate almost certainly that it was not at all a work of that kind; though it may have contained matter respecting ecclesiastical regulations of an unauthoritative and practical character. Again, we read, in a list of sacred books in Ruffinus, on the Creed, § 36: It is to be known, however, that there are also other books which are not called canonical, but ecclesiastical books by our Fathers, as the Wisdom of Solomon . . . . the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach.... the Book of Tobias, and Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament, the book which is called that of the Shepherd, or of Hermas; that which is called the Two Ways, or the Judgment ' of Peter; all which they willed should be read in the Churches, 'but not adduced to establish the doctrines of the faith.'

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It will be seen that Ruffinus' list nearly agrees with that of S. Athanasius, and that he keeps these sacred books distinct from the large class of apocryphal works among which the next age placed them. But the Doctrina Apostolorum, which he himself had found in Eusebius, and expressed carefully in the singular in his own translation, disappears here, and the Two Ways, or the Judgment of Peter,' comes in its place. We should naturally be disposed to identify these, and to consider this another name for the Doctrina; but of that presently. We are now ascertaining the authority of these books, not identifying them.

And we apprehend that we may safely infer, that thus far there is no evidence of the existence of any authoritative book or books of Church rules in the first four centuries. The only plausible supposition is, that the Doctrina Apostolorum was of that kind; but the fact of its being classed with such books as it is, and its being designed for the use of Catechumens, seems quite to exclude it.

We now, however, come to evidence of the existence of our Constitutions towards the close of the fourth century (A.D. 736)

in the writings of S. Epiphanius. We must premise what seems to be the generally admitted view with respect to the eight books of Constitutions, that the substance of the first six books originally formed a distinct work, as they are found in Oriental versions, in Arabic, Æthiopic, and Syriac, bearing the title of the Didascalia of the Apostles, or the Catholic Didascalia; the remainder, the last two books (and perhaps parts of others), having been made up of smaller portions combined together, and altered in order to their combination. Now, in Epiphanius, we clearly identify this work, the main body of the present Constitutions, by several citations made by him from the first five books, though from a text differing from that which we have; and we have also Epiphanius's distinct statement of his own views respecting the authority of the book which he is citing.

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In Hær. 45, n. 5, he says: The Apostles also say in what is called the Stárais-the Constitution;' citing, in somewhat different form, our Constitutions. In Hær. 70, n. 10: And to ' prove this the Audiani allege (wrongly) the Constitution (StáTags) of the Apostles, which is a disputed book with the generality of Christians, but is not to be rejected (ovoav ev · ἀμφιλέκτῳ τοῖς πολλοῖς, ἀλλ ̓ οὐκ ἀδόκιμον). For the entire 'canonical order is contained in it, and no point of the faith is misstated, nor yet of the confession, nor of the ecclesiastical 'administration, and the rule, and the faith.' This is followed by a citation directly contradictory to our present text. In other places he cites the work thus (ib. n. 11, 12), The Apostles say' and the like: in one (80. 7), ô Beîos λóyos says: in another (75. 6), And if it is right to allege the passage of the Constitution of the Apostles.'

In Epiphanius, then, we have evidence of the existence of the Constitutions, of the commonly received opinion respecting them, and of his own. But the opinion of Epiphanius on a point of this kind is not of much weight. He was anything but a critical or a discerning writer. He is of more use in that he states what the opinions of others were, as to the character of the work. It was, as he plainly states, a book of questionable authority with the great body of Christians, and he himself only says he does not think it ought to be rejected. His testimony is more valuable in that he attests that the book gives a true picture of the faith, and of the ecclesiastical discipline and system, which it might do without being an apostolical, or even an authoritative book. That it was not a work of recognised authority is certain, because he states explicitly that it was not, though esteeming it himself. As we have before said, a code of laws must, by the very force of the terms, be a work of acknowledged authority,

generally recognised; and the Constitutions were not such even on the statement of one most disposed to esteem them. That the book so called is a literary composition intended to depict, as if of an apostolical original, actually existing regulations, is a very probable opinion. But it lessens the weight of the authority of the collection, in such degree as we suppose the writer to give a limited view, or a distorted one.

Again, we find two citations, intended apparently to be from this collection, our present Constitutions, in a work to which we shall refer presently, the Opus Imperfectum of S. Chrysostom, as it is falsely called, on S. Matthew; one of which cites the eighth book, proving that at the time that book, or those words were written (for they may be an interpolation), the collection was made into eight books; the other is a citation of a passage which is not in our text. This is the evidence respecting the Constitutions.

After these we may place the statement of a later writer, whose work, called and being a Synopsis of Holy Scripture, passes under the name of Athanasius, and is included among the treatises of doubtful genuineness in the editions of that Father's works, but which, at least as respects this list of Sacred Books, is confessedly spurious, and is placed by Fabricius in the middle of the fifth century, and by some recent writers as late as the tenth, being regarded as based on the stichometries which we shall mention next. In this work we find a list of the disputed books differing so widely from that of the Synodal Epistle, that Tillemont, in maintaining that the Synopsis was the work of S. Athanasius, was obliged to say that this list was an interpolation. It includes the Travels of Peter, the Travels of John, the Travels of Thomas, the Gospel according to Thomas, the Doctrine of the Apostles, the Clementia, out of which what is more true and divinely inspired has been selected and inter'preted,' &c. We observe that the Kλnuévria first appears here, together with these several grossly spurious books; it is plain that the list of uncanonical writings contains a class of books of very much lower character than the lists of the fourth century; and it would seem that the few old books which alone Eusebius and Athanasius mentioned, had, in the course of time, sunk considerably in esteem, and were put on a level with books which, in the Nicene period, were held as of much less account. We cite the passage for its mention of the Doctrina Apostolorum; of the Clementia we shall speak again.

Again, there are extant two ancient catalogues of canonical and spurious books, in which these writings occur, which may further aid us in seeing what they were.

The first is the old Stichometry at the end of Nicephorus's

Chronography; that is, the list of books, with the number of lines in each, according to the established mode of copying in line. This list is the same as that of the Pseudo-Athanasius just cited; and their agreement is an argument with Fabricius for setting the date of the Stichometry earlier than the time of Nicephorus; and with Credner, for supposing that the Synopsis is based on the Stichometry; it is extant in Greek, and also in a Latin Translation at the end of the Ecclesiastical History of Anastasius the Librarian, which is of value as confirming the correctness of the number of orixo in the case of each particular work.

The Gospel according to Thomas

The Teaching of the Apostles (Doctrina Apostolorum)

Of Clement (KAμevros, i.e. the Teaching of Clement) 2,6001
Of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Hermas.'

Another list, without the number of lines, is as follows:

The History of James.

The Revelation of Peter.

The Journeys and Teachings (didaɣai) of the Apostles (we would draw attention to the plural).

The Epistle of Barnabas.

The Acts of Paul,

The Revelation of Paul.

The Doctrine of Clement.

The Doctrine of Ignatius.
The Doctrine of Polycarp.

The Gospel according to Barnabas.
The Gospel according to Matthias.'

We bring these lists together because of their illustrating each other; only adding, that so far as the number of orixo can be a guide to us-which, from the irregularity of the length of the orixo, it can only be somewhat uncertainly-the Doctrina Apostolorum was shorter than the Book of Canticles, which had 280 σTixo, and the Clementis Doctrina as long as the Gospel of S. Luke. Grabe conjectured, and we think very justly, that the Clementia and Doctrina Clementis were the same, and were the then received form of the early portion of the Constitutions; on that view they are the diaráteis cited by Epiphanius, which, in his time, about A.D. 400, were rejected by most, but were included in the later and larger lists of apocryphal books, together with the Travels of the Apostles, &c., which had not been

I There is some doubt about this reading, some make it 6,000.

of sufficient esteem to be mentioned in the lists of Eusebius, Athanasius, and Ruffinus. Grabe thought that the Doctrina Apostolorum, and the other Doctrinæ, were some of the various tracts which were made up into the eight books. It was this catalogue which suggested that view to Bishop Pearson. What the Doctrina Apostolorum was, we think we may see more clearly hereafter.

What, then, is the result? There is no single citation out of, no single reference to, any written collection of authoritative Constitutions, in any writer of the first four centuries. Whilst there are innumerable evidences of the existence of an understood system of Church government and regulations, there is no trace whatever of any Church rules being embodied as an authoritative code, or committed to writing, except in the letters of Bishops, Canons of Councils, or other similar detached forms. Of the books which might be supposed to contain such collections, one, the Doctrina Apostolorum, was not recognised as of such a kind; and the chief part of the Constitutions which we now have, though in a different form, and a different text, existed, but was not held to be of authority, and indeed contained matter opposed to the practice of the Universal Church.

If, then, any works did exist, as it seems certain from extant remains that they did, bearing the semblance of Church rules, we must hold that they were private compositions, or representations of some local and temporary customs, or mere fictions. And the examination of the works themselves will confirm this view.

It will appear, we think, as we proceed, that persons wrote books professing to be the appointments of the Apostles, in which they depicted, but rhetorically and fancifully, as writers of fiction would do, the practice of the Church, as in their own judgment it was, or, perhaps, ought to be. Hence, if we could recover the writings in question in their original primitive form, we should not be able to rely on them as representing to us the true state of the Church, any more than we could infer from the Acts of Paul and Thecla that women ordinarily baptized. Epiphanius, indeed, might be alleged as endorsing their statements, but his expressions are too general to be pressed very closely; especially as in one of the places which he cites, the Constitutions (according to his copies) directly contradicted the practice of the universal Church. The very autographs of the writers, then, could we recover them, would deserve no higher authority than that which is due to the composers of fictions, and of Utopias, to whom there attaches a general want of confidence. It is necessary to receive all their assertions with caution; to check them by the testimony of writers of known